Walk the Path
Practicing acceptance is a form of resistance and why your sense of agency is not an error but an extension of inevitability
“Shiv, I’ve been trying to practice acceptance with some difficult things in my life lately, and part of me does feel more at peace when I stop resisting what’s happening. But another part of me wonders if I’m actually moving through the suffering or just learning how to live with it more comfortably? And do I really have any choice in the matter?”
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The kind of acceptance you are speaking of is often just a more sophisticated form of resistance. More sophisticated, because it provides some relief rather than amplifying the feeling of distress - but that relief is only a short-term one. The distress is simply delayed and displaced over a larger expanse of time.
It is the equivalent of taking a bank loan to alleviate financial pressure and paying that loan back over a period of time, with additional interest accrued. Acceptance - the practiced kind - can become a strategy for bypassing the emotional pressure of a circumstance by postponing its impacts, yet this also accrues a kind of ‘emotional interest’ that compounds and adds to the feeling of existential deficit over time.
You cannot manufacture or contrive acceptance. It is an organic outcome not a strategy. True acceptance doesn’t look like acceptance as you imagine it. And the person for whom acceptance is a reality in the moment, may not even know or recognize it.
But first, let’s look at why practices like ‘allowing’, ‘accepting’ and ‘surrender’ are such buzzwords in spiritual and self-help culture.
One must first begin by recognizing that most of what constitutes spirituality today is just a sophisticated form of egotism. People with negative self-concepts or critical egos typically gravitate towards such teachings precisely because they seem to promise the opposite.
If you feel traumatized, the promise is of ‘healing’. If you feel isolated, the promise is of ‘oneness’. If you feel unworthy, the promise is of ‘empowerment’. If you feel trapped, the promise is of ‘liberation’. Certain approaches like Non-duality will attempt to solve all of these at the same time by convincing you that the very self that feels traumatized, unworthy, isolated and trapped doesn’t exist - and this is supposed to paradoxically liberate you. Yet, over the many years working with people, I have found non-dualists - especially the kind that walk around denying they have a self - to be some of the most traumatized people I’ve met.
What we refer to as spirituality today is not spirituality at all. It is an ego rehabilitation program. It takes egos that are typically traumatized, alienated, self-critical and resistant and attempts to provide them a sense of ‘deeper meaning’, purpose, connection and self-worth. The proof is in the pudding and can be evidenced in the ‘feel good’ effect they have on people. Think about the last time you felt confused or depressed and watching a spiritual video suddenly uplifted you and cleared the fog. Or practiced gratitude by writing in a gratitude journal - and the feelings of isolation and complaint you had previously felt were replaced by feelings of appreciation and well-being.
Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with ego rehabilitation. In fact, if given the choice between having a negative self-critical ego or a positive self-loving ego - the decision would be a no brainer for most.
Given the choice between feeling traumatized and feeling healed - which would you choose? Between feeling helpless or empowered which would you choose? Would you rather feel isolated or feel a oneness with others?
The vast majority would choose the latter in each case. Yet, notice the common factor between both sets of experiences - whether the positive or negative. It is the feeling.
In other words, ego rehabilitation is not concerned with what is. It is concerned with how we feel about what is. And the underlying driver is the belief that if your feeling can be changed, then so can your experience of life.
And so, most of what constitutes spirituality, self-help and the wellness industry in general today - is about combating the negative spin we inadvertently place on life, with a positive spin. Love, light, acceptance, surrender, oneness, freedom, transcendence to combat the self-hate, darkness, resistance, control, isolation, stuckness and limitation we experience.
Yet all forms of spin, negative or positive, are propaganda. And propaganda is not reality.
Spirituality, as far as I am concerned, is fundamentally concerned with a deeper recognition of reality. And so, spirituality has nothing to do with ego rehab.
Practicing acceptance or writing in a gratitude journal is the spiritual equivalent of a parent telling a child to smile and be polite to the guests. It is behaviour modification - not truth discernment. Just as smiling at everyone does not make a person happy and being polite does not make a person kind and considerate. So also, practicing acceptance does not create a state of acceptance nor does practicing gratitude make a person grateful.
When we try and “accept our hurt”, to “love our pain”, or to “allow our frustration” - what we are really doing is attempting to build another path upon the path.
It’s like seeing double when intoxicated. Certain spiritual teachings can have a similarly intoxicating effect - creating a second path where no other path exists.
We are trying to replace hurt with acceptance, pain with love, and frustration with allowance.
We are trying to manipulate what is into a version of what could be through the seeming “acceptance” of what is.
But this is an ulterior kind of acceptance. The one that says “I will love you until you go away”, “I will accept you so that you stop”, “I will allow you to express yourself so I can be done with you”.
That is arrogance - not love.
That is not acceptance. But a more cunning form of resistance.
A sophisticated form of manipulation that is seeking the backdoor to re-enter the seat of control.
Sobering up, then, is seeing that there really is only one path. That existential double vision collapses.
Then what is that path?
This is the question that spirituality is truly concerned with. And my own process of inquiry over the last three decades has led me to the realization that the path has been evident to us at all times.
The path is simply that which is happening now.
We are always on the path. We cannot deviate from it.
But this is far too simple for us. Because if we cannot deviate from it - that means we cannot choose it either. And if we cannot really choose it, then what does it mean? Do we even have agency? Does a chooser need to exist if there is no choice that is fundamentally made?
It is not merely the simplicity that is unacceptable but its implications that are unbearable. In seeking truth we never imagined it would require eliminating the one who was seeking it. What fun is there in that?
Yet, here we get into the territory of radical non-duality in which people cosplay having “no self” - pretending to be totally transparent to life while remaining remarkably opaque.
Eventually, the serious truth-seeker will grow out of these juvenile shenanigans and begin to ponder what it truly means to walk the path.
If the path cannot be deviated from, yet a sense of agency remains - how does one reconcile this?
If both acceptance and resistance are forms of sophisticated avoidance - then how is one to meet what arises?
These are the sorts of questions I have inquired into for a long time and the realization I had was unexpected and surprising.
