The ability to accept situations and people as they are is one of the most difficult challenges that I struggle with in my life. I have long been a righteous-minded and battling crusader seeking to overcome the world towards what I think is right; but in recent years I have begun to see another way.

I am coming to understand that there is a very different source point for approaching issues, situations and people. There is just beginning to open in me a new and fresh place in my heart from which to view the world, a place that is so very different for how it leads me to see and deal with life.

Rather than the powerful, external persona of confidence and certainty that I have always sought to develop and cling to, this part of me is rather tentative, quiet, soft, sensitive, gentle, peaceful, understanding and forgiving.

Most of all, and most importantly, this place in me is steeped and washed in love; and love is the real key.

Ironically, this place is not really new. It has always been here with me, but in our present world this place is hard to find and hold on to for all the influences away from and against it. Further, I have for years hidden this place, buried it and subdued it towards building a more grandiose, imposing, logical and correct appearing perspective that seemed to me the only possible way to address people and problems.

I have hidden the inner part of me out of fear that leading into the world with an open heart would bring me only hurt, pain and sorrow by those who would take advantage of such exposure; and I have buried it beneath my pride that I cannot be seen as lesser or silly or foolish, but must, for my sake, appear faultless, strong and self-assured; and I have subdued it amid the deceit that, as I am, I am worth nothing, but only as I seek to appear will people notice and regard me.

But I was reminded by a dear friend just last night that personal regard, pride and self-confidence are our biggest and most blinding barriers to reaching our genuine selves and with seeing in new and better ways.

What I have been sharing here in Words of Caring may appear different from what Larry Evans teaches in the Parent Seminar, but really it is not.

Larry knows at heart and I am coming to understand that the nature of a valid life is to accept and allow to live the true and genuine, inner self. This can only happen by daring, slowly and with courage, to be released from the powerful, vain and fearful external facade that operates around the real person. The Parent Seminar contains this understanding and I first began to see it there, but it has taken for me a religious, spiritual pursuit to energize this struggle and open more fully my entry unto this path.

Within that struggle, I know that I cannot do this by my own power, for I have finally come to see that I have no real power of my own. What I and we all have is given to us, and we participate in the ends rather than producing them.

Larry says that other curriculums and courses stress the problem, but, unlike the Parent Seminar, fail to give the solution. So as to be true to the Parent Seminar and to you, let me say that the solution I see is in release.

The answer for me has been to stop hiding behind what I think and want to believe is true and to see what really is true: I am no better than you and I have no power to change anyone.

My anxiousness and concern for wanting to overcome to what I feel must be cannot change one hair on my head or yours from black to white. Instead, my great fear and impatience will only hinder the one gift I have been given: to love unconditionally, and so create for people and with them an environment in which they will change of their own accord because, by what we have built together, they can now see in love and act responsibly of themselves.

The greatest gift is to finally accept the reality and so begin to let go of the allusion of and need for external power so that the true power, born in innocence from within, may shine forth. As Larry says, the "Love of Power" comes slowly to be replaced by the "Power of Love."

But lest, because of what I write, you think I am, somehow, good at this, let me assure you that I am not. I will, however, offer here to you once more what is changing my life and what, though poorly, I am working to teach my family: that life and challenges cannot be overcome, but only accepted and, thereby, transformed by the abiding power of love. I never do so well with my family and others as when I put love before me.

Enjoy!

-- John Borland --


To Accept
By John Borland

I remember about three years ago having an extended disagreement with a friend concerning a subject close to us. The topic contained for us deep and challenging religious, social and moral implications. We held very strong and differing opinions concerning the issues and we brought them rather fully to the table.

At one point in this exchange my friend related to me how self-righteously I was acting.

I was stopped rather abruptly by this remark and was confused. I felt that my argument was sincere and, to my mind, my points were obvious. It was difficult for me to comprehend how my friend could speak this way of me and could not see what I was saying. But, in fact, my friend did not see my points and drew from the same situation some very different conclusions.

Self-righteous? I pondered. How could I be considered as self-righteous?

