The R's of Acceptance

The entire city seemed to be sleeping at 5:00 a.m. and I took full advantage of humanity’s scarcity at the early hour to run my shopping errands at the stores open 24/7. At this hour, the elevator served as my personal express service from the fifteenth floor of my apartment building to the first so I was surprised when it lurched to a stop at the seventh to admit another passenger. He kept his nose buried in a book and took no notice of me, leaving me with a feeling of seclusion in my anonymity. While he read, I studied him; somewhere in his early to mid forties, I guessed. A dog-eared leather hat sat comfortably atop long, wavy black hair pulled back in a pony tail. He wore a simple white t-shirt whose pocket bulged with the outline of a pack of cigarettes. Faded jeans covered long, slender legs and their frayed ends brushed the tops of battered sandals. The olive tone of his feet matched the skin of his arms and what little of his face I could see. He hadn’t glanced up from his book.

He didn’t pause to check out the panel of lights and buttons that directed the elevator through its dutiful rounds. The doors snicked shut and with another sudden lurch, we were on our way. But, the non-stop service ended abruptly soon. With an ominous bump, the elevator shuddered to a halt midway between floors. There was no sound of grinding gears or cables to indicate that the elevator was even trying to complete its rounds. Like a rising tide, the pitch darkness of the elevator shaft rose through the glass of the elevator doors until it met the floor of the well lit hallway whose tiles were at eye level.

“That’s just great!” I groaned, knowing that my best attempts for an early start would be entirely wasted. I punched every button on the console and watched them light up one after another. No response. “Shit!”

My companion’s only response was to slide down the back wall and lower himself to a cross-legged sit, keeping his nose buried in his book. The odd thing I noticed was that he’d never turned a page. As if reading my thoughts, he smiled briefly to himself and turned a page. Being stuck might have been amusing to him but I had things to do and I didn’t want to waste a sunny Saturday standing in an elevator with a stranger. I checked my watch – 5:12. Besides, what would happen if we were still stuck and I had to go to the bathroom? I jabbed furiously at the buttons again and then scanned the ceiling for the service exit.

“You’re putting the wrong R in acceptance,” the man said softly, never breaking his gaze from his book.

“Excuse me?” I frowned. ‘Acceptance’ had no R’s.

The man closed his book on his index finger to mark his place and, at last, glanced up at me. Deep brown eyes that seemed to perpetually smile gazed into mine. His lips parted and curved upward revealing one gold tooth surrounded by a full set of even, white teeth. “Resistance,” he whispered. “Where there is resistance, there cannot be full acceptance.”

“What if I don’t want to ‘accept’ that the stupid elevator broke down?”

“That is your choice, but without acceptance of the moment, one cannot fully live in the moment. Since there is no other moment to live in, how would you define your existence?”

By habit, I crossed my arms over my chest so that I could do something with them while I pondered his question. I immediately uncrossed them. I didn’t want to give the appearance that I was closed to his thoughts. He intrigued me and, I had to admit, he was right.

“Yeah,” I finally said with a heavy sigh. “The elevator broke down and I can’t fix it. Someone will eventually come along and pull us out of the jam.”

“Resignation,” he said. He placed his book face down on the floor, leaving it open at the page he’d been reading. I winced. Although it was a hardbound book, the treatment of it put a strain on the binding. I studied the book a moment and noticed that the plain leather cover and spine bore no print; no title, no author’s name – nothing. “What kind of energies do you attract and dwell in when you align yourself with helplessness?” He continued. “Are you not becoming a victim of circumstance? Who’s energy created the circumstance to begin with?” He paused to allow me a moment of thought. “Are you not then becoming a victim of your own set of choices?”

I understood the law of attraction well enough to know that I didn’t cause the elevator to break down but that I was, in fact, responding to my own energetic creation by choosing to step onto the elevator at the time it would malfunction. I was responding to my own energies by choosing my emotional reaction to the circumstance. If neither resistance nor resignation allowed acceptance of the moment, what did?

“This is giving me the opportunity to think,” I admitted with a smile. “I wouldn’t have had this experience had the elevator not broken down. I can understand it now.”

“Rationalization,” he said, picking up his book to resume his reading.

