by A H Almaas
But being rejected is a big deal for human beings. Being rejected goes further than someone saying, “You’re not it.” That in itself is difficult to tolerate, but rejection is someone saying, “I don’t want you. I’m done with you.” Because of this we’re always busy making sure we don’t get rejected.
You can probably recall a time when you were getting ready for a first date. Remember how terrible the anxiety was as you spent all that time trying to find a sexier hairstyle, or put together just the right thing to wear, or whatever else you thought you needed to do to show up looking okay. Why? So you wouldn’t be rejected. You didn’t even need to be loved, you just didn’t want to be rejected.
Almost everyone is continually dealing with rejection in some form. Most people constantly reject their emotions: “I’m feeling anger now . . . I shouldn’t feel anger. I’m feeling weak . . . oh, that’s terrible. I’m feeling love . . . I definitely can’t feel that; that person’s married!” Whatever’s arising that we think we don’t want, we reject it—we don’t want to experience it. And we want to be casual about it, too; we’d like to deal with those feelings as though we were sweeping dirt off a floor. But what we think of as the dirt is us. That’s because nothing exists outside of our experience, our own consciousness. Your experience is not like the contents of a purse that you can throw away. Experience is the actual fabric of the purse—so if you try to throw part of your experience away, you are tearing yourself apart.
The more you reject something in yourself, the more you tear yourself apart—because that something is you. It doesn’t matter what it is—hatred, or frustration, or love, or grandiosity, or anything else; if you’re trying to push it away, sweep it away, get rid of it, what results is a tremendous tearing apart of the soul. It affects you that way even though you don’t know it.
Rejection is remarkably painful in a way that is not easily understood. Do we know why we try so hard to avoid it? We know that being rejected by someone is humiliating. It is belittling. It’s diminishing. People feel distraught or destroyed when they feel rejected. Why is that? Why is the experience of rejection such a devastating thing?
The first rejection most people were engaged in occurred in infancy, when they threw up milk. Even if you can’t remember that far back, you’ve probably had several experiences of throwing up something you ate or drank. The prototype of rejection is throwing something up. Something you’ve taken in doesn’t taste good—it doesn’t feel right—so you throw it up. That is rejection.
What’s the experience like of throwing something up? How are you feeling as you do that? Throwing up is not a neutral, easygoing activity. It’s not like a polite request: “Please leave the room now.” When you throw up, your whole body convulses. It is instinctual and violent. Rejection has within it this intense desire to get rid of something that seems horrible—a kind of revulsion: “Yuck! Don’t bring it near me! Get rid of it!”
Now imagine that somebody is directing that kind of intense, violent, repulsive energy at you. It is humiliating. That’s why it hurts. That’s why it’s so devastating. That’s why we try to run away from it.
The attitude of rejection is something we need to understand. It’s not just a mental orientation. When the soul is saying no and denying a part of itself, the attitude of rejection is a reflection of the same kind of violent reaction that causes us to throw something up. Because we know how much we dislike something when we vomit it up, we can appreciate that we unconsciously fear such a violent reaction being aimed at us, and we avoid rejection internally (from our superego) as well as externally (from others).
When we reject something in our experience, that’s what we’re doing—we’re trying to throw out part of ourselves. We’re not just getting rid of it by taking it out and throwing it away; we are trying to throw it away with an emotionally violent action similar to vomiting it out. You want to vomit up yourself, or part of yourself. It’s that devastating. So, that’s really what’s deadly about comparative moral judgment. It becomes the ground upon which we want to divest ourselves of something, and the way we do that damages our soul. Rejection, disapproval, or looking down on something that we think doesn’t measure up are not just detached positions we take about our experience; they are violent, destructive behaviors we use to harm ourselves.
How does our soul react to this aggressive wounding attitude? In the same way you would react if you thought someone you were about to meet for a first date was going to reject you. What would you do? First, you’d get anxious. And if the anxiety got severe enough, you might chicken out. Your date arrives, is waiting for you, and you don’t show up. Or maybe you call at the last minute and make an excuse: “I’m sorry, I can’t make it tonight . . . maybe next week.”
When a friend later asks you why, you say, “I don’t know; I guess I was too scared.”
And your friend says, “What were you scared of? What did you think was going to happen? The worst that could happen is that she’d reject you.”
And your response is, “What do you mean, ‘that’s the worst . . .’?!”
