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exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Surrender & Acceptance

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.” Fulton Oursler

Editor's 1-Minute Essay: Surrender & Acceptance

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Consciousness is a quantum field containing all manner of possibility

"Animals fulfill God's will most faithfully: they live to fulfill their Creator's purpose. We do not do this. We meddle with the work of the Creator. But the animals are themselves, and they fulfill the will of God that is within them in a true and faithful manner." Carl Jung

Mark Twain: “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”

Deepak Chopra, Synchrodestiny: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence to Create Miracles: “According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous."

Michael J. Fox: “Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.”

Osho: “The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target--you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target--not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.”

Ann Landers: “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”

Isaac Marion: “I am Dead, but it’s not so bad. I’ve learned to live with it.”

Shannon L. Alder: “Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.”

Lucille Ball:  “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”

D.B. Harrop: “Have a big enough heart to love unconditionally, and a broad enough mind to embrace the differences that make each of us unique.”

Eckhart Tolle: “Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.”

Dalai Lama XIV: “We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”

Diane Von Furstenberg: “You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.” –

Robert E. Lee: “It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means conform to our wishes.”

Sharon E. Rainey: “Acceptance doesn’t mean that life gets better; it just means that my way of living life on life’s terms improves.”

Eckhart Tolle: “Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.”

Rasheed Ogunlaru: “Live your life, sing your song. Not full of expectations. Not for the ovations. But for the joy of it.”

Haruki Murakami: “Nobody’s going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can’t always be in the fast lane.”

Alan Watts: “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

William Sloane Coffin: “I’m not okay, you’re not okay, and that’s okay.”

Peace Pilgrim: “When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.”

Jack Kornfield: “Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.”

Lao Tzu: “Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”

Melody Beattie: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”

George Eliot: “A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

Paul Tournier: “Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.”

Jim Morrison: “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself—and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is.”

Stephanie Perkins: “The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

Deborah Reber: “Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.”

William James: “Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”

George Orwell: “Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”

Graeme Simsion: “If you really love someone,' Claudia continued, 'you have to be prepared to accept them as they are. Maybe you hope that one day they get a wake-up call and make the changes for their own reasons.”

Elizabeth Gilbert: “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow—this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”

Sting: “The acceptance of death gives you more of a stake in life, in living life happily, as it should be lived. Living for the moment.”

Lao Tzu: “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

Fulton Oursler: “Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.”

Miyamoto Musashi: “Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.”

Michael J. Fox: “My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”

J.K. Rowling: “Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.”

Charlize Theron: “Marriage equality is about more than just marriage. It’s about something greater. It’s about acceptance.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”

Stewart O'Nan: “You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”

Andy Warhol: “Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That's one of my favorite things to say. So what.”

Mitch Albom: “Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.”

Maya Angelou: “The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

Mark Z. Danielewski: “Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”

John Lennon: “Whatever gets you through the night.”

Ellen DeGeneres: “Beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It's about knowing and accepting who you are.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: “A weed is but an unloved flower.”

Jeannette Walls: “You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.”

Tony Schwartz: “Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.”

Valery Satterwhite: “Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not.”

Joseph Campbell: “The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.”

Charlotte Brontë: “If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own.”

Bob Dylan: “I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.”

Eckhart Tolle: “Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.”

Jim Carrey: “Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don't let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.”