On Acceptance

There is so much hub­bub around us about self-help and improve­ment that the key pre­con­di­tion of per­son­al change — self-accep­tance — often gets com­plete­ly lost. I’m as guilty of this one as any­body, and maybe more than most. If you are inter­est­ed, as I am, in all things self-actu­al­ized, you too may expe­ri­ence the dilem­ma. With all the books and tapes and learn­ing groups out there, it is very easy to fall into the pit of con­stant­ly attend­ing to the gap between the ide­al and the real — what I should be rather than what I am. For me, a con­tribut­ing fac­tor is my con­sult­ing work in orga­ni­za­tions specif­i­cal­ly help­ing peo­ple rec­og­nize, under­stand, and work with lead­er­ship and orga­ni­za­tion­al gaps. In the process I know I can eas­i­ly “over-focus” on my own ideals, los­ing sight of the fact that human change is most­ly not a lin­ear jour­ney, but an organ­ic one that para­dox­i­cal­ly begins with aware­ness and accep­tance of the parts that are not changing. 

For me, Rogers’ quo­ta­tion points to the soft­est tis­sue of the soul. I attend­ed a recent work­shop at which I believe the leader, Jim Sorensen, beau­ti­ful­ly mod­eled what Rogers’ self-accep­tance actu­al­ly means. Faced with a par­tic­i­pant try­ing to con­vince Jim in front of the hun­dred or so peo­ple in the class that he should sim­ply “love his stuff,” no mat­ter what it is, Jim very hon­est­ly and vul­ner­a­bly stat­ed that no, there were parts of him­self he could not yet love. In doing so he mod­eled a deep hon­esty. By what he said and how he said it, and per­haps with­out any spe­cial inten­tion, Jim made it safe for every­one there to also acknowl­edge parts of them­selves that make com­plete self-love dif­fi­cult. And he demon­strat­ed how, even with­out that final self-love, there can also be self-acceptance. 

I can imag­ine a long argu­ment here about the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between love and accep­tance, and I’d rather not fall into that seman­tic whirlpool. But I do want to rein­force the impor­tance of Jim’s gift to the audi­ence. With accep­tance, I believe that love, maybe cap­i­tal L kind of love, comes of its own accord and from “out­side.” With accep­tance comes grace, comes heal­ing, comes change into our lives, and they come from some­place beyond our­selves and yet in a way that is com­plete­ly intrin­sic to who we are.

Dreamcatchers: Ethnic Fest ’08, Tacoma WA

Last week, Karen Lynch of Ver­mont Diary sent me this com­pelling sto­ry of con­ver­sion and grace. While I do not iden­ti­fy myself as a Chris­t­ian, and I cer­tain­ly am not in any place to make a judg­ment about the mean­ing of Karen’s expe­ri­ence, what is unde­ni­able is that some­how a door of tran­scen­dence opened for her in a sin­gle moment, as per­haps it can for any one of us. Maybe that moment is always hap­pen­ing, if only we have suf­fi­cient clar­i­ty to see its con­stant unfolding.

I believe what Rogers is talk­ing about all the pri­vate, prayer­ful nuances of let­ting go, of find­ing the end, of sim­ply being, of accept­ing — that things are okay, that I’m okay. Prob­a­bly most­ly this is an uncon­scious process of open­ing, of blos­som­ing, where some­thing redi­rects us and helps us regain our hold on our fun­da­men­tal inter­con­nect­ed­ness. The True Self. In my work I see lead­ers who attempt to sub­sti­tute their hard work, achieve­ments and intel­li­gence for the serum of self-accep­tance, lead­ers who are nev­er enough to them­selves yet refuse to go through the eye of the nee­dle in order to expe­ri­ence some­thing else. Truth be told, I iden­ti­fy with them. And yet I also see the pos­si­bil­i­ties of tran­scen­dence, which come from adver­si­ty and from ques­tions that can’t be answered, only lived. When I am stopped cold by self-made pain, indeed it is then most fre­quent­ly that the out­lines of a new door begin to appear on an oth­er­wise seam­less inner wall. 

Technorati Tag: Healing