Acceptance & Surrender [9+ Tips] Spiritual Tool For Tolerance

Surrender and acceptance is a powerful mindset to live with. Life can be very frustrating, but not when you practice the spiritual miracle of surrender and acceptance. Read all about it in this article.

‘Suppose a fly enters my house. I’ll tolerate that little bastard. ”
– Russel Brand about surrender

What is acceptance, surrender and tolerance?

Acceptance, surrender and tolerance are so close together that we put them together for the sake of convenience. Acceptance and tolerance means accepting something that you cannot change when you would rather have seen it differently . This can be challenging … And that’s why in this article we’re going to learn how to accept and surrender!

Accept in style what you can’t change anyway.

The greatest lesson in acceptance, surrender and tolerance: “What happens” is gracious to you

If someone insults you in everyday life, tolerate them. Only if you allow “what happens” are you left at the mercy of “what happens.” How is that gracious? We will discover that later in this article.

Once upon a time there was a Zen master who was falsely accused of anything and everything, and he never resisted and kept saying calmly, “Is that so?”

Why is surrender and acceptance important?

What you fully accept leads you to peace. Including accepting that you are unable to accept. The ego cannot survive acceptance and surrender.  And that’s good news!

You no longer demand that situations, people, places or events should satisfy you, or that they should make you happy. An imperfect situation or person may be there. It then becomes not only more satisfying, but also more harmonious and peaceful. Surrender and acceptance set you free!

Not tolerance is the key to unhappiness. For you and the people around you.

When uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it becomes fear. If it is quite acceptable to you, it becomes life, alertness, creativity and inspiration: in spirit! You become strong through surrender: for life, and its intelligence, then flows through you. No surrender will make you weak.

Relax, nothing is under control.

What is there and what is happening cannot be any different. If you already get a glimpse of this, you’re already in luck. If you do not resist it internally, you are no longer caught by it.

What you resist, persists.
– Carl Jung

If you never accept ‘what is’, you cannot by implication accept anyone as they are. Do not pollute your beautiful, pure inner being or the Earth with negativity. Do you know people who seem to devote their lives only to spreading grief? They live in a state of no surrender. Forgive them. There is nothing personal about it. That’s not who they are.

There are two ways to become unhappy. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting what you want.

On the other hand, be accepting of everything, whereby so much goodness is manifested into the world through you! You wake up radiant and fully. Everyone you come into contact with will be moved by your presence and affected by the peace you radiate. Nature too. You become the light of the world, a manifestation of pure consciousness. You no longer have the tendency to respond to unconscious behavior from your environment. You do not declare existence. You teach things to others by ‘being’, by demonstrating the peace of God.

Acceptance is the opposite of the ego, which is always complaining

The illusion of the ego is reinforced by fighting against ‘what is’. You keep the ego strong through the struggle, reactivity and resistance to ‘what is’. Complaining, disagreeing … Egos are always looking for the next thing to disagree about. Notice how it increases your sense of me. However, this does not take long, because after that the ego wants something else again. But what if we accept it and let it rest?

You also have angry people. Some people are in constant conflict: the whole universe is against them. The world is their enemy. Complaining doesn’t improve the situation, but the complaining pattern does seem to reinforce their sense of self.

The mind / ego wants to say to you, ‘Get back to normal. Resist again, like everyone else. ‘

The art of acceptance and surrender is to get rid of the ‘I’: ‘I am no longer John’: the death of the ego. You no longer need ego defense mechanisms. You become very simple. Very real. The ego says, “That is dangerous, you will be hurt. You become vulnerable. ‘ The ego believes that it is a weakness, that it is dangerous. What appears to the ego as strength is weakness. But only by letting go resistance, by becoming vulnerable to , you can true and essential on discovering vulnerabilities.

Cover mistakes with the mantle of love.

If you don’t accept, you want more …

Suppose you have the greatest wealth and you have moved to paradise. Suppose you created a situation and environment where all causes of accident had been removed. You are then happy for a short time. For example, there are still mosquitoes. Nothing is perfect. In fact, unbearable boredom will come in that paradise, even to the point of suicide.

