The term acceptance is frequently misunderstood, largely because it has numerous synonyms. Like many words in the English language, acceptance has various connotations that are especially laden with emotion. Acceptance refers simply to receiving or letting in whatever feelings are already present and actively responding to these feelings by allowing or letting be. Such receiving is a form of acknowledgment and perhaps surrender. Yet often, when people hear that they should ‘accept' something-be it a difficult situation or painful emotions-they think this means they should agree, approve, favor or even be resigned to the situation. When acceptance becomes equated with approval and agreement, it's easy to see how one might resist acceptance particularly when painful emotions are associated with a situation about which one is strongly opinionated.
It is human nature to want to push away experiences we find unpleasant or painful. The experience of aversion is a good example. When we accept what is unwanted, we allow the feelings to simply be in our awareness before rushing in and trying to fix or change them. Allowing these feelings to be in awareness means that we register their presence before deciding how to respond to them. When you cultivate acceptance, you create for yourself the possibility of a radically different relationship to your unwanted experience.
Once you recognize that you have judged something as "not wanted," you are in a position to practice acceptance of the unwanted experience. The unwillingness to accept negative feelings, physical sensations, or thoughts is the first link in the mental chain that can rapidly lead to automatic, habitual, old thought patterns of mind. These cognitive states usually lead to avoidance behaviors, including addictions, in an effort to push away all that is uncomfortable.
When you hold the intention of accepting, allowing, or letting be the unwanted experience, it decreases the likelihood of your attention being automatically "hijacked" by passing thoughts or moods. When you can soften your basic attitude or stance toward the experience from one of "not wanting" to one of "opening," you have begun to break the chain of conditioned, habitual and automatic emotional reactions. When you are not operating in the grip of old and conditioned reactions, you can actually see whether your thoughts are accurate and you can choose the response (mindfully) that is called for in the situation. For example, suppose you have the thought, "If this continues any longer, I'm going to lose it." Allowing it to be there and, as best you can, noticing what you feel in your body when you think this, and seeing the moment-by-moment changes in its intensity may offer you the chance to see that the thought may fade. In fact, your thoughts are always fading and shifting into other thoughts.
How to Cultivate and Use Acceptance
Have you ever tried sitting meditation? Most people who have not, have various ideas about meditation, the most common being the notion that one attempts to "clear the mind," or one works to achieve some state of inner peace and calmness. The simplest form of mindfulness meditation (sometimes called insight meditation) consists of sitting quietly while you direct your attention to your breathing. The task is to pay attention, without judging, to each inbreath and each outbreath. The first thing people discover is that this is not easy! The mind wanders all over the place and thoughts quickly take your attention off your breathing. But the idea is not to clear the mind of thoughts. All minds generate a constant stream of random thoughts and images. The task is simply to usher the mind back to the breath with gentleness and compassion, without judging. In time and with practice you will be able to observe your thoughts and feelings (physical and emotional) coming and going. Meditation is something one practices. It isn't a skill one uses to "fix" one's emotional or mental state. If you feel more mentally calm after a few minutes of meditation, that's great, but that's really the side-effect of meditation, not the goal. Again, the intentional task is to bring awareness to the sensations of the breath as it moves in and out the body. When our awareness and attention stray from the breath to other thoughts, bodily sensations, and feelings, we simply notice where the mind is, and then gently bring our awareness back to the breath.
But what do you do when your awareness is repeatedly pulled in the same direction, to a particular issue or thought stream, or to a feeling, or a set of bodily sensations? What is the task now when the pull on our attention is strong and our minds keep going back to the same place? One way to begin "opening to the difficult" is to think of the practice as having two steps. The basic approach remains to become mindfully aware of whatever is most predominant in one's moment-to-moment experience. So if the mind is repeatedly drawn to a particular thought stream, feelings, or bodily sensations, then the instructions are to bring awareness deliberately and intentionally to that place. That's step one.
The second step is to bring awareness to how we are relating, in the body, to whatever arises in that place. This "softening and opening to the unwanted experience" is what is meant by acceptance or letting be. To better understand the concept of acceptance, consider the opposite, nonacceptance. We can "be with" an arising thought, feeling, or bodily sensation, but in a nonaccepting, reactive way. If we do not like the experience because it is painful, unpleasant, or uncomfortable in some way, we tend to contract, to push it away out of fear, irritation, or annoyance. We brace in our body. We want it to go away. Each of these responses is the opposite of acceptance. Any massage therapist will probably agree that habitual physical tensing associated with nonacceptance tends to lead to very tangible body issues like shoulder and neck pain.
When we relate to an unpleasant experience with acceptance, we hold the experience in awareness and we simply allow the thoughts and feeling to be as they are, in this moment. We respond by allowing and letting be, by holding in awareness what, in a nonaccepting state, we would normally push away or avoid. In step two of the process we focus on accepting by softening and releasing tension in the body where we feel ourselves bracing against the unwanted feelings. We can use the breath in this process. Try breathing in from the places you notice you are holding tension and breathing out from those places while you visualize softening, relaxing and letting be.
The Practice
To practice the cultivation of acceptance, you might start by intentionally bringing to mind some problem, situation, condition or experience you are currently dealing with-something that is definitely unwanted and associated with feelings of wanting it to ‘go away.' Start your meditation by holding the idea that you are going, for just this moment, to stop trying to make things different than how they are. You are, for just this moment, going to stop trying to ‘fix' the situation. Accepting your experience of what is unwanted, means simply allowing space for whatever is going on, rather than trying to create some other state. Through acceptance, we settle back into a natural awareness of what is present. We let it be-we simply notice and observe whatever is already present. This is a new approach to dealing with the experiences that have a strong pull on our attention.
