I attended a Family Constellation workshop with Bert Hellinger in year 2008 and remembered a poignant statement he made about exclusions of family members in a lineage. Through his years of experience he found that if a family member was to be excluded in secrecy or had not been given a proper place where he is rightfully due or accepted, probably arising from shame of a psycho/physical situation or incident, the condition of which what was denied will repeat itself down future generations until what has been hidden is rightfully acknowledged. Somehow, this profound information gave me a meaning that whatever arisen has to be respectfully recognized and accepted as part of a whole natural unfolding; and if not given a voice, will be re-experienced again until what is not acknowledged is given full acceptance.
And I seem to have similar understanding on mind objects during my meditation when it comes to unpleasant experiences. I found that what is not accepted, particularly an experience that comes with resistance, will have itself prolonged or repeated; until it has been fully acknowledged of its presence. My observation is that since all experiences are created mentally by our own ignorance, what is created cannot be ignored, rejected or annihilated until a full acceptance and understanding of what brought about the situation comes into picture. Sometimes, by just acknowledging its presence, without needing to find its source will already make a completion out of it. It is a full act of self responsibility of what that has been done, is undone again through recognition. Not accepting what is has element of guilt, and it is this guilt that makes the experience repeat itself again.
Acceptance, in its truest form, must be from the space that is devoid of guilt, shame or fear. It is to have element of wisdom in it – recognizing that it was done out of ignorance is in itself, an act of reversal. Sometimes it is done as a form of forgiveness – forgiving oneself or others unconditionally, with compassion (which is wisdom in action). The proximate enemy to acceptance is resignation, which is unwholesome and comes with element of ignorance or guilt.
And back to practicality how this principle can be applied to our daily experiences. Any upsets, in whatever form, that one usually experience is normally directed to another, making others our scapegoat, though the experience itself is found in the mind of the beholder. Doing so only prolongs the anger or even to allow it the experience to repeat when condition for it ripens again. Hence to acknowledge its presence is utmost important. It is giving the anger experience a voice in our mind. To give it a voice is to mean accepting anger as part of the mind’s nature without furthering it through resistance.
One of the reasons why anger is not fully acknowledged is because of its unpleasant experience. Hence the way to resolving it, as instructed by my teacher, is to see it as an integral part of nature rather than something that we personally identified with. Give it a space, so to speak, without holding on to it. You will be surprised when such right idea is applied, that is when anger has been acknowledged, you will too, see its end in a brief moment. But it is important to be reminded again that this ritual is done not for the sake of removing anger, but rather as respect to its space in the mind that one has created ignorantly and let whatever result unfold itself. To not see its end is already an expectation deriving from wanting it to be fixed. So it is important to check our motivation when we apply acceptance.
Thus healing takes place when full acceptance is derived. It can be applied to any forms of upsets like jealousy, aversion, depression or judgments. Do not see these elements as wrong which we were taught before, but to see them arising in the mind due to our own ignorance and thus can only be healed when we take full responsibility of it through acceptance.
It also works for experiences that we held on due to cravings or attachments but due to the nature of clinging, normally the ignorance of wanting supersedes the ability to accept without holding on to it.