If we have a tendency to reject our experience, a part of us is going to feel the same as the person in this example: “I’m not going to show myself. I’m going to hide or cover myself up or pretend I’m like this or that I’m not like that.” After a while, if we keep doing this, we’re not aware anymore of what’s going on inside us. That awareness is not even possible for us because parts of our experience are so suppressed that they don’t even come up to be seen. Or, if they do arise, they’re so camouflaged or defended that we can’t become aware of what they really are. If we can’t be aware, we can’t understand. If we can’t understand, we can’t be fully there. If we can’t be there, present, we can’t be ourselves. If we can’t be ourselves, we can’t be real.
We can’t be real if we reject ourselves. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter what comes up; we can’t reject anything that arises in ourselves and be real.
Saints are not people who have no terrible thoughts. They can have the worst thoughts in the world. They just don’t do anything about them; they don’t put them into action. Imagine a saint having a bad thought and saying, “Yuck!” What kind of saint is that? But that’s how we think saints are. And we think they’ll disapprove of us if we have a bad thought or do something harmful.
So, what can we do instead of rejecting our experience? Of course, the first thing is not to reject our rejection. Remember the regression that you can get into if you are not aware: “Uh-oh, this is rejection again—terrible, horrible! Look at me. I’m rejecting my experience. I’m supposed to be allowing and spacious and spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t that humiliating?” The practice is to be aware of the rejection, to hold it, to recognize it, to let it transform to its true quality, as we discussed in chapter 2.
Of course, the experience of rejection has many implications that we need to be aware of. These issues concern the ways we were rejected, who rejected us, and how we internalized the rejection. We may notice certain patterns of how we experience ourselves when we feel rejected and whether we identify more with the one who is rejecting or the one who is rejected. The more we study our experience—what arises in our consciousness—the more we will see the activity of rejection, ranging from quite gross condemnation to very subtle dismissal.
ACCEPTANCE AS RESIGNATION
You might be thinking at this point that the best alternative to rejecting your experience is to do the opposite. What is the opposite of rejection? Acceptance. You see what’s arising—you see your weakness or your hatred or your vulnerability—and now you don’t reject it, you just accept it. But we need to look closer at this to uncover what may be underneath it.
For most people, acceptance means, “What’s there is there. I might as well accept it since I can’t do anything about it.” But that implies, “I still don’t like it, but I can’t change it so I just have to accept it.” That kind of acceptance may seem to be the opposite
of rejection, but it actually has rejection embedded in it. It means, “I’m just trying to do the right thing. Inside, I really am rejecting this experience, but I want to be a good practitioner, so I’m going to act as if I accept it.”
True acceptance doesn’t contain any kind of attitude of rejection. It is not a humiliating, violent throwing up, nor does it bring up any repulsion in the soul. 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.
So, when I say that rejection doesn’t work, that it’s an impediment to our practice, this doesn’t mean that the antidote—or what people call the antidote—is to accept it. Because that “antidote” has within in it an implicit rejection, as well as a judgmental attitude. And why is that? Because to accept instead of reject is really saying: “It’s better not to reject, so I’ll accept, which means I’m not going to push it away; I’m going to resign myself to it.”
ACCEPTANCE AS GRASPING
But we also commonly experience a form of acceptance that is not resignation. This happens when we like our experience. We think we are accepting, when what we are actually doing is grasping at or holding on to an experience that we like having.
What happens when we judge our experience to be good or desirable? We say we accept it, and we can then say that acceptance is the opposite of rejection. But what does that really mean in this case? We generally do not reject the experiences and feelings that feel good. But is that true acceptance?
Let’s say I’m feeling really holy right now. Or I just had a humble feeling. Maybe I remember that I did something generous a little while ago, so I’m having a warm, loving feeling about myself. Of course, I’m not going to reject any of those feelings. What I have here is an attached acceptance. I want to feel that way about myself. I’m invested in it. Most likely, I’m judging it as better than the time I was selfish or arrogant or whatever I consider to be unholy, impure. So, instead of pushing away my experience, I’m holding on to it. I want to keep it for myself; I don’t want it to go away.
TRUE ACCEPTANCE
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.
If I truly accept my experience—without comparative moral judgment about it—then I am not disappointed about it. Neither am I happy about it. I’m neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. I don’t need to feel anything in particular about it. I’m just fine with it the way it is.
So, most of the time, when people think they are in acceptance, they are either wanting to hold on to something they feel good about or they have become resigned to something that they don’t feel good about, because they don’t know what else to do.
The latter often happens when people struggle with something in the physical realm. Perhaps somebody says, “I’ve finally accepted my weight.” What does acceptance mean in this case? Most of the time it means, “I’ve tried and tried to lose weight, but it’s never really worked. I’d rather not have it that way. If I could, I’d change it. I’d cut away some of this fat. But now I’m not bothering to do anything more about it.” That’s not true acceptance. That is resignation.
