Ken Wilber talks a lot in his book The Religion of Tomorrow about the terms "embrace" and "transcend". The two go hand in hand. When I really own something as an integral part of myself without making it into something to be desired or repressed/hated, then I am ready to go beyond it. But it is so easy to get this wrong, especially prematurely trying to transcend something too quickly (allergy, as Wilber calls it) and/or trying to embrace to the point of making something an addiction.
I like to use the analogy of a spin cycle. Everyone has probably experienced times when they feel they are making the same mistake over and over again, yet are constantly trying to apply the same band-aid solution. The solution looks like it's going fine, but in fact, it's eventually seen as a stopgap to prevent a real and genuine transformation. Some solutions are even worse than the things that they are meant to address or "fix" precisely because they do work for a while, only to cycle back to the original problem again.What these things really do is make people feel temporarily good, at least enough to distract them from the thing that is bothering them the most.
When I finally recognize that the "fix" doesn't address the original problem, I stop pretending that it does, and instead, I see the spin cycle for what it is. I neither repress the problem by embracing a false solution, nor do I go back to the fixation that caused the original problem, I am simply seeing the absurd cycle, similar to clothes in a drying machine. It is only at this point that the cycle can really be transcended. It is seen for what it is, in its totality, and faced with an open eyed honesty that doesn't idealize any spoke in the wheel. Could this combination of acceptance and non-idealizing be the doorway to transcendence that Wilber describes?
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