For a while I felt this must be a ploy by my friend to throw me off my points, or that my friend's opinion came from a blindness. But as I reviewed our discussions I began to realize how my friend might be correct.

I looked hard at how I felt when receiving the responses of my friend. I remembered how hard these words were for me to bear for how opposite they were from my feelings. I remembered also how wearied and indignant I felt at what my friend was saying.

How could this be? I thought. How could anyone think this way about things that are so clear?

I didn't at all like what I was hearing and believed fervently that my friend was wrong.

But I also began to perceive that I wasn't truly listening to what my friend was saying. As I took in my friend’s comments I was thinking about what I could possibly say that would cause my friend to see my argument. And, as I responded, I was working with great vigor to correct what I saw as my friend’s errant attitude.

I continued to note these qualities in my reactions to this argument and to my friend. Over time the real question with me became, why am I doing this?

What I came to see was that, while my point of view with our issues might well be correct, I was indeed acting self-righteously towards my friend. I knew this because I was not at all accepting my friend or the argument my friend was making. Further, the reasons I saw for why my friend was making this argument were my own and not necessarily reflective or understanding of my friend. In short, all I was really attempting to do was overcome my friend to my way of thinking.

The argument eventually died without resolution, but this latter perception has stuck with me. I really was self-righteous in attempting to overcome my friend, and the question remained, “Why am I doing this?”

To overcome, or to accept: This choice is the question that arose in me from this exchange. The question is foundational in its nature and action, but the thoughts and feelings I have come to with it are very difficult to relate.

This is because the thoughts themselves are so hard to reconcile. My thoughts on this question – this choice – want to drive me to a rule, an absolute that makes either overcoming or accepting always right and true. But for one to overcome absolutely leads only to war, while to accept absolutely leads only to indulgence.

It is therefore, that my feelings and not my thoughts regarding this matter of overcoming or accepting are the only true barometer. But, unfortunately, feelings are impossible to relate. The only things we can truly portray in words to another regarding our feelings are our thoughts approximating them. But I will try here to give the thoughts of my feelings to you.

I have come to learn that in these current times and this modern society we have been nurtured almost completely in the art of overcoming.

Sayings such as: may the best man win, the survival of the fittest, might makes right, the dog-eat-dog world, the business bottom line, if it feels good do it, it's my way or the highway are not just popular themes, but are also subtle and effective actuators working on us, influencing us and justifying us for how we commonly choose to relate to others. And the necessity and perceived right to obtain, by almost any means, comfort and security according to our personal understandings of them has become so cultured, ingrained and accepted in us that overcoming seems now a right and natural course of action, seldom even noticed let alone called into question.

Of course we can and do practice love and compassion. But all too often our love is reserved for people we know and who meet our expectations and not as available to those who are considered alien, different, or somehow threatening; and our compassion seems too much tempered and too easily overturned by our need to ensure that we get first what we feel we need.

As Larry Evans teaches in the Parent Seminar, meekness is seen today as weakness and mercy is for the wimps. I need only see how my intelligent and caring son, Joshua, is treated at school by the many children who think him a nerd and a teacher's pet to know what our kids are too much learning.

But please understand, I do not at all consider us bad people. Still, I believe that we have become increasingly led and skewed in our perceptions of life, with where we think we are, with what is considered acceptable and expected, with what we are striving for as goals and virtues, and with what actions we feel we are supposed to be taking.

These challenges have surely always existed in one form or another, but that doesn't change or excuse the fact that we do have control and a responsibility for how we think and feel; and we can, if we wish to, come to see and act in different ways.

And what should I say of acceptance? This is a word we hear and use quite often, but beyond the word itself, what does it mean to accept and what does acceptance really look like?

My observations with people have shown me that, for all our use of the word, our real understanding and practice of the principles of acceptance tend to be strained and confused. In fact, I believe that we, in these modern and self assured times, accept very little.

For most of us (and I here very much include myself) accepting is seen as a good and noble thing to do; and we do at least attempt to accept. But our acceptance seems to struggle and wane at the point where to accept any further makes no sense to us.

At this juncture we usually begin to think and say that this situation is not right, that this is stupid or ridiculous, that this should not be. It is then that we become uncomfortable, start more and more to dig in our heels against the apparent direction, and begin turning away to other courses of action.

