A Lesson In Acceptance

This blog from Paula shows us one of the most important lessons of mindfulness: acceptance. Acceptance is a tremendously important feature of mindfulness, and it is something that I tweet about very often. Unfortunately, acceptance is very difficult for the mind, as Paula finds out in this blog. The mind wants to reason, and complain about every single little thing that happens, but once you have learned the lessons from the past, it really is best to leave it there. You see whilever the mind is telling you stories about how the past should be different, you are missing out on all those things happening in the present…….

You can find Paula’s blog here

Khao Yai National Park in Thailand is host to gibbons, deer, elephants, scorpions and a host of birds. Off we set, 8 of us on an adventure, with cameras at the ready. This was my favourite thing to do. Wildlife park, animals, guide and camera. Always the highlight of my trips. I could spend hours editing wildlife shots and making albums. The day before we had been treated with 45 minutes of millions of bats leaving a cave to hunt. A sight which I took several videos of to show friends back home. I was in my element.

After 15 minutes in the truck, the noise of the forest was thick with gibbons calling to each other. Down off the truck we climbed and started clamouring through the jungle for a glimpse of these loud tree jumpers.

Quickly our guide pointed up to several gibbons and out came the cameras.

And on came ‘battery low’ light.

‘You’ve got to be kidding’ – I thought in disbelief. ‘How could I not have a full battery?’.

And on and on went my mind, yo-yo-ing between ‘it can’t be’ and ‘what an idiot’, replaying how it had happened (all those videos of bats), all the things I should have done, thoughts about how this would change the whole day. I was annoyed with myself. Disappointed. Disheartened. After just a few shots, camera went dead.

What struck me after about 15 mins of unrelenting, incessant thoughts of this nature, was how hard it was to accept the reality I was in. Even though I shrugged it off, and said ‘oh well, never mind’ to myself (a few times) my mind would not let it go. After a brief pause of not thinking about it, back the thoughts would come. I even tried the strategy of saying to myself ‘imagine this is your last day alive’…but that just produced more thoughts.

Acceptance is hard! It is frustrating for things not to go the way we think they should. And when they don’t, we resist until we eventually let it go which can often take some time.

Being a mindfulness enthusiast, I decided to put all of theory I was reading about into practice. What a ‘great’ opportunity this was to practice acceptance – a simple word, that’s slippery by nature.

I focused on the present. My feet crunching the forest floor. The small insects I could see everywhere. The screeching sound of the gibbons. The smell of the forest. The feel of occasional cool air. There is nothing like taking to the senses – our most direct way of experiencing the present moment to help us accept. I didn’t try and change my thinking but just shifted my awareness to where I was physically and when the thoughts came, I shifted my mind to the sights, smells, sounds. It took several rounds of coming back to my senses but gradually, the thoughts that had been resisting the way things were subsided. I could literally feel my body getting loser, less tense as I focused on being right where I was. In this moment, with no camera.

Things often don’t go our way. But one thing is for sure, resisting or denying our reality – for sure – does not lead to contentment or happiness. Trying to recreate the past in our minds to make things turn out differently often means we miss out on what is actually happening in the present.

In the end, we saw very little wildlife after those first glimpses of gibbons. But I stepped, smelt, inspected and felt that forest. It was an experience that was better than any photo! Though I have learnt a lesson to check the battery before wildlife trips!