I knew I would never treat a friend the way I treated myself, without mercy or kindness.

In the eyes of the world, I was highly functional. Internally, I was anxious, driven and often depressed. I didn’t feel at peace with any part of my life.

“You know,” she whispered softly, “all my life I thought something was wrong with me.” Shaking her head slightly, as if to say, “What a waste,” she closed her eyes and drifted back into a coma. Several hours later she passed away.

Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is. A moment of Radical Acceptance is a moment of genuine freedom.

radical is derived from the Latin word radix, meaning “going to the root or origin.” Radical Acceptance enables us to return to the root or origin of who we are, to the source of our being.

We yearn for an unquestioned experience of belonging, to feel at home with ourselves and others, at ease and fully accepted. But the trance of unworthiness keeps the sweetness of belonging out of reach.

The irony of all of this is . . . where do we think we are going anyway? One meditation student told me that he felt as if he were steamrolling through his days, driven by the feeling that he needed to do more. In a wistful tone he added, “I’m skimming over life and racing to the finish line—death.”

Those who feel plagued by not being good enough are often drawn to idealistic worldviews that offer the possibility of purifying and transcending a flawed nature. This quest for perfection is based in the assumption that we must change ourselves to belong.

Our imperfect parents had imperfect parents of their own. Fears, insecurities and desires get passed along for generations.

Strategies to manage the pain of inadequacy:

1. We embark on one self-improvement project after another.
2. We hold back and play it safe rather than risking failure.
3. We withdraw from our experience of the present moment.
4. We keep busy.
5. We focus on other people’s faults.

The more we anxiously tell ourselves stories about how we might fail or what is wrong with us or with others, the more we deepen the grooves—the neural pathways—that generate feelings of deficiency.

The Buddha’s amazing insight was that all suffering or dissatisfaction arises from a mistaken understanding that we are a separate and distinct self. This perception of “selfness” imprisons us in endless rounds of craving and aversion. When our sense of being is confined in this way, we have forgotten the loving awareness that is our essence and that connects us with all of life.

Our most habitual and compelling feelings and thoughts define the core of who we think we are. If we are caught in the trance of unworthiness, we experience that core as flawed. When we take life personally by I-ing and my-ing, the universal sense that “something is wrong” easily solidifies into “something is wrong with me.”

Like waking up from a bad dream, when we can see our prison, we also see our potential.

Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being “without anxiety about imperfection.”

The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience.

Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart,

The two parts of genuine acceptance—seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion—are as interdependent as the two wings of a great bird. Together, they enable us to fly and be free.

Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.
Rumi

Common misunderstandings about Radical Acceptance

1. Radical Acceptance is resignation.
2. Radical Acceptance does not mean defining ourselves by our limitations. It is not an excuse for withdrawal.
3. Radical Acceptance is not self-indulgence.
4. Radical Acceptance does not make us passive.
5. Radical Acceptance doesn’t mean accepting a “self.”

The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.

“What would it be like if I could accept life—accept this moment—exactly as it is?”

Enough. These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here. This opening to the life we have refused again and again until now. Until now.
David Whyte

Taking our hands off the controls and pausing is an opportunity to clearly see the wants and fears that are driving us. During the moments of a pause, we become conscious of how the feeling that something is missing or wrong keeps us leaning into the future, on our way somewhere else. This gives us a fundamental choice in how we respond: We can continue our futile attempts at managing our experience, or we can meet our vulnerability with the wisdom of Radical Acceptance.

Often the moment when we most need to pause is exactly when it feels most intolerable to do so…letting go of the controls seems to run counter to our basic and instinctual ways of getting what we want.

In traditional cultures, naming plays a significant role in the healing process. It is believed that no matter how powerful the spirits causing the illness may be, if the shaman can name them, they are subdued.

“I see you Mara”

I, like the Buddha, was inviting Mara to tea, I intended not only to accept what I was feeling but to actively welcome it.

Sensations in the body are ground zero, the place where we directly experience the entire play of life.

Pain is our body’s call to pay attention, to take care of ourselves.

The fear of pain is often the most unpleasant part of a painful experience.

