Summary: On this episode of Living With Tolle we focus on "Acceptance," the first stage of "Awakened Doing," as explained by Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth. Practicing acceptance can help us cope with tragic loss, daily life, and the challenges of personal awakening. Play Now or Listen in a new window (32 minutes) Right-click to save to your computer (44MB) If you enjoyed this podcast, you can share it with friends. Simply use the ShareThis button at the end of this post. Thanks! Key Insights From Our Conversation: Sharing transformative experiences with others feels good. The process of awakening, on a personal and spiritual level, affects you in unexpected ways. Personal Awakening is not about creating a fixed paradise, but about being in the process of continually creating paradise “Acceptance” can help you deal with and recover from loss and tragedies, such as hurricanes. The Ego creates itself through identification by attaching itself to form, to things around us, and even to our thoughts. When those are stripped away, we have an opportunity to realize “I am not my possessions” or “I am not my thoughts.” Even in the face of loss, you can still experience the present moment, inner aliveness, and the joy of being. An explanation of Awakened Doing: (from Chapter 10 of A New Earth) Step 1: Acceptance. Step 2: Enjoyment. Step 3: Enthusiasm. Begin with Acceptance: It is fundamental. [Watch Greg speaking about acceptance] How do you accept a flat tire? How do you accept cold soup at a restaurant? How do you accept your kids’ tantrums or daily messes? A state of non-acceptance is a state of resistance, which creates Negativity. Acceptance can help you listen to your kids, accepting their emotions, creating deeper empathy and better connections with them. How can we practice acceptance without “putting up with” undesirable situations and challenges? Acceptance is not about a passive resignation to life’s situations. Accept the situation, acknowledge the problem, then consciously correct the situation through acceptance. Though your conditioned way of being can react to problems by complaining, creating drama, anger, and frustrations, acceptance allows you to engage life’s challenges in more clear-headed, dynamic, and creative ways. Acceptance allows for clarity of mind. Don’t engage in drama, false stories, internal complaints, inaccurate interpretations of what’s happening around you. All this energy wasted in the drama can actually make the problem worse. Rather, accept the situation and the present moment as it is unfolding. The solutions you seek are more readily available through acceptance than through resistance. Questions to our audience: How is your inability to create acceptance wasting energy in your life? How is your resistance to life creating more anger or anxiety than necessary? How do you experience resistance in your life? How do you experience acceptance? What has happens when you have accepted the situation differently, more fully, without the resistance? Have our conversations helped you to reach that moment of acceptance? Please share your experiences and your feedback in the "Response" section below. As we continue to develop our site, your comments on everything from content to design will be very valuable. Thanks for listening. Peace. Leo & Greg
