(Feel free to bring your lunch. You are also welcome to leave early if you need to get back to work.)
Theme: Accepting What Is
From Grateful Living Resources…
When the word “acceptance” enters a room, “but” is never far behind. But what about suffering and injustice? What about the pursuit of our personal goals? What about our individual and collective potential? As soon as the idea of acceptance surfaces, we seem to, ironically, brace ourselves against it as though it will render us incapable of anything other than complacency and apathy.
But acceptance doesn’t inherently imply inaction, stagnation, passivity, or cowardice. Acceptance does not preclude us from realizing something other than what is immediately apparent. Everything is as it is, and we live in an ever-changing, ever-evolving world that we are invited to actively acknowledge and respond to in each moment. Acceptance anchors us so that we might focus on the present rather than endlessly drift in a sea of wishing, dreaming, and pining for anything other than what is.
Presence and curiosity invite us to consider what is here now–in my life and in the world? and given what’s here, how might I act? Through our wholehearted presence and observation, we can endeavor to shape our visions for life–and the action that supports such visions–with grounded wisdom.
Primary Reading
Accepting What Is: In this essay, ANGL’s community program coordinator Rose Zonetti invites us to consider how acceptance can help us both face the actualities of life and act based on openness to and curiosity about what is. https://gratefulness.org/blog/accepting-what-is/
Additional Readings
Gratitude Motivates Us to Become Better People:
This article from the Greater Good Science Center details research that suggests gratitude does not breed complacency or apathy but rather exists as an “activating, energizing force.”
https://gratefulness.org/resource/gratitude-motivates-us-become-better-people/ Humility: The Virtue of Growing Downwards: Author Fabiana Fondevila recounts how humility–with acceptance at its root–helped her with a challenging health condition. https://gratefulness.org/blog/humility-the-virtue-of-growing-downwards/ Video 3-minute Storyteller featuring Tara Brach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asDhW5q7lD0&t=30s Poem Promenade, by Brit Washburn
https://gratefulness.org/resource/promenade/
Practices:
Cultivating Acceptance: An Embodied Practice: This practice from the Gratefulness Team explores accepting a difficult situation through wholehearted presence. https://gratefulness.org/resource/cultivating-acceptance-an-embodied-practice/
Accept What Is: Guided Meditation & Yoga Pranayama: Through focused breathing, this guided meditation from Caren Bagenski gently leads practitioners into the spacious terrain of accepting this moment as is. https://gratefulness.org/resource/accept-what-is-guided-meditation-yoga-pranayama/
Questions for Reflection and
Discussion
What is your initial response to the idea of acceptance?
When has accepting something as it is benefited you?
What happens/changes when you face the realities of your life and the world with genuine curiosity instead of judgment?
What in your life right now might benefit from acceptance?
How might accepting the realities of life invite you to act differently in the world? What might it inspire?
What reminders and practices help you in your effort to accept what is?
This event is free.
Facilitated by Karin Cross.