"resistance vs. acceptance" doesn’t exist. There is only ACCEPTANCE

[blankisomeone]

Your mind possesses dualistic cognition. That means that you can only think of something and make sense of what you’re thinking if the thing you’re thinking about is contrasted with its opposite. The concept of “good” only makes sense to your mind if it comes up with the concept of its opposite: “evil”. If the concept of “evil” didn’t exist, the concept of “good” couldn’t arise in your mind. Your mind is uncapable of grasping something simply for what it is, it only grasps something when it’s contrasted with its opposite. The human mind is infested with such biased understanding. It goes from clearly made-up concepts such as “left vs. right” and “up vs. down” to more tricky ones such as “good vs. evil” and “birth vs. death”. The trickier the duality gets the realer it seems. Dualities, however, always collapse when carefully analysed. What remains is the Ultimate that arises from the duality. The Ultimate can’t be talked about, because language is dualistic. Transcending dualities is equivalent to transcending your mind, quieting your mind.

                Having become aware of the dualistic nature of the mind, we can more carefully understand what your spiritual gurus mean when they say “accept the present moment”, “accept your pain”, “accept whatever situation you’re in”. When you’re going through a tough situation or even feeling strong physical or emotional pain, having someone tell you to just accept it is like adding fuel to the fire. It enrages you! Who in their right minds would just accept this horrible situation? Having someone give you such advice feels like they’re mocking you, making fun of you or acting indifferent towards your pain. It feels that way because you’re misunderstanding the teaching. I completely understand your angst, though. Because I understand the dualistic nature of the mind. Things can get complicated quickly if you don’t follow me. It can become even trickier if you have a chattery monkey mind, if your pain is too strong or your situation too sticky and you can’t bring yourself to concentrate. That’s why it helps tremendously to have solid meditation skills.

Resistance is not possible. Only acceptance is possible. You won’t come to “accept” something by trying to stop resisting it. You will only come to “accept” something when you understand that there’s no other way it can be.

Pick a thing you’re resisting. Focus on it. Whatever it is. It can be a personal problem or the current situation of the world. It can be something about your physical appearance you don’t particularly like. It can be something as natural as the process of aging. It can be the workload you’ve been avoiding by procrastinating. It can be the death of a loved one that you just can’t bring yourself to accept. It can be the environment you find yourself in right now. It can be a physical pain that is bothering you. It can even be life itself, the mere existence of life. Whatever it is that you’re resisting, pick that so we can work with it. Be specific about what it is you feel yourself resisting and turn your awareness inwards.

Become aware of the fact that you’re reading this text because there’s something you’re resisting and you’re suffering for it. Notice how you’re suffering.

Notice that you want to learn how to “accept” so that you stop suffering. You want to accept the pain in the hopes that it goes away. Now tell me, is hoping that something goes away acceptance?

Notice that your attempt to accept something is instantaneously turning into resistance. In your dualistic way of thinking about it, there's a dot of resistance in your acceptance, like in the yin and yang symbol, where there's a dot of black in the white. There’s something you’re doing wrong. You still haven’t accepted it. You’re getting caught up in the duality.

You want to accept something so that the suffering stops, so that you’ll more easily go through your workload that you’ve been avoiding, so that you’ll gain more motivation to work, so that your physical/emotional pain stops, so that your life will be easier, so that the situation goes away, so that you’ll stop acting a certain way.

“If I accept my pain does that mean the pain goes away?” Pain is pain. By definition, pain hurts. So if you want to accept your pain by wishing it wasn’t painful, are you really accepting the pain?

“Ok. So what’s the solution?” The solution is actual acceptance, by realizing that resistance is not possible.

“If I accept a certain situation does that mean I won’t do anything about it?” Taking action has nothing to do with the “resistance vs. acceptance” duality. Some people resist situations and still do nothing about them, they just complain. Some people accept situations (or so they say) and do nothing about them, becoming a doormat. The acceptance that I’m talking about has nothing to do with taking action or not. That’s something you’ll decide for yourself.

“Do I have to stop resisting things?” No, I’m saying that you must remove the illusory idea of resistance in the first place. Even if you want to change a thing, you must first acknowledge that it’s happening, that’s acceptance.

“To accept do I have to stop resisting?” To accept you must realize that what you think of as ‘resistance’ is NOT possible. Ever. To accept is to look at the word “resistance” as an insane idea.

Focus on how attaching yourself to the “resistance” end of the “resistance vs acceptance” polarity is unhealthy. Notice how it makes you feel. Notice the inner conflict. Notice the insanity.

You’re not LEARNING to accept, you’re just REMEMBERING that it’s the only possibility.

Notice that if you don’t take the process of deconstructing the “resistance vs acceptance” duality slowly, you’ll want to force yourself to stop believing in the existence of “resistance”, therefore reinforcing its existence by resisting it! An internal never-ending loop of suffering is then created. You must accept even the dualistic nature of your mind, not wishing it didn't exist, just seeing through it is enough!

You CAN’T look in the mirror every day and resist what you see. You CAN’T wake up every single day resisting a situation you’re in.

“If I accept this negative situation I’m in, then I won’t do anything about it?” First of all, our goal is to see through the illusion of the ‘resistance vs. acceptance’ duality. Just to label the situation you’re in as ‘negative’ is already going too far by creating yet another duality. Second of all, I can ask you the same question by the opposite end of the duality: ‘if you resist this situation you’re in, will you do anything about it?’ The answer is not clear.