True acceptance isn’t a judgment that my weight should be different from what it is. True acceptance says, “Since this is how it is, I’m interested in experiencing it and fully being with it; I am totally present and I’m being here with energy, with interest, with enthusiasm about life.” The resigned kind of acceptance diminishes enthusiasm. It’s not an attitude of True Nature—it’s an ego attitude that is actually deflated rejection, a rejection without aliveness. Likewise, the grasping acceptance, which is a sticky kind of attachment, is not true acceptance either.
What we call true acceptance is more of a contented awareness—an awareness that’s content with itself. It’s not busy judging and rejecting what’s arising in it. True acceptance is not invested. It is not attached to any desire or need for things to be different from how they are.
Over time and with practice, we become more skilled at seeing, recognizing, and understanding these reactions to our experience—the rejection, the resigned acceptance, and the grasping acceptance. This makes us more and more able to be with our experience as it is.
That’s why we say that our practice is just presence with awareness. Presence with awareness doesn’t reject, but it doesn’t grasp either. When we are simply present and aware in our experiencing, we can begin to recognize the true condition that is arising. We notice our inner attitude becoming simpler and more subtle as we are being with our experience.
We begin to feel an openness, a vulnerability, an allowing that has a sense of subtle contentment and satisfaction. The fact that our presence is arising in this way reveals the experience to be an expression of our True Nature. This quality in our consciousness does not arise because something specific is happening that is to our liking. True acceptance arises on its own as a result of our being present with our reactions—our tendencies to reject or grasp—without being run by them.
It is this kind of acceptance that is necessary for us to handle the peach correctly. Do you remember the peach that we talked about in chapter 3? The peach is no good, so you put it away, but you don’t reject your feeling. You don’t reject the taste. It doesn’t matter what the taste is like. It could be rotten or sweet. You take note of the sensations of taste, but being yourself—being who you are—doesn’t change; your inner balance remains. You do not engage in any pushing or pulling that will divide you.
Rejection divides the soul within itself. It says, “I am here, and I am rejecting this experience in me and making it into something other than me.” That’s what rejection is: making something in us be an “other” that is not part of us.
So we can see more clearly now from these examples that when rejection accompanies comparative moral judgment, judgment loses its scientific neutrality and becomes based in the ego. Scientific neutrality means engaging in comparative judgment without having a preferential attitude. With that balanced neutrality, which is a kind of serenity, we remain alive, aware, and conscious, because we’re investigating, we’re interested. Our attitude is open and allowing with a contentment in seeking the truth. And that brings us back to the foundation of all of our exploration in the work that we are doing: Whatever our experience is, we are interested in being present with it and finding out the truth about it. Learning not to reject or get attached to whatever arises will help us do that as fully as possible.
EXPLORATION SESSION
Discerning True Acceptance of Your Experience
This exercise will help you to explore how acceptance and rejection function in your experience. In this session, you will be following your moment-to-moment process in present time.
The aim is to be where you are—whatever you are experiencing—and follow your experience as it unfolds for at least fifteen minutes. You are not trying to have a particular experience of acceptance. You can see things, compa
re them, and understand them, but you don’t need to do anything at all about them. You are simply experiencing.
After you have finished, go back and review what happened. As you remember your experience, notice when and how the different elements arose. Was rejection active? When did you experience resigned acceptance? When did grasping acceptance show up? What kinds of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions led to the experience of rejection?
Did you shift into true acceptance at certain points? How did that happen? Which element did you find yourself most often engaged in? What kinds of patterns do you observe about your process in the area of acceptance and rejection?
CHAPTER 9
Hatred and the Power to Be
WE ARE BEGINNING TO SEE more clearly now that the practice of being oneself—finding where we are and simply abiding there—expresses our True Nature because our nature inherently doesn’t do anything to itself. True Nature manifests everything, but in its purity, it is totally settled, unruffled, undivided—it is complete stillness and peace. If we don’t engage in trying to change ourselves and instead allow ourselves to be where we are, where we are will spontaneously manifest this True Nature in our experience. However, as we have seen, the inner activities that we engage in to alter our experience are often what stop our True Nature from manifesting. Most of what we work with in our practice in some way addresses the various manifestations of this continual attempt to change ourselves.
All this inner activity makes it difficult for us to be ourselves in two fundamental ways. First, our interference blocks the arising of who we truly are. Because we do not embrace whatever is arising, our experience doesn’t have a chance to unfold and manifest True Nature. Our activity prevents it from expressing its natural dynamism, its natural tendency to simply and spontaneously self-reveal, and so we do not perceive or recognize our True Nature.