The Power of Forgiveness.

God told me to write, to write for my sister and to write what is right, which I do not know. I avoid, yes, I avoid, but perhaps, as it said in my little book on my little phone, full of all the information the world has ever known... why do I need to know all these things? All these little available pieces of tidbits that will never pertain to my own existence and will never answer the questions of my heart: is everything really going to be okay? What about for the people it's not okay for? Am I loved? Why am I so awful and how do I improve? Who of all the contacts in my phone can tell me that? Who can tell me, with the utmost certainty, you are okay, and so is she and so am I and so is everyone else? Who has the power to condemn and retrieve me when I've lost my way and I won't return? Who will remember me?

Anyway, the little book on my little phone said avoidance is not the answer, acceptance, acceptance is the answer.

So, what happens is I need, so I take, but it's not really what I need that I'm taking, and then I feel more sad than ever, because I am disappointed and I need something. Like drinking from a mirage. And it's all a mirage right now. So, I must stop taking and I must start giving, though everything in me says take, take, take, they don't know your pain and they must know your pain... but the truth is, what pain? I am walking, I am talking, I am flirting, I am reading helpful little books on my little broken phone. So, what pain?

The pain of being alone, of feeling pointless, of wanting all those things, like the Fantastic Four, X-Men or the Avengers. Desiring a teacher who will show you the truthful way, who will guide you through all your frustrations, because it's not really time for me to be wise, but maybe, maybe it is. I don't do well as a student, rarely as a patient. I do well as a leader and a teacher, as a guide myself, though I desire that figure, he's only available in movies. Like Morpheus, Mr. Miagi, someone who embodies love, faith and can take all my rage and hurt and fire and passion and funnel it into something magical, a practice, an understanding, a trial and difficulties and obstacles that are all meant to be understood. Otherwise, well, otherwise I could ... well, I can't even say it.

I've been saying for years I need training. I need that kind of training, from someone who wholeheartedly believes in me, even when I don't believe in myself, who is there with me, helping me to learn discipline day after day, as a disciple.

Ah, well, for now I may have to substitute that beautiful person, with all of their ceremony and nice garb, with all of their grace and depth, for Google. And, I do realize, that one of my greatest fears is knowing it all, and remaining indifferent. And I, for one, am genuinely afraid of indifference. It is something beyond my grasp, beyond that which I have observed, which is that someone fully believes that you do not count. So, I am afraid of my own indifference. I am afraid of others' indifference toward me. I can think of nothing worse, for that is loneliness. It's isolation on the side of a blisteringly cold mountain, begging for someone who's stronger to come, and no one does. It's actually almost impossible for me to believe it happens, but it does. It's caused by something I cannot name.

So, speaking of Google, which God may use when no other human substitute is available, I just suddenly felt a strong urge to search for the definition of "acceptance," and this one of the first things that came up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_and_commitment_therapy

Some quotes (which I think aforementioned mentors may seek to develop in their very proteges, shockingly):

ACT differs from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in that rather than trying to teach people to better control their thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories and other private events, ACT teaches them to "just notice," accept, and embrace their private events, especially previously unwanted ones.

ACT aims to help the individual clarify their personal values and to take action on them, bringing more vitality and meaning to their life in the process, increasing their psychological flexibility.

While Western psychology has typically operated under the "healthy normality" assumption which states that by their nature, humans are psychologically healthy, ACT assumes, rather, that psychological processes of a normal human mind are often destructive.^[6] The core conception of ACT is that psychological suffering is usually caused by experiential avoidance, cognitive entanglement, and resulting psychological rigidity that leads to a failure to take needed behavioral steps in accord with core values. As a simple way to summarize the model, ACT views the core of many problems to be due to the concepts represented in the acronym, FEAR:

• Fusion with your thoughts
• Evaluation of experience
• Avoidance of your experience
• Reason-giving for your behavior

And the healthy alternative is to ACT:

• Accept your reactions and be present
• Choose a valued direction
• Take action

ACT commonly employs six core principles to help clients develop psychological flexibility:^[6]

1. Cognitive diffusion: Learning methods to reduce the tendency to reify thoughts, images, emotions, and memories
2. Acceptance: Allowing thoughts to come and go without struggling with them.
3. Contact with the present moment: Awareness of the here and now, experienced with openness, interest, and receptiveness.
4. Observing the self: Accessing a transcendent sense of self, a continuity of consciousness which is unchanging.
5. Values: Discovering what is most important to one's true self.^[7]
6. Committed action: Setting goals according to values and carrying them out responsibly.

Wilson, Hayes & Byrd explore at length the compatibility between ACT and the 12-step treatment of addictions and argue that, unlike most other psychotherapies, both approaches can be implicitly or explicitly integrated due to their broad commonalities. Both approaches endorse acceptance as an alternative to unproductive control. ACT emphasizes the hopelessness of relying on ineffectual strategies to control private experience, similarly the 12-step approach emphasizes the acceptance of powerlessness over addiction. Both approaches encourage a broad life-reorientation, rather than a narrow focus on the elimination of substance use, and both place great value on the long-term project of building of a meaningful life aligned with the clients' values. ACT and 12-step both encourage the pragmatic utility of cultivating a transcendent sense of self (higher power) within an unconventional, individualized spirituality. Finally they both openly accept the paradox that acceptance is a necessary condition for change and both encourage a playful awareness of the limitations of human thinking.

And now, the definition of acceptance/accept: 

ac·cept

  [ak-sept]  Show IPA

verb (used with object)

1.

to take or receive (something offered); receive with approval or favor: to accept a present; to accept a proposal.

2.

to agree or consent to; accede to: to accept a treaty; to accept an apology.

3.

to respond or answer affirmatively to: to accept an invitation.

4.

to undertake the responsibility, duties, honors, etc., of: to accept the office of president.

5.

to receive or admit formally, as to a college or club.

6.

to accommodate or reconcile oneself to: to accept the situation.

7.

to regard as true or sound; believe: to accept a claim; to accept Catholicism.

8.

to regard as normal, suitable, or usual.

9.

to receive as to meaning; understand.

10.

Commerce . to acknowledge, by signature, as calling for payment, and thus to agree to pay, as a draft.

11.

(in a deliberative body) to receive as an adequate performance of the duty with which an officer or a committee has been charged; receive for further action: The report of the committee was accepted.

12.

to receive or contain (something attached, inserted, etc.): This socket won't accept a three-pronged plug.

13.

My favorite: to receive (a transplanted organ or tissue) without adverse reaction. Compare reject (  def 7 ) .