What Is, Is
What is, is. No more, no less. That’s it. We don’t need to add our flavor to it; we don’t need to add anything to it. If we can learn to accept things how they are, to let it be the way it is and don’t add filters, ideas, mental constructs. If we can do this, we might have a chance to see things clearly and respond in a different way than if we’re making up a story about them.
As an example, let’s say I have three dollars and 10 cents in my bank account. Right now, let’s say that’s a fact. I have three dollars and 10 cents in my bank account. The story is “I’m ruined, I’ll never bounce bank, things are terrible, nobody will ever love me because I’ve got three dollars and 10 cents.”
Those are all the stories. The facts are, if I look at my bank account, it has three dollars and 10 cents. Everything else I’m adding to those facts are a big story about things that haven’t happened yet. Those things may happen if I don’t do anything except sit around and thing about them. But for now, they haven’t happened.
The more that we can see ‘what is’ and save all the trouble and energy drain of replaying those big stories in our minds. If we can bypass the hyped-up drama we put around ‘what is’, maybe we’ll be more effective because we’re not wasting energy on things that haven’t happened.
The Taoist meditation of The Inner Smile is a great way to train ourselves to observe and accept ‘what is’ in our body. With practice, the habit of acceptance will sneak out of our meditation time and enter the way we approach life.
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