Life happens!

Of course, from the perspective of the mind, you can always find something that isn’t right, that you can complain about and worry about. “Not warm enough.” Not spiritual enough. Or worse, “More spiritual than me.”

Simple examples of acceptance and surrender

You can access the miracle of surrender very easily. First, practice with everyday things, for example when you are quietly sitting at home in the evening, and a loud, penetrating sound from a car alarm comes into the street. Irritation sets in. What is the purpose of the irritation? No. Why did you create it? You have not created it. The mind has done that. It was completely automatic, completely unconscious.

Why did the mind create it? Because it holds the unconscious belief that negativity, which in this case manifests itself as resistance and unhappiness, will somehow resolve the unwanted condition (the alarm). This is, of course, an illusion. The irritation and anger it creates is much worse than the original cause it is trying to resolve.

If a tiger chases you up the tree, enjoy the view.

Rather become transparent to the external cause, without the solidity of a physical body. Allow everything to go right through you. It is unimaginable how quickly we resolved what we fully allow.

What we resist will chase us. What we chase will resist us. Freedom is letting go, accepting and surrendering.

Another example: it is raining. At that point, become one with the water. There is no ‘me and the water’. You are one with it.

The best thing to do when it rains is to let it rain.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When you accept and surrender, you know that everything is supposed to be the way it is

Byron Katie , among others, has managed to bring this philosophical idea more and more to the Western world: everything in the universe is exactly as it should be, every millimeter. Every fabric. Every leaf.

There is not a speck of dust in the entire universe that is in the wrong place. Not a leaf falls from the tree if God doesn’t want it.

You feel it when you are in an extreme situation, and you accept it: then there is the chance of a natural ‘Satori’ (enlightenment). For example, the soldier who hears that a bomb falls on you and you have been there. And you accept it. And suddenly there is a weird feeling that is absolutely clear. And you cannot tell in words. And you feel as light as a feather and as free as the wind …

What a relief to realize that I am out of control – that I don’t have God’s gigantic task.

Now you understand why we die: to have the opportunity to understand what life is all about. By letting go, because then we will be in a situation that the ego does not know what to do with. When we are no longer hypnotized by that ego, our natural consciousness can clearly see what this entire universe is for.

The worst form of inequality is trying to equalize unequal things.
– Aristotle

Many people have been raised with resistance (instead of acceptance)

There is nothing wrong with being sick, vomiting (which is a relief for the body), being in pain and expressing that and dying. Mama just says it’s not socially acceptable to scream in pain or throw up. It is also taboo to shout in a hospital. They want to internalize pain: resist and suppress it, which makes it worse.

First everything in you says, “No, this is terrible! I don’t want the pain!” The pain flows in your mind.

Can you give in and surrender to the pain? This is a beautiful opening. You accept the pain so completely that it is as if there is no longer a person suffering. There is only the pain. And there is a complete acceptance of that.

After a while, there is a vast peace under the pain, which is not a denial of the pain. There is a tremendous chance there, it will only come if you allow it – instead of resisting yourself.

And then you have the resistance to death. Who says we should live forever? The earth cannot have that many people: it is very honorable to die (when your time has come) , because you make room for others.

Why else do we have children? Children make sure we survive, in a different way! Like handing over a torch so you don’t have to carry it forever. Life is renewed.

Death is institutionalized as something bad … to be resisted.

There are people who just want information … Without actually surrendering

Let’s look at a completely different aspect of surrender. Do you recognize the following? There are people who are stuck in a so-called ‘first phase’: the phase of gathering and discovering information … They are almost convincing in their actions. They have a tense vibration and they just can’t seem to get enough of it: seminars, webinars, books, audiobooks … This is the air character trait of the four elements.

They want to read, hear or find something that validates them. ‘I’m not crazy, this is real. Even though I only look at it from a distance, it is real. If I’ve gathered enough evidence and associate with enough other people participating in this, then I can at least say that my group is real! ‘

They really aren’t sure yet. The intellect is willing to accept it, up to a point! To the point that it doesn’t really have to give up. To the point that it doesn’t have to give up its safe, normal things …

And only then comes the next phase … If you dare! The phase of actually vomiting. People prefer to explore forever before surrendering, but surrender is so much more powerful!

