Acceptance in Our Relationships: An Act of Reciprocity
Part I - Intro
This is an intro for upcoming classes that focus on
Acceptance, but it can be edited to introduce classes that focus on Trust,
Forgiveness, Gratitude, or other Acts of Reciprocity.
Do We Want Acceptance
Acceptance. I think that everybody who’s reading this would
like to bring more acceptance into their world, and why wouldn’t you? Maybe you’re interested in developing
self-acceptance or maybe you’re more interested in gaining acceptance from
others. I think most of us feel pretty
accepting of others but we would love to have others be more accepting of us.
And sometimes we would like for them to be more accepting of our ideas,
especially when we’re trying to tell them something that we think is going to
help them, and our relationship with them.
Regardless of why you are interested in generating more acceptance in
your life, having more acceptance will help you in many ways. Thank you for
reading on.
Acceptance is a powerful force. Acceptance is like the gas
that fuels all relationships, or like the oil that lubricates all
relationships. Nothing happens in a relationship if there’s no acceptance.
Ultimately people just split if there’s no acceptance.
Or, if it’s a situation where people do have to stay
together, without acceptance there’s a lot of friction and maybe a lot of pain.
Acceptance, whether in a relationship or in life in general, helps us live a
happier life with less pain.
So how do we bring acceptance into a relationship, whether
it’s in relationships with others, or just with ourselves? Where do we start?
(A: It doesn’t matter)
Acceptance is one of these things that I call an act of
reciprocity. I’m going to diverge a little bit from our title (meditation) into
this topic, just for a moment because I think it’s pretty interesting and I
think it may be key into what is going on.
Who Started It
When I was a kid – and maybe this is the same for many of
you– but when I was a kid, I grew up with a bunch of sisters and we were
always squabbling and fighting Invariably someone would end up at my mother
trying to point the finger at somebody else saying “Anna did this,” or “Anna
did that,” and –except that I don’t think my mother said this to any of my other
sisters because I was always to blame– but my mother would say, “Doesn’t matter
who started it,” which would infuriate me. It took me years to realize that
she’s probably right: It’s like the chicken or the egg thing. These strifes,
it’s not that one just starts it. It’s an issue of acceptance, or lack of
acceptance. And where does the start of acceptance, or where does the lack of
acceptance, begin? Where can we insert or reinsert acceptance into our
relationships? Well, it doesn’t matter where acceptance ended or non-acceptance
started… That point can be as far back in our history as the dawn of time. I
mean, who knows. But you can insert, or start to insert, acceptance at any
point and, when you do, something magical happens. And the reason why, I think,
something magical happens, is because acceptance is an act of reciprocity.
Reciprocity
Now I always thought I knew what reciprocity meant. I always
had thought that an act of reciprocity was a phenomenon that could be
illustrated as my giving you an apple today and then, on another day when I may
need an apple, you’d give me an apple. Right? Or maybe I give you an apple
today, because you want an apple, and you give me an orange because you knew
that I would like an orange better than an apple. But, whatever. It’s this kind
of ‘give and take’ this idea of reciprocity that I think most of us have. And
maybe that is one of the main definitions of reciprocity in the dictionary,
that there’s this give and take. But I always thought that it had to occur on
this linear time frame, and that there always had to be this space between this
exchange. So I checked on the term, a while ago when I had a talk on the
subject tot give. I read somewhere that ‘reciprocity’ is an act of exchange.
But the rource I was reading but had no support for the notion that an act of
reciprocity needed the context of space and time. That got me thinking, got me
wondering, “Does reciprocity really need space and time?” Something in the
definition shifted my idea of what the definition of reciprocity could be.
Something in the definition made me realize that reciprocity doesn’t have to
exist on this Newtonian physics time-line, and that it could actually transcend
it. An act of reciprocity is a magical thing and could affect it’s whole environment
kind of like dropping a few grains of salt into a glass of water, changing the
chemical make up of all of the water, changing the electrical charge…. Actually
I don’t know how accurate what I just said is, but I think it’s valuable
because it gives us a new understanding of how one small act can change it’s
environment.