The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.
Alice Miller

The essence of mindfulness practice: It doesn’t matter what is happening. What matters is how we are relating to our experience.

In Buddhism, the three fundamental refuges are the Buddha (our awakened nature), the dharma (the path or the way) and the sangha (the community of spiritual aspirants). In these refuges we find genuine safety and peace.

When fear is too overwhelming, medical intervention, at least for a period of time, may be the most compassionate response.

Being mindful of fear requires being both open and awake. As Barbara experienced, opening her mind allowed her to be present without constriction. Being awake enabled her to recognize and fully experience whatever was arising. Both of these aspects of mindfulness are essential in widening the lens. If we don’t remain awake, spaciousness can become spacing out. We can seek openness as a way of avoiding fear rather than meeting it with mindfulness.

Being genuinely awake in the midst of fear requires the willingness to actively contact the sensations of fear. This intentional way of engaging with fear I call “leaning into fear.”

Pause and ask, “What is happening right now?”, “What is asking for attention?”, “What is asking for acceptance?”…It is especially important to address this inquiry to the sensations we feel in our throat, heart and stomach. These are the areas in our body where fear expresses itself most distinctly.

You nights of anguish. Why didn’t I kneel more deeply to accept you, Inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain. How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration To see if they have an end. Though they are really Seasons of us, our winter . . .
Rainer Maria Rilke

Facing fear is a lifelong training in letting go of all we cling to—it is a training in how to die.

Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.

“May this suffering serve to awaken compassion,”

Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you.
As few human Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice So tender,
My need of God Absolutely Clear.
Hafiz

Attention is the most basic form of love.

Aversion arises because we are so deeply conditioned to feel separate and different from others.

Compassion for others is the flavor of love that arises when we see this truth of our shared suffering.

Spiritual awakening is inextricably involved with others.

The poet Longfellow writes, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

I sometimes ask students to choose someone they see regularly but are not personally involved with. When they have brought this person to mind, I invite them to consider, “What does he or she need?” “What does this person fear?” “What is life like for this person?”

Sometimes the very people we are closest to become unreal to us. We might easily assume we know what life is like for them and forget that, like us, they are always changing, their experience is always new. We lose sight of how fully they too are living with hurts and fears, how hard life can be on the inside.

I am larger and better than I thought.
I did not think I held so much goodness.
Walt Whitman

Novelist and mystic Romaine Rolland says, “There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.”

The Buddhist perspective holds that there is no such thing as a sinful or evil person. When we harm ourselves or others, it is not because we are bad but because we are ignorant. To be ignorant is to ignore the truth that we are connected to all of life, and that grasping and hatred create more separation and suffering. To be ignorant is to ignore the purity of awareness and capacity for love that expresses our basic goodness.

This is the essence of forgiveness. Whether we are angry with ourselves or others, we forgive by letting go of blame and opening to the pain we have tried to push away.

“What would happen if, just for a short time, you put aside your story of being a bad person?”

Rather than forgiving a “self,” we forgive the experiences we are identified with. While resistance keeps us stuck by hardening our heart and contracting our body and mind, saying, “I forgive this,” or, “forgiven,” creates a warmth and softness that allow emotions to unfold and change.

We can’t punish ourselves into being a good person.

We can’t will ourselves to forgive—forgiving is a product not of effort but of openness. This is why the intention to forgive is such a key element in the process. To be willing but not quite ready to forgive holds the door open a crack.

When we forgive, we stop rigidly identifying others by their undesirable behavior. Without denying anything, we open our heart and mind wide enough to see the deeper truth of who they are. We see their goodness. When we do, our hearts naturally open in love.

In the words of physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen, “One moment of unconditional love may call into question a lifetime of feeling unworthy and invalidate it.” Matt had seen this power of love to heal.

I sought my god,
my god I could not see
I sought my soul,
my soul eluded me
I sought my brother
and found all three
Anonymous

Loving acceptance combined with forthright honesty are the key components in what substance abuse professionals call an “intervention.”

As a Japanese proverb expresses, “Seeing pure awareness without engaging lovingly with our life is a daydream. Living in this relative world without vision is a nightmare.”