What If Nothing is Missing?

It might sound paradoxical to claim that change could come from acceptance. After all, acceptance means that things are understood as ‘okay’ the way they are. If things are ‘okay’, what motivation for change could there be? Maybe the framing here is already wrong. Maybe change doesn’t need a motivation. Maybe change is not even something that I actively do, but instead something that happens to me, like growth just happens to an acorn.

This is the idea of unfoldment. It approaches change with two questions: “What if nothing is missing? What if you are already a whole human being?” Unfoldment is how every living being grows: the acorn already contains everything it needs for something greater to emerge - and yet, at every stage of growth, it is already whole. And maybe I am too. Fully believing this, and experiencing it deeply in the body, is something I aspire to more and more. It is what self-acceptance means.

What most inner work modalities recognize is that it is so much easier for us to see ourselves as whole when we are held by somebody who accepts and loves us. This can be a partner, a mentor, a friend, or maybe even a community we belong to. Growth requires the right conditions: sunlight, water, soil and air for the acorn; love, acceptance and safety for you and me. More often than not, I find myself in these conditions when I try to offer them to other people.