It may appear that people want what our money, or fame or power can give them. It may seem as if people like us for our strength, our outer beauty, our place in society, our talents, successes and achievements.
But what people really want – and they may not even be conscious of this themselves – what actually lies behind their aspirations, is to be accepted, to be understood, to be affirmed as they are.
We all have a deep desire to be seen, to be given full attention, to be listened to without interruption or judgment. To be accepted with our weaknesses, our flaws, our failures, our fears, our darkness. We want our pain to be acknowledged and understood. We want to be sincerely affirmed and praised for our selves and our struggles.
Why are we all so desperate for this total acceptance and why are so few of us able to give it to another?
Because most of us are in denial about our own selves. Most of us are afraid to know ourselves. Most of us are too busy constructing and defending the shell we have created of ourselves, based on our conditioning. This shell is not who we are, it is not whole, it is not authentic. So we have a fear of being found out, of being an imposter. And this disquiet eats away at us. And when we see our shadow reflected in others – in weakness, in vulnerability, in what we consider deviant or improper, in neediness, in brokenness, in failure – we shrink in horror from the other, when in fact, it is our own selves we are most afraid and horrified of.
What we require, more than anything else, is permission to be human – which means to be lost sometimes, to be confused sometimes, to make mistakes sometimes. To not always have the answers, to not always be right, successful, strong and in control. To be allowed to be weak, vulnerable and needy sometimes. To be allowed to want (not necessarily have) what we should not want. Permission to acknowledge our selfishness, greed, jealousy, envy, fear, without succumbing to them. Permission to acknowledge our appetite for violence, revenge, pleasure, without indulging in them.
Permission to be imperfect and broken.
Permission to be tired, to stop and to rest.
It is only when we acknowledge our demonic and beastly potential that we transcend them to realize our highest potential, which is noble and breathtakingly beautiful and sublime.
Our darkness is not just the opposite of our light, it is not just the path to our light, when the darkness is made conscious, it becomes our light.
Grant yourself the permission to be human. Grant yourself full acceptance. Walk into and transmute your darkness into light.
Then give this gift of total acceptance, of your light, to everyone else.
image: with thanks via Iraj Jahanshahi on facebook
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