Radical Acceptance: Awakening the Love that Heals Fear and Shame

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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.

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. The two aspects of radical acceptance are recognition and compassion. We can’t accept the experience until we can clearly see what it is that we’re experiencing. Buddhists call this mindful awareness, and it's the process of seeing things as they are. This includes patterns that emerge in our lives and broader consequences of our thoughts and actions. The second part is the ability to respond with care and tenderness, in other words, compassion. Our greatest needs are met when we relate to one another, when we are fully present in every moment instead of worrying about the past or future, and when we accept and revel in the beauty—and the pain—that’s always around us.Feelings of inadequacy and not being "good enough" are commonplace. We've all heard the saying that the harshest critic is often ourselves, and this couldn't be more true. We've been led to believe that perfection is a standard that we can all achieve, and we have ideas about our ideal selves. Wouldn't it be liberating to shed all of this pressure and just live in the moment? There’s a common misconception that Buddhism is anti-pleasure and anti-desire. People can come away with the impression that they’re not supposed to want things, or to pursue those wants. In fact, Buddha’s teachings were never about eliminating or ignoring desire. As with all of our experiences, Buddha merely urges us not to be ruled by it. 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. 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. One sometimes runs into folks who are suspicious of Buddhism and particularly of the capacity of westerners to find solace in an allegedly Buddhist perspective. I am not a Buddhist, but have found a lot of value in meditation--and in the ethical viewpoint roughly associated with Buddhist practice.

When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is.” pg. 86 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

Talks, Meditations and Resources to guide you:

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?