Look at and Accept Your Current Reality to Find Your Place of Peace

In Deepak Chopra’s book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, he writes that when you struggle against the moment, you’re actually struggling against the entire universe. In other words, where you are currently is the sum of all that has occurred. It can’t be any different. Accepting what is in this moment, fully, completely, and unconditionally, is essential to moving on to create what you want.

Sounds like a big order, doesn’t it? Some things we experience just don’t feel “acceptable.” When we look at what’s happening in our world with all the wars, the economic issues, and the inequities, it would appear quite difficult to “accept” what is, even if only in this moment. In our own lives, there are circumstances that challenge us, and finding our place of peace just feels, at times, impossible.

But think about it this way: nothing “better” can be created when we are experiencing negativity about something – resisting what is. There are lots of things that happen that could be called “unacceptable,” but we don’t make them better by hanging on to the negativity. Our only real way out is to find our place of peace first.

This is one of Author and Spiritual Teacher Eckhart Tolle’s practices as well. He stresses the need to be present – to be in the “now” – and to surrender to whatever is happening in the now. To do otherwise is to make an enemy of the only thing there is – the now. When you think about it that way, what else is there to do?

Recently, I have been hearing people talk about the change from calling our current war, “The War on Terror,” to calling it “Overseas Contingency Operations.” Whatever. Personally, that’s a mouthful and doesn’t really say anything. But here’s what I like about getting rid of the term “war on terror”: that phrase reinforced the fear that all Americans felt after 9-11, and kept that fear alive. It kept us focused on the fear, not on the solutions. Yes, it has a certain power – fear always does. But, is fear the power we want to use? I don’t think so. We certainly don’t feel peaceful when we use it, and I believe as a result, we don’t even see the best solutions. They are blocked by our fear. We also create more fear by focusing on it. This is what happens.

After 9-11, my son proposed a solutio
I thought was brilliant (he is my son, after all :-)) He asked me, what if instead of attacking, we had sought to forgive and asked the world to help us? What if, instead of sinking into the fear, we reached out to the rest of the world to help us solve this by finding the cause and remedying it? Where would we be today? That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t bring the perpetrators to justice. We would. It would just not have been done out of fear, but out of the need and desire for a more peaceful world.

If we look at our own lives for how we are holding onto negativity – where we are not in acceptance – and just let go of it, we experience greater peace and happiness and open up to new ideas and solutions. If that is what we truly want, then we will make that decision. It might mean doing it over and over again, but in the end, it will be worth it.