It’s no longer like, “That doctor said it, so it’s true.” It is a phase where we no longer need proof. You feel it, you don’t have to understand. Nobody has to understand. That is only a transformation. You no longer need “the book”, “the proof” from outside. You don’t need anything from outside anymore. 

By the way, surrendering does not mean submitting. Surrender is not surrender to something outside of you, but to the immense intelligence within you. You recognize that you are here when someone asks you, “How do you know?” And then you are not going to give them a long lecture. You say, “I have no idea.” This is the point of acceptance and surrender: not talking as much, but allowing the soul to flow!

How do I do that? Acceptance and surrender?

1. Acceptance by no longer judging

When you no longer judge , you accept. However, that does not go without saying: “I have to accept that I live in a bad place.” where is the acceptance then? Then you have already judged it bad. So how not to: “I have to accept that I’ve thrown away the next 25 years of my life, that I’m stuck, that I’m sick …” All you have to accept is the reality of the moment. There may be pain, but not the story around it.

How? “I’m sitting here, there is a plate, I eat and drink water and bread.” This is the situation, and don’t add anything to it. Then you become free from dependence on external conditions.

The same goes for something like chronic pain. Don’t try to be free from pain. It is precisely the pursuit of pain free that causes pain.

There is a non-duality in pain: pain and being pain-free always go together.

Suffering is always the story of pain – something that has been. ‘The pain is too much! Why me! I didn’t deserve this pain! ‘  Those are all stories . There is no such thing as too much pain. There is always exactly the amount of pain that is there during that particular moment. You perceive pain. There is just pain taking place now. The rest is a story, or word, “pain” that cannot come close to the life that is taking place.

2. Just feel down when that emotion comes along

It is beautifully described in the book: ‘The noble art of not giving af * ck’: sometimes it just isn’t allowed to go well. Stop motivating and pumping up and stop worrying about feeling down. Otherwise you will feel gloomy twice, through two layers. Depressed? Embrace him, love him the way he is. Say yes to it. Accept it. Accept that sometimes it is just bad. Don’t feel bad anymore for feeling bad.

Wanting a positive experience is a negative experience. Accepting a negative experience is a positive experience.

You don’t always have to be happy. You don’t always have to be silly or funny. You don’t have to be nothing. When you find these kinds of moods, accept and honor them. Acknowledge them so they can go again afterward. Just let it be. It will be fine after that

You can be angry. And scream. And hit in a pillow. And you are still loved. And you are still safe. And you are surrounded by white light.

3. The here-and-now as a gateway to acceptance and surrender

Another way to work on acceptance and surrender is by not giving power to the mind and by getting into the here and now . The mind not only has the capacity to create problems, it does it all the time. When you have acceptance, no more thoughts are needed. When you are in the here and now and say yes to the present moment without the intervention of your mind, there is never a problem. Everything is already good, everything is enough.

When you surrender to nothingness, you can feel the fullness hidden beneath it.
– Eckhart Tolle

Presence is inner space. That’s where all creativity comes from. You do not ask: how can I make this situation fulfill my wishes? Or another situation? That is the ego’s question. When you are in the here and now, you ask yourself, how do I respond to the needs of this situation, right now? You don’t even have to ask. You are then stable, alert and open to ‘what is’. You bring a new dimension to the situation: space. Then you watch and listen.

If you are present, you don’t need anything psychologically. And presence gives acceptance. So, instead of resisting it, become one with the situation. The solution then arises from the situation itself. Appropriate action comes through you.

Only two options are possible in the now.

1. Action. For example, by intervening in a way that the situation requires.
2. Accept.

Let it happen, find out what happens. Then there is finally oxygen instead of thoughts.

4. Accept via ‘being alone’: being ‘al(l) one’

When you can be comfortable with being alone, which can only come through alertness and presence, then changes are taking place in your life. What you thought you needed will be added to you. By being alone, relationships are added to you.

