Goal of Acceptance

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Goal of Acceptance

By PHIL WITTMEYER & Others

If you have this goal, you do not like being different — it is painful to you. You seek to be in accord with others and with the world. You emphasize the ways that things are similar, rather than the ways they are different. In relationships, compatibility is very important to you, perhaps the most important ingredient — the more you have in common, the better you like it. In fact, you avoid relationships or situations that are just too strange. You are very much concerned with issues of liking and disliking. You want to like everything, and if you can't, this can be upsetting to you. This Goal makes you a "nice" person. You try to be polite, cooperative, and tactful. You smile a lot around other people in order to appear more attractive. You try to adapt yourself to others in order to get along comfortably with them.

This is the most "popular" of the Goals — in two senses of this word. By my count, well over twenty percent of the population has this Goal, a higher percentage than any other Goal, making it more popular than the others. In a secondary sense, people with this Goal are often quite popular with other people. A person with this Goal wants to be unobjectionable and inoffensive. He seeks to be pleasant. Other people usually like this. Of all the Goals, this one is usually the easiest for others to deal with because it makes its owner very agreeable.

Positive Pole (Agape)

The original name given to the Positive Pole of this Goal was "agape", pronounced "ah'-guh-pay". This is the Greek word for "love" of the philosophical sort — pure and noble altruism. Modern psychologists call it "unconditional positive regard". It is benevolence, goodwill, and kindness. Religion and philosophy generally proclaim this to be the highest virtue.

People in this pole desire a sense of belonging. It is important to them that they behave themselves benignly and beneficially in whatever situation or relationship they find themselves in. They want to be in communion with all things. Perhaps the best way to describe this is to say that they want to be on friendly terms with everybody. They are gracious and charming without insincerity. They pursue a meeting of minds by emphasizing what people have in common, and they de-emphasize the differences. They avoid disagreeing with others where such promotes harmony, but they do not back down from what is correct. Whenever they see strife, they want to reconcile the differences. Whenever they see two points of view expressed, they seek to find a larger viewpoint which will encompass the two. They think well of others, and wish only for their benefit. When dislike is expressed toward them, they are conciliatory without compromising their integrity. In short, they try to be loving.

Negative Pole (Ingratiation)

In the Negative Pole of -Ingratiation, you want to be liked and favored. One of the surest ways to discern whether or not Acceptance is your Goal is to ask yourself how you behave under stress. You will often act out of the Negative Pole of your Goal when things are not going your way.

✓ Do you try to "nice" your way out of tough situations?
✓ Are you uncomfortable with the thought that you are different, so you try to act like everybody else around you and agree with them on every point?
✓ Do you find yourself presenting yourself to others as overly nice and sweet — too charming to be trusted. Do you seem as if you are trying to win a popularity contest? Do you "butters others up" to gain your own ends? — the best sycophants have this trait.
✓ Are you often afraid to "tell it like it is"?
✓ Do you tell others what you think they want to hear, rather than the honest truth? Do you whitewash things: make them seem prettier, cleaner, finer than they really are?
✓ Do you also use euphemisms so as not to risk any offense: sugarcoating your statements and using words which are softer, more palatable, and easier to hear than the strict truth?
✓ Do you compromises your integrity if you think it will avoid criticism?
✓ Does the idea of disagreeing with someone make you squirm with discomfort?
✓ Do you run from arguments even when they would be beneficial?

In the extreme form, this Pole manifests as phoniness, insincerity, and hypocrisy. Such is the perversion of love manifested in the fear of being at odds with others.

Quite often the Negative Pole will kick in when you are asked to do something. You naturally want to accept, to say "yes". You will often indiscriminately go along with it without due consideration. After all, you want to please everybody. Only later do you realize you cannot fulfill the request, or you realize that you really do not want to, so you have to rescind your acceptance. Therefore the Ingratiating act leads to resentment or rejection on the part of others and the shame of separation on your own part — exactly the opposite of the intention. The way to overcome -Ingratiation is to consider and contemplate the Complementary Goal, Rejection — particularly the Positive Pole of +Discrimination. Be discerning in what is accepted, and only say yes to what is in accord with personal integrity.

Another way out of the Negative Pole is to consider the Counterpart of Acceptance, the Power Mode. -Ingratiation is a sign of weakness, but +Unification is an expression of personal power. People in the Power mode expect others to conform to them. On the other hand, Acceptance is passive, and people with this goal conform themselves to others. People in Acceptance are responsive to others, whereas people in Power expect others to be responsive to them. If you see yourself if as powerful, you will not likely do the weak and ingratiating thing.

The Complement of Acceptance is the Discrimination (Rejection) Goal. The two are the exact opposites of each other. People in Acceptance avoid rejecting and being rejected if at all possible — such is painful to them. People in Acceptance dislike arguments very much, and tend to walk away from a disagreement rather than confront the situation. They are not often contentious or antagonistic.

The disadvantage of this Goal is that people who have it uncritically embrace things as they go through life, and get themselves into trouble. It is a noble virtue to be big enough to accept everything that comes along, but few people are actually that big. Those that aren't find themselves accepting things they can't handle. The advantage of having this Goal is that the person is usually well liked, and this can open many doors.

