Humanity’s super power is universal acceptance

Did you know that hiding in your mind is a super power with the ability to radically transform your world for the better - more peaceful, less stressful, and more fulfilling?

The title of this essay reveals this power: our capability for universal acceptance.

So how does one unlock this power, then?

As one modern mindfulness guru, Eckhart Tolle says, we can surrender to, or accept —  if not ultimately enjoy — any and everything that can possibly happen to us. This includes unpleasant events, from the benign to the catastrophic; there is always a silver lining or opportunity for us to find meaning in every event, no matter what.

Understandably, the mind’s first reaction to this idea of being able to willingly surrender to, accept, or possibly even find meaning in any event in life — even the most horrible or harrowing events — is probably curt dismissal. After all, you can probably think of dozens, if not hundreds of events which offer instant justification with which to reject this possibility of universal acceptance out of hand.

However, before you do that, I would urge you to read the book by the man in the photo above: Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl’s memoire of coming to find meaning even in the concentration camps of the Holocaust is a powerful, intense, and compelling account of how just such an impossibility —being able to accept and even finding meaning in even the most dreadful life events — is indeed possible, born out of our super power for universal acceptance.

As Viktor Frankl’s example and countless others show us, human beings really can come to accept anything that can possibly happen to us in life. The reward for doing so is extraordinary, too. Learning to accept or surrender to what happens in life can obliterate any level of stress that may accumulate in our minds and bodies, while leaving in place of that stress a deeply satisfying feeling of peace and even fulfillment.

To clarify, acknowledging our super power of universal acceptance isn’t tantamount to rolling over and giving up on our free will, either. Accepting is not the same as resigning oneself to drifting at sea without rudder or sail, as hapless as dandelion seed in the wind.

Exerting what influence we have in life can run in parallel with universally accepting what happens after give it our all. It is true that by learning to exert our influence by tapping into our natural and learned talents, we can indeed experience more of life and enjoy much more rich and exciting lives.

It is precisely by learning to both give life our best effort, while accepting what happens from this point that we can enjoy our most fulfilling lives. Yet it is when our egos get involved where we slip and fall into disarray in this endeavor. Ironically, the vision painted for us by our egos of an imagined version of ourselves who is always just a little better or different than who are in here and now is the real impossibility; rather, learning to accept who we are in the present is actually the only realistic option available to us.

Listening to our egos and striving to realize the unattainable vision of self our egos paint for us is what inevitably leads us to believe the initial delusion: that influence is the same as control. Furthermore, sinking into this first delusion is what leads us to believing the deeper delusion, which is that there are some things in life which we cannot — or should not, our egos tell us — accept. Once we believe both of these delusions, we close the door fully to our power of universal acceptance.

To keep us spellbound in these delusions, the ego uses a devilishly contradictory detail about what happens to us in life to its advantage. To explain how, let’s start with the facts that any event which we resist accepting has already happened, and so it cannot be changed.

If we listen to our egos and believe that our influence is as good as control, then our egos will build upon this by convincing us that we cannot accept the past, because we should have been able to control what happened. However, the truth is that it is impossible to control anything in life, because our influence is not the same as control. The only thing that we can control is how we perceive our life events, and whether or not we accept what happens in our lives.

We can prevent ourselves from being deluded into this impossible circular logic if we can learn to do the best we can, and then come to accept what happens from there. These two steps together can grant us a deep fulfillment from doing the best that we can in life, while enjoying being unencumbered by the stress of trying to impossibly resist what we cannot control.

Reflect on this and you should see how not accepting what happens is a recipe for madness, and mires us in an endless circular trap, refusing to accept what cannot be changed in the past and becoming upset with ourselves when we cannot control what happens in some future past-to-be, over and over and over again. In this trap, we simultaneously become obsessed with the past and emotionally charged about the future, which destroys our ability to live peacefully in the present.

Let’s consider a couple examples of this.

Say you lose your keys and are locked out of your house. How frustrating, right? Immediately, your ego will try to make you feel like an idiot for losing something as important as your keys. Your ego will lead you to believe that you should be impervious to losing your keys — or wallet, or phone, or passport, or anything else, ever. Yet, is it really possible for you to control whether or not you ever lose your keys? What if you get robbed and the thief steals your keys? Could you control that situation? When confronted here, the ego’s defense will never be to admit that maybe you can’t control what happens, but instead an endless stream of rationale, such as how being careful would prevent you from being robbed in the first place, or that being robbed doesn’t happen in this neighborhood. If you hear these thoughts arising, can’t you see that this is missing the point? Don’t other people lost their keys, too? You not being the only person to ever lose their keys demonstrates how this is a non-controllable aspect of life. Even if you are careful, check before you leave the house, tie your keys to your pants, or take a self-defense weapon in case of robbers, these are all influences over whether or not you lose your keys, but in the end there is no amount of influence that you can exert that will guarantee that you will never, ever in your life lose your keys or other important articles.

