The 1st step on The Path

[Eternal Unity]

Acceptance

 

The first step on The Path is called Acceptance. But, while acceptance is the first of the steps, it is so much more than just a step. Acceptance is The Path ITSELF.

 

It is also The Portal. Or, as the Taoists call it - The Gate of No Gate.

 

You see, acceptance is that which takes you from duality consciousness on this side to unity consciousness on the other side. Between victim consciousness and creator consciousness. This is why I say it is a portal. Because you will have to learn to LIVE in acceptance rather than just choosing it sometimes. It is much more than just the doorway. It is also The Path. It is crucially important, if you should rise above victim consciousness, rise above the dramas, and attain Unity Consciousness, that you fully discover acceptance within yourself and that you learn to live by The Way of Acceptance.

Acceptance is an unbelievably powerful thing.

If you hadn't had lifetimes to master acceptance and sufficient mystical experiences in this lifetime into the nature of acceptance, then it is going to take a great deal of practice and effort on your part to do so now. Sometimes you will falter and get it wrong. Accept that. Accept that you are not there yet. Accept that you are on a journey. And accept too that you most certainly WILL get there if you stay the course. Which, of course, you must because there isn't nowhere else to go but Home to the Oneness. And acceptance, as I have said, is the portal and the path that takes you Home.

The best way for us to learn about something is with our own direct experiences. So I will share my understandings with you about acceptance using my own experience as a vehicle. Please, therefore, play along with the following process.

To begin with, I will ask you now to pick a major drama in your life.

Complete the sentence:

 

“I will only be happy when…”

 

Think now of some major thing in your life that you believe needs to change before you can find fulfillment.

Pause your reading and take a moment to come up with one such issue. When you have identified one such an issue and completed the sentence for yourself, continue.

 

Good. So you have identified a drama in your own life.

 

Now we will walk a short road together.

Let me tell you that the circumstance and consequence of your drama is EXACTLY what will happen to you for you are creating AND experiencing what you choose, what you identify with. Like in a dream. You are both The Dreamer & The Dream.

So it is in reality. You are both The Outside Observation & The Inner Experience.

If a particle of consciousness enters into life and has the experiences you have had, the knowledge you have accumulated and comes to Self Identification you have come to, then it will fully BE the exact same drama, know, experience and identify Itself as You. That is the formula: Knowing leads to experience leads to being.

 

It can be no other way.

 

This is because your deepest beliefs govern all the choices you have made and will make in the future. From the circumstances of your birth, who your parents were, how you grew up, all of those formative experiences - right the way through to the things you think you are good at, the things you think you cannot do, the people you associate with. Everything. What I mean is all that you have chosen and will continue to choose is filtered through your unique filter of consciousness. And what you choose you eventually become. It is where your Life Energy goes. And where your energy goes is where You go. In short, my friends, life will always feed back to you the effects of your own deepest ideas about yourself.

When you have had a number of lifetimes in duality and forgetfullness then it is an absolutely guaranteed fact that you will have built up many layers of identity that are about separation from God. You will have fear, pain, anger and loss built right into your belief system. And so life will feed that back to you. You will see multiple layers of dramas in your life right from the global to the national to the societal to the familial to the personal. All these will be playing out in your life constantly.

Now, you can engage with the dramas. You can keep wishing things were different from what they are, you can keep trying to make them different, but the dramas themselves will keep repeating themselves on you until you come to change the underlying belief you are holding about yourself that is actually inviting the drama. The Sponsoring Thought, as I call it.

My friends, it is crucial that you understand this! Your drama is not a random thing that is happening to you by some accident of bad luck. You are creating it and bringing it to yourself. These means of attraction are an intrinsic part of what you identify yourself as. 

And so THIS is what we are actually going to do here. The Steps of the Path are means of healing your false identity as a being separate from oneness, from the eternal and from God.

We begin by identifying the beliefs that you hold somewhere in the deep recesses of your mind that are causing you harm, and then we go to work healing that belief by replacing it with something that is infinitely more loving and empowering. In this process you discover just how profoundly true it is that YOU are the creator of your whole reality. Because you will SEE this, first hand, in your own life experience that, as you heal your false beliefs or in other words – ego, the whole universe will course-correct and subjugate to Your Will. Where, your whole life you have struggled, fought and failed to change things for the better because you have been wrestling with the drama – Now, suddenly, you will find that the drama changes by itself as you change. Life around you heals itself as you heal yourself.

So that is what we are doing. But we cannot go to work on the problem while you are attached to a misidentification of the problem itself. Misidentify that you misidentify. Don't know that you don't know, so to speak.

 

Allow me to illustrate this through a parable, a good friend of mine came up with:

If you looked in the mirror and the mirror showed you that your hair was all tangled you wouldn’t try to change the mirror, would you? Well, the drama is like your mirror reflection. It is simply showing you with absolute clarity something that is going on inside your own psyche that you are not aware of. So there is no more point in trying to change the drama, the external circumstances than there is trying to fix the hair of your mirror reflection.

 

What you want to do is to USE the mirror reflection to fix your own hair. To comb it. And then, as if by magic, you will notice that the mirror reflection’s hair is fixed. So in exactly the same way you want to USE the drama to understand what is going on within yourself and then to change your own inner landscape. Then, you will see the drama change. Or fall away completely.

