Powerful Medicine

To acknowledge and be acknowledged is a pre-requisite for every healthy relationship with others and with our Selves. The act of acknowledgement recognizes and honours, contributing to an enhanced sense of self-worth. It contributes to creating a context of unconditional love and support – a powerful condition for growth, like fertilizer is to plants.

Acknowledgement focuses our attention on a specific aspect of our being or doing in the present. We can also acknowledge transgressions – identifying injustice, terms & conditions not met…in this context, acknowledgement may require courage. Taking a stand, we speak our mind, our truth, and retain or reinforce our integrity.

To be acknowledged by someone or acknowledging your Self in private is one thing; to be acknowledged in public is quite another thing. Either, can be deeply moving – moving us to centre, helping us ground so we can share more of our authentic selves. The experience quiets the mental chatter and silences the ego momentarily – the ego, always eager and engaged in important busi-ness. So, having received acknowledgement, we breathe in deeply and exhale more freely.

Without acknowledgement, by self or others, life can be experienced as desert-like – it may seem hard, brutal, nasty and short and we can feel strained, depleted and exhausted. Acknowledgement acts like water to parched earth, refreshing, renewing and revivifying – but we have to receive it to benefit. We can let it run off or take it in, and when we do, we can feel the roots of our being growing deep, finding strength – the spine lengthen to extend our frame to its full height and stand tall. It feels so good!

Copyright © Julia von Flotow 2007