Radical Acceptance

 What you resist, persists.   Carl Jung.           

 It is what it is.  12-step saying

I get the meaning of ‘it is what it is’, and I appreciate the message which reminds me to stay in the present. It can be accompanied by a sort of indifferent mental shrug, though. Dr. Jung’s quote, however, is more on point for me, without the attitude.

I haven’t studied radical acceptance as such, but I have Tara Brach’s book by that name, ready to be my next textbook. I’ve been getting that message a lot lately, which seems to me to be one of the ways in which my Higher Power speaks to me. 

I think that the phrase ‘it is what it is’ is, if not seen as uncaring, a very worthy mantra. It’s sort of a truncated version of the Serenity Prayer. If I can’t change a situation, what can I do? Accept. Find my ‘north star’ and keep my chin up. Know that all situations are temporary, and are impersonal. “Why me?” has no place in acceptance of what is. The heavens haven’t conspired against me. God isn’t peeved. My ethereal posse will guide me through, if I turn my attention to doing the next right thing, taking the next right action.

As is so often the case, driving is a great classroom, offering me many opportunities to practice loving kindness and radical acceptance. Personal relationships are full of those lessons. We’re bombarded with reasons to learn these lessons, and, for me, they offer growth in emotional sobriety, or emotional intelligence. 

Today, I am grateful for the grace which accompanies the lessons. Today, I will not resist, but will allow, with love, that which I have no control over to come at me, go through me, and be done with it.