Acceptance is divinity - I'm not selling my ranch

Acceptance is extraordinary, a super-power that develops calm strength. It’s not giving up, or giving in. It’s not weakness.

Acceptance supplants excess potential, which is worry without action that causes frenetic anxiety. YOu know what that feels like - wired and tired. Acceptance is a little-by-little practice that stops the old story and brings you clarity and love right now.

Last winter I made a film about how I had to sell my house, and lessons I’d learned going through a process of essentially failing to create my long-term dream life and business by running small, cozy luxury retreats here at this ranch.

Making that film was helpful in processing the decision to sell.

A big shift takes a while to settle. It’s tempting to think that you make a decision and the past fades like a dusty road in the rear view mirror, or you do a plant medicine ceremony – forever healed – or one of those crash diets is good for you, or one particular exercise will fix your back pain forever.

Truth is: progress in life comes from micro-devotions – and divinity is acceptance.

Divinity is acceptance.

God is acceptance.

This came to me on a hike. Great nature has a way of reminding you who she is.

Think about it, why and when do people “find” God? People find God when they need to accept circumstances that are beyond their control. When faced with their own preconceptions regarding their limitations, people find God through prayer - they ask for help expanding.

Prayer is expansion framed as a request. By asking for something impossible, it becomes feasible.

Last year, when I made the film telling the world (or the exactly 894 people who watched the film on Youtube) that I had to sell my house, it was about creating for the sake of creating and closing a circle, since I’d made films about the progress of the project.

I wanted to show up not as a victim, but as the growth I made through the process.

Telling the story helped me accept the circumstances. Telling the story brought me closer to divinity – acceptance, a place from which I could see clearly and act wisely.

By asking yourself a simple question: what would I do in this situation if I were choosing to know myself as loved, intelligent and empowered – everything changes for the better. Not just once in a crisis. Seeing yourself for who you really – soul energy – is a practice.

It’s ironic that we seek to avoid repetition when life is inherently repetitive. Nature is cyclical. Your aversion to practice is, ironically, attachment to repeating a pattern that is controlling you. If you don’t choose your patterns, patterns choose you.

Accept that making any kind of change takes time.

Know yourself as loved, intelligent, and empowered, and then all of a sudden you’re taking one step at a time instead of shaking your head looking up at a peak you’re already convincing yourself you won’t reach.

For a while, I was looping through a list of questions about mistakes I may have made while trying to sell the ranch, and wasting time repeating the rhetorical question, should I have never bought the place at all?

The only answer to those spinning questions is a better question:
what would I do right now if I were choosing to know myself as loved, intelligent, and empowered?

Yesterday I took down the for sale sign.

My fiancee is moving to Montana in two months. I want us to have stability. Now is not a good time to sell a house, and rushing real estate is a mistake I’ve made before. I know better now. I want to focus on all the opportunities that do exist.

I rented out a section of the house to a friend for a year. He moved in a couple of weeks ago right before I left for a teaching tour. It’s good to have someone else around when you live out here.

Last Winter while I was away, there was a storm so intense that one of the outer barn doors blew off the hinges. Each door is 18 feet high and 10 feet wide, solid, and very heavy. Luckily the door leaned precariously but didn’t smash one of the glass-paneled garage doors. I didn’t even see the off-kilter door until the morning after I got home when I went out on the deck for sunrise.

Do you see how this works?

You only move forward if you accept what is and go from there. Acceptance is already progress.

Acceptance is who you really are – soul energy, part of great nature – present. Present means practicing, not falling for the trick that one day you’ll have it all figured out and then you’ll be satisfied.

Be here now.

What would I do if I were choosing to know myself as loved, intelligent, and empowered?

I’ve been on this ranch for over three years but it feels like I haven’t really lived here yet, always unsure if it was all going to work out, in and out the door for work in other places, and juggling a challenging long-distance relationship right when I could have been laying down roots in my new hometown.

We are in charge of ourselves. Acceptance.

Now I’m locked in, my friend and I call it. The house even has a new locked-in station – more commonly known as an office. There is a desk in the corner of the great room that was the temporary Yoga class space. Writing there feels different than sitting at the kitchen table or on the floor in front of the sofa.

You only get locked in if you accept what is. Know where you are and use time well. Acceptance is step one for progress.

Notice when you are creating a story about the inevitably of failure in the future because you are dissatisfied with the recent past. Know yourself as loved, intelligent, and empowered and slow time down.

When I look up from writing, silver-dollar Aspen leaves flutter and catch the light reaching over the deck. Last week I chopped a couple of dry branches near the base of the tree to bring water upwards.

In the opposite corner from the locked-in desk, I set up a Yoga chair and I’ve made a micro-devotion to my back to use it at least once each day. The garage gym is a dream. I’ve built myself a new set of thicker, stronger, legs. I might even use them to walk down to the storage area and organize all the clean sheets we bought for retreats by bed-size.

That will take a coffee and a few micro-devotions.

I have a new espresso maker that requires grinding beans fresh for each shot, then weighing the shot as it pours into a small glass perched atop of a thin scale. When the scale hits 18 grams, stop the pour for a single shot. I stick to single shots.

I haven’t gone in for an afternoon coffee yet. I agreed to see one of my New York corporate groups at 5:30AM online twice per week. No afternoon coffee.

I still have ample room in the house for my 1-1 and semi-private immersions. I had one last month and another coming up with a woman flying in from Hawaii. I’ve got massages booked for her, a menu planned, and she knows to bring warm clothes. We’ll hike every morning. October mornings are brisk.

Winter is coming, and will come quickly.

Acceptance is the foundation of progress. It’s strength and solace through presence. Acceptance is divinity – you are one with the divine spark within you, part of great nature, an integration of patterns you can create and lean upon.

I’ve been home for three days from a teaching residency in New York. I’ve been up at 5, hiking, seeing clients online, and writing in the locked in station. The first night I was home I took a sauna, and last night I took a bath, the first one since moving into the suite where my fiancee and I will live.

I laid in bed for a while with a book open on my chest, Amor Towles’ latest collection of short stories.

I badly wanted to get up and drag the incredibly long and heavy custom modular credenza from where three friends and I placed it under the windows in my new bedroom over to the locked in space, and bring the modern wicker chaise into the bedroom, just to see how it would all look.

There’s a time where a string of thoughts about something that needs to be done could derail an entire night of sleep and become an energetic pendulum of all the things I haven’t done and need to do. Last night I was able to sleep. This morning I woke at 5, hiked, and was ready for clients by 8.

Life is good.

Life is not a test, but many, many steps for which there is no score card other than our own feeling function.

I had a client come to the house today, a kind, strong woman who works with horses. She left with the simple mantra “this is not a problem” to use when she notices herself creating excess potential, building a Jenga-like stack of worries about things she does not need to solve.

She’s a great problem solver, the kind of friend you want around in a crisis. Today she realized that she is not a problem to be solved. She is a being of love, intelligence, and power.

We make realizations and then the work continues. You can jump off a negative pendulum but you don’t just jump off and stop. Use the momentum. Your realization will likely be tested within twenty-four hours.

Welcome the opportunity to practice.

We are beings of love, intelligence, and power – accept that, and know divinity as quiet, open, endless awareness that is already there accepting everything as it is.

What would I do if I were choosing to know myself as loved, intelligent and empowered?

My fiancee is moving to Montana. I’m building a Soul Alignment group program so more people can feel the impact of the one-to-one work.

I’m not selling my house.

Your body is more than a machine made of muscles and bone. Your body is a home for soul energy.

Don’t sell out. Know yourself as loved, intelligent, and empowered.