Where Does Rejection Originate?

Original Rejection
Everyone knows what it feels like to be rejected. We can recount numerous tales of being rejected and clearly see the people who rejected us. It hurts. People naturally want to feel connected, accepted, and a part of. Many of us have done embarrassing things in our past because we wanted acceptance and approval. It began with our parents and desperately wanting them to love us and approve of us. Or did it? Most religious people believe that the original rejection was God kicking Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. They believe that all of humanity has been separated from God ever since.

What if original rejection was not something that anyone did to us, but a choice that we made? Think about that for a minute. Didn’t Adam and Eve make the choice to do something that would get them expelled from paradise? Why would they do that? What could they possibly gain? Knowledge, through experience. Adam and Eve lived in perfect paradise, but they did not experience it as being better than anything else. They didn’t know anything else. The wonderful could not be experienced as wonderful without the contrasting experience of something not wonderful. So, who rejected who?

I use the story of Adam and Eve because it is familiar to so many, and to bring our mind back to the point of coming into the illusion of separation. Separation is an illusion because that which is part of the whole cannot be separate from the whole. God could not send us away from God because we are all part of God. The illusion of separation gives us the opportunity to experience contrasts and make choices. The downside of this illusion is the hurt, emptiness, and loneliness that we feel as a result of believing that we are apart from our source. There is a part of us that remembers incomprehensible love, perfect peace, and unspeakable joy. It longs to be back in that “heaven.” It is the pull that we feel toward God, the Divine, the Mystery, to something more than what we can experience here on Earth.

Believing that we were rejected by God establishes an unconscious belief that we are in some way “bad.” From early childhood, we learn to earn love and acceptance, to work for approval. We are trained and taught that we must work very hard to be good enough. Most of us go through life feeling that we never are quite good enough. This sets up all kinds of negative self-beliefs and patterns. Look at the violence and addictions in the world and you will see the result of living in these beliefs. People are hurting so much from believing that they are isolated, abandoned, and inherently bad that they reach for anything to relieve the pain or act out in violence against others.

God did not reject you. God has rejected nothing and no one. All is part of God, always was, and always will be. YOU are part of God, of All That Is. You need not earn God’s love, approval, or acceptance. It is yours by your very existence.

Now, let’s get back to rejection. Most people have felt that they don’t belong here; that they would rather be somewhere else. People want to be in paradise, or heaven. Life can be painful and frightening. We resist life and fear life. We withhold our energy, our love, not wanting to commit fully to being here. What if we put all that we are into living this life and then can’t get back to where we came from? What if loving this life and immersing ourselves in it takes us so far from heaven that we can never go back? Do these questions bring up a feeling of sadness in your heart? You are not alone. Many people have these questions in their unconscious mind, preventing them from committing to this life. Here is the original rejection. It is us, rejecting this life. It is very common for children to feel that they do not want their parents, do not feel like they belong in their family, and just don’t want to be there. They grow up to feel out of place everywhere they go. No matter where they are, they feel like they don’t belong there.

This may not be true of you, but it may help you understand someone in your life. People who always feel rejected are experiencing the reflection of their own rejection of life. They have so much resistance to life that they cannot fully enjoy it. Good things may come to them, but they find away to push them away.

We have the power to change our beliefs and the way we experience life. It begins with recognizing that this life is not a punishment; it is a gift. Living this life is a gift of love, given out of immense love for us. Loving our lives and putting everything we are into them does not mean that we don’t love God and cannot separate us from God. Think of a precious gift that you give to someone you love with your whole being. Don’t you want them to open it up, to examine it, to use it, and to fully enjoy it? How much more does God want us to enjoy the gift given to us? What better way to show our appreciation for the gift than to live our lives with all that we are, committed to full participation? When we begin to realize that our life is a gift of love, given out of immeasurable love for us, our heart can overflow with gratitude. We begin to see just how wonderful this world and this life are. Every moment can be an incredible experience and every day another gift just waiting to be unwrapped and played with. Embrace your life. It is yours to enjoy.