Self-Help Success Story: Jenny Thorne: "I Learned to Love What Is"

This self-help success story was contributed by Jenny Thorne.

Readers of Eckhart Tolle understand the importance of appreciating the present moment–paying attention as much as possible to the glorious Now and leaving the past behind us. For a long time, though, I was stumped by something: How am I supposed to live in the present and also allow myself to feel the desires that lead to conscious creation? 

What about visualization? What about mantras? What about figuring out what I don’t want so that I can decide what I do want to welcome into my life? 

Then the other day, a good friend talked to me about the importance of acceptance.

“Life is perfect, just as it is,” she said. “You don’t have to want a single new thing to be happy.”

And I knew it was true, because she has four young children and she manages it all amazingly well.

So, the following day, I took her advice. I started a new spiritual practice: that of accepting everything that came.

“Bring it on, Universe,” I said. “Do your worst. I’m going to learn to love what is if it kills me.”

And it was the greatest experience. That day I happened to spend most of the sunny afternoon at a park with my two wonderful children. Then that evening I was treated to a massage and a facial. I truly enjoyed these experiences in a way I have rarely done before, without fault-finding and overly critical thinking and too-high expectations.

It was wonderful.

I’m pretty sure the Universe wanted me to have an especially good first try at all this acceptance stuff, because over the following few days things got back to normal. Kids crying till my ears hurt, poopy diapers . . . you get the idea.

But I continued my new-found spiritual practice, and what I noticed right away was that none of the bad stuff seemed all that bad anymore. Because they weren’t that bad. They were the challenges of life.

There’s an amazing quote in The Power of Now (by Eckhart Tolle) about  whether or not we as conscious creators should accept that bad stuff happens.

“Is suffering really necessary? Yes and no. If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion. You would not be reading this now. Suffering cracks open the shell of ego, and then comes a point when it has served its purpose. Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.”

Beautiful, isn’t it? Sometimes we law of attraction believers get down on ourselves for not having everything we want, not outwardly appearing to be as successful as others we know. As much as I believe in and practice visualization, affirmations and meditating on what I desire, and pray to the angels and seek enlightenment and read books and discuss spiritual matters for hours on end . . . I’m remembering through it all that I am in a process. I am experiencing everything–“good” and “bad”–for a reason.

Truly, it is all perfect.

And here’s the really funny part (that you may have guessed already): Ever since my revelation on acceptance, things are flowing better for me, too. What I need and want comes to me in a natural way, at the right time–often before I consciously know I need it.

If you are a dissatisfied spiritual person, someone who wants to become a more positive thinker right now, I encourage you to embrace this paradox.

Accept first. Then work on your deliberate creation.

Accept.

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