The Deepest Acceptance

Without the story, do you really have any way of knowing what pain is? And we can go even further: without the story, do you really have any way of knowing what sensations actually are? Without the story, life is a total mystery, isn’t it? Yes, the mystery is there even within the experience of pain. Pain does not destroy or block mystery; it is sa

Freedom is always about what’s true, right now—not what I think is true, not what I’ve been told is true, not what I believe is true, not what my spiritual teacher told me was true, but what is actually true in this moment, in this present experience, in these thoughts, these sensations, these feelings. True freedom is about admitting what’s true.

Even in the midst of the noisiest thoughts, there is something here that is very quiet—something that is deeply at peace. It’s what you are. It watches all thoughts as they come and go. It allows all thoughts to come and go.

And so it’s not that there is no me—it’s that when I take a fresh look, right now, I can’t find something separate from life itself called a me.

Our fear is not really the fear of failure or ugliness or pain, but what these things symbolize in our world. And for many people, failure is linked to disapproval, rejection, abandonment, and, ultimately, lack of love.

What you are is simply the capacity to think anything and to feel anything, but you are not defined by any of the thoughts and feelings that appear.

We are at war with the opposites; we reject any opposite that doesn’t match our image of ourselves, and we don’t realize something very important: in reality, there are no opposites. Opposites are a creation of the mind.

Suffering is always an invitation to discover, in the moment, what we are not deeply accepting and to see that what we are not accepting is already accepted.

Here’s something that’s crucial to understand: In reality, feelings have no opposite. Energy in the body has no opposite. Life itself has no opposite.