Sunday, June 12, 2016

I Choose… The Pause (Part Three) Unconditional Acceptance



I Choose… The Pause (Part Three)
Unconditional Acceptance

Hi Everyone!

Midway through this cleanse, I must admit that I find the lack of ANY different results a bit frustrating. I feel exactly the same as I did before I started it, with the exception of a severely pinched nerve in my neck that is a new thing (and it has nothing to do with the cleanse).

And what this feeling of frustration is telling me is that, although I told myself when I began that I was doing it without an agenda, clearly I did (do) have an agenda.

I want to feel better.

It’s a simple fact that as of right now, two weeks in, I don’t feel any better or any worse. And I am resisting that “simple fact” because of how difficult this is. I mean, really, you would think that if I’m going to put this amount of work into something like this, the least that God could do for me is show me some dang positive results, right?! Sheesh! (LOL – I’m being facetious, although there is a grain of truth here, too, and this has me recognizing that I’ve got strings attached, which I promised myself I wouldn’t do.)

I find myself glad that I decided to make it a 30-day cleanse rather than a seven- or ten-day cleanse, because NOW I have the opportunity to persevere. To NOT give up. To be AWARE of things [like the hidden agenda that I’m just now discovering] cropping up that I would not have otherwise recognized. If I had made it a shorter process, it would have already ended, and my attitude at the end would have been, “What a waste of time. All that work and nothing to show for it.” and I would have moved right back into old, unhealthy, unconscious habits.

So I will continue on, and as I do so I will deliberately cultivate a choice for unconditional acceptance. Acceptance of all of it, exactly as it is. Non-resistance, non-attachment, and complete and unconditional acceptance of what-is, is my choice for the week. In the words of Bill Harris, this week I choose to “let whatever happens be okay.”

Neck/shoulder/arm pain? It is what it is, and if I struggle against it I only add emotional suffering to the physical suffering. ZERO weight loss? If I struggle against this fact, I will create my own emotional suffering. Still feeling generally unwell? Again, if I struggle against the circumstance, my experience will be one of suffering. This idea applies to every single aspect of my life situation. Relationship issues. Work issues. Vehicle issues. Financial issues. Pet issues. All of it.

If I can walk through it all with a feeling of complete acceptance – as if I chose every bit of it on purpose (and I believe that at the spiritual level, I did) – then I get to choose how I handle every single step along the way.

Whereas if I walk through it resisting every step along the way, choosing to feel like a victim of it all, I will have a very different experience, won’t I? As long as I struggle against it, I am powerless in my experience of it.

When I choose to accept all of it exactly as it is FIRST [beginning, if need be, with accepting the feeling of non-acceptance, which is our “normal” human reaction when something happens that we don’t like], only from there, only if I stand centered in complete acceptance, can I deliberately choose the experience that I WANT to have.

Acceptance… deliberate, unconditional acceptance is, I believe, the quickest and most empowering way to bring ourselves to that feeling of inner peace that is inherent in every single one of us. The peace that is Divine in its nature. The peace that does not depend on worldly things to be a certain way before we can feel It.

Remember, circumstances are completely neutral. They have nothing invested in what we think of them or how we feel about them. They just ARE. How we experience them is completely up to us as individuals. Our experience of ANY circumstance is dictated by who we are choosing to be—and on how we are choosing to see—in the midst of it.

For this week, at the very least… and preferably for the rest of my life:

I Choose… Unconditional Acceptance

For now, and indefinitely, I am choosing to be a person who knows exactly how to be at peace in the midst of any circumstance, and I find my way to that feeling of peace by deliberately cultivating unconditional acceptance of what-is. I ask the question, “If I knew that I chose this on purpose—for my own benefit, as a spiritual being having a spiritual experience—what would I choose to do and who would I choose to be as I take my steps through it?” And that is how I walk my Path as it winds its way in, through, and around my circumstances. I accept it all.

What about you? What’s going on in YOUR life that would be easier for you if you felt empowered IN it rather than a victim OF it?

