Transform Your Life with Radical Acceptance

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Today’s read time: 9 min

Tara Brach is a meditation teacher and author who has impacted me immensely. Below are the main insights and takeaways from her powerful book, Radical Acceptance.

I highly recommend this book if you are (1) willing to look at things that are tough to look at and/or (2) eager to improve the quality of your thoughts.

This book touches on aspects related to “the self”, inadequacy and unworthiness, happiness, our bodies, desire, fear, compassion, and much more.

It helped me, among other things, recognize (a) a bunch of BS stories I tell myself, (b) how they’ve shown up in my life, (c) how to shift my approach to fear and “deficiencies”, and (d) how to see fellow humans in a more compassionate way. Hope you enjoy the insights!

• The trance consists of feelings of unworthiness, insecurity, a feeling of undeserving … it often leads us to try to be admired, to be needed

• The trance shows up as: I have to do more to be okay, I have to have more to be happy

• We can't relax because we're convinced we're not good enough

• We manage this pain of inadequacy by:

  • Self-improvement projects (stems from I'm not good enough)

  • Playing it safe rather than risking failure

  • Withdrawing from our present moment experience

  • Keeping busy → helps us remain distant from the pain of vulnerability, deficiency, and aloneness lurking

  • Becoming our own worst critic

  • Focusing on other people's faults → blaming others temporarily relieves us from the weight of failure

• Buddhist perspective: suffering arises from a mistaken understanding that we're a separate and distinct self. We’re not. We simply draw together a bunch of thoughts, emotions, and patterns of behavior to create a story about a personal, individual entity that has continuity thorough time. The “self” is a story we tell. It’s not real.

Thankfully, we can awaken from this unconscious trance. Here’s how:

• Pause and make self available to whatever life is offering in each moment

• We have to stop our mental busyness and endless activities to know our actual experience

• Most of our pace and controlling is because of an anxiety about something being wrong or not enough

• Doing nothing helps us overcome our compulsion to control

• Addiction: behaviors we use to keep us from pain only fuel our suffering

• Carl Jung: the unfaced and unfelt parts of our psyche are the source of all neurosis and suffering

• We chase after the pleasure and security we hope will give us lasting happiness

• Explore what's happening, what most wants my attention now

• Recognize my whole mental dramas are silly .. greet whatever arises in awareness with “yes, hello. It's okay”

• Name and note passing flow of thoughts, feelings, sensations; don't judge it or see it as anything "wrong"

  • E.g “afraid, tight, story about blowing it, fear of rejection”

  • When lost in thought, notice “planning, obsessing, fantasizing”

• Stop comparing ourselves to some assumed standard of perfection

• "When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change"

• With a thought, there's a sensation in the body first .. Don't miss it; it's the root

• See that our physical experience doesn't hold still for even a moment

• We suffer when we cling to or resist experience; when we want life to be different than it is

• There's no self generating thoughts or sensations; life just happens .. as a magical display of appearances

• Relate to desire without getting possessed by it and without resisting it (resisting hardens us)

  • Suffering comes from trying to fight the demons; it's about surrendering, to stop resisting

• All things change, come and go; there's no permanent satisfaction

• We lean into the next moment hoping it'll offer the satisfaction that the present moment does not

• We try to satisfy emotional needs with substitutes

  • Workaholism to solve the feeling of inadequacy or unworthiness -> obsessed with productivity, consuming, recognition

• We're primed to grasp after pleasure and avoid pain

• Our culture promises satisfaction through consuming

• Consciously forgive and let go when cravings arise

• See through the stories we create - e.g. the self who is a victim of desire, a self who is fighting desire, a self who has to have something more/different

• Fear is the anticipation of future pain; it takes over our mind with stories about what will go wrong

• Fear only lasts a few seconds; it then persists by being stimulated by fearful thoughts & memories; we respond to an accumulation of past pain

• Stories of unworthiness and shame are the binding elements of the trance of fear

• Accept the fear, ask it what it's afraid of; hold it with love

  • “What is asking for attention/acceptance?”

    • Inquire into the sensations in heart/throat/stomach ; connect with the body's feeling; drop all the stories of the mind

• Our very nature is aware and loving .. We just often forget it

• As long as we're alive, we feel fear

• We must agree to feel what's too much - to the pain of dying, to the inevitable loss of all we hold dear

• Letting go into fear is like lying down on an icy couch

• Facing fear is a lifelong training in letting go of all we cling to; it's a training in how to die

• Radical Acceptance = to see clearly what's happening in me and meeting it with compassion

• All circumstances serve to awaken compassion

• Compassion = to be with, feel with, suffer with

• Compassion frees us from self-hatred

• Mindfulness is about turning inward and listening deeply to the suffering that's giving rise

• Compassion for others = seeing the truth of our shared suffering; the pain in our life is an expression of universal suffering

  • The pain of inadequacy or rejection? Millions feel that!

• Everyone's vulnerable, afraid, etc.; we all fear being unworthy, incompetent, and insecure

• "Tendency to climb the ladder of perfection and hide our deficiencies". Don’t hide them!

• Even if we don't like someone, seeing their vulnerability allows us to open our hearts to them

  • Think: what does this person need/fear? What is life like for this person?

• Everyone needs to be listened to, loved, and understood

• Our grief is the honest recognition that this cherished life is passing

• Many of us are fed a mythical Adam and Eve story about how we're flawed and don't deserve to be happy, loved, or at ease with life

• We mistakenly buy into the belief that we're flawed, bad, unlovable

• We're so used to replaying the story of what's wrong with ourselves and others that it becomes our familiar way of being

• We need to see past the roles, stories, and behaviors that obscure our true nature

• Forgiveness = letting go of blame and opening to see the pain we've pushed away

• Forgive the experiences we're identified with

  • “I forgive the shame for existing”, NOT “I forgive myself” .. we’re not our experiences.

• We need to reflect on our own goodness - e.g. qualities and behaviors that I appreciate about myself; see ourselves through the eyes of a close friend

• See people as children or imagine seeing them for the last time

• About looking beyond our habitual judgments; every person is new every moment

• Relax the stories, wants, thoughts, and fears in order to recognize pure awareness

• Stop trying to control / interpret our experience

• On one hand, there's nothing to do, force, want; everything happens by itself

• "Only our search for happiness prevents us from seeing it"

• Our OG nature = empty, wakeful awareness; not mental dramas and charging emotions

• We’re more at home in awareness than any story of a self falling short or on our way somewhere else

• Nothing is missing!

• Recognize the clear, shining light of your own nature

With deep appreciation,
Phil

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