Accepting Reality: Happily Ever After.

Note: In order to get a better understanding of what is being said here, please do read from  here. Also it is highly recommended to practice cultivating silence as mentioned here.

In one of my earlier posts I had talked about looking for happiness within us. All our lives we look outward for happiness. If that really did make us happy, we should have been the happiest people alive, after manipulating ourselves and the world around us we should have it all down to a fine art to find happiness. And yet, happiness is always just beyond us. Even when we do catch up with it, it slips away real soon.

So is "happily ever after" possible?

Yes. It is possible to be happy exactly where you are.

How?

Shift the way you think. Instead of "what can the world do to make me happy?" or "how I can change myself to gain the love of the world?", look into "how can I accept the world as it is, and myself as I am?"

In all of the example statements we talked about in previous posts, there was one part called "reality" … which was the actuality of the situation, free from any interpretation about it. Accepting this part, the reality of the situation, will make everything different.

Acceptance doesn’t mean being weak, or allowing others to use us as doormats, or not acting when action is needed. Acceptance means dropping the mind stories that makes us suffer by keeping us mentally and emotionally bound to a situation. Being attached to the mind stories uses up energy needlessly, clouds thinking and drains energy; acceptance helps get past the mind story and address any moment or situation with clarity.

Things happen around us without our help. We may believe we are making things happen, however life just keeps flowing with or without our help.

We believe we actually carve the path of our lives, however, look back and be honest with yourself... how much of our lives has been as we had planned? How much of our sadness is because we are still clinging onto the dreams ("mind stories") we had of our life, partner, kids, parents, siblings. What happens if we drop the ideas ("mind stories") we have.  It's a slight shift in our focus. We put all our attention and energy on our mind stories and see our world from this place. All we need to do is shift our focus away from the mind story and accept the reality.

Let’s look into this:

"I feel sad because I am disappointed that my mother is not around more to help me with my kids."

emotion = sad

label = disappointed

mind story = mother should help more

reality = mother is here once a week/month, never.

So you are sad because you cannot accept the reality of what is going on. Your mother is doing what she is doing. Maybe she does not want to go through bringing up children again. Maybe she feels unloved because she feels you are using her to take care of the kids. Maybe she is old and does not have the energy to take care of the children. Maybe she is afraid she is old and may not be able to keep up with the children. We know how tired we get taking care of the children? Well she maybe double our age... and with half our energy. Or maybe she just does not care.

All the above statements are to help you see what she may be going through. But it does not really matter what she is going through. We can only speculate what someone else is feeling or thinking with our mind stories. The only thing we can be sure about is what is going on. My mother is not involved with my children as often as I would like her to be.

Can you accept this? For even a moment, drop the thought "my mother should help me more" and feel the release and lightness. Try thinking in another way... "I should not expect anything from my mother and accept that she is loving us the best she knows how" or "I should love my mother no matter what she does or does not do". Or "I should love myself and drop the expectation, because it is hurting me to keep the expectations in place".

When you can identify the mind story and let it go and accept the reality that is beyond the mind story, you will feel an instant release in tension in yourself. We will see how we cling onto these mind stories and keep our suffering in place.

Another wonderful thing that we will start to experience is when the mind stories are not controlling our every move, a kind of freedom comes into our lives and we can just flow with what is happening. Once this happens... once we have loosened the grip our mind stories have on us... everything starts to unfold in perfect harmony. It has always been unfolding in perfect harmony, we have been so caught up in our mind stories that we haven't noticed.