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Acceptance is the purification from the self.
One who accepts leaves no self within.
One who accepts sees with the heart that everything — gain or loss — comes from Him.
Acceptance is not only what befalls you; it is making peace with everything that happens.
What is not in you cannot appear in another, and you see in others what is in yourself.
Are you condemning someone?
Criticizing?
Judging?
What if you reconsidered all this from this angle?
The station of acceptance is far more than its dictionary meaning. It is one of the final stops on the arduous yet liberating journey humans make toward their own inner core. As one of the highest stations in Sufism, the station of acceptance is often forgotten and misunderstood in the dizzying chaos of daily life — it is not passive submission, defeat, or surrender to fate.
On the contrary, the station of acceptance is purification from the self — the destruction of that false world humans build with their own hands, brick by brick, with pride, arrogance, and endless desires: the prison called “the self.” One who accepts leaves no self within; for they know that as long as the claim of an “I” remains, the conflict with the magnificent harmony of the cosmos will continue.
The state in which a human surrenders their limited desires to the great whole is described by Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi in his Tafsir al-Kabir Ta’wilat as a complete annihilation of attributes (fana al-sifat). For him, the station of acceptance consists of the dissolution of the servant’s particular will into the absolute and divine Will. Real acceptance begins when the claim “I am doing this, I am wanting this” ends; otherwise even saying “I have accepted” becomes another game of the self.
The Station of Acceptance and Demolishing the Prison of the Self: The Nature of the Ego
To understand this sense of self that imprisons humans, along with the false identities that arise from it, we must turn to the guidance of spiritual teachings. As the master Ergün Arıkdal emphasizes in his work Knowing Thyself, abandoning all internal and external attachments and escaping this false prison must be the greatest aim. As long as humans remain within the boundaries of their ego, they defend only their own interests and their own rightness. This sticky veil that overshadows the true personality — what is called nafsaniyah, or carnal egoism — is the chief culprit in our endless quarrel with life and with people. The station of acceptance is the name given to reaching the pure consciousness beneath this veil.
To better grasp the destructive effect of carnal egoism in our lives, the work Communications of the Plane of the Faithful — gifted to humanity through the mediumship of Ergün Arıkdal — offers a transformative perspective. As stated very clearly in the seventy-seventh session of this work, most of the problems humans experience are intimately connected with the carnal egoism close to their own personality.
The crisis moments in which we look for someone to blame outside ourselves, or hold life or other people responsible, have at their root the insatiable demands of our own ego and carnal egoism. Liberating ourselves from these crises that imprison us in a narrow space is possible only through reaching the “reasonable conscience” emphasized in the introduction of the work, and through the disciplining of the lower self.
When humans free themselves from the illusion of selfishness created by their carnal egoism and choose the guidance of reasonable conscience and consciousness, they enter into harmony with the universal order. To accept is exactly to awaken this conscience and demolish the false world.
Making Peace with What Life Brings: Gain, Loss, and Trials in the Station of Acceptance
One who accepts is the one who, in their gain and in their loss, sees with the heart that everything that happens to them comes from the Supreme Source. By human nature we rejoice when we gain, attributing it to our own intelligence and abilities; when we lose, we rebel and blame fate or others. Yet the station of acceptance is not merely accepting the pleasant things that come our way; it is making peace with everything that happens.
As Dr. Bedri Ruhselman states in Predestination and Manifestation, the events and sufferings we encounter in the cosmos are obligatory trials presented to us in order to accelerate the evolution of our soul. The chain of events we meet in life may not always run parallel to our simple desires of today. A loss you experience is, in truth, an invaluable lesson placed before you for the development of your soul. Gain and loss are different vistas of the same evolutionary path. To attain the station of acceptance is to be able to look upon both vistas with the same equanimity.
The eighth session of the Communications of the Plane of the Faithful presents to us, with a very high vision, what reaching this state of equanimity means. In that session, when describing how high administrative mechanisms and advanced spiritual beings approach events, it is reminded that they are completely free from the mechanical judgments, instant emotional reactions, and shallow examinations into which humans constantly fall in daily life.
We typically respond, rebel, and judge immediately in the face of an event. Yet a consciousness that has attained the station of acceptance observes events without haste, without judgment, and with a high acceptance.
To meet both the pain and the sweetness life brings with universal equanimity — this is to step into that non-reactive, non-judging higher consciousness, that is, into the station of acceptance.
“What Is Not in You Cannot Appear in Another”: Reflection and Consciousness Cleansing
So how do we move so far from the station of acceptance and turn life into a prison for ourselves and others? That magnificent rule found in your study notes comes into play here: What is not in you cannot appear in another, and you see in others what is in yourself. Are you condemning someone? Criticizing them mercilessly? When you judge people, do you see yourself as wholly right and them as wholly wrong and at fault?
One of the most striking sources explaining the human’s blindness to their own inner world and the disease of judging others is Maurice Nicoll’s Gurdjieff and Ouspensky Teaching: Psychological Commentaries. As the work conveys, we are not aware of our inner world, and we project the dark sides we cannot tolerate within ourselves outward, blaming those around us.
