The Need for Acceptance

By Philip Martin



The Need for Acceptance

"Knowing others is wisdom; knowing the self is enlightenment."
-- Tao Te Ching

Before we are born, whilst we are in the womb, we are part of the womb, part of the mother, all connected, an intermingling of chemicals, energy and whatever else is there. When we are born, a physical connection is severed. And we breathe to obtain oxygen and we suckle at the breast for nutrition. Our senses pick up more sensations and we do not yet have the understanding that we are ourselves, that we are separate. We are very aware of how wonderful we feel. We are very aware of being, but we are unaware that what we see is not us. As a baby we feel that everything in our world is us, we cannot distinguish between out there and in here.

Every sense that we sense is a part of us, we experience the sensing, are we not the experience? We have experiences and because we feel those experiences, we naturally assume we are the experience. As the baby’s mind develops, it begins to learn that there is a difference between the world out there and the world in here. It begins to realise that the object/person called Mummy is not me. The baby/toddler then becomes aware of its vulnerability and at this point realises the need for acceptance of itself by its mother. It needs its mother to love it, in order to guarantee its own survival.

As the child grows and develops it imitates its parents as a form of love. The child does this because it loves its parents totally and a desire to be as like as its parents as possible. This is the aim of the child - to be one with the parents. This is how we learn most of our information, by mimicking our parents. In this way we guarantee our survival.  We learn to be like our parents for they have survived and we learn their survival methods.

All young children have a desire for all in their world to love and be loved (In the earliest stages of life the baby is only aware of love and the absence of love). A child wants to be loved as it is, as his nature is, if we have to alter our nature and behaviour in a certain way to achieve love, then it is not us, our nature that they are loving. They are not loving the real us, they are loving what they want, how they want and we feel that our realness, our essence is not good enough.

At this stage in the young child’s development it is sure to have suffered some rejection. As rarely we love the child as completely and totally as much as the child wants to be loved. The child ends up with its need for acceptance being unfulfilled. This unmet need like all unmet needs creates pain for the child and the child seeks to avoid the reoccurrence of the pain by varying its behaviour. The child’s aim is to get more acceptance, but unfortunately the acceptance is rarely forthcoming. And the child either continues in attention seeking behaviour or avoidance behaviour which is denial of the need for acceptance (which is fear of rejection).

By now the child is maturing and another need, that of individuality is forming and the child needs to assert itself in the world. The child needs to be an individual and be self reliant. This need is obviously important for the young adult to ensure the survival of the species. This need for individuation though, competes with the need for acceptance. If the need for acceptance is fulfilled it is an easy passage to that of individuation. But sadly it is all too common for the need of acceptance to be unfulfilled and the young adult finds itself with the conflict of two important needs (that are now in competition) controlling it’s behaviour.

At this time the young adult displays the behaviour of conforming with its peers, behaving in a similar manner to his/her friends so as to be accepted. Though the more they behave in this accepting behaviour the more the need for being an individual (a somebody) becomes unfulfilled. If the young adult behaves in an individual manner the more its need for acceptance becomes unfulfilled. A real dilemma ensues and it is one that most teenagers find themselves in. This conflict of opposing needs reflects a conflict between oneness and duality that perpetrates the civilisation of mankind. Explored later. 

The teenager matures into adulthood with the continuing struggle between unmet needs. One of these needs becomes more important than the other and the adult sacrifices one for the other. The behaviour pattern then is set. You attempt to fulfil the chosen need, alas to no avail.

For, if you choose to fulfil your need for individuation, you will simply become aware of the need for acceptance. You will simply feel unaccepted (rejected). Becoming an individual will just make you feel more distant from people and you will feel you don’t fit in or belong. If you choose to fulfil your need for acceptance, then you will become acutely aware that pleasing people just makes you feel like a nobody. Every time you do things to gain acceptance and be like your friends or do what is accepted. Just accentuates the void inside, which is where you as a unique individual belong.

