Acceptance as a Quality of BEING
In the Diamond Approach, “acceptance” is not necessarily an act of approval but is seen as a healing agent, a fundamental aspect of Essence. It is not an activity but a state of being, a presence that comes into play when there is no resistance or rejection.
When we talk about acceptance in this context, it is not about accepting unconsciousness in oneself. Instead, it’s about complete consciousness and awareness of what is. It’s about understanding that there is what is, all the time, whether it’s personality, essence, heat, or cold. If there is any attempt to change what is there in your inner experience, then there is conflict.
Acceptance in the Diamond Approach is about allowing ourselves to see the movement of rejection and allowing our understanding to unfold completely. This process leads to the simultaneous cessation of the movement of rejection and the flow of acceptance. This acceptance is not the personality accepting but the Essence coming. It’s like a benediction, a blessing, a gentle rain. The personality cannot accept. It can surrender to the truth of the moment, which is the same as stopping rejection, and allow what is there to be there without preference and judgment.
In this approach, no part of the ego is capable of accepting. The individuality of the ego is incapable of Acceptance because its very existence depends on a subtle attitude of rejection. The ego can only cease rejecting, but it cannot accept. The complete cessation of rejection is the absence of all defense and resistance. This precipitates the aspect of Acceptance. Thus Acceptance involves the cessation of ego, or of a segment of its structure.
True acceptance doesn’t contain any kind of attitude of rejection. It’s just there. Something arises, and you don’t respond with a moral or preferential invested judgment. You just recognize the feeling or experience for what it is, whether it’s something that feels good or doesn’t feel good. You experience it with presence and awareness. Your sense of satisfaction or contentment doesn’t depend on whether it meets a particular standard that you have set up for your experience.
Acceptance will not be the personality accepting. Acceptance will be essence coming; it will be like a benediction, a blessing, a gentle rain. The personality cannot accept. It can surrender to the truth of the moment—which is the same as the stopping of rejection—surrender and allow what is there to be there without preference and judgment. For example, if you feel your knee now, you have no judgment, good or bad, about it; this is the attitude of allowing. When that surrender to the truth happens, then the acceptance comes and is experienced as a gentle, cool shower. After the hot harshness of the constant rejection of the personality it feels so cool and refreshing. Your heart will be cool and your mind rested. The feverish movement of rejection is gone. You cannot act in such a way as to accept, but you can allow acceptance by allowing and perceiving the rejection. Even the lack of awareness of a feeling is a rejection of it. Dullness, dimness, numbing all are rooted in rejection. Often the personality pretends to accept things as they are, in order to avoid a feeling. When you’re completely aware of what is happening and not doing anything about it, you surrender to the truth and open the door for acceptance to rain on you. It washes away the pain that you wanted to avoid and reject. You don’t want to reject the pains, you are aware and surrender to their existence. – Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, ch. 6
It is very rare for people to know true acceptance. That’s partly because the word “acceptance” usually is seen as being the opposite of rejection—if I’m not rejecting something, I must be accepting it. Rejection pushes away. Acceptance takes in, whether in a resigned or a grasping way. If I don’t throw something out, I munch on it and eat it up instead. I either push away or take in—either reject or accept—these are the two ways we usually relate to our experience.
The acceptance of True Nature is quite a different thing. True acceptance does not grasp or hold on to anything. It says, “I’m happy being myself—it’s irrelevant whether what I’m eating right now is good food or bad food. I’m fine with it. I can be here with it. It’s interesting. It may taste terrible or it may taste delicious. I’m open to the situation.” In this case, there is no need to judge it one way or another. – The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, Ch. 8
True acceptance means stepping out of the world of assessment altogether. It is exactly the experience of neither rejecting nor approving. Where rejecting and approving are actions of moving away from or toward one’s experience, accepting is not an action at all. It is nonaction: a state of Being without attitude, simply allowing experience to be as it is.
Acceptance does not mean you approve of your experience, think it’s OK, like it, or are happy with it as it is. Acceptance is not an expression of any kind of evaluation or interpretation. It simply means you can allow your experience to be exactly as it is. There need be no justification or effort to defend, deny, protect, or promotes what is there. Acceptance means you get out of the way and stop taking a position. You don’t approve, you don’t reject; you don’t push away your experience, you don’t try to hold on to it. If you like it, that’s accepted; if you dislike it, that’s accepted. Whatever it is, your soul is simply there with the experience. – Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, Ch. 7