Phil Wittmeyer

People with a goal of acceptance do not necessarily find it easy to accept difficult situations. In fact, they often find themselves in situations that are difficult to accept. Nonetheless, they usually bring to the challenge tools that can assist them, such as open-heartedness and agreeableness. (The positive pole of acceptance is agape, but one doesn’t have to achieve total unconditional love in order to be in the positive pole. A certain magnanimity or even tolerance is adequate.)

Acceptance is a “natural overleaf” for sages, since both are on the cardinal side of the expression axis. When sages have a goal of acceptance, it can be “overkill,” since sages tend to naturally seek acceptance anyway in order to have an “audience” for their self-expression. In the negative pole, a sage in acceptance can go to extremes in “bending over backward” to win favor, and have a tendency to obsess about those who don’t seem to accept them rather than focusing on those who do.

Shepherd Hoodwin -- From Journey of Your Soul

Outgoing, friendly, and natural lovers of humanity, people with a goal of Acceptance are some of the most approachable souls you will ever encounter. There is something in their eyes that immediately conveys understanding and an ability to accept people just the way they are. In short, these people are easy to be around.
Although popular with Old souls, this goal is occasionally used as a bridge towards resolving karma. The natural inclination to accept whatever occurs in life facilitates the burning of many karmic ribbons.

In the negative pole, there's a fear of not being liked. The resulting level of ingratiation can be so pronounced that in the words of James Thurber: "You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."

David Gregg

Channeling About Acceptance

About thirty percent of people have a goal of acceptance; growth accounts for forty percent. Therefore, seventy percent have lives shaped by either growth or acceptance. They are quite different from one another. The positive pole of acceptance is "agape," meaning unconditional love, or simply tolerance; it is about being open in a loving way. Someone in acceptance will likely say yes more often than someone in discrimination. However, in the positive pole, one says yes to those things where one can contribute. Again, it is physically impossible for one to say yes to everything and make it stick. If you say yes and don't mean it or can't follow through, you get into trouble.

The highest form of acceptance is accepting life on its own terms, particularly your own life. There is also a valid desire to fit in, to be accepted in your community. When you have this goal, you learn about how your society works and what it takes to contribute to it in a smooth way. You want to have a harmonious society, and you try to exemplify how to accomplish that in your own life.

The ordinal overleaves are contracted, so discrimination and reevaluation focus more on the self, whereas growth and acceptance focus more on society. Growth avails itself of all the world has to offer and participates in it. Acceptance is the grease of the wheels of society, helping everyone get along, trying not to be contentious. Therefore, people with this goal are often nice, pleasant people, relatively easy to get along with.

In ingratiation, this is taken to an extreme, being too worried about what others think of one. The yes is selfish, designed to avoid conflict, improve one's status, or make up for insecurity; it is not coming from the universal forces of love, truth, and beauty. It is not true acceptance, making peace with what is; it is a fear of rejection, which is not the same thing. It is brown-nosing, being too nice in a way that is not authentic.

In that situation, someone in acceptance can slide to discrimination and be more discerning. He can start thinking about what is worth accepting, what isn't, and why--sophistication. That can help get him back to agape, or simply being more at peace with himself in the world.

The opposite dynamic for someone in discrimination also works: if she is being narrow, prejudiced, and too much by the book, she can slide to acceptance and be more open-minded and tolerant--for example, being willing to try a new wine with a certain kind of food.

With all the overleaves, souls gravitate more to some than to others. The goal of acceptance is on the cardinal side of the expression axis, as is the role of sage. Since sages are about self-expression, they often like to perform or write, and need an audience for that, so they have a natural social interface with the community. This has an obvious correlation with the goal of acceptance. Sages not only crave acceptance, but need it, or they can't do their job. A sage with a goal of discrimination may handle it well, but it can also be a train wreck. The forces of wanting to be loved conflicting with wanting to reject can make for a difficult personality. You could also, to a lesser degree, imagine a sage, being so naturally socially oriented, feeling a push-pull with the goal reevaluation, although some could experience it as a much-needed respite. So it does depend on the individual.

Shepherd Hoodwin -- From Michael On Goals

Acceptance as a goal causes the soul involved to go through various machinations in order to find their special niche in life. This also in turn causes them to excuse the faults of others, since they themselves recognize their own imperfections. This is the proverbial “nice guy”.

The goal of acceptance is in itself a powerful exalted goal from which spiritual enlightenment can spring. With this there is no need for a switch in overleaves — merely extinguishment of the negative pole, which in this case is the desperate need to be accepted universally by others. In exchange for this you come into the positive pole, which is of course, the unqualified acceptance of others, just as the negative pole of the growth goal involves tremendous scattering of energies as the soul rushes from school to school searching feverishly for that illusive “way”.

Michael Teachings Transcripts

Next page | Goal of Submission,

The Seven Goals: Re-evaluation, Growth, Discrimination, Acceptance,
Submission, Dominance, Flow

About Phil Wittmeyer

Phil is a long-time Michael student who has written several book-length manuscripts about the Michael teachings, many of them featured on this site. He has been an active member in the community for many years and can be found at most Michael gatherings.

Phil currently lives in Colorado.