“We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don’t. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success” [1]. As this quote from Henry Rollins suggests, the key to living a virtuous and happy life is to accept ourselves, unconditionally, with the ugliness of all the old scars and festering mental boils. And the best way to accept ourselves is to acknowledge and celebrate those scars and boils as trophies derived from conquering the monumental challenges we have had to face as bisexuals.

The virtue of acceptance begins with recognizing the self, or the mind or ego, as part of our divine soul that links the spiritual with the realities of this life. The role of the ego is to make sense of the past, to neutralize all the threats and negative feelings, so that we can accept the present and look forward to the future with pride and confidence. If you are feeling depressed or hopeless, or perhaps just have an empty feeling, or a belief that you are just floating through life with no meaning or purpose, do not despair; you are not alone. That is just our spirit working together with our minds or egos to urge us on to being more than just a victim of our circumstances.

Part of our growth is evaluating what we did yesterday. Sometimes, for whatever reason, we have not been able to understand and resolve some events and feelings. They may be traumatic like abuse, or rejection from a loved one, or they may just be a collection of events that build up to a feeling that the situation is hopeless. The mind or ego, by its very nature, has to take a second look at those times when we landed flat on our back with powerful negative feelings, feelings that it has never been able to resolve. It will keep visiting those events until it feels it is safe to move on. Sometimes those feelings or events are beyond the power of the mind to resolve. That gives us a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. These feeling challenge our belief in ourselves, making us feel like failures. We begin to blame ourselves for these failures which often leads to feelings of despair and self-loathing.  However we are not yet out of resources.  We can now tune into the Higher Self and the infinite power and positive energies of our spirits.

The key is to accept that our souls are made up of mind from the lower self and spirit from the higher self, and that all the struggles are in the mind. We then recognize and accept our spirit or Higher Self as a source of infinite power and wisdom. We then let the Higher Self flood our ego with self-love. We woo and seduce our ego. We tell it that we appreciate all it has tried to do. We encourage it to believe that it has done the best it could under the circumstances; in fact, it has done a great job given the scope of the situation. But we do not just stop at self-acceptance, we go beyond that to a celebration of self-appreciation and self-love.  This rewires the negative from the pain body of the ego into positive powers of love from the spirit and changes the circuitry of the brain. It allows the mind to use the new circuits to get off the old negative spinning wheel and create a new set of positive circuits. It can now prune those old axons and dendrites and forge new axons to new positive feelings and beliefs. In the process of acceptance we open up a new world where old thoughts and feeling begin to make sense thereby increasing our understanding and appreciation of life. We are now ready to move on to the next stage of our lives with increased understanding and power.

Now how does this apply to bisexuality? Here are my five steps to living a victorious bisexual life through the virtue of acceptance:

1. We recognize and accept our bisexual orientation without judgement. We are what we are. Through a combination of genetic predispositions and natal and early life experiences, we now have a body and brain that desires sexual connection with both males and females.  Without engaging in judgement and old thinking patterns we simply accept the fact that our body has these longings and desires. We thank our body for all the pleasures it provides including our ability to enjoy sensuous experiences more intensely from both sides of life.
2. We recognize and accept the struggles of our egos to balance our bisexual desires with the longing for acceptance and approval from others. We realize the depths of these conflicts but we also recognize the need to be true to ourselves and the desires of our bodies and souls. We accept that the feelings of rejection and confusion are natural under the circumstances. We then make a conscious ego-based decision to move on.
3. We also recognize and accept that we are more than just a combination of body and mind. We reach out to the higher self and invite it into our minds and bodies. We realize that the spirit accepts our bisexuality.  It has no desire to judge, condemn or change us. It just wants to use this part of us to reach a deeper understanding life and to forge new or deeper connections with others. We then silently, and without thought, entrust the spirit to do its work. It will flood our souls with love and self-acceptance. We stay there grounded in this new reality until the spirit begins the process of forging a new beginning through the rewiring and changing of the mind. We will experience this as a feeling of contentment and divine acceptance and peace.
4.  We make plans to daily check if we are still experiencing contentment and peace and then invite the spirit to infuse the soul with the power of self-love. However, we recognize and accept that the bisexual struggle is not yet over and will never be completely resolved in the mind. Those old components of the circuits made up of wounds, feelings, and memories will always be a part of us. The triggers from our environment will always have the power to reconnect all these old circuits of pain. When flashbacks occur we consciously understand and accept that the ego is perceiving a threat from something that is happening in the present. We thank the ego for its diligence and willingness in bringing it to our conscious mind which is under the influence of the spirit. We then resolve the issue from a spiritual perspective of wisdom and power and consciously invite the spirit to bathe the situation with self-love and love for others and move us on.
5. We recognize and accept that life is a journey towards spiritual Self Actualization and that our bisexuality is not a hindrance but an advantage in understanding the complexities of life. We then bring this gift to others.

[1] Rollins, Henry: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henryrolli616896.html