1. The act or process of accepting.
2. The state of being accepted or acceptable.
3. Favorable reception; approval.
4. Belief in something; agreement.

 

Out of all the things I write about here I think acceptance is the hardest. It demands living in the moment, seeing things the way they are. As I tell my closest friends when they are under a great deal of stress:

Breath…

Ironically, most of us think of acceptance as something fairly straight forward. I do not. I think it takes daily practice. Why? As Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, "If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is, 'The quiet acceptance of what is.'"

Acceptance of things can be fairly simple. Quiet acceptance, now that's something that takes inner strength of a type I'm still trying to find and though I find that in the moment I strive to built upon it.

We don't have to always accept things the way they are, though. That's not really the meaning of acceptance. To delve in further consider the words of Denis Waitley: "There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them."

To put it another way:

"I saw a star, I reached for it, I missed. So I accepted the sky." - Scott Fortini

Or yet another:

"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses." - Carl Jung

The spiritual warrior in me believes this. We must accept our situation and move forward with determination, only then can we effect change in ourselves and in others. And like with ourselves, acceptance of others does not preclude a desire to present them with challenges. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, "If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that."

And so I try to be.