Radical Acceptance
by Tara Brach

  • Philosophy
  • Ashto = 2/10
  • Jonesy = 5/10

Over the past 20 years as a psychologist and Buddhist teacher, Tara Brach has worked with thousands of clients and students and they have revealed how painfully burdened they feel by a sense of not being good enough. We don’t have to wait until we are on our deathbed to realise what a waste of our precious lives it is to carry the belief that something is wrong with us. Yet because our habits of feeling so insufficient are so strong, awakening from the trance involves not only inner resolve, but also an active training of the heart and mind.

Through Buddhist awareness and practices, we free ourselves from the suffering of trance by learning to recognise what is true in the present moment, embracing whatever we see with an open heart. This is radical acceptance. It reverses our habit of living at war with experiences that are unfamiliar, frightening or intense. It is the necessary antidote to years of neglecting ourselves, years of judging and treating ourselves harshly, years of rejecting this moment’s experience. It is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is.

UNWORTHINESS

A legend from Ancient India tells of a musk deer who one fresh spring day detected a mysterious and heavenly fragrance in the air. It hinted of peace, beauty and love, and beckoned him onwards. Compelled to find its source he searched the whole world over. He climbed forbidding and icy mountain peaks, padded through steamy jungles, trekked across endless desert sands. Wherever he went the scent was there, faint but always undetectable. At the end of his life, exhausted from the relentless search, the deer collapsed. As he fell his horn pierced his belly and suddenly the air was filled with the heavenly scent. As he lay dying, the musk deer realised that the fragrance had all along been emanating from within himself.

We may be spending our lives seeking something that is actually right inside us, and could be found if we would only stop and deepen our attention.

But distracted, we spend our life on our way to somewhere else.

The Trance

Caught up in our stories and fears about how we might fail, we are living in a waking dream that completely defines and delimits our experience of life. The rest of the world seems merely a backdrop as we struggle to get somewhere, to be a better person, to accomplish, to avoid making mistakes. Like in a dream, we take our own stories to be the objective truth, and it consumes most of our attention. While we eat at lunch or drive home from work – while we talk to our partners or read to our children at night – we continue to replay our worries and plans. Inherent in The Trance is the belief that no matter how hard we try, we are always, in some way, falling short

Feeling unworthy goes hand in hand with feeling separate from others, separate from life. If we are defective, how can we possibly belong?

It’s a vicious cycle- the more deficient we feel, the more separate and vulnerable we feel. Underneath our fear of being flawed is a more primal fear that something is wrong with life, that something bad is going to happen.

Our feelings of unworthiness and alienation from others gives rise to various forms of suffering:

  • For some, the most glaring expression is addiction
  • For some it is alcohol, food or drugs
  • For some it’s a relationship, dependent on a person
  • In order to feel complete or that life is worth living
  • Some try to feel important through long hours of gruelling work, an addiction that our culture often applauds
  • Some create outer enemies so that they are always at war with the world

The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved. We fear that if they realise that we’re boring or stupid, selfish or insecure, they’ll reject us. Convinced we are not good enough, we can never relax. We stay on guard, monitoring ourselves for our shortcomings. When we inevitably find them, we even feel more insecure and undeserving, we try even harder.

The irony is – where do we think we’re going anyway? We feel as if we’re steamrolling through our days, driven by the feeling that we need to do more. We’re skimming over life and racing to the finish line – death.

UNWORTHINESS CURE – ACCEPTANCE

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change” – Carl Rogers

Mohini was a regal white tiger who lived in the Washington National Zoo. It lived in a 12 foot cage with iron bars and a cement floor. Mohini spent her days pacing restlessly back and forth in her cramped quarters. Eventually they created a natural habitat, covering several acres, hills, trees, ponds and vegetation. But it was too late – the tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound where she lived the remainder of her life. Mohini paced in that corner until an area twelve by twelve feet was worn bare of grass.

The biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns. Entangled in the trance of unworthiness, we grow accustomed to caging ourselves in with self-judgement and anxiety, with restlessness and dissatisfaction. Like Mohini, we grow incapable of accessing the freedom and peace that are our birthright:

  • We may want to love other people but are holding back
  • To feel authentic
  • To breathe in the beauty all around us
  • To dance and sing

Yet each day we listen to our inner voices that keep our lives small. Even if we were to win a million in the lottery or marry the perfect person, as long as we are not good enough we won’t be able to enjoy the possibilities before us.

Unlike Mohini we CAN learn to recognise when we are keeping ourselves trapped by our own beliefs and fears. We can see how we are wasting our precious lives

The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-moment experience. By accepting absolutely everything, we are aware of what is happening within our body and mind in any given moment, without trying to control or judge or pull away. It’s not just putting up with bad behaviour. It is an inner process of accepting our actual, present-moment experience. It means feeling sorrow without pain without resisting. It means feeling desire or dislike for someone or something without judging ourselves for the feeling or being driven to act on it.

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

When we are caught in the trance of unworthiness, we do not clearly recognise what is happening inside us, nor do we feel kind. The two parts of genuine acceptance, seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion – enable us to fly and be free.

