What Is Meditation? by Rob Nairn

Author:Rob Nairn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications

Acceptance

An attitude of self-acceptance is essential to meditation. This begins with the mind: learning to accept everything that is happening within the mind—all the thoughts, all the feelings, whatever—and coming to terms with it. Any attitude of wanting to change or manipulate the mind, or enforce a different mind state, constitutes nonacceptance and will lead to trouble. This makes sense if you think about it. If you had to live with someone who did not accept you as you were, but was always trying to change you, manipulate you, or mold you into their idea of what you should be, you would not like it and would feel uncomfortable, rejected, and eventually rebellious. In the end your relationship with that person would be a bad one, full of conflict and tension.

Working with the mind is the same, because the mind is what we think of as me or self. If there is no inner acceptance then there is no basis for inner harmony and peace.

Stated simply, when we talk of acceptance, we are talking of unconditional love—starting with ourselves. If we are unable to accept and love ourselves unconditionally, then we will not be able to accept and love others; if we reject ourselves and live in a state of inner emotional conflict, confusion, and tension, this is what we will put into the world around us, because we manifest what we are. If we learn to accept and love ourselves unconditionally, then this is what we will manifest in the world. We will become happy, peaceful, and loving, and will naturally express those qualities.

People often misunderstand acceptance and think it implies approval or endorsement of negative mind states. For example, most children are told that it is bad to be angry or to hate people, and so on. They grow up with an attitude that these states are unacceptable or dangerous (“I will be condemned and rejected and therefore not loved if I have these feelings”). This creates a quandary within the mind because practically everyone has these negative states to some degree. Normally the solution to this quandary is to ignore them and pretend they are not there, even to the point of denying their very existence. We do this with all our negative, “unacceptable” thoughts and feelings, following some irrational belief that if we do this long and hard enough, they will go away.

That is not the way things happen. This attitude produces nothing but inner conflict, chronic tension, anxiety, fear, neurosis, physical illness, and eventually insanity. These negative states will not go away until we do something about them.

It is true that they are harmful. They are destructive; they do cause suffering to ourselves and others; they are the cause of all the trouble in the world. Happiness, peace, and love are not possible while they are present within the mind. But how are they to be dealt with if suppression, denial, and manipulation only make the situation worse? The solution is acceptance—the opposite of what most people think.

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