Now, to be sure, some persons can hold out and follow the path beyond the point of personal comfort, or will deviate from the course to lesser degrees than others, but for most of us acceptance has an endpoint of our choosing beyond which we will accept no longer.

But is this way the best way? Is there a point beyond which acceptance must cease? And how is this endpoint properly arrived at? To understand these questions perhaps it is necessary to look more closely at the nature of our acceptance.

I used above and on purpose the term, "the principles of acceptance." This is because I believe that for most of us this is what acceptance really is – a principle. I believe that in our minds we view acceptance as a valuable pursuit and so we undertake acceptance as a principle for our lives.

I can see two common reasons that we do this. One is because we perceive acceptance as a noble virtue and so we take on acceptance so that we ourselves may appear noble. The other is because acceptance can serve us with helping to calm and sway people. Acceptance can be valuable with resolving situations and, therefore, we assume acceptance as a strategy to settle difficulties.

But there are some common threads evident with each of these approaches to acceptance.

First, these motivations for acceptance are superficial; within them acceptance is assumed or taken on by us. And acceptance, when used in these ways, is rather manipulative. It isn't necessarily that we truly are accepting, but we are using acceptance with others for a purpose.

Secondly, each of these motivations for acceptance is based in intellectual logic. It is logical to appear virtuous for the sake of our well being or good standing and it is logical for us to use any good strategy that works to make peace and solve a problem.

Again, it is not at all my intent to show us as bad people or to demean, out of hand, these motives for acceptance. They indeed are good in their own ways as a start, and we do very often undertake acceptance with loving intentions. What I speak of here is very subtle, but it is not so difficult to see that, within these motivations, our acceptance can become limited and confused.

If we approach acceptance as a logical strategy, we must recognize that survival of self is also a logical strategy and a basic and powerful instinct within us. Simply put, just as it may be logical for us to accept a person or a situation it also logical and instinctive in us to fight for our lives and against the things we perceive as threatening to us.

Thus, if acceptance is acted upon for logical reasons alone, acceptance will most certainly become constrained and perhaps even be overthrown by logical reasoning, charged beneath by our instinct for survival, once a person or situation appears sufficiently to endanger our existence. And this threat need not be unto physical death, for even challenges to our sense of well being, our egos, our ideals for what is right, or our personal standing are handled by us as death.

And, if viewed honestly, to approach acceptance deliberately as virtue to be gained is not for the sake of the other person or the situation, but it is really for us. In this arena of self-focus acceptance can easily become confused and degraded into a veiled effort to overcome or a well meant but errant action of indulgence. This is because, at heart, the outcome of the situation is to support the perceived quality of our well being. The other person and his or her needs and well being is not truly our issue.

This is exactly what happened in my discussions with my friend. First, though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was coming to my friend in an intellectual fashion. I initially saw myself as virtuous for my lofty arguments and I wielded acceptance as a noble, logical strategy by which I could change the other. But when, undaunted by my logical persuasions, my friend persisted in opposing opinions, I became indignant feeling it quite illogical for someone to think in such ways.

Secondly, I allowed the outcome of our argument to define the quality of my life. As such, my ego was affronted by my friend as though my very life were being challenged. From this condition of self-concern I easily and unknowingly switched from accepting to overcoming my friend all for the sake of my personal survival.

What all of this says, quite frankly, is that there is huge and fundamental difference between one assuming acceptance as a logical strategy or virtuous principle and one having acceptance as an inherent and innocently humble characteristic. But the difference between these two conditions and where we are within them is, I think, quite difficult for us to discern.

Why is this? Well, I think it is because we really don’t recognize just how much we approach persons and situations from the perspective of our intellects or by our more basal instincts; and much, much more than we know we deal with the people and happenings in our lives from the viewpoint of ourselves and with the rigid, basic aim of first preserving us.

But there is a third motive set and way in this pursuit of acceptance or overcoming that must be recognized and exercised intensely if we are to understand and use these actions correctly; that condition comes from our true feelings centered, most importantly, in our love and compassion.

