Acceptance

Acceptance is a theme that has pursued me on my spiritual path for well over a decade now. When I did the various levels of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy Training I took, we focused on various themes from befriending, awareness, acceptance, truth, discernment, truth in action and flow. In them we wore name tags that had one of those words on them instead of our names. My name tag always said, “Acceptance.” We had to wear that name tag everywhere. I remember that being a hugely distressing experience because it was so out of alignment with the truth of my experience. I was fighting, albeit internally, with almost every situation, emotion and person in my life.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, it was a Friday morning and I had spent a particularly difficult week in pain with migraines. It was especially difficult because it had been a long time since I had last experienced such an intense episode and I was judging and turning away from my experience. I was making the experience of the migraine itself a problem, I was also making myself the problem.

Friday mornings I go to my meditation class with my meditation teacher Neil McKinlay at the Monterey Centre in Oak Bay. This particular Friday morning, Neil, an avid rock enthusiast was giving an example of how he noticed his body was turning away and resisting the early music of Chicago. It was a cute and safe example (not something that Neil leans towards) and I could feel myself getting more and more angry as I was struggling with a very deep and real experience in my own life.

I waited until Neil finished with his talk and then I asked him, tears already forming in my eyes, “What about the real stuff, the hard stuff? What about when you are in pain and your body literally shuts down?” And then something happened, I couldn’t control the experience any long and the floodgates of tears opened. I cried and cried through the entire class, the entire meditation and throughout the rest of the day. It was complete and utter surrender to the reality of my experience.

A few weeks later I took a refuge vow with Dharma Ocean and my teacher Neil, an oath to relate directly to the truth of my life, not the distractions or the diversions, not my hopes and fears of how I want my life to be, but the truth of my life as it was. During that ceremony, each person who took the vow was given a name. It is not a name to replace your given name, but one to invite clear seeing into the truth of your nature. My teacher Neil laughed a little as he approached me to give me my name, he said, this name will make you laugh sometimes. My given refuge name was, “welcomes without exception.” This name lit something in me with recognition and aspiration. It has been one of the greatest gifts I have received on my spiritual journey.

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

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Today I shared one of my many experiences of bringing acceptance to the moment to moment unfolding experiences, emotions and people in my life. I would love to hear how acceptance touches you in your life in the comments. Let me know.

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Today we focused on acceptance. We have several more Yoga with Melissa Classes on Acceptance:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdFcYtDajz20mbPtS06aG2VZTcYMzIMnI

This yoga class also focused on hip and shoulder openers. In our yoga membership community we have two series of classes hippy shorts and