5) The acceptance of reality
Here, denial and manipulation are
replaced by a willingness to see 'what is' because there is trust in
'what is'. The fear of death, for example, no longer infuses political
conflict and life in general, because life and death are seen to be part
of a sacred process of continual renewal, and extreme measures do not
have to be taken to avoid death or the consciousness of death. This
shift affects many of the personal elements of life that give rise to
political debate - issues concerning health and ageing in particular.
Industries that are based on the collective fear of ageing no longer
have a place, for their consciousness becomes part of an obsolete need
to prevent or deny the ageing process. This no longer has merit or
validity.
The denial of death and of ageing, so pervasive in modern culture, is but
one half of a tendency toward denial that relates to life as well. For in
the separation from God's reality, there is also a separation from a more
natural way of living in which what
is,
is perceived as good. Ageing has the possibility of being viewed in this
way as does death. This is not the view commonly held today but is a view
held by those who perceive life as sacred and who view it as held within
the natural order of light. If a culture needs to deny the importance and
sacredness of death, it will also need to deny the importance and
sacredness of life. If it has the capacity for honoring or celebrating
death as part of a cycle of renewal, it will also have the capacity for
honoring and celebrating the seasons of life, including the time of
getting older. If one leaves the circle of life, selecting only certain
parts to honor and other parts to reject, then those rejected parts will,
by virtue of the fact that life is a circle, interrupt the continuity of
the circle and limit the capacity for an experience of beauty and
sacredness within the whole.
Factors that foster the operation of denial and rejection of 'what is',
include:
- Fear of dying - caused by loss of the conviction that
life is ongoing and that God is real.
- Vanity
Vanity may be defined as 'the glorification of glamour and external
representations of beauty which are based on beliefs and motives that
have departed from the sacred'. It is found in the conditioned values
of a society that obscure what is truly
valuable, while amplifying false values that have popular appeal. Such
false values are often in the position of creating economic benefit
for a few. They also have the power to amplify whatever exists within
the self of shame and ugliness and to detract from the perception of
inner beauty and depth. The motive of vanity operates to the extent
that there is a disconnect from the experience of a deeper self. Then,
it is primarily the surface self which appears to others that seems to
have the greatest value.
- A sense of inner fragility
Here, too, disconnection from awareness of the deeper self causes the
feeling that one cannot handle the truth - that emotionally, there are
certain things that are too difficult to bear. The perception of life
or emotions as 'unbearable' exists to the degree that we hold things
alone. With God and through an experience of God's love, things that
seem unbearable can be borne.
- Unhealed portions of the self that are rejected and
repressed
Here, the ego operates protectively and causes conscious awareness to
forget or to not notice certain things because the inner experience of
what is rejected is too painful. As in Principle 3), truth may be
hidden behind a layer of falseness due to an inner rejection of pain,
and so what is real and true goes into hiding.
Resolution within the experience of truth:
When the self experiences life as of Divine origin and as infused in all
aspects by God, then what is false or self-created due to motives
arising out of fear and rejection will no longer be tolerated or given
great value. That which is of Divine origin has a value surpassing all
others, and the revelation of truth brings into consciousness the
ultimate, irreducible value of life so that the desire to alter it into
another pattern seems unnecessary and without merit.