Choose Freedom? (from "Right Now, Just As It Is")

• Acceptance opens up possibilities.
• The seeking for happiness (somewhere else) is what makes us unhappy.
• Seeming opposing forces are just thoughts.

Highlights

• Accepting what is, as it is seems to open up possibilities previously unavailable. Resistance drops away. Something relaxes.
• it is often the very act of seeking what we believe is missing that makes us miserable.
• Wholesome aspiration and genuine transformation begin with the total acceptance of what is rather than with resistance and rejection.
• some degree of dissatisfaction with how things are now, along with some vision of how they could be better, is often essential.
• I’ve found that I cannot will … these undesirable behaviors away on command. But the interest and the aspiration is there to let them go whenever that is possible. And at the same time, there is an acceptance of the ways this isn’t always possible.
• Instead of thinking about this question analytically and relying on past experiential insights, experiences or beliefs, what if instead we ask it freshly, in this moment, as a completely new question, without knowing what the answer might be, open to being surprised? How does this question act on us? What possibility does it open up for us?
• Sometimes, it seems that we are pulled in two different directions by opposing forces or conflicting thoughts, each claiming to be “the real me.” Is “the real me” the fingerbiter or the one who wants to stop? Or are they both just thoughts?
• It’s fascinating to see how the mind will argue against the possibility of letting go, how it will defend and argue for the necessity and inescapable inevitability of our suffering and our story.

From “Choose Freedom?” on Joan Tollifson’s Substack

Added 2025-01-04.