Contemplate how your desire to accept something is actually coming from your desire to resist it! Contemplate it so hard that at some point you’ll burst out laughing at your insane attempt at going about doing something in a way that is not sustainable!

You cannot accept hardship by wishing it was easy!

In fact easy vs hard is another duality!

In fact this entire text is a duality!

all of it collapses lol

Edited November 16, 2020 by blankisomeone

[Moksha]

Nice

Waking up is the direct realization of Consciousness. You experience that you are already abundant. Thoughts and emotions are not you. Your body is not you. You are Consciousness infusing this form, and are Consciousness infusing every other form.

Every dream duality has a gravitational pull that leads to suffering. It is the insanity of trying to find permanence in the impermanent. Waking up is the end of suffering. Consciousness is sanity.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Moksha

[snowyowl]

Ok, I'm trying to understand this, not sure if I've got it yet. I resist stuff, procrastinate too (resistance to doing things on my to-do list). Are you saying that resistance is like another name for lying to myself, creating a fantasy which is different to reality?  
     
But there's also a tradition from the east, Buddhism & Taoism, which says that we shouldn't reject or cling to anything - find the middle way - so are we talking about  acceptance without clinging (clinging is as bad as rejecting)?  Is it letting things be themselves without trying to change them? But then sometimes there are conflicts. For example, there's poverty and homelessness, I don't want to accept that, but it exists.  So does my feeling of rejecting it exist.  So presumably I need accept the whole situation, the reality of poverty, plus my thought that I want to change it?  How is that different from what I'm doing already? 

Edited November 16, 2020 by snowyowl
grammar

[Moksha]

@snowyowl Good questions. Resistance is the result of not understanding reality. You believe that you can change what is, when you can't. What is, already is. What is the point of denying what is? It only creates unnecessary suffering.

The reason people are unhappy is that they look for happiness in the impermanent. It is always around the next bend. The conditioned mind continues to chase, and chase, and chase without realizing there is no prize out there. It is only in here.

That is the wisdom of the bodhisattvas. Clinging and rejecting are two ends of the same stick. People do it because they misidentify with their mind, which is pulled by dualities. When they wake up and realize themselves as Consciousness, they see these things for what they are. They are centered in themselves. Their happiness arises from Consciousness itself, which is the only reality, and which never changes. 

That doesn't mean we can't change our life situation. It just means we act Consciously, rather than unconsciously. If a woman is in an abusive relationship, she has to first recognize the relationship for what it is, before she can get out of it. The more Conscious she is, the more empowered she will be.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Moksha

[snowyowl]

So, acceptance (= love) of the present and past, of the whole situation, and action from that acceptance is the good. But if we divide reality up into some parts which we like and accept; and other parts which we dislike and reject; that's a recipe for evil and suffering. 

[Moksha]

6 hours ago, snowyowl said:

So, acceptance (= love) of the present and past, of the whole situation, and action from that acceptance is the good. But if we divide reality up into some parts which we like and accept; and other parts which we dislike and reject; that's a recipe for evil and suffering. 

That is a good way of looking at it. Acceptance of isness is the pathway to Self-realization. We get ourselves into trouble when we allow our minds to dwell on the past, or worry about the future. Awareness in the present moment creates the space for you to realize who you are. When you directly realize yourself as Consciousness, and resonate with the same Consciousness in every other person and thing, you are love.

[Ibgdrgnxxv]

@blankisomeone there is resistance. I've been feeling a lot of resistance this week. 

Resisting an insight. Time went by super fastly. 

[blankisomeone]

16 hours ago, Ibgdrgnxxv said:

@blankisomeone there is resistance. I've been feeling a lot of resistance this week. 

Resisting an insight. 

Are you suffering?

Why are you resisting the insight?

What was the insight?

What’s so terrible about it that you must resist?

Do you accept that you’re resisting it?

Edited November 18, 2020 by blankisomeone

[Ibgdrgnxxv]

6 hours ago, blankisomeone said:

Are you suffering?

Why are you resisting the insight?

What was the insight?

What’s so terrible about it that you must resist?

Do you accept that you’re resisting it?

It's personal. I'd feel reluctant to share it with the whole world. 

Edited November 19, 2020 by Ibgdrgnxxv

[blankisomeone]

4 hours ago, Ibgdrgnxxv said:

It's personal. I'd feel reluctant to share it with the whole world. 

Sure. Just contemplate those questions on your own, you don't have to share it here. I thought you meant you were resisting an insight you had about life in general, not a personal issue, but the questions still apply

Edited November 19, 2020 by blankisomeone

[Claymoree]

From my latest experiments I came to conclusion that most mind and emotion problems are result of pitting emotions vs thoughts and thoughts vs emotions and ofc  there is also third factor, so I don't think that  you need to quiet your mind, or let go of it, just like you don't have to do it with emotions, thoughts on them self is nothing more then chattering and no strings attached logic , observation happening, just as emotions on their own don't seem to be negative in any form if you don't pit them against something. 

In other words everything is authentic, perfect as single unit , as soon as you disturb it with certain combinations it goes rampart, it does not mean that you can't do anything with them, you just have to  know what the hell you are doing. 

 

Maybe I am wrong, still think it is worth sharing. 

 

Edited November 19, 2020 by Claymoree

[Moksha]

We have no free will, because there is no we. Consciousness is making all the calls.

[Beginner Mind]

2 minutes ago, Moksha said:

We have no free will, because there is no we. Consciousness is making all the calls.

This.

"Not even a leaf moves except by the will of God." -- Ramakrishna