Hi dom,

Your confusion is genuine and valid. I too had it for a long time.

Eckhart Tolle has given a very good example in his book The Power of Now.

“If you were stuck in the mud somewhere, you wouldn’t say: “Okay, I resign myself to being stuck in the mud.” Resignation is not surrender. You don’t need to accept an undesirable or unpleasant life situation. Nor do you need to deceive yourself and say that there is nothing wrong with being stuck in the mud. No. You recognize fully that you want to get out of it. You then narrow your attention down to the present moment without mentally labeling it in any way. This means that there is no judgment of the Now. Therefore, there is no resistance, no emotional negativity. You accept the “isness” of this moment. Then you take action and do all that you can to get out of the mud. Such action I call positive action. It is far more effective than negative action, which arises out of anger, despair, or frustration. Until you achieve the desired result, you continue to practice surrender by refraining from labeling the Now. 

Let me give you a visual analogy to illustrate the point I am making. You are walking along a path at night, surrounded by a thick fog. But you have a powerful flashlight that cuts through the fog and creates a narrow, clear space in front of you. The fog is your life situation, which includes past and future; the flashlight is your conscious presence; the clear space is the Now. “

I give you one more example. You are in a car and stuck in traffic. You are not able to move left, right, front or back.

What would one do?

option 1: Get angry, upset, frustrated, may be even get out of the care and see how long the traffic is and get even more frustrated.

option 2: Accept that “Okay there is a lot of traffic and I cannot move. What is it that I can do?”

Play up a good song in the car stereo. Call a friend or a partner. May be focus on your breath. Smile at the person in the car next to you..and things like that…till the traffic moves. It nowhere meant that you cannot take action and move.

So acceptance does not mean “inaction”. Acceptance does not mean “resignation”. It simply means “the situation is as it is”.

“If you let the world do what it will to you?”

For this question of yours too Eckhart has given a quick example

A question asked to Eckhart was – (Referring about his book A New Earth)

“I’m a little bit confused with chapter 2. I understand the quote, ‘If someone takes your shirt, let them have your coat as well.’ Where do you draw the line without getting walked all over? I don’t want to be an egotistical person, but at the same time I do not want to get taken advantage of. So I’m having a little bit of confusion with that.”

Eckhart replied:

“All it says is sometimes letting go, there’s more power in letting go than in clinging or hanging on to something. So there are situations when you actually become empowered when you let go, rather than when you cling. It does not mean that people walk all over you. In fact there are situations when you have to say no very clearly as to a situation or to a person, but even that ‘no’ can be of two different kinds.”

Tolle continued, “Usually the no is very negative. When you say ‘no’ to a person; a person says, ‘I’ll give you a ride home.’ But you see the person is drunk. Of course you wouldn’t say yes just to be pleasant. You say no.”

“Now do you say no with negative energy and in a state of resistance or do you say not that is positive? It simply means a clear and straight forward, ‘No, I won’t do that.'”

“This is very different from the resistant no. I call that the no that is not negative – a high quality no.”

To get more answers on the title of this thread I recommend you to read/watch articles, books and videos from Eckhart Tolle. There are also free videos of him on YouTube.