5. Allow things to be 

The perfect surrender? Surrender to ‘what is’. Is that not possible? Then surrender to what you feel, such as pain. Allow it fully to be there.

“Here is something to surrender to.”
– Eckhart Tolle when a car alarm went off during his seminar

“Unfortunately it just stopped …”
– Eckhart Toille when the car alarm stopped

Even with minor irritations, you can practice allowing and accepting it fully. Anything you allow in full will take you to a state of peace.

Allowing is the opposite of trying to get something done. To allow is to give up the tendency to interpret the world completely, to give up the tendency to immediately relate something to something you want. “There is a flower, I have to pick it, now it is mine.”

Yes nothing has to change. Just to experience and observe what you feel now.

One of the ways you put that acceptance into practice is the EFT method.  Another way is to feel compassion. Have an attitude of “I love you” to everything and everyone, including your own challenges.

Enjoy when you can … and bear when you must.
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

6. Accept by no longer reacting emotionally to a rejection

If you are told ‘no’, accept it. Maybe someone will tell you that something is not allowed or not allowed. Rather than reacting emotionally or losing self-control, open up to the possibilities of the no. No can open up a surprising new world for you and it can bring you unexpectedly to new people.

7. Accept through adopting a proactive attitude

If you are proactive , you are already very good at accepting. So develop your proactive attitude! Can I change anything about it? Yes? Then change it immediately. No? Letting go. Is something getting difficult? Either you go ahead and go for it, or  you don’t. Complaining is not a valid option. 

You have to make do with what you have.
– Dutch saying

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
– Theodore Roosevelt quoting William Widener

The ‘Serenity Prayer’ below summarizes the proactive attitude well:

Give us the calmness to accept what we cannot change, the courage to change what we can change, and the wisdom to distinguish between the two.
– Serenity Prayer of Francis of Assisi.

Whining is the alternative. You do not accept the situation and do not make the situation better. Because of this you do not help and you do not add anything. Only misery comes out of your mouth.

You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

8. Stop craving anything

Read the following quote from the Buddha:

We suffer because we desire.
The end of suffering is: no more desire.
– Buddha

(‘But now I long for the non-desire …’)

Much of the pain is thinking, “I don’t want to be in pain anymore. And I don’t want it to get worse later … What if I become completely blind, deaf, or disabled …” However, that pain is now a minor inconvenience. Only those desires around it turn that little discomfort into disastrous suffering.

Eat a weak sandwich and still enjoy it.

The desire to escape your pain, gives them more life. Do not resist the actual manifestation of what you labeled as suffering.

9. What are other ways I can surrender and accept?

• The secret is, “I don’t mind what happens.”
• When you smile, you feel that you can accept things that you couldn’t accept before.
• You don’t have to fix something. It may be there. Without the thought that something is missing (‘if only there was a nicer pillow, if only my partner was there’) we are in heaven. However, we always want to improve something that makes us step out of heaven
• Life is difficult, and when you know that life is difficult and accept that life is difficult, then life is no longer difficult.
• Accept, live, enjoy! Enjoy instead of wanting.
• Everything is good / Otherwise we just adjust the definition of ‘good’! (This is reframing ).
• Allow sounds, allow the phone to ring.
• In this article about consciousness, read the part about shapes , and how they are not perfect and not stable. Then you accept them, and you no longer demand perfection. We learn in that article: go with the flow. The flow is fluid. Not stable. Be open to uncertainty. Uncertainty of your life situation.
• Stop perfectionism.
• Develop your patience . This will make tolerance easier.
• Develop your flexibility. This will help you immensely. Flexibility will automatically enter you as you become a proactive person . Change yourself (because you can control that), and not the other.
• Acceptance and surrender becomes a breeze when you understand what is important and what is not. This is brilliantly explained in the book with an interesting title, “The noble art of not giving af * ck.”
• Accept your mistakes. There is then enough room for personal growth.
• Forgive  instead of holding a grudge.
• Ask the angels, guides, or God to help develop your abilities to accept what you cannot change anyway.

Does it not work yet? Test this out … This always works!

