Acceptance/Surrender vs resistance

[gustavofring]

Resistance is trying to fight the current situation. Your mind is in a state of war and a constant source of unhappiness and unease. However, from this unhappiness may also emerge a big thrive to change the situation, so it may be beneficial.

Surrender is the state in which you accept the current situation, warts and all. This can help you be more at ease so that you can try and solve the situation with a bigger deal of inner peace.

Would you choose opposition or yielding to?

 

[MikeyC]

Depends on the situation. Although I do too much surrendering.

 

[Falkor]

I'm dealing with Resistance all the time. I don't want my life to be like this, I don't want to have Social Phobia, I don't want to see my past, it's one of my deepest problems. I try to learn acceptance though. But it's extremely hard. Since I still don't know the total ''meaning of acceptance of myself'' :: I just can't face it well enough. Can anybody tell me, how they do it? ::

 

[gustavofring]

Depends on the situation. Although I do too much surrendering.

I don't know if you understood this, pardon me if you did, but with surrender I don't mean easily letting yourself be stepped on by others and not sticking up for yourself or things like that. I mean surrender in the mind. Yielding to, as opposed to opposing the flow of life. To accept the present moment unconditionally, without mental labelling or judging of the now. Eliminating resistance and emotional negativity.


I got this from Eckhart Tolle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LSSjeqf5kA

I think a lot of us SA-ers/depressed people have a big resistance pattern.

 

[worrywort]

I have this problem all the time. I always desire to just settle and accept where I'm at, because it feels good. I can release myself from high expectations and pressures and just enjoy where I'm at. And sometimes I think this is a good thing, to be grateful for what you do have instead of striving for what you don't.

But then sometimes the guilt kicks in, and I feel like I really ought to be doing more with my life. And I think of that film, 'Big Fish' where he says that "big fish get that way by never getting caught", i.e. never settling down and getting too comfortable, but always growing and challenging yourself. And this seems right to me.

But like most things in life, I suspect the solution is some kind of balance between the two.

 

[gustavofring]

I have this problem all the time. I always desire to just settle and accept where I'm at, because it feels good. I can release myself from high expectations and pressures and just enjoy where I'm at. And sometimes I think this is a good thing, to be grateful for what you do have instead of striving for what you don't.

But then sometimes the guilt kicks in, and I feel like I really ought to be doing more with my life. And I think of that film, 'Big Fish' where he says that "big fish get that way by never getting caught", i.e. never settling down and getting too comfortable, but always growing and challenging yourself. And this seems right to me.

But like most things in life, I suspect the solution is some kind of balance between the two.

Yeah true. It's not really one or the other, but it could help to sometimes bring more surrender to our lives. Because surrender doesn't just mean letting the situation go on, it means a peaceful state of mind in which one can be proactive. Inner resistance is the negative emotions and labels we give to the present moment. Positive action cannot really emerge from an emotion like guilt. Instead, we'd rather bury an emotion like guilt because it makes us feel uneasy. A lot of people thrive on these emotions without realising it.

 

[Srijita52]

I don't know if I'll make sense but I neither resist nor surrender. One moment I'll try to resist and the next moment I'll surrender and it goes on. Maybe I'm confused?

 

[coyote]

resistance is futile

 

[O'Killian]

I think calling it 'surrender' is a mistake - the word is negatively charged, and when I see it I think of it as giving up, losing, etc. Which seems to be how a lot of other responders have read it. I'm still not quite sure I understand the gist of your post and I'm not sure whether that's the semantics of the word 'surrender' or not.

But I can understand acceptance. That I can understand and get behind. In fact I think it's crucial - inner turmoil is going to make anything you try to do harder, right? If you've accepted the situation you can assess it and figure out how best to move forward. I can't even see it as a choice - in my experience, my own resistance will eventually give way to acceptance. (Sometimes not quickly enough, but that's another matter).

So I guess to me, they're like two steps in a process.