When you are confronted with a difficult situation, a painful event like a loss, to be dismissed from your job or a split-up, your mind will be very busy figuring out ways out of the pain. You may have a reflex of numbing or distracting yourself (which is OK as we cannot always handle all emotions in one go). Or your mind will be looking for “ways out”, for fixing or making right what went wrong. And that can be super helpful when there is a real chance to succeed.
Your mind however may be so focused on the fixing, that it is not even considering a possibility that may ease the pain simply by getting at peace with a situation. It is so much looking for the best solution, which, to its understanding, is to get away from or to change the situation, that it is not considering that staying with whatever is might give you a much better result.
When I lost my father in a very unusual way, and earlier than expected, there was (and still is) so much of a “that is not OK” , “this can’t possibly be”, that my brain has been torturing me for months with questions about what I or others can, could or should have been doing differently. ‘What if’… is probably the worst question in existence. Because it does not bring him back. It assumes how things could or should be, when they are not.
And this is very little helpful.
Getting to terms with and accepting what is does not mean that I give in. It does not mean that I acknowledge or agree with other people’s behaviour, not even that I forgive. It simply means that I am choosing the most loving solution for myself.
“Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.” – Eckhart Tolle
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