acceptance

a path to here

I recommended someone read Eastern Body, Western Mind because he was interested in the theory behind my Reiki practice. He liked the down-to-earth, non fuzzy-wuzzy language that he found in the book. Too often discussions of ki, prajna, chakras etc. break down because the initiated (the people who are used to these strange words and therefore ‘understand’ them) have no way of explaining alien concepts with everyday words. This book fills a hole.

Except ‘rainbow bridge’.

What the hell is a rainbow bridge? I can only guess. Maybe…the path (or bridge) to wholeness, which in the author’s experience comes through freeing and integrating the energy of each chakra. (The colours of the chakras when put together would look like a rainbow, I guess.)

This got me thinking. The path to wholeness. That means that where I am now is not whole (probably true), but that to become whole I have to go somewhere else. The people reading this have probably already clocked that it’s not through owning things that we will find this wholeness, so what other places do we look for it? Where are you looking?

Somewhere else. We can take external trips somewhere else (buy or get rid of some things, travel, change your job, start or end a relationship) or internal trips to somewhere else (get saved, get enlightened, get your chakras healed). But what does this change?

Suggestion:
As long as you are trying to be whole by going somewhere else, you will never find wholeness where you actually are.

I’m roughly the same person I was five years ago, only I don’t hate myself for it now. That’s the only important thing that’s changed. Yes it’s true that my mental and emotional bodies are a little clearer thanks to a couple of things you might call spiritual practices, but that’s not the significant difference. What matters is that I can live with myself in my imperfection-riddled state of being, buy myself a beer, and say to myself that where I am right now, that’s okay.

So I wouldn’t call it the path to wholeness anymore. I haven’t gone anywhere but further inside. It’s the path of wholeness.

It brings me back to the leathery old AJ Muste quote:

There’s no way to peace. Peace is the way.

I cannot forgive you, for you are accepted.

Has someone close to you ever given you a random request like this?

“I’m really sorry for so and so fifteen years ago. Please forgive me.”

After racking your brains for a few seconds, you admit that you have no memory of the alleged incident. Forget about it, you don’t need forgiving.

I don’t know if that happens to other people, or if it’s just an evangelical thing. I’ve got it a few times recently, as my family are making redoubled efforts to clear themselves of demonic spiritual inheritances, sins of the forefathers, and sins of our own lives which they feel are putting a heavy black blot of ink over the pages of their books of spiritual accounting.

And I replied in that way. How can I forgive you if I’m not holding it against you? Sorry to disappoint, but you won’t find forgiveness here.

After a long and healthy break away from Christianity, I haven’t come across the word forgiveness too many times. What you find in Buddhism and Taoism is acceptance. It’s different.

When people look for forgiveness, they are looking for some kind of justification. They want their ink blotches erased, removed, vanished completely, leaving only pure white. The gospel of sin management is really all about this.

Acceptance, I suppose, works more like this: I know you did something hurtful, and I accept it; I accept you, without needing any accounting for that action. And certainly I wouldn’t make you changing a condition of this acceptance. What kind of acceptance asks for change? Incomplete acceptance.

Acceptance is maybe less satisfying, because the hurtful actions still exist in the metaphysical ether-they haven’t been washed away. But there is a hidden power to it. If a friend can accept and love me even with my tendency to be an arrogant and proud, I don’t have to worry about being like that in the future. If I’m arrogant again tomorrow it doesn’t matter; my friend accepts me. I don’t need to be forgiven all over again. My good friend has eaten the whole apple, even the bruised bit, and said “that’s OK. Apples are like that sometimes.”

Forgiveness tries to separate sin from sinner and says: “You are okay! Your sin is gone.”

Acceptance swallows the whole lot. “My arms are open to every part of you. Those ugly bits are you, at least for now, and you are my friend.”

These are thoughts-on-the-run; nothing is set in stone. Please let me know if they connect to you or if you have something to add by commenting.

friends with everything

What do you do when you come up against something that you don’t agree with? Atheist: you meet fundamentalist. Liberal: you meet conservative. What happens when you talk and you find they are the opposite of everything you stand for?

How do you react when someone tries to hurt you, or take from you?

Thomas Merton wrote of a Buddhist story he read:

One evening [a farmer] heard some noise in the garden. He noticed a young man of the village atop a tree stealing his fruit. Quietly, he went to the shed where he kept his ladder and took it under the tree so that the intruder might safely make his descent. He went back to his bed unnoticed. The farmer’s heart, emptied of self and possession, could not think of anything else but the danger that might befall the young village delinquent. ¹

This is very, very far from my usual reaction, which might be to throw stones at him, or at the very least, wish that he breaks something when he comes down from the tree. There is so much anger that rises in me at something like robbery. But is this anger necessary?

For peace to be solid, you need to be at peace with everything. This sounds radical, but it’s the only way to be free.

I don’t mean to let the whole world walk all over you. If someone robs you, call the police. But you can call the police without hating the intruder. The integrity of our world does not depend on him being caught and brought to ‘justice’.

There is no deep freedom if our peace can be stolen from us, in addition to our possessions. If a robber can steal our peace too, we are completely at his mercy. I don’t want to be completely at the mercy of robbers.

When we are friends with the world, we make peace with both the pretty and the ugly, the giving and the thieving, and then we are free.

Notes:

From Zen and the Birds of Appetite, pg 111 ↩