Acceptance of the grace and mystery of life means that because of our practice of letting go the core posture of our soul and pattern of our life is letting go….letting go of the need to make every thing fit, cohere. We just need to surrender to what arises and allow the mystery and grace of life to come to us uncensored and unedited
When I say surrender what do I mean?
In fact coming from the old Covey school of thought concerning goal setting, 5 year personal planning, life goal achievement the idea of surrender might seem oxymoronic.
This is a move from planning to preparedness.
Surrender is radical acceptance of our lives just as they are, it is the active turning of the mind from willfulness (resisting or trying to change what is) to willingness, (meeting what is or accepting life on life’s terms)
THIS DOESN’T imply becoming passive or condoning an unacceptable situation; instead radical acceptance is an active engagement with whatever is happening in the moment.
Radical acceptance is precisely what decreases pain. Our ability to receive and accept instead of fight and resist is what decreases pain and discomfort.
I not only read about this a lot in the larger wisdom traditions but have experienced this first hand.
When I try to control or fight circumstances in relationships or in certain church setting I work that very resistance is precisely what heightens pain and angst.
Furthermore it is in the mystery the parts that don’t initially makes sense that often God is up to something that we couldn’t see before, hadn’t planned or didn’t anticipate.
SYNCHRONICITY may be one of the greatest by products of accepting what is arising. One of the most important leadership books I have read of the several hundred on my shelf and the one I go back to over and over again is Synchronicity by Joe Jaworski. First used by Carl Jung, Synchronicity is serendipity with the “universe behind it.” In Christian language…God is involved in what might look like a coincidence.
What if we remained just as connected to the adventure of mystery and the questions of life as we did the answer seeking we are so driven by and end up in the process with these incredibly synchronicity moments?
My guess is this too is a function at some level of years and maturity.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree.. For me, surrender played a significant role in what lead to a deep sense of being rescued. There is a lot of mystery surrounding God. He makes no apology for it. But it wasn’t until I surrendered to His sovereign hand in my life and the lives of those closest to me that I experienced a deeper relationship with Him. One that resulted in healing and a profound sense that God knows what He is doing.
in the light of your other posts, this is all so well stated, wow. Thanks, I can’t wait to read about synchronicity moments. I have to kick back a little at the end comments about ….”What if we remained just as connected to the adventure of mystery and the questions of life as we did the answer seeking we are so driven by”
I guess because I see questions and answers like learning and teaching. Pretty much the same thing. I get what you are saying, what we call answers is a problem. Perhaps its not the wanting of answers, but our unwillingness to make peace with non symmetrical answers. Its like learning jazz harmonies, at first the notes just sound wrong, but if you check your jazz book it is indeed correct. It is the answer. It is the answer in a process of unlearning. I like to think of it, that it is not the answers that are the problems, its our preconceived hypothesizes that abort divine answers and disguise dangerous judgments as divine answers. But these dangerous judgments do not deserve the dignity of being called an answer. I don’t even like to call then wrong answers. They are a lack of wisdom or a blunder, that the smartest people in the world have been guilty of making many times over. I am just not comfortable associating answers with problems. In a life filled with jeopardy, if their are no answers how can we go on to the next category of questions? In the same way, if teaching is to questions what answers are to learning, then how can we question what we have not learned?