Yesterday we looked at one common mind-response to the Innate Health understanding – trying to turn it into a set of rules. Rules that can easily be flagged by the word ‘should’ (🚩).
So today, let's look at another sneaky way in which the mind stops you from living a life of ease and grace:
Making out like this is an invitation to apathy.
The mind hears this:
…and it gets out its dictionary definition of ‘acceptance’ to conclude:
📦🗣️: “Ok, so it's got nothing to do with what's happening, and everything to do with what I think about situations, so I should just learn to put up with things.”
Which leads me to my second necessary disclaimer:
I'l admit, it took me ages to get my own head round this one, because there's something paradoxical about stopping trying to change things, in order to change things… but no, the Innate Health understanding does not mean you're ‘making it all up’ and you should (🚩) just accept things as they are.
That's not what acceptance is.
But there's a neat little passage in Eckhart Tolle's landmark book, The Power of Now that really brought it home for me, when he uses the example of finding yourself stuck in mud, and what to do about that:
“You wouldn't say, ‘Okay, I resign myself to being stuck in the mud.’ Resignation is not surrender. You don't need to accept an undesirable or unpleasant life situation. Nor do you need to deceive yourself and say that there is nothing wrong with being stuck in the mud. No. You recognise fully that you want to get out of it
You then narrow your attention down to the present moment without mentally labelling it in any way … You accept the ‘isness’ of this moment. Then you take action and do all that you can to get out of the mud.”
Have a listen to this excerpt from the book
That ‘narrowing your attention down to the present moment’ is simply a case of letting the mind's narrative about a situation slide on by, which is what you'll hear me inviting you to do, pretty much each and every day, here at the Daily Reminders.
You'll find this unlocks your greatest potential and allows creative solutions to the situations you face, to flow more easily.
So that you don't have to ‘put up with things’ at all!
😘
Giles
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Giles P Croft
A good one!