Conscious Living - Acceptance Is The Answer

Foreign. Hello, Cadre community here on the fourth Saturday, fourth Saturday of November, which means that it's conscious living. Every fourth Saturday is conscious living. And the theme has been acceptance. And for me, the theme has been acceptance. Excuse me. Acceptance is the answer to all our problems. And I'll tell you what, there's a lot that I could talk about, but I want to share about this. And I think it's. I hope it's considered really and seen as a way to honor a friend of mine who just passed.

And I was just talking with my old sponsor, who was his sponsor as well, who was with him leading up to when he passed and actually when he passed. And what does that have to do with acceptance is the answer? Well, it probably doesn't take much to figure out that we're all going to die. We accept it or we don't accept it, but much of. Maybe not much, but, you know, a fair amount of our suffering in this world comes from our fighting the fact that we're going to die like that. There's. There's no escaping it, no matter how much you bargain, how much you want to fight it.

And so there's this beautiful thing that can happen when we accept that we're going to die. And it's even more beautiful sometimes when a person is actually in the process of dying and they accept. So this idea of conscious living and acceptance, acceptance is an incredible tool, right? I screw up and I can like, pause and I can accept that I made a mistake, and I can accept that I'm human and I don't have to beat myself up because I made a mistake. And if I need to make amends, then I make amends.

And if I need to, you know, clean anything else up, then I clean it up. But there's always an opportunity. There's always a top opportunity to do something different, say something different. But that where acceptance comes in really from this idea of conscious living, for me personally, is I like to fight. I like to fight reality. I fight reality a lot. I fight reality from the perspective of, like, I want things to be different. And acceptance helps me to see when they are or to help. It helps me to see life as life and things as they are without trying to fight it.

And the interesting thing is it was my friend Ed, who just died in Minnesota, and I was talking to him less than two weeks ago, and he was sharing with me that he wasn't accepting it. His medical team was telling him that he was dying, and he said, no, no, no, I'm not I don't want to die. I want to do everything I can to stay alive. And how amazing is that? How beautiful is that? Now, some people would say, but was that helpful? I think it was helpful for him. It helped him feel like he wasn't just giving up.

Just. You know, sometimes when people hear acceptance, we hear resignation. But acceptance is not accepted at all. Resignation, acceptance is a point. It's a moment. It is a part of the whole process. And that process begins with acceptance, right? In some circles, it's awareness, acceptance. And what follows? Acceptance, action, awareness, acceptance with clarity. And then right. Action. And then I can take action. And that is a beautiful thing. So ultimately, Ed did accept, and Ed faced his fears, and he talked about his fears with his sponsor, and he shared, right.

And he got to the place where he accepted. And I think his willingness to not accept was as powerful as his willingness to accept. And it's probably not that often where not accepting has some value, because ultimately, for me, each day, there is so much I need to accept. And when I do, I have much, much greater peace. Acceptance is the answer to all my problems. Because when any. Anytime I find something unacceptable, oftentimes it's because I'm fighting reality. So I wish everybody a very wonderful Thanksgiving, Wonderful next week, and take care of.