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Card messages in the Illuminated position.

+ Affiliation

Key Integrated Concepts: Amiable, Accord, Agape, Inclusive, Mutuality, Allowing, Agreeable

Illuminated Position: There is often a sweetness in Acceptance, a potential for generosity. The two little girls are sharing a moment of togetherness and cooperation. Here, along with its counterpart, the Attitude of the Idealist, they are symbolically turning life’s lemons into lemonade. Acceptance is the first phase of forming community. The first stage of community begins with the simple act of kindness. Affiliation is forming bonds, even if for alliance, but also for mutual recognition, and perhaps even support. However, when a person is in this positive pole, they may have reached an emotional aplomb that may contrast greatly from the drama that surrounds them at any given moment. If you think about it, acceptance requires that you drop resistance to what is. It does not require you to approve of something disagreeable or distasteful. In actively rejecting something, one is polarized by it and to it. Jesus of Nazareth modeled the positive pole of acceptance more completely than any other person.

Response Ideas from this Pole

1. Freud said, “A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what direct him in the world.” Agape is to be in total accord and releasing all judgment and loving without condition. Are you accepting yourself? Who else might need your acceptance?
2. Accepting conditions as they are is the way to maintain balance when circumstances are not to your liking. Sharing Agape does not mean you resign yourself to the situation nor does it mean you forgive bad behavior.
3. Dissolve the power of vexing complications by accepting them as is and move through, over, or around them.
4. Often the most humane thing to do is let someone have their foibles.
5. If you operate from Acceptance, you often feel the need to make peace. Useful.
6. Praise trains an animal better than pain. Kindness and firmness can go together.
7. It is not about ‘tough love’, you need to learn to love the tough.
8. Friendship is the act of allowing the person to be who they are without having the need to change or reject them. Lighten up or move on.
9. Affiliating, even with those you do not like, goes a long way to smooth differences and make peace.
10. Inclusivity is more than just a politically correct idea. Doing so is to hold someone as an equal, at least in their rights. Differences in style or preference of appearance do not minimize the greater reality that all humans are the same species. Live and let live.

Quotes relating this sentiment…

• “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”  Carl Rogers
• “A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.” Edwin Hubbel Chaplin
• “Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there’s all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.”  Arthur Gordon
• “Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgement of the facts of a situation. Then deciding what you’re going to do about it.” Kathleen Casey Theisen

Card messages in the Shadow position.

– Ingratiation

Key Integrated Concepts: Nice, obliging, flattery, fawning, deferential, duplicitous, insincere, smarmy, unctuous, placating, schmoozes, suck-up

Shadow Position: Open wide! Consider the poor dentist, trying to distract as you undergo an experience many would consider unbearable. Try as they might to make the patient feel comfortable by being cheerful, their occupation suffers from some of the highest levels of stress in any profession. When someone is trying to Ingratiate, they are afraid to raise your ire, fear, or create bad will; or they may want something from you, that only making nice, or “kissing ass” might achieve. These are the ‘yes men’ where the idea of being positive is actually a negative, because it is a deception, perhaps to themselves. A great equalizer in many respects because it can be passive, acquiescing, agreeable, and have a desire to please such that it tends to shun or back down from conflict whenever possible. The “people pleaser” or “enabler” or “suck-up” or “yes-man” all live under the negative pole of Ingratiation. But not all is sinister with this pole, a person may actively want acceptance…at any cost, merely to experience an approval or approbation they feel lacking in other parts of their lives. Yet, the lengths that some will and do go to, driven by this deep fear of rejection, can be manipulative, pretensive, and desperate in the extreme. If it is self-approval you are seeking, where do you honestly struggle with some perceived faults and withhold love from yourself?

