Author: asitisnow

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.

I am just an environment
giving you the freewill
to incept whatever ideas you wish
and with it
you get to experience the feeling
that accompanies it.

But be forewarned
the game you play in me
as you may lose yourself
and suffer in consequence.

For, you see
there is such things as wrong ideas
and right ideas
not that they are differentiated
to mean evil or good
but to mean
ignorance or wisdom
either leading
to seeming bondage
or simply free.

Like an amusement park
you can either enjoy playing those games
or be frightened by what you played
both are merely perceptions of your own.

Hence right view gives right perception
and with it follows freedom or joy
and wrong view gives wrong perception
making your experience a nightmare of sort
bringing fear that is unfounded and unreal
but yet so real to you
when you are in it.

Awake to me
and you will see I am merely an innocence space
a nature on its own
working out fairly
what has been incepted.

Don’t blame me
if you are unwell in mind
Don’t love me
if you are experiencing mental freedom
as I am merely
Mind
like a mirror,
reflecting what you intent.

The purpose of awareness, or mindfulness, is to give presence to what is already occurring in the mind, which obviously has to be in the present, not in the past or future. Past and future too are actually thoughts of the present, arising in the here and now with meanings of past and future.

And when awareness is given to the mind, one could not help but notice in due time, that what he or she is being aware of has always occurred in the mind, never leaving it. In other words, nothing left the mind, not even something or someone that we think is causing our distress or happiness that is seemingly “out there”. The something or someone is actually the result of the mind’s ability of conceptual projection, making what is actually in the mind seems to be out of the mind, as in “out there”.

Soon when one is able to skilfully watch the mind, what comes up obvious to one’s experience is the rampant nature of resistance – the inability to accept what is. It becomes obvious that there is nothing one can run away from, since it has never left the mind, but due to the ignorance in this fact, one tries to reject it by making meaning out of it. Resistance comes in many forms, which the mind has mastered over time when the earlier ways did not work or does not anymore thus new methods are continuously being created ignorantly to fix the pain one thinks can be avoided resulting in the many facades of resistance which the mind uses to escape an inescapable pain.

In reality, the whole thing about resistance is paradoxical by nature. Nothing is painful in the mind, except the arising of not wanting, in other words, clinging on to not accepting. The not wanting, or resistance, is what causes the pain, not what is in the mind. It may sound strange, but that is exactly what it is when one starts to see how the mind works. Take for example, anger. Anger, by itself, is just an aspect of the mind. It arises due to one not seeing that the idea lodged in the mind is merely an idea and cannot be clung or held onto. Hence when another opposing idea that seems to be coming from the outside world meets with the idea in the mind, conflict arises and it is in this conflict that pain is born. Conflict is merely the inability to accept another idea because the very idea which one holds on, to him, seems right and with that the meaning of another being “wrong” arose in the mind. Hence the arising of anger, as a pain in the mind.

If one is mindful, and able to recognize anger as a product of opposing ideas, and with right mindedness, accepts how this is the nature of the mind works, one will see anger disappearing in his presence. Logically explained, anger arises from not acceptance and to bring in acceptance is to nullify anger. Of course, if one wishes to be angry there is no reason to accept the fact that anger springs from his own meanings.

The next round when any upset arise, be it in the form of jealousy, aversion, worry, depression etc, recognize it as it is, as if giving it a voice in the mind. It is like, “I am accepting you exactly as you are – giving you the space to be what you are” and then observe what happens to it. “Recognize it as it is” here is to mean accepting the upset without trying to resist it. You will be surprised by what turns up only if you are to accept the mind, and not to fool it by trying to fix up the pain.