Acceptance and Acknowledgement – The Enlightened Mind.
Continuing with the theme of change and using the letters of the word, this month I want to look at the letter ‘A’. ‘A’ for acceptance and acknowledgement.
Acceptance and acknowledgement may seem similar in meaning but when you look at those words more closely they clearly do not. We can acknowledge something without accepting it and choose to act differently to others.
I once watched a tv show which looked at the psychology of peer pressure. The producers conducted an experiment where they had a member of the public, let’s call him Tom, in a room with a group of other people. Unbeknown to Tom, the other people in the room were all role playing and were asked the answer to a simple sum, what was 5+7? Everyone was sat in a row with Tom halfway along.
The first person was asked for the answer and they replied 13 and the camera panned to Tom who smiled and looked around at the others. As each person was asked in turn they all replied 13 and Tom began to look confused. He was then asked to answer and hesitated but gave the same answer as the others, saying 13. Afterwards Tom was asked why he had answered as he did and he couldn’t explain it as he knew the correct answer was 12 but as everyone else had answered 13 he had doubted himself.
He acknowledged that something was wrong but went against his intuition and accepted that the others must be correct. He chose to go along with what the others said perhaps in fear of going against everyone else or in case they thought he was stupid?
It can be easier to follow what everyone else is doing and sometimes the wish to be seen as the same as everyone else leads some to go against their true feelings. Learning to acknowledge that feeling within, your intuition, your inner knowledge and accept that you can be different is an ongoing process. Nobody in this life is perfect and there may be times when you fail to accept that inner feeling. When this happens don’t dwell on it, acknowledge it and move forwards.
We can acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers but we don’t have to accept what somebody else tells us without question. If you are told that someone you don’t know isn’t a nice person would you accept that opinion or would you wait until you had the evidence of dealing with them yourself?
Next time I’ll be looking at the letter ‘N’ for now and no.
Paul
Acceptance and Acknowledgement – The Enlightened Mind.
On Saturday 24th June we are holding our next healing day event at Crosby library 10am until 2pm. I hope you accept our invitation to attend and chat to members of the team or just have a cup of tea.
