Faith and Acceptance

Some thoughts from Pond Rings

Sometimes our mind and all it knows seeks security, faith demands that we rest in insecurity. Sometimes rational thinking invites our attention into the many possibilities that lie outside of our current experience, faith invites us to trust in those possibilities unfolding. Hope adds to our dreams of something different, faith awakens those dreams. Knowledge of the right thing to do can seduce while faith loves What Is. Intellectual awareness of the way out is often a grasping attempt to escape from despair, an attempt to use positive thinking to change What Is. Acceptance allows despair to be despair and walking into the heart of that despair one may find an open doorway, a place to gently make contact, offering a touch of sobering kindness.

Or walking into the heart of any emotion. . .For myself, sometimes I just have to accept that I should be present with and accept this feeling and right now I'm not and I don't. Right now it sucks and is painful and I can't accept it. Right now I can't go further into it because I'm stuck in the looping of hating its presence... Sometimes those pointers to the 'healthy way of doing things' are just another way of romanticizing some state other than what is being experienced right now.

When someone feels anger or hate or anything else, it's authentic because it is what they are feeling. Noticing our emotions jumps to a different level once we are aware of our noticing... Then we have the response-ability to notice our reactions to our emotions. In the practice of accepting, we have to start with whatever is most present. If it's a response to an emotion that is most present then we have to accept our response and then perhaps down the road we can accept the emotion and then. . .


(some of these thoughts are adapted from a passage in Robert Masters' book Darkness Shining Wild)