Radical Acceptance: Awakening the Love that Heals Fear and Shame

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Thoughts of unworthiness also create feelings of isolation. When we don’t think that we’re good enough, we assume that others think the same thing. We find it hard to trust people who offer us love, friendship, or even simple encouragement. Letting Go of Perfection Many times since then, especially when I’ve been caught up in tension or self-judgment, I have stopped and asked myself, ’What would it be like if I could accept life—accept this moment—exactly as it is?’ Regardless of which particular mental movie has been playing, just the intention to accept my experience begins to deepen my attention and soften my heart. As I grow more intimate with the actual waves of experience moving through me, the running commentary in my mind releases its grip, and the tension in my body begins to dissolve. Each time I begin again, wakefully allowing life to be as it is, I experience that vivid sense of arriving, of reentering the changing flow of experience. This ‘letting be’ is the gateway to being filled with wonder and fully alive.” pg. 44-45

There will be times when we doubt that we really have Buddha nature—times when we feel angry, judgmental, unfocused, or self-conscious. At times like these, it’s helpful to remember the story of Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree. Western culture typically entrenches fears of inadequacy, and feelings of belonging don't come naturally. Although we have family and community bonds, many of us feel like we can't make mistakes freely, and that we're alone in dealing with things. Standards dictate that we need to compete, and if we fall short of an expectation, then we're failures. While high standards aren't always bad, the message that we're inferior if we fall short is incredibly damaging.

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It [meditation geared toward cultivating a state of peacefulness, energy or rapture] was a valuable training, but I found that when I was in emotional turmoil, these meditations at best only temporarily covered over my distress. I was manipulating my inner experience rather than being with what was actually happening. The Buddhist mindfulness practices, on the other hand, taught me to simply open and allow the changing stream of experience to move through me. When a harsh self-judgment appeared, I could recognize it simply as a passing thought. It might be a tenacious and regular visitor, but realizing it wasn’t truth was wonderfully liberating. . .I was no longer striving to rid myself of pain, rather I was learning to relate to the suffering I felt with care. From the very start, these practices carried me to a loving, open and accepting awareness that felt like my true nature.” pg. 43-44 Along those same lines the author seemed to anticipate my mental rejection of the concepts. She would directly confront rationalizations, sarcastic comments or undermining doubts in a way that clearly demonstrated she understood the problems faced by her readers.

I particularly appreciated the chapter on how to accept fear and the accompanying meditation guide for how to work through fear to a place of acceptance and power. It is a skill set I need to develop in a bad way before I go through childbirth in a few months. :)However, fear often goes beyond what’s needed to keep us alive. We may find ourselves tense and on guard, even when there’s no threat to our safety. Our minds may be working constantly, trying to figure out what will go wrong next. When this is the case, we’re in a state of defending our lives rather than living them. Her breaking down of specific concepts and applying them (somewhat) systematically is helpful and for most of the book, a breezy read (I found the last few chapters that I was losing a bit of patience), and her inclusion of specific exercises and meditations connected to each concept by chapter is helpful. As, to whatever degree it is, the book has some role as a discussion and instructional guide for practitioner/therapists interested in integrating meditative practices and Buddhist spirituality into their work it would have been extremely helpful, and in my mind helped her cause of this as a serious discussion, if she had spent some focused time and energy on the challenges of doing so, some cases that didn’t go so well, places where the two traditions can seem (and maybe or maybe not be) contradictory or incompatible. The trance of unworthiness is a prison that leads to self-destructive behaviors such as drinking too much, over-eating, smoking, losing our tempers, withdrawing, or whatever other so-called coping mechanisms we think will help. The fact is that the inability to accept ourselves is what leads us to spiral into patterns of self-destructive behaviors. Is The West to Blame?

How often do you wish that you could change aspects of your personality, or be more like the people that you admire? Many of us are caught up in a web of deficiency, and beat ourselves up for our so-called failures. While many of us wish that we could celebrate the accomplishments of others, sometimes we feel envious or have a heightened sense of our own inability to achieve our goals. Other times we may feel vulnerable when criticized or don't perform at our best. If you look at the people around you, most of them experience these exact feelings of unworthiness. The good news is that we can shift our mindset and learn, not only to accept ourselves, but to radically accept who we are. I also feel a near-allergic reaction to “self-help” books written in “we” statements (eg. “When WE begin to feel our feelings, WE see our true self blah blah blah”). I judge it to be emotionally coercive and passive and my want is for everyone to own their judgements and wants and beliefs—ESPECIALLY “spiritual” teachers!—by switching to “I” statements (eg. “My judgement/belief is that when I begin to feel my feelings, I see my true self”). This course was previously offered on Udemy. If you have taken this course on Udemy and don’t want to take it again, please explore some of the other courses here. But there were a few key sections, and really the overarching concept, that were just so useful and important and applicable. I liked a lot how she used real life anecdotes about people applying these concepts to their own challenges. There was a tiger named Mohini who lived at the Washington, D.C. National Zoo. She spent most of her life pacing around her 12x12 cage. Finally, biologists and zoo staff worked together to create what they thought would be an ideal enclosure: an area that covered several acres, complete with hills, a pond, and lots of different plants. They thought she’d be happy there.At times anyone would have had a feeling of unworthiness, fear of rejection, sour to our family and friends, longing for fame, this would cause shame, distress, broken relations, reduce in productivity at work and decline in health. The author helps to resolve these problems with her personal experiences, case histories, Buddhist teachings and meditation practices. Each chapter ends with a meditation practice to let go of the negative emotion. One of the things I like about this book is the many sources it draws on. It is personal, telling, for example, of joining an ashram and having a falling out with its leader, of a divorce, of difficulties in raising her son. It draws on her professional work, relating stories of exchanges that, as a psychotherapist, she has had with her clients. And most of all it is literary, skillfully so. She retells and interprets stories from the tradition, as well as anecdotes from contemporary American life, all to the end of introducing the outlines of a kind of consciousness she calls "Radical Acceptance." Myths and misconceptions tend to surround radical acceptance. Here are some of the most common misunderstandings. Radical acceptance means you ‘approve’ of the situation