To accept out of love has tremendous power. It permits to reinvigorate stagnant energies, dissolves old pain and to open up to the infinity of your heart and being.
Accepting out of victimhood, however, is something completely different. It means to do nothing about a situation you feel bad about while swallowing your emotions of anger, fear and sadness. An embittered accepting does not mean to acknowledge your pain, it means to stay in conflict and resistance with it. And as long as you are in resistance with your inside of thoughts and emotions, you are in resistance as well with outside experiences, with the world, your situation, with everything in your life.
To accept truly means to first and foremost accept everything you are experiencing, knowing that it is nothing but energy moving through your body. What you are feeling is never an issue. It only becomes an issues when you turn it into one, when in some way you make yourself wrong about experiencing what you are experiencing. Imagine someone says something to you that makes you angry. What is our first reaction? We believe there is something wrong about feeling angry and make it about the other person, somehow blaming her for making us feel this way. We lash out at her, trying to defend ourselves.

But defend for what? All that is happening is that you are feeling emotions you have been repressing for a long time. They have accumulated inside you and gained in intensity, that is why they are so strong. Does the other person have something to do with it? No, not a lot. She is simply serving as a trigger to bring up to the surface what has been lingering within you for so long. What do you need to do about it? Repress it? Turn it into an attack launched against someone else?

No. Just be with it, accept it. Anger is a form of resistance and it is impossible to fight resistance by resisting it. What you can do is accept it. Something magical happens at that moment. The emotion loses its negative charge. You are still feeling intense emotion, but it is no longer painful. Joy and peace shine through it. You feel yourself relaxing while being in the intense emotion of anger.

Now, you may ask: If I accepted everything as it is, nothing would really happen in my life. There would be any incentive whatsoever do move out of an unsatisfying job situation or relationship, for instance, as I simply accept things as they are.

Again, this type of acceptance is more resignation than true acceptance and as mentionned above, is born out of victimhood: I consider myself to be at the effect of what is happening to me, I feel power- and helpless. If in an unsatisfying situation, true accetance would be first of all welcoming all the feelings and emotions rising up within you as a result of this experience . They do not define you, they do not affirm anything about you. They are just what is happening in your life right now.

Then secondly, asking yourself if there is something inside you, keeping you from what you are truly up to. Are there feelings of guilt forbidding you to be happy and abundant because you feel unworthy for it? Is there fear wanting to keep you locked where you are to keep you in false safety? Welcome all of these feelings and insights. Then: accept that you are a powerful creator and that at your truest level, you are infinite. Accept that nothing can stop you from living your true heart´s purpose when you are coming from that place. That is true acceptance!

Author's Bio: 

Benedikt Dommes is a pioneer in the field of bliss coaching, an expert in inner peace, and a gifted author, mainly in the field of spirituality and self-development. His first language is German, but he is equally at ease with English and French.
To learn more about his work, go to his website www.benediktdommes.com or email him directly at info@benediktdommes.com