Acceptance is the Prerequisite for Everything

What if living with chronic illness wasn't about trying to fix it and get better?

I'm trying to be with reality. To accept the presence of dysfunction and adopt an attitude of self-compassion, but how? Trial and error; attempts and failures.

Compassion is composed of two latin roots: from com "with, together" + pati "to suffer", from which we also get "pity", as in "mercy, care, tenderness, wretched condition." In 13th century Middle English, passion also meant "an ailment, disease, affliction;" and "an emotion, desire, inclination, feeling; desire to sin considered as an affliction."

So I'm choosing a word riddled with morality, with an old-world religious sentiment that to suffer, to be sick, is a religious failing, a sin. Compassion is all that is left once I have accepted that all of my efforts may only ever be palliative care, and I choose to remain with the reality of suffering.

Accepting the limits of my power is a self-practice. Recognizing what I cannot change within myself now, and welcoming those parts without resentment, is an act of surrender. Easier said than done.

In his commentary of the Bhagavad Gita, Paramahansa Yogananda makes explicit that when the self-destructive tendencies of the mind (anger, rage, envy, hatred, jealousy...) are not automatically indulged, they flare into burning desires, and momentary inner chaos ensues. That is, when we attempt to change our internal habits, the long-held patterns do not change easily or immediately.

As I navigate relapse-remission, I notice self-judgement and resentment: "I’m still sick? I’m a total failure." Judgement of others, too. Either for their health, illness, or lifestyle choices. It's not heroic or sexy to admit that I judge others, right? But it's the mind playing its tricks, keeping me angry, frustrated, blaming the outside world for problems it perceives. Trying to do anything but accept myself.

My mind has had enough practice blaming others and victimizing my situation. Even now, it continues to cast blame on myself for perceived shortcomings. It says: “If only I just ate right, slept right, moved right, sat up straight, took the right herbal formulas… THEN I'd be in total, complete, perpetual, eternal remission. I'd be cured, never to wear another bruise again.”

But it's a fallacy. Anger arises when I inevitably fail to live up to impossible standards; it is itself a toxin that my body needs to digest and evacuate.

In Ayurveda, anger has a vicious cycle with Pitta dosha. Doshas are the three primary forces within the body. They are Movement (Vata), Stability (Kapha), and Pitta is the principle of transformation. Transformation is associated with both Fire and Water. With these elements, it can move from solid, through plasmic and liquid. Pitta is hot. It digests food, and it makes the blood boil. Pitta is the source of passion. In excess, it creates acidity, irritability, obsessiveness, and an inflated ego. Anger fuels Pitta, and Pitta's imbalance fuels anger. The cycle is observable, and can be remedied with love and compassion.

One translation of 'dosha' is literally impurity, implying that being alive itself is impure. And what a blessing that is. There is perfection in the imperfection of creation itself.

I grew up (maybe you did, too?) with some fictitious idea of "health" that permeates the cultural psyche. Health has been sold as a beauty standard. This received notion would have me believe that anything short of invincibility is a failure. Health is not an ideal, nor is it the capacity to live up to the numbers that modern medicine equates to a perfect static specimen. Health is a way of living with the body I have been given in this life.

I could continue to expend days and years fighting for some ideal, some standard I absorbed and decided was rightfully mine to attain as a form of manifest destiny. Or I could remain honest, and give all my love and compassion to the body I was given.

With years of reminding myself to accept, I can integrate acceptance as a habit, and use up less time in futile, angry resistance against my own body. One of my favourite online videos I've seen in the last few months is called "Realistic time it takes to Press to Handstand." It took this fitness guy 781 days; a little over two years, to learn to handstand. He just kept trying. Acceptance is also the forgiveness of failure. Start where you're at. If you're running, keep running, but slow down a couple of degrees. If you stop all at once, the momentum will carry you forward and bring you to your knees.

This is the place to start. If I remember to accept myself, I can then evaluate what is a feasible next step in the present moment, over and over, forever. Acceptance, then choice. I accept the chronic reality, and therefore it continues to change from day to week to month to year.

Maybe I'm addicted to illness, but only as much as I've been addicted to alcohol, cannabis, chocolate, and porn. So I accept, and I change slowly. This is my life, it keeps shifting. With help and faith I learn to accept, and each passing cycle brings more depth, more love.

Acceptance is a fundamental prerequisite for attuning to the ground state, zazen, samadhi, no-mind, flow; call it whatever you'd like according to your preferred tradition. Both modern psychology and traditional wisdom agree on this point: that which one denies and pushes against hurts one the most over time.

So I attempt to accept, to surrender. It's the first step towards recovery. Accept that life has its own innate wisdom, and to be carried by that is as simple as floating down a river. The currents have their own logic, and I may not know what they are, but if I try to brace myself or hold fast against the water, or try to push the river, I'll have a much harder time reaching my destination than if I attune to the flow.

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My good friend and collaborator Nick Ingrisani, meditation teacher and author of the blog Mindfulness in Everyday Life, coincidentally wrote a post about acceptance this week, too. It’s a beautiful take on similar themes. Read it here: Holding Desire with Compassion.

Nick runs monthly day-long meditation retreats in Montreal, they are a joy and a beautiful container for practice. Come this fall, we will be co-hosting a meditation and Qigong/Somatics retreat. Stay tuned.