Acceptance and the Mirror!!

“As within, so without. As without, so within.” Based on The Kybalion

Everything in the world that you perceive, you perceive only what is in yourself. When you perceive something and have a negative response it is usually because:

Either you notice something in someone else that you have denied yourself,

Or you notice something in someone else that you deny in yourself.

Or you are thwarted in achieving something you want.

Or a trigger from the past.

The mirror has a positive side too, what you like in others, tells you what you like in yourself!

So, all of the above can cause positive and negative emotion. Anger or compassion, envy or admiration. This is only a message. It is how you respond that counts!

When you are angry with someone else, let’s take messy children as an example, there are three different internal causes:

You are angry because you are messy yourself (and you deny this knowledge), or

You deny yourself the luxury of being messy, or

You are angry because you are thwarted in achieving something you want.

A “trigger” is a fourth cause of anger. To respond automatically when something happens. This is a learnt response, normally from childhood, although we can create new ones as we navigate through life.

At the time a trigger is created it’s normally because of one of the above three causes. So, anger is an adult temper tantrum, hidden by a veneer of righteousness!!

Mostly, emotions experienced in the now, are the past projections from others, triggered by present environments. So by addressing the past, eventually only present projections will happen, and you can then use the emotion as a cue for right action.

An empowering belief to have is that when you are cross with someone it is simply a message. A message to understand and

Re-integrate a part of you!

Acceptance notices things without judgment. Acceptance is different to “condoning” behavior.

A useful belief is that all behaviors have positive intentions – sometimes deep down, but eventually they do have a positive intention. When this is used with the realisation that we have learnt our behaviors in childhood without really knowing what we were doing acceptance comes more easily.

To change our behavior, it is required to understand its purpose. By satisfying its purpose in other ways, our habits change –

Permanently!