This is the principle. So, now you understand that there is no point in getting upset about a mirror reflection. It is just a reflection. There is no point resisting it and insisting it must be anything other than what it is. The mirror reflection simply IS. That is what is in the mirror when you are as you are.

Your drama, in a similar manner, simply IS. And there is no point in getting angry, sad or resentful about it. So, the first step, the liberating step, the step that opens the door and allows us to move on to doing some good and bringing about some real change is to accept the drama. Accept that this is as things are.

Now you are going to take a step that will seem strange and perhaps uncomfortable at first. To continue the mirror metaphor this will be fruitful for you to simply stand still and LOOK into the mirror. Taking a moment to just observe. You will be saying “THIS is how my hair looks right now”. Without judgement,  without criticism. Just a simple recognition. Observation is the elemental drive of our existence and has a special place along The Steps of the Path. We will revisit it in the near future.

For now, bring your drama back to your mind. But this time you are going to change the statement. This time you are going to insert your drama into the statement:

 

“I choose to accept that (whatever your drama is) is going on in my life right now as this is an accurate reflection of my identity”

 

Again, please take the time to pause the reading to formulate your statement so that it correctly reflects your situation. Please do this. And please - this is important - say the statement out loud to yourself. Do it now.

 

***

 

How did that feel? Strange? Did it feel as if you were lying to yourself? Did it feel as if you were saying the words but not feeling them? Or did it feel liberating and empowering?

Friends, however it felt is really okay. You are on a journey with me. And we don’t need to arrive at the destination with the very first step. So please do not concern yourself overly with how you feel about that statement. Notice it. Accept it. You see, the degree to which you DON’T accept your drama is the degree to which it resides in your experience. Nothing is outside of you is out of your control. You cannot create that which is outside of your control – that would defeat the reason for which You were created in the first place. For you are a limitless creator So this is what we are doing now. We are accepting this situation. Doing so brings the situation home. The drama and its cause moves inside of you. When you accept it, it becomes yours. When it is yours and inside of you then you can know that you have created it. And then you can create it differently. 

So do you see now how the first step, the most crucial step, is acceptance?

There are more steps and in those steps we look at the process of brushing the hair in the mirror. But first YOU must completely accept. So think about this  between now and when you read the next presentation in The Steps of the Path Series. Please, I urge you, take your time. Take a few days or longer. Take the time to really sit with the drama. Say aloud to yourself that you accept the drama. Think it. Feel it. Allow the drama to show itself to you in its facets so that you can accept every single part of it. When you KNOW that you accept it as it is, then you are ready to move on.

Moving on with the material before you are ready will simply not work. If you are not in acceptance then you are not creating. Then you are just reacting as a victim who is just trying to avoid the outcomes of his or her own choices. In that case, at the end of this process you will say “but nothing changed!” You will think the process is flawed all because you didn’t stay with the process of acceptance until you really got it.

Notice how the drama feels as if it is moving from the outside experience to that of inner reflection. Notice how you feel differently about it. Notice that, even though the drama doesn’t necessarily changes, how the way you feel about it does. How you become more peaceful, centered and calm.

Acceptance occurs when you do not resist the drama. You do not require that it must be different.

Acceptance occurs when you do not judge the drama, nor yourself and not the other players in it. No one is wrong or broken. It is just a drama.

Acceptance occurs when you release your attachment to life being different than what it is. This IS the way life is when you are the way you are.

Acceptance occurs when you have moved beyond forgiveness to the point of realization that, indeed, there is nothing to forgive.

If you have chosen to take one small step in the direction of acceptance by choosing to accept one of your dramas. I salute you. This is the first step and you are now on The Path.

Now, my friends, if I could get you all on a mountaintop spiritual retreat we could work with just the concept of acceptance for many years before the subject was even nearly exhausted. And you could, as I have indicated, spend many lifetimes in incarnated experience mastering only the aspect of acceptance. So today, in this presentation what I have offered you is but the briefest indication of what acceptance is and how it might be to live in acceptance.

Now it is YOURS to live this principle. To take this seed called acceptance and nurture it that it might grow and flower in your souls. Your goal is to remember to accept not just this drama, but all your dramas. Moreover, not just all your dramas but the very principle of drama itself and all of Life in The Divine Process.

My dear friends, you will - in due course - get there. You will all come to perfect, complete, full and whole understanding of all of life. And when you do, you will be a magnificent embodiment of God. You will be a pure light being of infinite capacity and creative power. And that is what lies ahead of you on The Path. This is God's plan for you.

 

Now before I leave you there are a couple of things that I would strongly advise you to do at this juncture of the journey:

 

1.

The first is that you set some time aside each day for your spiritual growth. Some time to be in the NOW moment. To meditate. If you do not know how then there is help. You can be taught how and you can be guided. But take some time each day to center and to listen to your soul.

 

2.

The second is that you regularly take some time to take ownership of your life. This is time spent, either alone or with some trusted beloved other or others in which you talk or think about where you are going with your life. Your goals and aspirations. This is the time in which you remember yourself. When you set objectives for your healing and your growth. When you look back upon the path you have already walked in this lifetime, evaluate how it went and understand for yourself which choices work and which do not.

It is most beneficial if you can join in groups of like minded souls for meeting and discussion. Find people that are on a similar spiritual frequency to engage with so you might remember, teach and learn together.

And with that my dear friends, I now leave you. Next I will address the second step along our path - Intention. 

 

Your humble fellow traveler,

Greg.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Eternal Unity
Acceptance