When we reject, we sometimes know what it is we are pushing away, shutting out.

We glimpse it, but cannot allow for it.

Hope may have brought us out of denial, but we are still far from acceptance.

Here, our work is to catch the lightning flash of rejection and create a pause.

In this pause, we may find an opening, a shift towards allowing.

This fragile opening may close almost straight away, but we can stand steady and allow a wish for it to find us and soften us.

If we are patient and steady, this opening will come again. We hold ourselves in readiness for it.

This takes courage, for we know that, by opening like this, we will be changed, we will give up something that may be part of the wall of defences we have erected to protect us from feeling discomfort or pain.

When the hard knot of rejection is washed away, 'no' becomes 'yes' and we sometimes feel a sudden release of energy.

Vigilence is required of us and we may have to make this shift from 'no' to 'yes' many times over just one thing, because the habit of rejection may be strong in us.

Some of us have the pattern of rejection or criticism as a wide river in us, this is the main window that we look through onto the world.

Learning to turn rejection into acceptance is like learning the piano -- we don't actually learn to play the piano, we learn to play individual pieces of music. Each acceptance we learn to practice is another piece of music that brings beauty to our lives. When we know how to accept many, many things, we may say that we have learned acceptance.

We learn to leave rejection behind through individual small acts, here is a poem about one small act of leaving rejection behind.