So just by inserting an act of reciprocity, like acceptance,
or trust, or any other act of reciprocity, can change the whole history of a
relationship. This is pretty interesting to me. And now, let’s turn our
attention to what’s going on in the brain.
Body = Brain
In the brain there are electrical impulses, electrical
communication happenings. One part of our brain sends signals to another part.
One part of our self communicates with another part of ourselves, and results
in thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions. This communication happens via
electrical signals, from one neuron to the next. How the signal gets to the
next neuron, how it crosses over gulfs, spaces between the neurons, is via
chemicals, neurotransmitters, hormones. These little chemicals transfer
messages that keep us alive, feeling, acting, thinking.
Here’s something interesting, an aside: It’s not just
happening up here, in our brain. This same method of communication, these same
methods of communication, happen between your heart and your brain. There’s
neurotransmitters and neuro-translations, same as in your brain, happening
between your heart and your lungs, and between your lungs and your brain, and
between your gut and your brain and your heart and your lungs. We have more
than one neuro-center, our “mind” is bigger than just between your ears. So you
might hear people referencing a “second brain” and talking about their stomach,
or gut, or the heart-lung-brain connection. That’s how we communicate with
ourselves and, of course, with whatever is around us, by these processes
Anytime, Anywhere
Okay, here’s the other thing that I think is very
interesting about all that –actually, this is huge: those communications that
happen, some of them are so small, maybe the size of an atom, and some of them,
some of these communications, I’ve read, actually happen on a level that uses
particles that are smaller than atoms. So some of these communications happen
at a level that is subatomic, at the subatomic level. Now just think about it.
That’s a game changer.
The interesting thing about this kind of communication is
that, if we’re having interior communication that happens at not only the
molecular and atomic level, but at the subatomic level, that means, to me, that
these phenomena are not just proceeding and being governed by Newtonian,
linear, physics, but also they could be proceeding and governed by Quantum
physics. In Quantum physics, if you change a subatomic-something here, then
over there a similar subatomic-thing changes, too. And it’s not governed by
space, or even by time. That’s something that may be a way to understand why
these acts of reciprocity happen and have effects that seem to go beyond just the
here-now, and not play by the rules of space and time as we understand them.
Think of the Possibilities
It’s my belief that acts of reciprocity are acts of
communication, and capable of powerful affects, in yourself, and in your
relationships. That’s not only my believe, but my experience. And I’ve heard
that it’s the experience of others. I hope you enjoyed my introductory
explanation of Acts of Reciprocity, above, and that you’re interested in trying
for meditation techniques that use reciprocity.
Coming up, we’ll practice some of these techniques. I hope
you practice them in different situations, in your life and see how they can
help you change a relationship with a person .
These meditation are a lot of fun. I love teaching these
classes and workshops because it’s neat stuff. I hope you find it useful, too.
Next ----
In the next section, I’ll talk a little about how meditation
works, and how it helps us, by practicing
1) “Fake it ‘til you make it”, 2) You can control your nervous system,
and 3) You can control your thoughts and stress.
We’ll go over the basics, and practice a basic meditation
just so you can experience the benefits from it.
In the section following the next, we’ll actually go through
an Acceptance meditation. Maybe you’ve done something similar before, but maybe
this explanation has helped you understand, think, and appreciate it in a new
way.
I hope that in all these exercises you actually do it so
that it can be more than theory and a real experience for you. And each time
you do it, taking more time or less, even just a few moments, each time you
will develop your ability to experience it more strongly. It’s like a muscle:
you can develop strength in these abilities. These techniques will get stronger
and more powerful for you each time you practice them. You can do these
mediation exercises anywhere, and for any reason. You can have the benefits
work in your life however you need or want.
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