I came to the realization about 15 years ago that almost ALL of my ’suffering’ in life was caused by my resistance to ‘what is’. It hit me one day, that my misery was caused by me wanting things to be different than they were. I wanted the past to be different, but was stuck with what was. I wanted the future to be different than the past, but felt like I had no influence over that, either.

I remember lying on my bed, completely miserable, wishing for a different life, and a speck of dust caught my eye. It was floating in a ray of sunshine coming in my bedroom window. I so wished I was that speck of dust, just floating, no cares in the world. I wanted to be…just be.

I stared at that speck of dust until it went out of my view down beside the bed and noticed that, in that moment, everything was fine. That speck of dust didn’t have a brain (so far as I knew) and it had what I wanted: peace, or so it seemed to me. It was my mind that was causing all my problems. So, how could I get that peace? Stop thinking and just be.

I didn’t know it then, but what I experienced that afternoon was the peace of accepting what is. I took my attention off of my problems and put all of my attention on just being and found a little peace. I was completely absorbed in the moment…the now.

Had anything about my situation changed? No. What changed was I had, without consciously knowing it, accepted ‘what is’ and stopped obsessing about my problems.

Acceptance doesn’t necessarily mean you like what is, it just means you accept it. You acknowledge it and stop trying to wish it away or wish it into something else. You stop resisting, and in doing so, the conflict dissolves and you find peace.