So why is it that you feel so upset for losing your keys, rather than accepting that you have done just that?

Once you have lost your keys, the most sensible option available to you is not to beat yourself up, but to accept that you lost your keys and to move on. Standing there and wishing that you didn’t lose your keys or mentally berating yourself won’t change the fact of the matter. What you can do is retrace your steps to try to find them, and if you can’t you can get ask your roommate to let you in to search inside, or ultimately get another copy made. If you cling to non-acceptance of having already lost your keys and mental abuse, the only thing this will do is ruin your day, weekend, or entire week every time you are reminded of how you lost your keys. A sinister part of non-acceptance of what has already happened is that, even if you find your keys and effectively un-do the issue, the memory of the issue remains, and this is what your ego will use try to make you hold onto negative emotions and thoughts. Instead of “wow, I found them! Thank goodness!” Your ego will say “well I found them. I’m such an idiot, how could I leave them on the table today!”

It may not sound like much, but if you stop to imagine or actually catalog how many times you beat yourself up throughout each and every day over events that happen which you can’t control and won’t accept, then you’ll realize how much stress your ego’s non-acceptance of life adds. Imagine what life would be like if you didn’t have that stress?

Or say that you lose a job, or don’t get a desired job.

Can you change the facts once they have happened? No. 

So why should you let your energy be fed into an ego-driven refrain, repeating over and over again, “it’s not fair, this shouldn’t have happened to me? I can’t believe this! Why me? Why did this happen to me?”

Could you have prevented that outcome from occurring? No. 

You could only influence it, but you couldn’t control it. So why create stress by resisting what is impossible? Why not devote your energy and time now to learning why you didn’t get or lost your job, or finding a new job, or finding a new career, or finding some help in this challenging time for you, or just taking a few days off and thinking about what to do later?

Or say that you lose a loved one.

Can you change this fact once it has happened? No.

So why should you try to pretend like life is the same and keep smiling or working without allowing yourself to grieve? Why should you deny the sadness that you feel in that moment, or in the moments to come?

Or why should you assume that the loss means you can never be happy again, and should feel ashamed when you come across moments of joy or feelings of peace? Why should you hold onto the sadness forever, when life will bring you many moments of happiness in the future, which it is okay to accept?

Could you have prevented that outcome from happening? No.

So why should you be afraid that it will happen again? The truth is that it will happen again. We will all die — it’s the nature of life, and no amount of being afraid of or running from death will prevent us from dying. Why not spend your time living and cherishing what comes in life instead of being afraid of that?

Or why should you feel guilty or sad for surviving without your loved one? Firstly, it wasn’t your fault that they passed away. And as hard as it may be to admit this, this person wasn’t the only reason for you to go on living your life. They may have been an integral part of your life, which their absence makes an incredibly painful realization, but the reality is that your life is much broader than one person — or one job, or one day, or one decade, or one decision.

Losses can hurt with an intensity we never knew was possible. Yet, what we lose is not who we are. We are consciousness, which itself has nothing to lose, until it is lost itself. Losing someone or something in life will hurt, but it can’t destroy us, because it is not who we are. After each loss, we are still there, still conscious; until the day that our consciousness itself is lost, we are each still conscious and have the ability to accept any loss, and to continue living.

In the coming days, weeks, months, and years: realize how tremendous your power of universal acceptance is. We are all born with this super power greater than conscious thought, which can enable us to live our most fulfilled and enjoyable lives in the present moment. It is only our egos, who are the guards at the gate of this power, who prevent us from tapping into this great power. The next time you feel a resistance to something that happened which you wished you could control, remember that nothing in life is controllable, except your acceptance of what happens. Remember that by accepting what has already happened to you, you can be freed of the obsession with the past, or the constant fear of the future, and instead can focus your energy on living fully in the present, where you can discover how life can still be meaningful, or enjoyable, no matter what your present moment holds.

Stay tuned for more musings on how to reduce stress or anxiety and how to live mindfully in modern society, and in doing so discover and resonate more happiness, love, peace, energy, and meaning.