The spiritual practice of Acknowledgment
Last week Scott talked about acceptance in his blog post and during his message on Sunday at NorthStar Community. The requirement to understand this blog is to not forget what Scott wrote in the last one - acceptance is a pre-requisite before any of us will ever feel safe enough to practice today's spiritual practice: acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is impossible without safety; acceptance provides safety and enables us to get on with the business of acknowledgement. Without these two A's - acceptance and acknowledgement - I have no clue how people change and grow.
What do I mean by acknowledgement? Acceptance of the truth plus. Plus what? Acceptance of the truth SAID OUT LOUD. If we don't say it out loud, it is not acknowledgement, it's just an idea we think about as possibly true. It's a secret shame. It's a hidden part of ourselves that isolates us and makes us feel lonely.
Acknowledgement is a spiritual practice that is best taught, in my opinion, in the rooms of AA, NA and the like. These rooms are loaded with doses of "Been there, done that." And although judgment is as present in some mutual aid society spaces as everywhere else on planet earth, if one is to find it, this is a more likely place than many other options.
One of the most trying places to create an environment for acknowledgement to flourish as a practice is where people are committed to the "rightness" of their way of seeing. This kind of certainty brings judgment into the room, breaks the rules of safety and causes us to armor up rather than open up. Families who are committed to the belief that their family member who is struggling with a substance use disorder is the problem rather than a symptom of the family's problem will not see much reason to acknowledge anything - except for the fact that they want this problem solved. Move on. Nothing to see here. Acknowledgement, on the other hand, would free the family to see that the problem is the disease and the entire family breaks out in symptoms, not just the one who is using.
Another confusion that stifles this beautiful spiritual practice is a misunderstanding about the nature of our thoughts, beliefs and even our values. These are all preferences. They are limited by our personality, experience, knowledge, exposure and even trauma. We think we have the facts on our side - and often we do - but our thoughts, opinions, beliefs and values are all INTERPRETATIONS of those facts. There are places in the world where a woman must not show her knees in public, but her boobies can hang out for all the world to see. You'd get arrested for that in my county.
When we are certain of our beliefs/thoughts/opinions, acknowledgement is very, very difficult. And when we cannot acknowledge things that are important to notice, growth is stymied. If we figure this out, we become capable of paradigm shifts that promote growth, change and healing. A family with proper education and a willingness to learn discovers that the whole family has been impacted by the disease of addiction. Everyone can do the uncomfortable work of changing their relationship with the actual problem. Amazingly, when this happens, what once seemed like an impossible problem to solve can be acknowledged and dealt with in ways that bring about meaningful solutions.This requires curiosity, and acknowledgement, and acceptance. We need to open up to new perspectives that our own limited way of seeing could never come to without some shifts in our assumptions.
My daughter was a pitcher on a softball team that was extremely traumatizing and ended up ruining her pitching arm. Her father and I failed to acknowledge the abuse because we were not paying the right kind of attention. During an All Star game when she was 13 years old, she pitched a no-hitter in 106 degree heat with an abusive coach yelling, "Throw strikes!" (which she was doing by the way) the entire game. He was a scary dude.
I thought this was very bad form on his part and told my husband as much. He explained how I just didn't understand the game. But what I would suggest is that lots of times we are saying and doing and yelling things because it's always been said, done and yelled without understanding why what we are saying, doing and yelling is a problem.
Living transparently (being able to acknowledge stuff) is the OPPOSITE of the way we live most of the time. We say, "Bless her heart" in the South when we really mean, "I hope you get hit by a bus on the way home from the Piggly Wiggly." Maybe we don't want the bus to squish a person, but we are fine if it results in a broken hip.
Acknowledgement is what happens when we stop fooling ourselves and talk to others about what we really feel, mean, fear, hate, think and believe. When we stop distracting ourselves by critiquing and evaluating others and instead, turn the focus on ourselves - with full acceptance - it is amazing what we discover. It's humbling. Without full acceptance, we cannot do this kind of personal inventory. But with acceptance, we can wake up to the old patterns of seeing, doing and yelling and MAKE A CHOICE to switch off our auto-pilot and reconsider who we want to be and what we want to do about the disconnect between our imagination and our reality.
I wish my husband and I could have worried less about whether or not we were teaching our daughter to be a quitter or us being overly protective and have instead ACTUALLY PROTECTED OUR DAUGHTER. We were wrong. This is not how the game is played; this is how one man did not know how to coach without doing so in an abusive manner. Our failure to acknowledge that was wrong. We were wrong. We failed our daughter. This is the greater truth in our story - what are some hard truths in your stories? I hope you have a safe place to practice acknowledgement because it is the only way to make progress on becoming your most authentic and glorious-created-in-the-image-of-God self.
"Don't foot yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don't act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like."James 1:22-24 The Message
