How often do we say, "What is, is." While we might say that, we so often don't really believe it and then, with hard work and determination, set out to change what is to what we need it to be, rather than what is. And yet, What is....still is.

"If you understand...then things are as they are. If you don't understand, then things still as they are."

There is freedom in deeply understanding that what is...is, and let it be so. When someone close to our personal consciousness or family suffers or dies, we learn, or don't what it means to accept "what is...is." Inspite of what you have heard, no one in the real world of people that you ever really knew, came back from really being dead. Life ends for everyone and everything and in that we learn or fight "what is..is." If you are lucky, you get old and die now that you are here. We, as humans, can spend weeks, or months or years railing against the "what is-ness" of any particular situation but that is our problem and doesn't change a thing. We can progress quickly, with acceptance or kicking and screaming all the way, through the four, five, six or seven steps of grief. We can spend six months in shock, four in denial, two in bargaining with the deity to reverse what is, a few in anger and then over years, accept what is and was from the day "what is" paid us a visit.

My dad has a habit of noting, "well that's the way it is and I'm not going to worry about it." It seems to have served him well into his 91st year. This is a man who tells me he once took my brother and himself for a ride in the car and thought of ending the "is-ness" of his handicapps and mental disabilities due to birth a premature birth and subsequent medical disasters, but running into a tree. Whew...my brother is older than me so I appreciate that dad was able to put some space between the thought and the event. My "is-ness" would never even have made it to a "was-ness" if he had done that. History would have been different and of course, produced more "is-ness" for others.

The mind is a terrible thing at times...it needs to be wasted on some ways of being. There is magic in facing what is. Somehow, it disarms the beast and puts some space in there where we can start to accept how things are rather than rail against how they are and can't be and we won't accept it. A simple way of being in such times is to have the ability, ok fake it until you make it, of simply noting "Is that so?" when confronted in life with what is. "Is that so?" Such a simple thought form and yet so disarming to the emotions and sudden change "is-ness" can inflict upon us if we are lucky enough to spend substantial time on the planet. Reality for some and those that love them, is that they don't get to spend much time here, or leave too quickly and the skills of accepting what is are learned, or not, early in the cycle.

Whenever I suffer the panic or anxiety I feel at times that my mind and subsequent chemistry can provide me with on various topics, it is due to resistance to what is. All negativity is some form of resistance as Eckhart Tolle notes in The Power of Now. Just ask yourself when you are angry, or bitching, or nervous, or anxious or in a panic..."am I resisting something," and I quarantee you are and you know it. We are resisting what is. The plain and simple, what is, of many topics and circumstances. A middle age nurse, friend of my sister, tells everyone how excited she is to get her new motorcycle. She's that kinda woman, and now she is dead leaving four children behind. That is what is. My nephew, wearing his headset and walking along the railroad tracks can't hear the train and he was killed. I didn't want to write the word "killed" rather opting to say it in a more gentle way, but I'm practicing here noting what is. A brother-in-law, who all his life was very careful about what he ate, never smoked, drank only good red wine and prayed every day, died relatively young of cancer, go figure. What is...is. These "is-nesses" can be magnified and multiplied tens of millions of times, no billions and the degree to our mental and spiritual health thrives is the degree to acceptance of what is. I'm not speaking of complacency to what is and needs to change. I am speaking of those life things that simply cannot change no matter how long it takes us to admit it.

When a pastor (I no longer am as that is what is,) I am sure I noted how amazing it must have been for Methusaleh, in Genesis, to live to be 969 years old. (I think someone liked the 9,upside down 9, thing). It never happened, but I have since thought it is not so much amazing as a human disaster. That's a lot of psychological baggage over time that much time! How many loved ones do you accept died this way or that? How many children? Would one be married to the same person for 700 years or how about 900? (Of course in that culture, as long as you could afford them, multiple wives was the norm). How about 900 years of multiple wives! How many funerals and how many stressful weddings and stonings? Only a human with a highly developed sense of accepting what is could possibly survive the psycho-baggage of a life that went on and on like that. One would truly have to get help by joining ON and ON Anonymous...:)

Some simple awareness skills can help. When life does what it does and is what it is and everything in us screams NO, learn to think and audibly say YES. "Yes, it is so " goes a long way in the mind giving you space to accept what is. Learn to say things to yourself such as "I am divorced now." "I am no longer this or that." "My father, mother, sister, brother, child, has died." "That career is over." "I have changed." Say it and disarm it. This is when we most want to say NO but the magic of acceptance comes from facing the beast and disarming it with knowing that it is so. We do it over and over and each time we give the mind space to process the events and give us some personal growth in it's place.

A word about health challenges. We have a lot of say over the state of our health. Genetic factors also do over which we have no control at our level for the moment. In health, what is can change if we change. Most people think Sugar, Caffeine, Alcohol and Nicotine (SCAN) are the four main food groups and one should have lots of each every day. I see what is in those people all the time. They won't say NO when they should. But whatever...when illness comes, or the predictable problems of old age, are we not better to accept it, doing what we can, but knowing the nature of life is to have it end and change forms? A skill we adopt or a maybe better said, a way of being we can be when ill is to not identify who we are with the illness. One might have cancer, or diabetes, or a disease, but that one is not that cancer or illness. "I am being challenged in my health by cancer, but the I that is me is doing just fine." That's a step towards not too closely identifying the problem with being who we really are and it can be an easy, just do it thing, or a struggle to get out of the head and into the "is-ness" of whatever it is we are challenged with in life.

"What is...is." A mantra for living in the real world of drama, events, tragedy and what is. A mantra that can disarm the beast and open up space for us to be.

If you understand...then things are as they are. If you don't understand...then things are as they are.