“Accept what is” – a buzz-phrase floating through the awakening ethos of the transformation culture – carries wildly different meanings, depending on speaker and listener.
In its most liberated, liberating, creative sense, it translates as “allow one’s inner vantage point to center in, and perceive/experience everything through the lens of, an awareness so expansive that it notices all apparent phenomena without reacting.” This is obviously a (literally) superhuman state of being. It is a state of consciousness beyond simple embodiment. It is pure spaciousness, total relaxation, an exaltation of being alive – a state of awareness and welcoming beyond conditions, circumstances, or personalities.
Just as obviously, the idea of it, before it’s fully realized, can be a tempting closet to hide in, an involuntary and unconscious self-imprisonment, and/or a weapon to use against anyone perceived as disrupting a desired status quo.
Trying to discern the consciousness of someone using this phrase is problematic for all but the most adept. There is a way of listening that is more helpful to most listeners and, by ripple effect, to the speaker and to everybody: developing the vibration of this state of awareness internally, so that every time it’s heard or read, regardless of the awareness or intent of the speaker, the highest truth of it is sounded and felt – a simple noticing, a receptivity that includes compassion for anyone using it as defense or aggression.
An intriguing way to develop the transcendent witnessing capacity might be to fully absorb the fact that no two sentient beings experience the same ‘what is’, since each person is a unique perceptual apparatus, uniquely situated. This can feel lonely at first but is ultimately freeing, since it becomes possible to notice the big picture and respond with one’s full powers (whether action is taken or not), rather than involuntarily reacting to a limited momentary signal.
So if someone is using ‘Accept what is’ as a weapon or costume, the aggressive energy dissolves in the clarity of this higher/deeper awareness. If they use it as an expression of despair or helplessness or apathy, or as a wrapper holding a terrified or furious self together, the calm wisdom inside genuine acceptance of ‘all that is’, as a transcendent witness, can offer heart-sensed communion – the beginnings of a path out of the trap for the sufferer, who feels accepted at a cosmic level when receiving this vibration. The energies of the trap itself are also dissolved in the compassionate gaze.
Ultimately, then, and maybe ironically from some vantage points, complete acceptance becomes an enlivening, liberated, generous, creative impulse, even if it looks very calm.