In your youth: counting all events before
the last birthday, you remember getting
Denied permission to go someplace
Refused entry for wearing no coat
Left behind for being very late
Eliminated from a competition
Refuted by a sound argument
Rebuffed by the ladies
Laid off by a boss
Censured by a wife
But not once do you remember feeling
rejected, redundant, cast off, abandoned,
alienated, separated from communion.
Naturally, any failure of feeling could be due
to mistaken identity, or maybe faulty memory,
and maybe not.
None of that would seem momentous, even noticed
but for today's news that the science of the brain
has now found the seat, the brain center, of rejection
called the anterior cingulate cortex, and it so happens,
that's the same locus where conflict finds focus.
Here's the delight to notice, the brain scene of rejection,
a psychic pain, seems to match that of physical pain.
Does body checkmate mind?
Before you dream of taking a pill to deal with your next put
down, which pill sits already in the sanctuary of your favorite
pharmacy, you might think-through-to-the-end two things,
one a matter of fact, the other a matter of hermeneutics.
The fact is, the mind is not located in the brain, actually,
rather mind Envelops and Transcends brain.
The hermeneutic is, being a psychic pain, rejection
has to be interpreted on levels higher than brain.
Rejection depends largely on outlook with aspects physical,
to be sure, but you can no longer discount mind, soul, and spirit.
If you fail to do your grief work on this you may just deny
transcending realities, and succumb to categorical mistakes.
Still, the fact is, awe-inspiring realities are well established
world-wide by both human experience and scientific method.
The laboratories are the various centers of deep spirituality;
the methods are contemplative; the findings are repeatable.
The singular way to test both fact and hermaneutic arises
clear, distinct, and present: some integral practice.
By integration you can easily confirm, too, the outcome
of neurobiology: Cure for rejection is community.
One source for Integral Practice