Teenagers in particular but also adults can satisfy these opposing needs in a shallow fashion by forming gangs, clubs, sporting supporters etc. Whereby for example a gang, will have its identity and those in the gang feel a part of something, they feel accepted and by having the identity of the club they feel different (superior) to others. The identity of the gang is a single identity, they feel very individual whilst they are together and rejecting other such groups!

As this conflict continues we feel we have no control, which is a very important need. We feel we have no control because we cannot fulfil our needs of acceptance and individuation. To compensate for this lack of control we look for order in our lives. We like to be certain about things so that we know what is going on. We do this so we can feel safe, to have some semblance of control. Rules come in handy here. We want everybody to obey the same rules, and it seems to make us feel safe. It only temporarily makes us feel safe, and a pseudo safe it is. The thought of questioning or doing away with rules scares us. We think everything will fall into chaos, and what is chaos but the total lack of control.

We are afraid of chaos because we do not have self control. Our need for self control is unfulfilled. If our need for self control is unmet, then we cannot trust ourselves and we cannot rely on ourselves. We feel like we are inferior, a nobody, a nothing. The downward spiral continues. We become aware of how important the good opinion of others is to us. We live our life as a pretence. Portraying ourselves as nice good people etc and it is very important that others see us as a good person or a strong person or however we portray our self image.

The more we keep up this pretence, the more we are untrue to our real nature. We dare not let anyone see who we really are. Even the straight shooters, the people who say ‘What you see is what you get’ are likely to be fooling themselves.

Underlying all of this is a belief - ‘I am nothing/a nobody’. This belief may be easily felt or it may be a whisper of a feeling deep within, buried beneath layers of denial or numbness.

We do not want to look at ourselves. We want to fix the symptoms. We want to change the outside and we want the world to treat us better. We will do anything except look inside and this is understandable. Because we have the misconception, that we are nothing. I can tell you that it is a lie - this ‘I am nothing’ but because you believe it, you think I am wrong. Beliefs are extremely powerful but they are not necessarily true, they are only our individual perspectives.

The solution to your sufferings is to find your True Self. Accessing your True Self will enable you to have a wonderful life. The journey to your True Self is via the misconceptions and fears you have about yourself.  Be willing to accept and acknowledge your fears about your self, investigate them and you will discover the truth of your True Self.  

Begin today to accept your self as you are, as O.K, without guilt, embarrassment, shame or humiliation and you will ease your fears. Self Acceptance - it is your natural right.

It is easier to judge than accept. It is easier to reject than accept or are we just lazy? When we feel threatened we tend to react so that we survive. We either fight or flee, this is our first instinct, but if we accept the situation as it is, without judgement and accept the other viewpoints. We can make wise decisions instead of dangerous knee jerk reactions. I look at countries in conflict and it is like looking at young children in the school yard ‘You did it first’ - ‘No you did it first’ and on and on it goes.  No acceptance of things as they are. Only blame as a reaction to threat. The reaction is a lack of mature self control and so we feel more vulnerable and we lash out to feel powerful. This only proves and escalates our weakness.

The emotional need of acceptance is the need to be accepted as we are in this moment. We are human beings. We do not need any further judgement, expectations or labels. Parents tend to see their children as they might be in the future. They see their own desires, wants and fears. It is truly a beautiful sight to behold when you see a parent accepting their child without any agendas or expectations. Many mothers do this when they have a new baby. For they simply see the baby as it is and the awe of this new life is accepted as it is. A new unique human being, perfect as it is! If only we carried this awe through life, this non judgemental awareness. In these moments these mothers are experiencing reality, they are witnessing what is. But sadly this is not appreciated for what it is and the mother is urged to forego this nonsense and start interfering, controlling, moulding, preparing, and get back to (so called) reality, and the essence of what is, once again is misconstrued. Alas.

 This emotional need for acceptance in fact can only be manufactured by the individual. You are the only person who can fulfil your need for acceptance. For only by accepting yourself can you feel accepted. The acceptanceness is the feeling you feel after you have made it (the actual feeling of acceptance). It is uniquely your own experience, this holds true for every feeling. For only by accepting yourself can you then know you are accepted. Other people accepting you can feel good but without you accepting yourself, as you are, your need will continue to be unfulfilled and a source of anguish.

