The Community of Acceptance

The search for community is often a long and hard one. We all desperately want, and need, to belong to something, somewhere, somehow, and yet we have also fought desperately for our freedom and are legitimately fearful of backsliding into group dynamics that suffocate individual expression and creativity. 

This, in essence, is the problem around the desire and need for both community and freedom, for arguably, we cannot have one without the other. The late 70’s and so called “me-generation” 80’s perhaps witnessed the apex of individualism in unbridled capitalism, the quest for endless sensation and experience, and ultimately (as Philip Slater entitled it) the pursuit of loneliness.  

Ironically, as the “glory of me” ideal was cracking through various forms of addiction, existential despair, and loss of will, the ideal of the commune was also falling apart. The construct of any collective willing to sacrifice the individual for its group mind was revealed as stultifying and oppressive.  And as one communal experiment after another grew up, and then disbanded, through the counter-culture, the challenges of our living together were painfully revealed. 

So the “Community of Acceptance” arises as both an ideal and a practice. As an ideal, it indicates an awareness of our need for one another, of our need to belong, while simultaneously remaining open to each person’s freedom to be exactly who they are. Ideals, such as this one, are admittedly utopian, but the practice of this ideal occurs on a regular basis, all over the planet, when we meet one another with intention and openness. Indeed, this is one of the factors that has kept me participating in and facilitating workshops. In workshops, and small focus groups, we come together, sometimes on an ongoing basis (actually getting to know one another) and become a group that can offer support on obvious (feedback, mirroring, etc.) and hidden (karmic connections, group releasing, etc.) levels.  At the same time, these groups are deliberately non-binding and work to respect the individuals in them, along with whatever group dynamic is taking place. This might be one of our best chances for avoiding shooting sprees and the like from people who have fallen through the cracks and have no other options for expressing their frustration. 

I remember one year I was offering a 5-day Creating the Work You Love seminar at Esalen Institute, and there was one male in the group who was constantly interrupting others, disturbing a number of the women, and generally being a nuisance. I asked the administrators of Esalen what they thought I should do. They replied that it was my workshop and I could do what I wanted, but that they strongly encouraged me to try and work with him. I tried. I never spoke to him about his behavior, but I did try to be as inclusive as possible. He remained. Our group remained intact, and at the end of the workshop, no less than four people thanked me for sticking with him, as he wound up contributing much to our process. Hence, a community of acceptance, as the practice of being together while also being apart – inconceivably and simultaneously one and different. 

RJ April 18, 2007