Accepting people exactly as they are is the game. Whether I keep someone or leave someone, my job is the same.
When somebody speaks, they’re simply telling me the way they see things – it has nothing to do with me. It’s what they see.
Once I have accepted something or somebody as it is, the choices I make become clear. I may say, “I love you” and stay or “I love you” and leave. Accepting has a loving quality to it. I believe the repetitions we see in our own habits and cycles come from leaving something without reaching this point of acceptance for ourselves and them.
It’s finally seeing someone clearly without a bunch of judgments splashed onto them. If I don’t accept them as they are, I’ll stay in a reality of suffering, and this can be tricky. I want them to change. I see their potential. I see I see I see. I see what i want to see, what I think and believe about them.
If those thoughts and beliefs cause me suffering, it’s my own doing because I can choose to investigate my thoughts and find the truth. I (unless it’s not true) make the choice to stay with them, or it, or that. In the case that I am locked in a box with no key, well, my choices sure have simplified. This may be a relief to some of us. (Did you know Trader Joe’s has around 4,000 SKUs compared to the average grocery store, which as of 2016 held around an average of 38,900 SKUs? In a 2014 survey Trader Joe’s sold $1,734 items per square foot in contrast to Whole Foods $930 items per square foot. It may seem counterintuitive that a store with fewer items would sell more, however, some consumer psychological studies have shown that in many cases people are much happier when they have fewer choices than more.)
I have found again and again that I can change nothing about my circumstances and experience a different, more joyful life just by editing the thoughts I pay attention to and investigating the ones that just won’t let go.
Blaming feels easier, but it really doesn’t. It places authority outside of me. And I can’t remember a time that somebody blamed anybody else where suffering wasn’t involved. It’s kind of a part of the whole blaming thing. Otherwise it’s just appreciation. They did that to me! – in different tones.
Yet another epiphany occurred this week when I woke up in a highly luteal mood, snapped at my dad for asking THE SAME QUESTIONS again, and put on this episode of Byron Katie at work:
[AT HOME with Byron Katie #233]
For the first time, I listened without trying to force myself into agreeing with everything she said and judging myself and her for it when it hurt. My gosh I can’t tell you how much more I got out of it by accepting me as I am.
She does this annoying (in the great way) thing where she asks the person, who has long sunk into focusing on an exact moment in their memory where the person they are complaining about wronged them, to look at the person’s face in the memory. I imagined my dad’s face when she prompted this, asking me his “annoying” questions, and saw how all my assumptions about how he:
- Meant to hurt me.
- Meant to annoy me.
- Judged me harshly and that’s why he’s asking these again.
were wrong. He didn’t want to hurt me. He didn’t want to annoy me. He wasn’t trying to do any of that, but I couldn’t look him in the face when I was annoyed to see it.
Don Miguel Ruiz says in Agreement #3: Don’t Make Assumptions.
It seems to me that every disagreement is made of a tangle of assumptions, and we should be spending more time trying to sort those out together. I’m assuming this which makes me also assume that, about you — oh and you are assuming this and this about what I did means, ok… isn’t that true? Oh. It’s not? But I wanted to believe it’s true. Oh dear. What do I do with all this outrage now?
The beautiful thing is that when we are able to center and open our minds to another path, the truth is an expansive and joyful thing. It may be lying under a field of thick and sticky muck that we very skeptically have to dig beneathin order to find the truth, but the truth feels like clarity. Every. Single. Time. Often painful clarity. But the other side is real.
This does not mean that I am ready for clarity. I am not always ready to let go of my grip on my beliefs. The miracle of yesterday was a clumsy shift into remembering I need to accept myself exactly as I am for the circle to complete. I found myself awkwardly dancing between asking, “Am I accepting me as I am?” and “Am I accepting him as he is?” in what felt like slow-motion as I toddled forth, remembering the importance of both queries.
I’m also half-certain I will take days “off” of figuring and unraveling here and there, if I can, lol. Emphasis on the “Accepting me exactly as I am” days where I am not discovering a damn new thing about myself and my lies for 12-16 hours.
I have decided to move on from the regenerative pig farm I work on. While I look for a new job I am willing to take on a few clients to help them sort through and manage their suffering and joy, asking them amazing questions and turning rage into laughter and love at the pace they are ready for. I may show them self-healing techniques for physically processing their pains in a way that employs the body’s own knowing (body knows best), or help guide using one of the many other rabbit holes and professions I’ve assumed over this curious lifetime.
In the meantime I’m still on the farm, working in all weather and loving the experiences I am afforded there.