But why is there a need for acceptance and is there a deeper layer? Glad you asked. You do not need acceptance to survive. So it is not a need. Your ego needs it though, to survive (so it thinks), that is why it is an emotional need. Why does the ego need to be accepted, how can it not accept itself? Think about it, do you doubt your existence? Do you doubt you are reading this book? Do you doubt that the chair you are sitting on is there? Do you reject the chair? Do you doubt its existence? Do you need to accept the chair? Your answer to these questions is no, yet one of the questions, the answer is yes.

You do doubt your existence. This may sound ridiculous, but your identity/ego, explained later, formed early in childhood. And there was a period of time when your totality existed before the construct of the identity of you. The identity is a thing, something, a label and yet just before it was created it wasn’t there. The new identity feels like it came from nothingness. One moment it wasn’t there and the next moment it was and since that moment, ego has been deathly afraid of slipping back into nothingness and therefore ceasing to exist. From that first moment it has two possibilities. Two scenarios it lives with constantly, this or that. It can be nothing or something, no – body or somebody, existing or not existing, here or not here and it has no choice but to keep both possibilities/opposites.

Your ego lives constantly with this paradox, that at the same moment it is both nothing and something. It is impossible for the ego/identity to remove “I am nothing”. If it discarded and removed the “I am nothing” the “I am something” would disappear too.  This happens for two reasons, one – when you get rid of the statement “I am nothing” you are also getting rid of “I am”, so you discard all “I am’s” and if you discard “I am”, what have you got? – nothing. Two – the ego/identity is a construct, it has no place, no form, no substance, in fact it is nothing. It is aware of something that it seems to control, own and communicate with, something that it is attached to. That is the body and that body was existing before ego/identity’s emergence but as I am this identity then I am not that which was before (the body). But as I have awareness of ‘something’ before my existence and I could only be Nothingness before my existence, then I am aware of nothingness and I was nothingness. Therefore there is an “ I am nothingness”, the ‘I’ cannot conceived of it not existing even though it knows of its beginning. This is because the identity of I is a concept and as such the identity can know what it is not (the body any everything else) but it cannot know what it is, as it has no form, no matter and if it can’t know what it is. It can’t know of its non existence. Hence mans desire, to know himself, to define himself to be validated and needing others to accept him. For if he is accepted by people (things that have form and matter, he sees them as whole but himself as an I within a body) then that may be proof that he exists and is real. More about these dilemmas later in Singularity and Duality and in Language.

Here is a beautiful piece of truth, very elegantly worded. It is worth printing out and placing it where you can see and read it every day.

ACCEPTANCE

Acceptance simply means that you make a commitment:

“Today I will accept people, situations, circumstances, and events as they occur,” This means I will know that this moment is as it should be. This moment … the one you’re experiencing right now .… is the culmination of all the moment you have experienced in the past. This moment is as it is because the entire universe is as it is.

When you struggle against this moment, you’re actually struggling against the entire universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole universe by struggling against this moment. This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. This is important to understand. You can wish for things in the future to be different, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are.

When you feel frustrated or upset by a person or a situation, remember that you’re not reacting to the person or the situation, but to your feelings about the person or situation. These are your feelings, and your feelings are not someone else’s fault. When you recognize and understand this completely, you are ready to take responsibility for how you feel and to change it. And if you can accept things as they are, you are ready to take responsibility for your situation and all the events you see as problems. ....…

Author - Deepak Chopra

It’s you resistance to WHAT IS that causes your suffering .....… Buddha

 

"What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way
people think things are."
-- Epicetus

 

“At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”

--Friedrich Nietzsche

 "As long as I am this or that, I am not all things."
-- Meister Eckhart

  

"Inside every older person is a younger person--wondering what the hell happened."

-- Cora Harvey Armstrong

Posted by Life Patterns