In the wholeness of our response to what is happening in our lives lies a very important secret. If we understand it—if we truly understand it—something significant happens in our life, and after that, we are never the same.
To explain what I mean, I will start from a distance—from the time I began reading “spiritual books” that spoke of how important it is to accept life (and oneself) as it is. This was the practice of unconditional love, and I tried very hard to follow it. Until one day I realized that I was deeply mired in depression and misanthropy. And the reason was clear—they were the voice of the truth that I, in fact, could not and did not want to accept everything. They were the shadow of my conscious attitude.
I was shocked to discover how, despite my profession, I had managed to deceive myself into thinking I was accepting and loving unconditionally. I had repeated to myself so often that I should accept the trash in the streets, the boors, the corrupt politicians, my own limitations and imperfections, that I had almost believed it. Until the day of truth arrived, and the truth was that with the same ease that I wept when I saw manifestations of kindness in people, I could also feel sincere hatred toward the things I did not like. In my depression and my hater-ship was the truth of my whole reaction toward the world and toward myself. And this truth was that, in fact, there were so many things I did not accept, judged, and rejected.
So I decided that my primary spiritual practice would now be truth, not unconditional love. I became painfully honest with myself. If I hated someone, I hated them. If I felt love, I loved. If I was envious—I was envious. If I was desperate—I was desperate. If I was angry—I was angry. This practice helped me be an objective and impartial observer of my inner life; to register things, but without identifying with them. It became a way to be more tolerant and humble—I saw that what I so fiercely rejected in others was no different from what I found within myself. And the greatest irony was that accepting my non-acceptance made me more accepting.
Then I came across Michael Tamura’s book “You Are the Answer.” While reading the chapter “Affirming the Spirit,” something in me “clicked.” In it, he described the same thing I was doing, but in other words that helped my understanding sink to an even greater depth.
“There is nothing that is not God. So exploring and affirming the spirit is not the determination of what is spirit and what is not… Affirming the spirit means perceiving the spirit as being whatever it chooses to be… The more you begin to define yourself with the truth and wholeness of the spirit, the more you will master the ego and teach it to surrender to the oneness of existence…” — Michael Tamura, p. 129
In this context, to validate means to “establish the truth or authenticity of something.” And to “validate the spirit” means to acknowledge what is happening in your life as the form that the spirit has chosen to take in this moment—the good as well as the evil; the pleasant as well as the unpleasant; the fullness as well as the dissatisfaction; the harmony as well as the disharmony. The opposites together form the whole, and the whole is the spirit. Without the perception of opposites, consciousness cannot emerge, and this is the reason we fell from the Garden of Eden. But it is precisely thanks to the acquired knowledge that we will be able to return to it, now transformed.
“Validation begins when we say ‘hello’ to the spirit. Then it can become our spiritual passport, with which we bravely seek new spiritual horizons, leaving the dilapidated old dwelling. Validation always leads to an improvement in your condition. On the other hand, if you do not validate or ignore the validation, your condition will worsen. Nothing in the Universe stays in one place; the condition of existence is always moving forward toward more wholeness or toward more destruction. This is the path of Life. And validation is the secret key to all teaching and healing; without it, you cannot achieve spiritual growth and the fulfillment of your purpose.” — Michael Tamura, You Are the Answer, p. 114
I know a significant number of people who have been fighting their inner battles for many years; they are already tired of the effort to be alive in a world they do not like. I understand the powerlessness they go through, but I also know that there is something that can be done. It is to differentiate the experience of pain (discomfort, emptiness, dissatisfaction, tension, difficult emotions) from thoughts about it. Even if the emotion is experienced as resistance, the mind does not need to produce thoughts that argue with reality and reject it.
We should also be aware of our inner contradictions. Recently, I received an email from a woman in which she wrote that she was furious with God and herself, and she ended it with the words, “Pray for me!” I wrote back to her: “To whom exactly should I pray—to the one you are furious with?” I believe it becomes clear why our prayers are not heard. As well as why it is so important for our resistance to be directed in the right direction. There is a difference between being angry at something we perceive as external to ourselves and being aware that one part of us is fighting another part of us.
I am reminded of Eckhart Tolle, who received enlightenment in a moment of extreme despair. When he told himself he could no longer live with himself, a thought appeared that left him speechless.
“Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that I cannot live with. Maybe, I thought, only one of them is real.”
“I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words ‘resist nothing,’ as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void…” — Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, p. 24
For Tolle, first came the question of who the true Self is, then hearing the voice to “resist nothing,” and finally the awakening to the miracle of life. After “falling into the abyss of the void,” he woke up the next morning with the feeling that light is love and that it is something alive. Everything around him was exactly the same, but the way he perceived it was entirely different. The same thing happened to Byron Katie, author of the book Loving What Is. Before she received enlightenment, she had lived for many years with resistance toward what is.
Extreme despair is also a way to reach extreme acceptance. These, however, are extreme forms. More often, the unification of opposites happens gradually. For this purpose, it is enough if we simply validate the truth that the spirit is everywhere—even where we are least inclined to see “spirituality.”
“One of the hallmarks of enlightened souls is their choice to validate the spirit, regardless of the circumstances. The measure of our spiritual awakening is not what happens in our lives, but how we choose to respond to everything that happens. If we are to remain awake, we must validate the spirit in ourselves and in others; otherwise, we will fall asleep again due to the failure to nourish our soul.” — Michael Tamura, You Are the Answer, p. 128
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