Does not it work? Bring surrender to the fact that you are unable to surrender. Bring acceptance to the feeling that you are unable to accept. Then see what happens!

Whatever your life situation, what would happen if you fully accepted it as it is? You will find that once you don’t mind being unhappy, you are no longer unhappy.

The task we should give ourselves is not to feel secure, but to tolerate uncertainty.
– Erich Fromm

Suffering is a Spiritual Teacher – Blessings in Disguise?

Pleasant experiences make life wonderful; painful experiences lead to growth. Life is meant to be frustrating, and only through surrender can you become free.

Shit makes you grow.

We experience a lot of pain… Until we have had enough of the pain, and start to accept it. Let it be. What you accept, you put yourself over it. That is a miracle. What you fight stays.

When you have acceptance, no more thoughts (worry) are needed.

See a limitation as an opportunity to grow stronger. You are blessed with a disability. Who knows what God’s plan is for the progress of your soul.

If you had not suffered as you have suffered, there would be no depth in you as a human being, you would not have compassion and humility. Then you would not have picked up this article. Suffering breaks open the ego.

Life is hard. And when you know that life is difficult and accept that life is difficult, it is no longer difficult. It will only remain difficult if you keep walking around with the idea that it shouldn’t be difficult.

When you fight life, life fights you. When you say yes to life, life says yes to you. Life, consciousness and God then appear in your life.

Parents control children because they want to protect their children. They want to protect them from harm, they want to spare them suffering. But even though the child has grown up, the parents remain extremely concerned. If they could really protect that, there would be no development in the child.

Don’t think that suffering is the only way

Suffering is a spiritual teacher. Among other things. It is one of the spiritual teachers. Until you reach the point where you realize: I don’t need suffering anymore, because I choose presence. Ultimately, you choose to be present. Until then, you have to be forced into it by the suffering that life gives you. Most of it is self-created.

Enjoy what you have, but move forward!

What do I surrender to?

For example, you surrender to ‘what is’ or to what you feel, such as pain. You have complete acceptance for it, and then you start to feel it. You also have to take that second step. And then there will be an opening.

In addition, you have acceptance of the unacceptable: completely accepting that you sometimes do not know. Giving up on wanting to understand. Be comfortable in a state of ‘not knowing’. Only then does the greater intelligence flow into you. And the great thing is: it helps you. That’s you.

You can also fully accept change. The world is changing faster and faster. Like it or not, change is inevitable. Embrace and welcome her.

The trick is to live as if it were happening to you.
– Martin Bril

Ultimately, you cannot avoid surrender and acceptance

Why would you allow anything to happen? Because it is. It is already the case. “Yeah, but it shouldn’t happen.” But it is. How can you go against the ‘isness’ of this moment?

Everything in the cosmos is connected. So nothing that happens is isolated. It is connected with the totality. And within that totality it is correct .

You can never understand with your mind how an event that is numb or unwanted on the surface has been brought about by the totality.

No human mind can comprehend even a fragment of that totality. It would be absurd to believe that the human mind can understand the totality of the universe, and then explain it, using 26 letters and 6 vowels.

What happens must happen and is not bad. Difficulties are part of life here in this form. The intelligence behind all phenomena does it. When challenges come into your life, you don’t know it anymore and there is an opening.

I accept.

Life will eventually bring you to your knees. There are two ways to get on your knees. You have the choice in which way:

• The first way is on your knees to curse the universe and beg for another life.
• The second way is to kneel in gratitude and wonder. So overwhelmed by the beauty of everything that you can’t even stand anymore. Fully embracing the life you have, as it is.

In both cases it is your knees. And you cannot ignore kneeling.

Acceptance takes you to enlightenment

Whether it’s a car alarm, dog barking, traffic jam, earthquake or loss of all your belongings, the resistance mechanism is the same: you’re still looking for something outside of you. Don’t look for peace or a different frame of mind than what you are in now. Otherwise you are in conflict and you have subconscious resistance.

Does not it work? Forgive yourself for not being at peace. Anything you fully accept will get you there. That is the miracle of acceptance and surrender. When you accept what is there, every moment is the best time. That is enlightenment and awakening .