Show Up – Open Up – Serve Truth – Accept What Is
The four stages of practice form a cyclical experience, not a linear one, with each stage deepening self-awareness, emotional resilience, and inner freedom.
Life is such that we Show Up again and again, bringing our present moment awareness to each new emerging experience. Rather than avoid or ignore these experiences, we Open Up our minds and hearts to whatever arises. At this stage, our courage and vulnerability gift us with the ability to see and Serve Truth. Serving the truth means putting away our ego so we can view reality without our biased, conditioned perceptual filters. Insight rather than illusion becomes our guiding beacon, lighting our way to accepting what is and responding wisely.
Acceptance is not resignation. It is clear-eyed acknowledgment. We stop fighting reality and begin working with it. This stage allows healing, integration, and wise action. Acceptance is foundational in mindfulness, yoga, and many therapeutic traditions. It echoes the movement toward mastery, where effort becomes more fluid and aligned with reality rather than resistance. As mastery grows, denial and resistance are shed, allowing one’s emotions and circumstances to be as they are. Within each of us forms a space for compassionate, grounded action. Our wisdom-informed response-ability replaces the denial, illusion, and impulsivity underlying such current global actions as greed, war, genocide, coercive governance, and environmental degradation.
It can be disheartening to recognize that global mass consciousness is not operating within the parameters of these four stages. In their recent book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World, Canadians Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor ask their readers, “What is it about our particular moment that is giving rise to such a powerful strain of apocalyptic politics?” Many readers may want to deny their apocalyptic reference; however, Richard Seymour in Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization assures us that “The apocalypse is no mere fantasy. We are living in it, after all, from deadly viruses to soil erosion, from economic crisis to geopolitical chaos.” All three authors describe our global reality as modern far-right movements and billionaire technology Bros fixating on imagined catastrophes. These perceived crises are used to mobilize fear, despair, and apocalyptic fantasies and to justify impulsive AI growth, authoritarian politics, and cleansing violence.
How do we NOT become overwhelmed by such negativity? As a practitioner of Show Up – Open Up – Serve Truth – Accept What Is, I resolve to bring peace, love, and joy into the world. This four-stage practice keeps me centered in my mission and counterbalances the large mass of negativity afloat in the world.
What practices or rituals help you to maintain or find your balance? Show up for those practices or open up to new ones that reveal the truth, and with contentment accept the results.
I tried to capture this process of acceptance in my poem below.
Permanence
Standing present in the acceptance of what is
unveils contentment. Lightness rests deeply
within this purified state. No room exists
for the likes of angst, fear, displeasure.
Tho’ pleasure feels good, it is not contentment;
temporary, shallow is the pursuit of what is not true.
Only contentment’s acceptance of each moment
finds a permanent home in the soul.
For more yoga actions and teachings, click here. Namaste.