Response Ideas from this Pole

1. To be included, let alone wanted and approved of, is a survival need every animal has. Humans are as much a part of a pack, herd, hive, or flock as any living creature. Without affiliation, one would have no support nor mutual protection, let alone opportunity to learn from others. Is someone, dying to be included but not owning up to their fear of rejection?
2. Ingratiation is the tool of the phony salesman. Suck-ups and yes-men only seek favor with those from whom they want something. They are afraid that others will not like them if they are genuine. Is there a people-pleaser in your midst? Confront it by accepting the truth…even if you don’t want to hear it!
3. Resigned to a situation? You think this is Acceptance? Not a chance! You’ve caved in on some dream or principle in order to ingratiate with a crowd that you believe might take care of you. Are you stuck brown-nosing in fear of losing.
4. Flattery is the tool of the phony salesman. “Suck-ups” and “yes-men” ingratiate themselves to seek favor because they want something from you. They are afraid that people might not like what they genuinely have to offer. Is there a people pleaser in your midst? Watch your back.
5. Goodness gracious, can you stand up for yourself? Even if you ruffle some feathers, there is no reason to stay quiet in the name of being
6. Are you stuck brown-nosing for fear of losing? How can someone help you if they don’t know who you honestly are?
7. “If you live life for people’s acceptance, you will die from their rejection.” LeCrae Monroe. There is a good chance that you’ve not focused your attention on a purpose.

Quotes relating this sentiment…

• “To understand is hard. Once you understand it is easy.” Sun Yat-Sen 
• “The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.”  Warren Bennis
• “Men who cannot conceive a happiness of their own accept a definition imposed upon them by others.” Earl Shorris

Relevance within the Michael Teaching

Acceptance has a two fold purpose regarding why a person might chose it: one internal motive and another interactive motive. The first is an attempt to resolve an inner struggle allowing the cessation of some painful belief or life circumstance. The other is a strategic approach to reaching accord with others in hopes of finding more common ground with another.

Accord in affiliation with others but also the circumstances one encounters in life are essential to this Expressive Goal. Essences choose this approach to life as a means of coming to terms with something or someone that has cause it confusion or pain or to whom it might owe Karma. A great equalizer in many respects because it can be passive, acquiescing, agreeable, and have a desire to please such that it tends to shun or back down from conflict whenever possible. However, when a person is in this pole they may have reached an emotional aplomb from which they may contrast greatly from the drama that surrounds them at any given moment.

But the “people-pleaser” or “enabler” or “suck-up” or “yes-man” all live under the negative pole of Ingratiation. Fearing that their native way of being will either offend another and thus is somehow not sufficient in its own right, the Acceptor in this pole becomes a phony. A pretender that will always want to make things seem alright and not scare anybody away. The person in Acceptance hates being isolated, or disconnected from others even when that connection is emotionally abuse, spiritually toxic, intellectually stifling and causes the person to forego their own integrity for the company of others.

The Chief Feature influences its expression and may warp it into someone whose desire for self-approbation transforms into ego-indulgence and even conceit if it morphs with its paired Goal Discrimination.

Over a quarter of the worlds population have this Goal and do so for a variety of Essence agendas.  Inherently about communicating warmth, inclusion, and a willingness to allow rather than shun; it strives to feel the very gift which it Expresses in its nature: namely, AGAPE (pronounced ah-gah-pay) Which is derives from the Greek concept for Unconditional brotherly love – or that which is granted by the Gods themselves.

To gain acceptance is a high achievement. Coupled with other supportive Overleaves, it might serve to bring a person a kind of peace because struggling against what is, is simply a waste of energy.

Famous Examples

Jesus of Nazareth, (Christ was a title not a name!) His Holiness the XIV Dahlia Lama,  President John Kennedy, Dolly Parton, Jay Leno, George W. Bush, Hugh Jackman, John Muir, Sally Fields, Courtney Cox, Ben Affleck

Cultural Relevance

Almost all religious institutions claim the mantle of Acceptance as a canon of their faith. Doctrine and practice however will tend to slide to the side of Discrimination listing the exceptions or exemptions to the general principle. Acceptance allows engagement in life on life’s own terms, without trying to make it conform to an agenda.

Acceptance might be your Goal if…

1. I try not to judge anyone because I hate to be judged.
2. Criticism hurts me greatly.
3. When people get angry I might be quiet or try to intervene and be peacemaker.
4. Nothing feels as good as being liked.
5. People call me a “suck-up” or a people-pleaser because I want approval from others.
6. It is hard to make a decision when I am the only one who believes my position.
7. I’d rather not rock the boat just be safely in it.
8. I try to adapt to the people or circumstances with which I find myself.
9. I’d rather say something nice and lie, than deliver a harsh truth.
10. Does having a disagreement feel extremely risky and uncomfortable?

Having realized that resistance to what-is meets no useful purpose, it is time to move into a position to devote yourself to a cause. The next Goal of Submission requires action to defend your principles. Not merely pay them lip service.

by Stephen Cocconi © 2023

For a Tarot Session or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com