I’m not sure there are many practices that bring us back to centre, and quietly realign us with the soul of our lives, like the one I want to reflect on today.
It isn’t prayer in the usual sense, though it can become one. It isn’t meditation, a breathing technique, or anything you need to add to your routine.
It’s acceptance.
Even writing that word, I can feel how quickly the mind wants to argue with it.
It might be worth noticing what happens in you when you just read it. Did you soften? Tighten? Roll your eyes? Feel tired? Feel relieved? Most of us have some kind of reaction to that word.
What I mean by acceptance is not resignation. It is not pretending something is fine when it is not. It is not making the painful thing your fault. And it does not mean you do nothing.
It means you stop fighting reality.
Acceptance is the moment we let something be here, long enough so we can tell the truth about it, without defending ourselves.
From a psychological angle, this is one of the most human things we can do. When we stop clenching against an experience, we create space to respond rather than react. When we stop arguing with what is already happening, we often find energy for what is actually ours to do.
From a spiritual angle, acceptance looks a lot like faith. I would argue that it is one of the primary fruits of deep faith. Not the kind of faith that insists everything makes sense, but the kind that releases the need for life to be a certain way in order to feel safe.
There’s a deep trust hidden inside acceptance. Sometimes it’s subtle; a sense that resistance doesn’t ultimately serve us. And sometimes acceptance comes from a more conscious trust that we are held by a larger benevolence, which will somehow make good of all things, even the tough stuff. Either way, acceptance requires a level of faith.
Acceptance is a consent to the real, and a willingness to meet God, wisdom, or love in the only place we ever actually can: here.
The problem is that resistance is often our reflex.
We naturally resist a situation, an outcome, a person, a memory, a feeling that annoys or challenges us. We resist because something in us says it shouldn’t be this way. This isn’t in my script. And underneath that script there is usually an old attempt at safety, an old hurt that is still active which produces a certain, limited way of seeing the world.
We resist the colleague who frustrates us, the family member we don’t understand, the plan that fell apart, the door that didn’t open when we thought it would.
I might resist challenging feedback because it disturbs the version of myself I rely on to feel acceptable.
Or resist a certain group or ideology because it threatens the story that helps me feel right, special, or secure.
Or resist the moments I notice anger, jealousy, desire, grief, and any feeling I’ve labelled “unholy” because it disturbs the image of myself I’ve worked hard to maintain.
Resistance protects the self I think I need to be. I go through life constantly reinforcing my own limited ideas about self, God, others, and the meaning of life.
And the cost is that my world contracts.
When I live from resistance, my inner life becomes like a courtroom. I build a case against reality. I rehearse conversations. I tighten in my body. I lose curiosity. I become less teachable, less free, less able to love what is actually in front of me.
But acceptance reverses that contraction.
Each time we consciously accept something we don’t initially like or expect, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We loosen the grip of control. We stop trying to manage life purely through the defensive strategies of ego. We return, even for a moment, to the deeper place in us that can hold complexity and mess without needing a clean answer.
Acceptance is not just a thought, but a posture. I experience it as a disposition, an inner spaciousness. A capacity to hold whatever is happening without the automatic reflex to push it away.
Often, what we are really resisting is the fear that acceptance means approval, weakness, or giving up on change, when in fact it simply means telling the truth about what is already here.
It can sound like this:
“This is what is happening…or this is what I am noticing in myself or others…and I don’t like it…I wish it were different…but I can let it be here…I’ll give it some attention without abandoning myself.”
Acceptance gives us the chance to be curious rather than dismissive. It loosens the grip of reactivity and opens a deeper kind of knowing, one that grows through staying present rather than rushing to judge or fix.
Often, when we do this, the very thing we want to resist softens, loses its charge, and sometimes even passes through.
As the psychologist Carl Rogers famously observed: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
Acceptance is not the opposite of action. It is often the beginning of wise action.
Resistance tends to suppress self-awareness. Acceptance almost always deepens it.
If I accept jealousy and stay with it, I might discover that it is not proof of my failure. It might be revealing a longing, or an unlived capacity, or a desire for a more truthful life. Sometimes the thing that irritates me is simply showing me what I secretly want.
If I can accept the difficult individual, rather than immediately judging and dismissing them, and sit with my annoyance long enough, I might recognise that they are reflecting qualities within myself that I don’t like, and which need some attention.
We might be clever, intelligent, and articulate, but insight and wisdom is formed through a lifetime of meeting and accepting what is real without closing the heart.
Acceptance is the great leveller: the intelligent, wealthy, or powerful have no advantage over others here. To glean the wisdom and peace of acceptance, all that is required is sufficient self-awareness, humility, and courage.
Importantly, not all resistance is the same.
There is the resistance that comes from fear and egoic protection, and there is resistance that rises from love. When something is genuinely harmful, unjust, or violating, the soul can and should decisively say “no”.
That “no” usually has a different energy. It can include anger, but it is often protective rather than vengeful. It does not seek domination, but integrity. That kind of resistance usually moves us toward clear action, boundaries, and repair.
But much of my day-to-day resistance is not that.
A few days ago in prayer, I noticed a subtle voice that has been living in me for years. It’s the voice that keeps suggesting that I don’t have permission. That I can’t fully claim what I value. That I shouldn’t want what I want. It speaks in familiar lines: “You shouldn’t do it. You can’t do it. You haven’t been good enough. It’s not God’s will.”
This time, I simply noticed it and accepted its presence. I allowed it to be there. I gave it compassionate attention.
What I realised, almost immediately, was that this wasn’t the voice of God or wisdom. It was an old part of me trying to keep me safe with outdated strategies. So I thanked it for its service. I acknowledged what it was trying to protect. And then I offered it an updated truth about who I am now, and the kind of life I am committed to.
That liberating moment was only possible because I accepted and allowed that voice to be there.
What we resist can tighten its grip.
What we accept often becomes a doorway.
Here’s a question you might want to sit with:
What is one piece of life “content” you keep arguing with, avoiding, or pushing away?
Could you make an effort, just for today, to stop the inner war and let go of the resistance to it. To simply say: this is here. This is real.
Not to approve of it. Not to lose yourself in it. Just to meet it with a little more honesty, curiosity, and trust that your acceptance can become a doorway for you.
Go well!
— Dan