If we were to think of our minds as one giant letter box, ready for the delivery of whoever wants to send something our way, then naturally you might want to be extremely choosy about what you let be delivered. Only the good stuff, please. And that is not necessarily a bad strategy. But the question is, how realistic is it? One walk down my local neighbourhood street will tell you that any letterbox whose owner has taken their sweet time and money to affix a polite request for No Junk Mail has had it completely and utterly ignored by all who wish to shove their latest offering, opinion or request in there.
Every single letterbox I see that has made this effort to control what it receives, is literally stuffed to the brim with unwanted marketing paraphernalia. Our minds are really no different. Lots of undesired incoming information or news. We can and should seek to limit negative thoughts, ideas or experiences penetrating our mental barriers as much as possible. But when they come in, and they undeniably will, I don’t necessarily think that the answer is to ignore them and only open the letters that allow us to think positive thoughts.
Before learning Vedic Meditation, I had lived a large part of my life with the more old-school view that it was good to try and suppress negative thoughts about a situation or challenge all together. Or, at the very least, proactively replace them with positive thoughts. Fake it til’ you make it was the name of the game. Easy to say. But bloody hard to do in the thick of a really hard time. I had never even imagined it was even possible (or safe) to instead observe a dark or worrying thought, stare it dead in the face, feel it fully and then let simply let it pass.
I don’t think managing our thoughts in this way is an entirely realistic north star though if we do not learn the art of acceptance as the core modus operandi for managing life’s junk mail (in whatever form it comes). When I was diagnosed with cancer, there were some who could not cope with my acceptance of the diagnosis that arrived on my doorstep. But doing so helped me avoid too many of the unanswerable “why me?” whinges and focus more on the hope producing “what now?” actions. Acceptance is the antithesis of resistance to 'what is'. But all my prior beliefs that acceptance had to mean inaction were completely dissolved when I realised that my power lay entirely in the control that I still had in relation to the prognosis.
Yes, I accepted the fact that I could not change. I had cancer. There was no amount of signage refusing entry at the doorway to my mind that was going to avoid letting that bad boy in. He was already well settled, in total disregard of my polite requests to stay away. But it was my (relatively) speedy acceptance of that unchangeable fact that allowed every single ounce of my energy to instead be devoted to what action I could take to influence my yet-to-be determined future. Action that would see me eradicate this foreign matter that had taken lodging uninvited in my face.
It is not necessary or effective to try to keep already established facts frozen out of our minds or unauthentically turned into some kind of positive story. Sometimes the truth of the matter is that our incoming news is not positive. It might well and truly suck. But accepting it, feeling all the feels that come with it and then acting with speed to move towards a more favourable outcome will make for a hell of a lot less suffering. We certainly don’t want our junk mail to accumulate and lie around unread or unprocessed. All that leads to is a mind jammed full with no space for new offerings, new deliveries, new potentials. Let’s change all those resistant letterbox signs to Junk Mail Accepted. With one big fat disclaimer:*But once I have opened you, if I don’t like what I read, then I will take action (which might just involve throwing you in the bin).
P.S. If you think this blog piece might be junk mail worthy of accepting, please do forward it to friends and family and encourage them to review the collection. SUBSCRIBE, SHARE, WEAR. Tell them its wisdom their consciousness can wear.
#thehautequoture #wisdomyoucanwear #thequotesswiththemostess #whateverfloatsyourquote #eckharttolle #acceptance #action
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