What if, instead of seeing the argument, or how I felt about what my friend was saying, or how I could change my friend's opinion, I would have first seen and accepted my friend?

Perhaps I would have wondered: What is my friend really saying? Why is my friend speaking this way? What does my friend truly think about these issues? What are my friend's experiences with all of this? Perhaps I would have listened to my friend more. Maybe I would have asked my friend more questions. Possibly I would have attempted to understand my friend better.

And who knows where we could have ended up if only I had gone beyond myself and done this?

Though it is understandable why we do it, I believe there is no benefit to us and no room at all for the overcoming that we practice. Neither, however, is there a place for acceptance as a superficial, logical strategy or selfish, virtuous pursuit.

Of course, we should not accept everything, for not everything is beneficial to the other, or to us, but how should we go about overcoming such things of no benefit in situations and with others?

I believe that we cannot rightly overcome anything unless we first come to accept; and what we will come to realize in this is that it is not actually about overcoming or accepting at all.

It is really about those around us and the situations we live in and share together. Within these occurrences how do we regard our friends, our enemies, the other persons in general? What do we know of them? What is really the best for them? What can they accept from us? And how do we reach out, understand, truly help them, and help guide them well to a better situation and a stronger, more secure person?

This cannot happen by intellect, or strategy, or in concern for self. And though it may begin there, it can never be fulfilled in the mind simply as a principle.

This understanding and the good efforts deriving from it can come only from our hearts, from our deepest, most sincere feelings, in love and with genuine compassion for the other, for what he or she truly requires and not with what we need or want.

In this condition, acceptance and overcoming meld into invitations openly offered and carefully weighed to bring about openings for connection and movements to change, steeped in love and with focus on the person, for who he or she is and what we can best do for them.

But this is so difficult for us to do because we live so little in this place of our hearts and trust our true and genuine feelings hardly at all. Instead, we have been taught ourselves and are teaching our children that feelings – and especially our most deep and loving, honest feelings – are unnecessary, illogical, unreal, sappy, silly and, indeed, even dangerous for how they open us, expose us to situations and to others, and leave us seemingly unprotected.

We value knowledge above all for the power and assurance it appears to confer. But we fail so blindly to recognize and come to know that it is the gentle understandings of our sincere hearts, daring to reach out, feel and possibly be disadvantaged, humiliated, hurt or even sacrificed, that open us to the genuine wisdom within us and temper us to be led rightly in the use of our knowledge and our given gifts.

This wisdom comes only from the heart and only one who lives in and is well practiced in the ways of the heart can discern this true and real place from the other places and influences of our environment, the mind or body. Such a genuine person will use well his knowledge and gifts unto others according to the wisdom given within him.

And I know that all I say here is true, for on this very day I was myself challenged harshly by a person of good intentions, but bent on overcoming what he saw in me as my mistaken direction. I felt, firsthand, the powerful, sharp sting of concern brought to me on the sword-points of accusation and belittlement.

Though I knew full well that love was behind his actions, my immediate feelings (to my shame) were of upset, distress and intimidation. It was only by recognizing his true purpose and praying as best I could for him that I barely maintained my composure, forgave him in my heart, and held on with great difficulty to a smile and a good word.

All the time I thought about my friend and of this story, which I had thus far been unable to finish. Now I knew what I had done those three years before. I felt the real hurt my friend surely must have suffered at my hands and why self-righteousness had been called upon me.

Rather than trying to confuse or confound me, my friend, from the anguish, may very well have been trying to wake me up and save me from myself; and now, at least in part, it has happened.

I know now. I owe my friend a debt, and I am working to repay that debt by passing this story on to you.

It is so very easy to attack and overpower, or to put forward feigned caring from a facade of hidden self-regard… But how easy is it to see these urges in ourselves, fight to overcome them, and open, touch, accept and love as though the person opposite us is us? For, whether we know it or not, that other person truly is us.

My dear friend, if you read and see yourself in this story, can you accept my mistakes as I now accept you and please, please forgive me?

YOU MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN WHAT WE CAN DO TOGETHER!

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Last Modified: April 02, 2005