Aloha and Good Morning,

 

 Perfect acceptance: It’s like searching for the Holy Grail armed with little but coconuts and anecdotal trivia about the lift capacity of carrier pigeons. Perfect acceptance: it’s a life preserver I grasp when I’m drowning in my own jangling prickliness; it’s a salve I hope to apply to the spilt between my emotions and my intellectual, rational reaching for more conscious, evolved reactions patterns. Perfect acceptance, perhaps I’m asking too much of myself; after all, I’m only human. Yet, if acceptance is the doorway to equanimity and personal growth; if acceptance is the song that sooths the roaring of my shadow-beast – I want more of it!

 

 Unconditional acceptance is an ideal, a measuring stick like hash marks upon the wall by which we can gauge our growth and progress. Still, how can we even begin to live the ideal of unconditional acceptance without first acknowledging, recognizing and embracing its opposite?

 

 

We are unavoidably enmeshed within the polarized expressions of duality as long as there is an “I” with which to observe and something outside our “I” which can be observed. Even when you experience the enlightenment of causal consciousness – the most profound and inclusive oneness: where your soul expands to include all else and you feel the bark upon your trunk and the soft fuzz upon your pedals; you know the

dryness of your soil and the taste of it as you wiggle through. You laugh as your moons tickle your gravitational belly and ride your light into your own eyes. You look out upon yourself flying thought the air that is you and riding the warm thermal of yourself. You love the way the wind of yourself caresses your feathers. You pounce and are pounced upon simultaneously, feel pain and satisfaction equally for that too is all you, you experience deep, unequivocal union with the divine – even this profound awakening of oneness still withholds a minute center of “I” with which to perceive all that you are. As long as there is an “I” and something outside of it, there is duality.

 

In other words: our arranged marriage of opposites isn’t suing for divorce any time soon, so we’d best make it a relationship that works! I received the following email, and share it with permission:

“I have been pondering my shadow side for a while and also the implications of integrating the same with my light side and wondering what kind of confusion and chaos I might be getting myself into.  However, the meditative results have been remarkable.  This morning I was finally able to feel the oneness with everyone and everything around me.  Recognizing for the first time that all those I have been interacting with have not been a “them” at all—there has only been ME.  The separateness fell away; the integration was all-encompassing and the wholeness was complete.  I finally understand the “mirror,” and that the contract with those souls who have been my mirror has been a labor of love.  I have had many opportunities and blessings bestowed upon me through their love, although my human-ness has opted to see these opportunities and blessings from many different emotional angles.”

 

 I like the gestalt idea of looking at opposites. We see the light of the stars and the shine of the moon only when night time’s darkness gives them life through contrast. To appreciate the light of the moon and the stars, we must first allow darkness to be present.

 

 To create unconditional acceptance we must become aware of all the ways, little or large, we initially created it conditionally. The pathway to perfect acceptance,

of which there is only one, winds through our mine field of conditions. It struggles through the boulders of our conscious and unconscious expectations and plows resolutely through the heavy jungle of our cognitive filters. Nor does this journey travel a one way road. It inevitably dips and winds through and around our over-all increases in consciousness.

 

 

Acceptance is one of the foundational, core qualities of our soul (along with wisdom, equanimity, witnessing, compassion and confidence) without which we simply stay stuck. To be become unstuck, to create movement, to learn to do things differently and better we must unavoidably find ourselves confronted by the roaring beast of our own interior. Moreover, to experience being fully accepted one must be equally eager and prepared to experience acceptance’s dualistic opposite: rejection.

 

 Deep dualities are difficult to grasp and inculcate. Christ spoke of them often and people still debate His meaning. The Tao is made of them and we often misapprehend it completely. We have an opportunity to create a new relationship to the dualistic acceptance/rejection reality every time we look into the mirror of another human being reflecting our self back in a way that feels imperfectly accepting or awaken to the same in ourselves.

 

 What corner of my inner unconscious, what little blob of my split-off soul parts is crying out to be heard? What part of my self is less than fully accepting? If acceptance is tempered by my fear of rejection, my fear of acceptance’s sudden withdrawal, then when will my comfortablity ever be complete, or my feelings ever become secure – no matter what another person says or does? Again, it’s not about them. Fear of rejection creates

rejection because I become unable to fully feel whatever level of acceptance is present and into that apathetic absence my imagination projects rejection through my fear of it. Certainly none of you have ever pushed another into a behavior or a reaction you abhorred to vindicate your certainly that it was inevitable anyway so best to get it out of the way now.

 

Several nights back I found my self struggling deeply with subtle, yet powerful feelings of acceptance’s opposite. I’d spent much of the day searching for a way to improve my ability to access acceptance when what I really felt was some level of something different. In this case, my feelings of being left out, of being un-included soured my inner equanimity with disproportionate loneliness. My mind and greater spirit whispers “All is well,” yet my emotions cry out “But what

about me?” What, I implored of myself, must I do the change these feelings and spare myself this stiletto stabbing, however thin the blade? With a sigh I continued to contemplate, perhaps if I meditate? I deepened my breathing and let my thoughts defuse. Suddenly I appreciated the larger picture of my silliness: trying to create acceptance by changing something, that’s not what I’m meaning when I extol embracing duality! I laughed aloud at the absurdity and simply shifted my soul, sudden okay with my insecurities and my subtle levels of loneliness, suddenly okay with not always being included. My heart flooded with peace and grace, my body tingled and buzzed and my spirit exploded out energetically to fill the room.

 

 Once again my realization returned to the simple truth: I’m okay and so are you.

 

 With love and aloha, 

 

 Holman

Contents © 2008 by  Holman R. Meyerhoffer, LMT—Project Transformation