We always get to choose. Always. No exceptions. [And yes, I am aware of what happened in Orlando last night. And no, that does not qualify as an exception. If anything, that kind of thing is an amazing, powerful motivator to deliberately choose acceptance and peace. Why? Because blame, anger, judgment, revenge, fear, punishment, hatred, etc. is NEVER going to produce a solution to the problem (the “problem” being the mass consciousness—the attitudes, habits of perception, and beliefs—of our society, itself) that allows things like that to happen in the first place. Only a choice for peace and love has that capability.]

Love,
Sandi

I Choose… The Pause (Part Two)



I Choose… The Pause (Part Two)
June 5, 2016

Hello all!

Well, one week down and three to go.

This week I’ve really taken two of the ideas from last week’s letter and done my best to remember to APPLY them in this experience.

The first: “I did not try to control ANY aspect of that experience, except for the choices I was making in each and every moment.”

As with any “tool for transformation,” the stronger my intention to make it a “default setting” in my patterns of behavior 1) the more likely I am to remember to do it and 2) the more numerous and intense are the opportunities to practice. Because, as you’ve all heard me say before, it’s not possible to create a new habit if we never have to choose it deliberately. And, for myself, the strength and the level of sincerity of an intention such as this is always apparent to me in the number and the intensity of the opportunities to practice it that I recognize in my experience.

Please note: I did not say “opportunities to practice that I RECEIVE.” I said “opportunities that I RECOGNIZE” (as opportunities). It’s a Divine Truth that we are continually, in every moment of every day, receiving opportunities to make our choices deliberately. For myself, when I set an intention to really change something within myself, it’s as if I have decided to “turn my awareness dial” just a bit for the purpose of being able to see the choices that are always available to me but that my previous habits of perception and behavior have not allowed me to recognize. This makes those opportunities “light up” for me AS opportunities, and from there I can choose more consciously than I do when I’m operating out of habit.

The second idea that I’ve been getting into is regarding the “pause,” itself: “I stood in that “pause,” in the “turning of the page” moment, which contains no content, and I paid attention to the choices that my habits of thinking would try to make. In that pause, I discovered that I could leave what was past, in the past. I could write a different story [if I chose to].”

Last January I sent out an article titled, “I Choose My Desired Content,” and it was about the “Book of My Life” idea (if you’ve joined this list since then and you’d like to read it, you can find it in the archives), and that’s where I’ve been going with the above idea about a “turning of the page” moment, which contains no content. In this metaphor, I’m taking the “days” out of the idea and making it about the pause, instead. As I do so, I know that I can take as long as I choose to turn that page, and in that pause I get to decide who I want to be, as the author of my own story, when that page has been turned all the way over and waits in readiness for the next bit of content to be entered.

In that “My Desired Content” article I said this: “I get to choose what is written on this page. …And whatever it says will be the truth of who I BE'd [as I lived the life that became that page’s content], because the choices that I make are always—NO EXCEPTIONS—an infallibly accurate representation of WHO I AM BEING in the moment that I make them.”

In other words, who I am being as I make my choices in each and every moment—in the midst of each and every circumstance—is what creates the story of my life as I’m living it.

In this “pause” that I am currently giving to myself, as I am just breathing in between the moments of recognition that I’m behaving by default, rather than by design, there is an amazing freedom to witness how I’m choosing to live each moment without judging or criticizing, but WITH the ability to see my behavior for what it is and to change it if I decide to.

This last week has been one of observing myself and my choices for the purpose of seeing where my habits of behavior are not behaviors that contribute to the quality of the person that I know I am capable of being. Simple. And yet, difficult at the same time, I must admit.

And well worth the effort.

I Choose… the Pause (Part Two)

This week as I stand in the Observer position, witnessing my own attitudes, choices, and behaviors, I recognize in all of it – in each and every moment and experience – the opportunity to stand more firmly in the NEW “default” position that I’ve set for myself. Each time I choose FOR the new pattern, I help it to become the default program that I WANT to live my life from, and the story in the Book of My Life reflects the quality of my new choices.

I am grateful for every single opportunity to practice that I am able to recognize, because I know that it’s not anything that’s happening TO me, but it is something wonderful that is happening FOR me, for the purpose of showing me where a new and different choice can be made on my own behalf. In this “turning of the page” moment, I breathe, and I consciously decide who the author of the next page in the Book of My Life is going to be.

What about YOU? Do you find anything helpful in this? I hope so. I’d love to hear about it.

Love,
Sandi