If we are continuously and harshly criticizing a quality such as miserliness, arrogance, jealousy, or anger in others, this is in fact a direct reflection of something to which we are blind in ourselves. When we become angry with another, we are actually attacking that unrecognized dark fragment within ourselves.
Until we engage in non-critical, honest self-observation, we will never realize that what we criticize in others is actually ourselves. P.D. Ouspensky’s Knowing Thyself too tells us that a person’s confronting their own truth is the only way to awaken from this sleep.
What path should we follow instead of judging others and pouring our anger upon them? Here a tremendous rule recommended in the sixty-second session of the Communications of the Plane of the Faithful — “the cleansing of consciousness” — comes into play.
In that session, it is emphasized that we should not immediately subject the information, impressions, and events we receive from outside to instant judgments. What falls to us is to calmly hold these impressions, to observe them, but absolutely not to judge them.
How mechanical and worldly a weakness it is that we are so eager to judge and condemn is struck across our face like a slap in the eighty-fourth session of the same work: if there is a condemnation or scolding, it should be known that this is not a high spiritual act but is wholly “for the human,” a manifestation of human bodily limitation. To condemn another is nothing but to declare our own spiritual weakness.
The Limits of Judgment and the Power of Universal Love
To judge another is in fact to declare one’s own limits and ignorance. While you mercilessly judge someone, you cannot see the spiritual trials, inner battles, and past karmic loads that drove them to behave that way. The wisdom-filled lines in White Eagle Teachings IV — There Is No Separation in Love describe how judgment contradicts the universal laws. While the great watchers of the cosmos embrace that person with compassion, knowing the spiritual conditions they pass through, we cannot understand that the person we are drawn to judge is in fact an instrument of divine law, holding a mirror up to us. The station of acceptance is the courage to look at the reflection without breaking the mirror.
Approaching those around us with understanding, instead of sending them the energy of hatred or condemnation, is the most important turn of spiritual evolution. For while condemnation and hatred poison the being, love elevates it. The seventy-third session of the Communications of the Plane of the Faithful formulates this truth very deeply through the nourishment of the soul: “Love is the opposite of hatred. And only love is nourished from the soul; hatred is nourished from the counter-effect.”
Inner growth and reaching the station of acceptance is possible only through emerging from that dark cycle of hatred and endless judgment, and embracing love — the true food of the soul. The endless inner courtrooms we set up in our minds, thinking we have been wronged or our value has not been recognized, are counter-effects that consume our energy. But a person who has reached the station of acceptance, a person who has demolished their self, has closed these account books forever, having grasped that no one owes them anything. For this reason, forgiveness is the first key at the door of the station of acceptance.
The Station of Acceptance: The Great Reconciliation with the Universe and the Self — The Key to Freedom
In conclusion, every breath life offers us is an opportunity to step out of the narrow, dark prison of our self and into the wide, luminous garden of the station of acceptance. That unbearable flaw, lie, arrogance, or anger you see in the person before you is, in fact, a clear mirror your soul holds up to you. Instead of becoming angry at the mirror or trying to break it, one must look bravely at the reflection. For the station of acceptance is not the rejection of this reflection, but the “yes” said with love to it.
The next time you are about to condemn, criticize, or judge someone, stop and take a deep breath. Remember the cleansing of consciousness whispered to us in the sessions; do not pass instant judgment. Turn within and ask yourself honestly: “What is the dark point inside me that I am running from confronting — the one that is making this person bother me so much right now? How does what is not in you appear in me?”
The moment you can ask yourself this question, the moment you can step down from the judge’s seat and watch others with love, you have taken the greatest step toward the surrender of the self — toward that great and peaceful station of acceptance. When you make peace with everything that happens, with the losses life brings you, and with the people around you, you will see how light your heart becomes. For the station of acceptance is not only a peace with the outer universe, but the human being’s making peace with their own deepest darknesses. Not to fear looking at the reflection — that is to love it; and this love is the station of acceptance itself.
Bibliography
- Arıkdal, Ergün. Knowing Thyself (The Key of Freedom). Enstitü Yayınları, Güven Mücellit Matbaası, Istanbul, 2023.
- Arıkdal, Ergün. Communications of the Plane of the Faithful (Sadıklar Plânı Tebliğleri). Enstitü Yayınları, Güven Mücellit Matbaası, Istanbul, 2023.
- White Eagle. There Is No Separation in Love (translated into Turkish by Kemal Menemencioğlu). Ruh ve Madde Yayınları, Emre Matbaacılık, Istanbul, 1994.
- Ibn Arabi, Muhyiddin. Tafsir al-Kabir Ta’wilat (Vol. 1). Kitsan Yayınları, Istanbul.
- Nicoll, Maurice. Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Ruh ve Madde Yayıncılık, Istanbul, 2008–2012.
- Ouspensky, P. D. The Reality of Man — “Knowing Thyself”. Ruh ve Madde Yayınları, Istanbul, 1989 / 2010.
- Ruhselman, Bedri. Predestination and Manifestation (Mukadderat ve İcabat). Gayret Kitabevi Yayınları, Istanbul, 1953.