Accepting that things are as they are is a form of intelligence. It has nothing to do with surrender, passive resignation, or despair. The awareness that holds the unwanted, the unpleasant, the difficult, even the terrifying and the heart-rending, affords us a new degree of freedom to be in wise relationship with the actual. Awareness is intrinsically both a refuge and a source of strength and sanity, of wisdom and compassion, including an honest compassion for ourselves as sometimes frail, vulnerable, and wounded creatures.
