Radical Acceptance: Awakening the Love that Heals Fear and Shame

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For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much--just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us feel that we are not okay. Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first step toward reconnecting with who we really are and what it means to live fully. I've been studying Buddhism since I went to India in 2006 to learn from Geshe Sonam Rinchen at the Tibetan Library and Archives in Dharmasala, India, and with the Dalai Lama at a mass teaching. Translating a religion from one culture to another is an immense task, and one that has been happening seriously for Buddhism the only in the last fifty years or so. I heard about Tara Brach for the first time in the book Tools of Titans and that's how I ended up reading this wonderful book. 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?

I first came to Buddhism because I was raised by an atheist and a new ager, and wanted to be part of an organized religion but felt uncomfortable with God and the Bible. Yet as much as I loved Buddhist philosophy, the spiritual communities that have sprung up around it here in the US can be difficult to navigate. The intense hierarchy of a collectivist based culture such as Tibet translates poorly into the individualistic one of the West, and both teachers and students here can easily loose their way. I was able to scratch the surface, but there was much that was lost on me. With our American drive for excellence and superiority, it's easy to be pretentious and competitive in one's quest for spiritual understanding, and all I can say for myself is that I'm very glad I am open to being mistaken. Both aspects are needed for Radical Acceptance. Either one on its own will create an unbalanced and harmful mindset.This is also a lovely book, filled with poetry by Rumi, Rilke and others. Tara Brach is quite vulnerable in sharing her personal stories, which may or may not appeal to everyone, but you do not have to have a story line similar to hers to appreciate the teachings. I have tagged many passages and poems to return to. 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. Can we extend this friendly curiosity towards ourselves? The moments when we feel hurt, angry or afraid, are often the moments we most need to be kind towards ourselves. However, often the times when we need radical acceptance the most, are the times it might seem impossible to practice it. Oftentimes, we simply react to problems as they arise. However, when we just react, we’re often responding from a place of negative emotion such as fear, anger, or frustration. Stopping for just a few seconds to observe and identify your current experience can help you respond to it with wisdom and clarity. The Essential Pause Welcome to reality. There's no such thing as perfection. Buddhism invites us to let go of perfection, to let go of being so future-focused, and instead just to embrace the goodness of who we really are. If we rid ourselves of the belief that we're flawed and "bad," then we can start focusing on what makes us good and worthy.

Rather than relaxing and enjoying who we are and what we’re doing, we are comparing ourselves with an ideal and trying to make up for the difference.” pg. 15

You may think that all of this positive thinking and self-love means that we don't have to do any kind of self-reflection. Radical acceptance isn't about passively going along on life's journey or believing that we're all perfect. Instead, it's about empowering us to inspire change within ourselves. When our fear and shame don't encumber us, we can live more positively and embrace life and all of our relationships. In these two chapters we’ll look at specific challenges we all face in life, and how we can apply Radical Acceptance to overcome them. Everyone has bad days. Difficulties are inevitable, and so much of life is out of your hands. But the one thing you can steer is your mindset. When we offer ourselves the same quality of unconditional friendliness that we would offer to a friend, we stop denying our suffering. As we figuratively sit beside ourselves and inquire, listen and name our experience, we see Mara clearly and open our heart in tenderness for the suffering before us.” pg. 81 I found myself praying: ‘May I love and accept myself just as I am.’ I began to feel as if I were gently cradling myself. Every wave of life moving through me belonged and was acceptable. Even the voice of fear, the one that told me ‘something is wrong with me,’ was acceptable and could not taint this deep and genuine caring.” pg. 35