Surrender | Accept - Pass the Sour Cream

This entry is part 4 of 9 in the series Surrender

We need to acknowledge where we are before we can move forward.

There are (at least) two elements of Acceptance:

Accept where are you today.
Accept that there is a greater version of yourself.

Let’s get into the first one because it’s required to then move onto the second one and also, this first one can be quite the annoying roadblock to getting further at all.

Accept where you are today

Accept where you are before you can get start leaving where you are. To get to the next level, onto the next personality, phase in your life, we first need to figure out, acknowledge, and accept where we are.

One element of this acceptance is “being OK with it.” Not just, “OK, fine, I accept this is where I am even though I’m not happy about being here and I really don’t want to be here and I’d rather be further along by now.” but embracing, even being, grateful for where you are.

This was (and is) always a struggle for me. I find myself saying things like:

“But I don’t want to be here.”
“I should be further along by now.”
“I deserve to be at a higher level at this point.”
“Well, this sucks.”

Whereas the cross-legged monk in me feels like I’m supposed to be saying:

“I thank my past self for getting me to the point where I am today so that I can move forward from here.”
“I’m grateful to be even at this point in my life for I might have been much further behind.”

What if where we currently are in a cocoon stage of our lives and the next stage is when we emerge as the beautiful butterfly? Could we have, should we have skipped that boring, stupid, annoying cocoon stage? The butterfly thinks not.

But I know, I get it, I’m in the same boat (or maybe the same cocoon): I want to be the butterfly. Could we hurry up this claustrophobic cocoon stage, please?

Speaking of the butterfly…

Accept that there is a greater version of yourself

We don’t have to be in the cocoon forever.

We don’t have to be that slimy, segmented, truly odd beast that is a caterpillar.

We can become the butterfly. In fact, and this can be hard to grasp while we’re still feeling like a caterpillar, we currently are that future butterfly we’re just in another form right now.

Here we go with the part that gets a little harder to grasp if you’re still feeling like the caterpillar. Yes, we are that future butterfly right now even though we don’t feel like it but even better is that while we’re the caterpillar, we have access to the butterfly. The butterfly’s wisdom, experience, even beauty and outlook from that perspective.

Let’s move away from the crawly and flying insects for a moment and come to us, to people.

What is your butterfly? Or maybe who is your butterfly? Who will you be in the future? We now, yes, right now, have access to that future self, our own future self in all of its glory, fame, fortune and whatever else we seek and strive towards.

Let’s go beyond even the butterfly for a moment.

Sure, she’s beautiful, brilliant, and, I mean, come on, she can FLY while we’re stuck crawling on way too many legs down here on the ground.

But what if this greater being is something even greater than what we can imagine? What if there is a greater self, a larger-than-life source or entity or ____________ (fill in the blank as to what you think might be there) that is accessible for us?

Allow me to guess where you’re heading right now in your thoughts? Let’s do a bullet list of my guesses at words that are going through your mind right now.

God
god
Spirit
Source
Universe
Greater self
Angel
Tinkerbell

Any of those pop into your mind yet?

I especially like Tinkerbell because this being, this floaty existence we’re trying to “accept” here in the “accept” chapter could be anything.

Ready for the hard part?

Because up until now I’m throwing out terms we might be familiar with but maybe don’t quite, well, accept.

Yep, that’s it.

To get to this next level of self, to rise up, to elevate to where we want to go, we can do it quite a bit faster, easier, and with more bells and whistles when we accept that there is a greater force out there guiding us, leading us, or at least with a stick and a flag like tourist groups in Rome, available to us to tap into.

There are you have it.

That’s the second part of acceptance–it’s a doozy, I admit.

That there is something greater than our physical self out there, well, maybe not even so far out there, maybe it’s “in here” or right next to us at all times.

We’re not yet in the chapter titled “Believe,” we’re only at Accept.