The poet Rumi saw clearly that the relationship between our wounds and awakening

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

When we look directly at the bandaged place without denying or avoiding it, we become tender towards our human vulnerability. Our attention allows the light of wisdom and compassion to enter. In this way, the times of great suffering can become times of profound spiritual insight and opening. Nearly all of us have faced seasons in our life where everything seemed to be falling apart. At these times, all the beliefs upon which we based our life are torn from their moorings

FEAR

While physical and emotional pain is unpleasant, the pain of fear can feel unbearable. When we are gripped by fear, nothing else exists. Our most contracted and painful sense of self is hitched to feelings and stories of fear. To our ways of resisting fear, yet this trance begins to lose its power over us as we meet the raw sensations of fear with radical acceptance. Such acceptance is profoundly freeing. As we learn to say yes to the fear, we reconnect with the fullness of being – The heart and awareness that have been overshadowed by the contraction of fear.

The basic function of fear is survival. Life forms as primitive as reptile experience fear. On a purely physiological level, fear is a chain of physical reactions that occur in an unvarying sequence. Western psychologists call this biological response an affect. It can unfold in an instant or endure for up to a few seconds. As the effect of fear arises, the chemistry of the body and nervous system shifts in ways that enable several distinct responses to threatening situations.

Without fear we would not be able to stay alive or to thrive. The problem is: the emotion of fear often works over time. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body will remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-moment experience, becomes bound in reactivity.

The trance of fear not only creates habitual contraction in our body. Our mind too becomes trapped in rigid patterns. The one pointedness that served us in responding to real threats, becomes obsession. Our mind, making associations with past experiences, produces endless stories reminding us of what bad things might happen, and strategizing how to avoid them. We might tell ourselves that inevitably we’ll always ruin things. Or trapped in the powerlessness of victim-hood, that others will always ruin things for us. Either way, our stories tell us we are broken and need to be on guard.

In cultivating radical acceptance of fear, we see again and again how the wings of mindfulness and compassion are interrelated. Otherwise the comfort of feeling spacious might tempt me to avoid feeling the unpleasantness of immediate experience. 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 is “leaning into fear”.

Leaning into fear

In a popular teaching story, a man chased by a tiger leaps off a cliff in his attempt to get away. Fortunately a tree dangling breaks his fall. Dangling from one arm – he yells out ‘God help me!’… A voice responds ‘yes’

The terrified man says he’ll do anything , please. God responds – “let go”. The man pauses for a moment and then calls out

“Is anyone else there?”

In the face of fear, letting go of what seems to be our lifeline is the last thing we want to do. We try to avoid the tiger’s mouth and the jutting rocks by accumulating possessions, by getting lost in a our mental stories, by drinking 3 glasses of wine every evening. But to free ourselves  from the trance of fear we must let go of the tree limb and fall into the fear, opening to the sensations and the wild play of feelings in our body.

We must agree to feel what our mind tells us is “too much”. We must agree to the pain of dying, to the inevitable loss of all that we hold dear.

Leaning into fear does not mean losing our balance and getting lost in fear. Because our usual stance in relating to fear is leaning away from it, to turn and face fear directly serves as a correction.

As we lean in, we are inviting, moving toward what we habitually resist. Leaning in allows us to touch directly the quivering, the shakiness, the gripping tightness that is fear

Whether it is a familiar but vague feeling of anxiety or a strong surge of fear, leaning in can help us become aware and free in the midst of our experience. We might wake up after a disturbing dream, we might have just gotten a call from our doctor’s office about a suspicious mammogram, or the company downsizing, or the potential of a terrorist attack

In any of these circumstances – ask yourself – what is happening right now? What is asking for my attention or acceptance?

When the trance of fear arises, instead of getting caught up in worrying or looking for something to eat, or getting busy, we can choose to lean in.

As we long as we’re alive we feel fear. It is an intrinsic part of our makeup, as natural as bitter cold winter day or the winds that rip branches off trees. If we resist it or push it aside, we miss a powerful opportunity for awakening.

If we are waiting only for our fear to end, we will not discover pure and loving presence that unfolds as we surrender into the darkest of nights. Only by letting to into the stream of life and loss and death do we come into this freedom.

Facing fear is a lifelong training in letting go of all we cling to. We practice as we face our many daily fears. Performing well, insecurity around certain people, worries about children, finances or letting down the people you love. Our capacity to meet the ongoing losses of life with Radical Acceptance grows with practice

OUR TRUE NATURE

In a classic Zen story, the disciple Hui-K’e asks his master – “please help clear my mind”. Bodhidharma responds by saying “bring me your mind so that I can quiet it”. After a moment of silence, Hui-Ke says, “but I can’t find my mind”. Bhodhidharma replies with a smile “I have now quietened your mind”.

Like Hui-K when we look within, there is no entity, no mind, substance, no self, no thing we can identify. There is just awareness – open awareness. We can’t locate any canter or find the edge of experience. Unless we anchor ourselves again in thoughts, or grasp after desired sensations, we have no where to stand, no firm ground. This can be disconcerting, scary and incredibly mysterious.

But this nothingness is not empty of life. Rather, empty awareness is full with presence, alive with knowing. The very nature of awareness is cognisance, a continuous knowing of the stream of experience. To recognize this pure awareness, we need to relax the veil of stories, thoughts, wants, fears that cover our natural being. To see the universe as is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net if full of holes

Our attention is always fixated on something – a flattering comment someone said, our plan for next Saturday, an image of our dirty kitchen. Everything we can possibly see, hear, feel or imagine – this entire world – is a fantastic display appearing and vanishing in awareness. As you explore the space between the thoughts, through the holes in the net you are looking into awareness itself. You might sit quietly and simply listen for a few moments

The path of awakening is simply a process of wakeful, profound relaxing, we see what is here right now and we let go into life exactly as is.

“There is only one world, the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle”

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