I suddenly felt like scribbling all over the pages of his precious book. I held my silence, knowing that if I said anything, he’d find something wrong with my logic. I hated being backed into a corner, especially in an elevator where I had nowhere to run.

“All rationalization,” he said, “is based on thought. No matter how logical it is or how good it makes us feel or how thoroughly it vindicates our actions – or lack of them, it is still dependent on external conditions. In order to rationalize, we have to label and judge things. Right. Wrong. Good. Bad. Those are only personal values based on perception. All values are dependent on all external things being as they are in relation to what’s being judged.”

“So, what R would you put in acceptance?” I challenged.

His answer was immediate. “Release.” Without another word he resumed his reading.

I supposed I’d be just as nonchalant about the whole thing if I had a good book to read. “What are you reading?” I finally asked, not out of any real curiosity, but as a way to break the boredom and the stifling silence.

“I’m reading the greatest wisdom by the greatest spiritual master who has ever lived – or will ever live for that matter.”

There had been hundreds throughout the ages and we each had our personal favorite. “Who?” I asked.

“See for yourself,” he said, handing the book up to me.

The pages were blank. I thumbed through the book both forward and backward and discovered that all the pages were blank. “I don’t understand,” I said, returning the book. I could understand a book of blank pages in which someone kept a journal of their thoughts but there was absolutely nothing printed, typed, or written in the book anywhere.

“You’ve heard the saying many times that it’s not what’s written but what’s between the lines that counts. This book contains everything that’s between the lines. It holds whatever the reader wants to focus on. When you focus on something, regardless of what it is, you detach from the energies of whatever surrounds you and you draw into the energies of yourself, deep within. That’s meditation and it serves you by helping you release or detach from the energies of whatever false reality you thought was so important. You release your desires of what you want, intend, or expect to do. You release your worries of the future – of a time that exists only in your imagination. You release your regrets of the past – of a time that exists only in your memory. You release your emotions and your attachment to the drama of them. This is acceptance.

“It’s ironic though,” he paused and smiled softly again. “We think of acceptance as taking or receiving something that’s offered when acceptance is nothing more than letting go. Without fully letting go, we cannot receive. Through release we find acceptance.”

“Does your book say anything about how to release anger so I can accept the moment?”

“Of course it does.”

Yeah, right, I thought. The book’s pages were blank.

“You read it yourself a moment ago,” he added when he saw the disbelief in my eyes. He flipped to a page, apparently at random, used his finger to mark the imaginary words, and offered the book back up to me. He’d lost his mind, and my own was scampering away quickly enough because there I stood peering into the book as if it really did have something valid to say. “Let me ask you something,” he said as he reclaimed his book and snapped it shut. “When you were focused on the page, searching for something to read, what did you feel?”

“I guess I was still angry because the elevator is stuck.”

“Oh? Think again. For the moment, however brief it was, when you were looking at the book, did you feel angry?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “I guess not.”

“It is impossible for the human brain to think more than one thought at a time. So while you were focused on the energies of the book, you had released the energies of anger – of resistance, and had accepted the moment and every condition of it.”

He was right, I thought. I spent a moment reliving the energies of letting go and realized, even as I pondered the memory of the situation that I was accepting it. Just as I began to grasp the full essence of it, the elevator lunged into action again and resumed its glide to the first floor. I instinctively turned to face the doors, ready to step out as soon as they opened. I checked my watch to see how long we’d been stuck and then puzzled over the time as I watched the second hand tick around the face in uninterrupted perpetuum. My watch said 5:13.

“That’s funny,” I said. “I think my watch stopped for as long as we were stuck. Do you have the ti--?” I turned to face my companion but he was gone. He had disappeared.

I spun to my right and then my left and then turned a full 360 degrees just in case he was ducking and diving behind me to avoid detection. A cool tingle spread up my spine then down my back and legs. I was entirely alone. The elevator hadn’t stopped for any length of time at all according to my watch.

I chalked up the experience to imagination; but what was the difference? It was my experience. As I turned again to face the doors, patiently waiting open, I glimpsed a piece of paper lying on the floor. It was blank and appeared to be a loose page that had fallen from a book of blank pages. With reverence, I picked it up and folded it to slip it into my purse. As I made the final crease, I thought I glimpsed in tiny print, the wisdom of the ages.