Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the hidden power of acceptance. So I want to start by sharing a quote. "Deep acceptance of another person is often the doorway to deep acceptance of ourselves. Since so much of what we resent in other people is a reflection of what we've disowned in ourselves, meeting another person with curiosity, compassion and love is an essential component in our journey toward becoming whole." It's a powerful practice to notice how others trigger you and then to ask yourself, what about this person have I committed to not becoming? Why? Where does that internal agreement stem from? Do I fear deep down that I have the potential to be similar? Have I been similar to this person in the past, but experience a loss of safety and love because of it? I'm not a huge fan of the spiritual trope that says we're all mirrors for each other, because I think it can be used to pathologize one's intuition that something is off in another person or situation.

For example, you know, if we are triggered, there must be something in us that's unintegrated. I don't really like going into that. To me, that's dangerous territory. But we also don't need to throw out the baby with the bath water. Our experience of others can, and often is, a mirror for our experience of ourselves.

We just need to be able to hold the nuance. So acceptance is not endorsement. You can seek to understand why a person is the way they are and see the seeds of that behavior in yourself while still holding boundaries toward their behavior. There's a big difference between casting a part of yourself into the shadows and then projecting the hate you hold toward that part on anyone who expresses it versus holding that part of yourself with compassion and presence, which would be integration, and voicing your concern about how its expression in other people might be causing harm, to you, others or the planet. So this is just one of the big issues that I, I sometimes see with cancel culture, which is often, there can be a refusal of people to also look at how that which they condemn in others may also exist in themselves.

So I do believe we would get further in our quest for connection, empathy, and harmony if more of us took the time to reflect on where the seeds of the behavior we condemn in other people may also exist in ourselves rather than impulsively othering people because of our projections. So something to think about on your mindfulness journey. Let's settle in for today's meditation.