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Many people believe that accepting something means you don’t want it to change or that it cannot be changed. In common understanding acceptance means approval and many of us will certainly not approve of some of our own behaviours, thoughts, or emotions. That’s completely understandable. However, we often must accept the reality as it is first, before we can proceed to find the best way to improve it. If we struggle against the reality, we may simply spend too much of our energy on denying and avoiding it instead of finding a solution.
In traditional teachings from Buddhism this is often explained by the simple formula: Pain x Resistance = Suffering. Resistance is created by our lack of acceptance of what is currently happening, and it works for both physical pain but even more so, for emotional or mental pain. Pain of course is inevitable – we are all human with our imperfect bodies, minds, and souls. We will hurt sometimes – some of us get a very large dose of pain (as a person suffering from chronic pain, I can attest to that!) and some get a bit smaller dose. Regardless of where you find yourself on the pain scale right now, it will likely change as you age and not necessarily for the better.
Suffering, however, is optional – it will always depend on your level of resistance (lack of acceptance) to your pain. The less resistance, the less suffering. I do not want you to take it simply on faith – check it for yourself! Can you remember a time when you were in some physical pain, yet it did not bother you too much? Perhaps you were simply on holiday, so taking it easy did not cause any feelings of guilt that you are missing on anything important. Maybe you simply met with some friends and the fun conversations made you almost forget about your pain?
Well, this happens to me all the time. If I focus on the pain as something that must be fixed, I often tense the muscles and obsess about that one sensation to such a degree that it makes it even worse. Yet, if I am either distracted by some pleasurable activity or able to relax and widen the focus to those parts of my body where I don’t feel pain, the level of pain seems to diminish. Strange, isn’t it? It does not mean that I will not take a painkiller or look for various solutions – but in that moment, my suffering can be radically reduced, and I find more energy to look for those solutions.
It worked in the same way for me with depression – a serious condition that of course requires often both pharmaceutical and psychological treatment. Yet, only when I accepted the reality of sadness and grief, I was able to find appropriate help and learn tools to return to emotional balance. On a much smaller scale, acceptance helps me with those difficult tasks that I am not so fond of doing every day. Instead of resisting the need to schedule a doctor’s appointment for example, I am experiencing much less “pain” if I just accept it and do the task immediately – because the suffering of procrastination in this case is much worse than just doing the “painful” activity itself.
So, try experimenting with acceptance – or if you prefer, the lack of resistance. Check what happens when you do not resist. How do the sensations, emotions, and thoughts change if they do? There is always an option to change your focus to something else if it becomes too unpleasant. Remember not to judge yourself at all when it happens – it is a healthy survival mechanism to avoid unpleasant things and all we are doing in this practice is to notice it. Once we notice it and accept it, we can choose to respond differently and change our resistance habits to reduce our suffering.
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