A Living Teacher or Acceptance

The Sufis say that the way to find God is either through a living teacher or, failing that, is through acceptance. Acceptance of all things that come to you without judging them. The way of accepting all things without complaining or feeling bad is to know that the reason these difficulties exist is so that you can be offered the opportunity to accept what is coming to you without your ego determining good or bad. It is training you in endurance, which is self will, inner strength, or, will power. Just like taking the bitter medicine, you know that it will make you feel better once the taste is gone from your palate.

If you could accept everything completely objectively you would be in a state of total inner peace and contentment. So just like the child who says I am hungry, you give them more and more food to satisfy their hunger, or their thirst, more to drink. So the gods give the true seeker many trials and difficulties because that is the food to satisfy our hunger for conquering the ego and its opinions. It is the ego that causes us all the distress of desires that it seeks to fulfill. This food is the nourishment to give us the strength to undergo the training.

If we have a desire, that means we feel a lack. If there is a lack, then there is suffering to some degree. Suffering is like a weed that grows and spreads continuously if it is not pulled out by the roots. The removal of this lower desiring ego is the achievement of inner peace and contentment. The achievement of these qualities opens the door for the potential of an experience of enlightenment, of that which is beyond the normal three dimensional world. Just like removing the weeds lets the flowers grow and be seen.

Desires are not only for things that we want and do not have, but for feelings and a state of life that we would prefer to have. This means not simply the car or house, but for an ending of the troubles of life, from the things that cause us stress and so on. If you wish for peace, then you believe your life is other than it should be, which is probably not realistic for this world. When you accept that the life you live is due to your own efforts combined with the food for the soul, then you accept it as it is. Once you have that, you will have the power to change your life.

This state can only be achieved when you have the humility and acceptance that you know nothing at all. Can you accept that despite your definite uncompromisable belief that you know what is good or bad, that you know anything at all in its absolute truth of certainty, that you really do not know what the ultimate truth of anything is? What if someone murdered a baby, that would be considered evil. But what if that baby was Adolph Hitler, only you had no idea what that baby was going to grow up to be, you would still have considered that bad.

In retrospect, if someone killed a baby, you would have looked at that as a horrible deed, but if you had the opportunity to judge someone who killed Adolph Hitler when he was a baby, knowing that he would kill so many millions of people, and in killing that baby, the murderer would have saved so many lives and unimaginable suffering, you probably would consider that a good deed. Think about this when you see all events you are certain that you know what good or bad is. Remember that you do not know the future and the connection of the present to how it is forming the future.

Think back to difficulties in your life, and you will find that once they are over, they are left in the past. The key to a happy life is that when you are in the middle of a difficulty, try to remind yourself; “This too shall pass.”

When you can doubt yourself this deeply you will achieve the inner peace. This means that life stays the same, the difficulties are still there, but you no longer are tired by them, they are not as bad as they used to be. Of course if you only doubted yourself, that would not be a life that you can comprehend, but there is something that gives balance to that.

You doubt your opinion of good and bad. You are certain that there is a good thread in every event, only that you may not be able to see it. So you doubt your sense of judgment when you see some event as purely negative. If you see every event you encounter, and possibly rightly so, as negative only, you will not find peace. If you begin to see every event that may appear to you as negative and doubt yourself about your opinion, but you are certain there is good in it, only that good is not visible to you at that moment in time, then you have the confidence to balance the doubt.

You doubt your opinion, but you are confident that there is an invisible balancing factor to every event. In this, you will have total self confidence and strength that comes from conquering the ego.

The life of difficulties is the opportunity to achieve inner peace. Simply by acceptance of all that you face without thinking good or bad, difficult or easy, that acceptance will bring you what you seek. Once you have achieved such an inner state, then you can achieve whatever you desire in the world. But of course, once you are at that level, your desires are simply to do what is in front of you.

Some people say that one must have desires and goals, or else life is pointless. But those same people who make that statement would do anything to have the inner contentment of a Buddha. Bring up your inner strength to let them have their beliefs, and you have yours, it is all a matter of what you wish to achieve.

Further to that, if you look at the people who have achieved the most in this world, you will find that they are very peaceful inside. The ones that are agitated and nervous rarely make great accomplishments. So if you wish to achieve the most for yourself, your family, and your world, then your first step is to find inner peace. Once you have that, you will be capable of fulfilling your destiny, otherwise, you will just be running around in circles chasing the ghost of a peaceful existence in the world the way you think it should be.

There once was a sheik who asked his students what they would do if they where God. One said he would eliminate illnesses, another said she would make everyone peaceful and kind, another said he would end war, one would end pollution, and so it went until the last disciple. This one said he would do nothing at all. All the others where shocked and said, surely there must be something he would do. But he simply replied; “I believe that there is something that created this world, and that something must know better than me what the right thing to do is. So who am I to think I know better?”

This is humility, acceptance, a state of inner peace that brings wisdom.

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