Making Decisions
Written by Kate • August 23, 2010 •
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I was recently listening to Eckhart Tolle’s Bringing Stillness into Everyday Life [which I highly recommend] when he began discussing making decisions from a place of acceptance rather than resistance. I had heard about right actions and right decisions before but it has not really resonated with me prior to this. I hadn’t really ever understood and so I didn’t know how to act on it.
The concept is this, as I understand it: make decisions from a place of presence, of acceptance. If you’re making a decision because you are resisting what it, the decision or action will more than likely be worse that the current situation that you’re resisting. His point is that unless you’re making a right decision, right in the Eastern/Buddhist philosophy sense, your decisions are based on resistance and rarely does good come from this. During his session on Bringing Stillness into Everyday Life,  Eckhart Tolle used an example that brought it home for me. He discussed the Soviet Union, how it came as a reaction to the previous political regime. As he puts it, yes, the Russian monarchy was corrupt and evil and the Russian citizenry was justifiably outraged by the regime. And I’m greatly simplifying what Tolle said here, for the Russian people, by not accepting what is and making decisions on what should follow from that place, they got the Soviet Union and communism. An ideal that when implemented was an even greater level of horror perpetrated on the very people the new regime was trying to save.
This example, to me, was very helpful in understanding how to better make decisions and how disastrously things can go when action is taken through resistance.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I have disliked, even despaired, about my job. I searched for that job and choose it above others that I was offered. So it was something I manifested, something I purposefully brought about. And in honesty, I got this job because I was resisting my job situation before that. And look where making decisions in resistance landed me. But I’ve found this gentle place where I can now list the many positive things my job brings into my life, for which I am truly grateful. And now as I move forward with my decisions on how to continue moving on, I know that I’ll get results from this place of peace and gratitude. I know it’ll be better.
Are there times that you’ve made a decision in resistance and can see the results against other decisions made in acceptance?