Once you have called to mind a difficult issue, some worry or intense feeling, notice where in your body you feel this. Deliberately move your focus of awareness to the part of your body where the sensations are strongest. Use the breath as a vehicle to do this. Breath ‘into' and ‘out from' that part of your body where the sensations are the strongest.
Having identified where in the body the sensations are the strongest, become aware of any aversion present by investigating where in the body the manifestations of such an attitude are expressed. See if you can begin to observe the physical sensations of resisting, holding, pushing away, or tensing and bracing. Once you have brought these bodily sensations into awareness, see if you can ‘open' and ‘soften' on the outbreath. Now you are ready to work on the second step, which is letting go of aversion.
Now that your attention has moved to the bodily sensations and you have the issue in your field of awareness, say to yourself, ‘It's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay. Let me feel it.' Then just staying with the awareness of these bodily sensations and your relationship to them, breathing with them, accepting them, letting them be, letting yourself ‘soften' and ‘open' to the sensations. See if you can ‘relax' into your difficulty. The idea is to soften and open-to relax, but not to ‘collapse' in a state of resignation. Softening and opening to the sensations you become aware of, say to yourself, ‘Soften,' ‘Open,' on each outbreath.
Hold these bodily sensations in your awareness and notice your relationship to them so long as they have a pull on your attention. Try again to hold together in your awareness both the sensations and the sense of the breath-breathing in the sensations. When you sense that the bodily sensations are no longer pulling for your attention, simply return your complete attention to your breath and continue with the breath as the primary object of attention.
This practice aims to explore the consequences of reversing the habitual tendency of the mind to move away from what is painful or difficult. Notice we are working on this by intentionally bringing a gentle and kindly awareness to the sense of how the difficulty is manifesting in the body, including aversion-related physical sensations. This is different from how we usually approach painful experience. The usual way is to try to mentally ‘solve' or ‘fix' the experience. This usually ends up becoming rumination about something unpleasant or painful, which then amplifies the physical and/or emotional pain. In this practice we begin to reverse our habitual rejection of the difficult and the unpleasant, and cultivate an attitude of acceptance and friendliness. Bringing a gentle curiosity to something is itself, part of acceptance. Holding something in awareness is an implicit affirmation that we can face it, name it, and work with it.
"But It's Not Okay"
Invariably when I work with people on the concept of acceptance, I am met with questions about how to deal with situations that really are not "okay" such as social injustice, violence, and other harmful actions in the world. When we say the words ‘it's okay... let me feel it,' we are not meaning that we necessarily agree with a particular situation. The words are simply meant to be a way to help you in that particular moment to come to a point of balance. It is not actually a final decision on the state of the world. You may not be able to do anything about the present situation-whether it concerns noise from the neighbors, or unjust laws-but you still have the possibility of doing something about your internal state. Remember that the goal is to respond from a place of mindfulness as opposed to reacting from a habitual and automatic behavior pattern.
Another potential "trap" people fall into when attempting to cultivate acceptance, is judging themselves negatively when they get reactive or find it impossible to accept the current state of affairs-whether that be external events or the internal pain associated with physical and emotional states. For example, one of my clients was having a difficult time accepting her husband's indifference to her. She frequently reacted by starting a fight with him or running away from the situation. When she could not stay in the moment, could not practice acceptance, she felt she was "also a failure at coping" with her difficulty. She was judging her reactions to the situation. It is important to recognize that just because you might not be able to cope effectively with a situation in the beginning, it does not mean you have ‘failed' at anything. Adding "I am a failure" is just one more negative judgment and can create even more problems for you. I often find those things we cannot do much about to be the most difficult to accept. And again, acceptance does not mean that we agree or go along with the current state of affairs, but it means that we accept the entire situation, including our reaction to it, just as it is, in this moment. People who remember to practice the breathing exercises during difficult times frequently report that their turmoil does not go on as long. They do not remain a prisoner or their old reactive emotions. When we can settle our emotions and thoughts down in the heat of a difficult moment, we can see more clearly what response is needed from us.
Acceptance is difficult to cultivate! However, it is an attitude that can be of tremendous benefit if we simply remember to do the best we can in the moment. Acceptance isn't like signing a final contract "I accept this as it is (and can now forget about it)," rather it is an active process that we choose from moment to moment. The softening, the opening, the relaxing we do does not happen all by itself. It requires moment-to-moment awareness and mindfulness. You will undoubtedly experience some combination of contracting or bracing and effortful softening and opening. You might even find that you vacillate between nonacceptance and acceptance a lot. Try just accepting that!
Acceptance versus Fixing Things
The act of bringing an accepting attitude to that which is difficult without having the hidden agenda of "fixing" it, is subtle and challenging. The distinction between accepting and fixing is difficult to grasp, maybe because when people talk about accepting something, they often describe positive changes that they have noticed as a result. Acceptance is then linked to positive outcomes, so it is natural then to try to reproduce such a positive outcome and use "acceptance" as part of a "doing/driven" mode, as a means of achieving the goal of relaxation or happiness. The problem with using the acceptance practice (breathing/body focus) to escape or distract yourself from your difficulty is that it tends not to make for a lasting change in the relationship you have with your difficulty.
When practicing acceptance formally with the instructions above, your intention, if possible, should always be more than taking a time-out. You are encouraged to step out of automatic pilot, to become aware of the "here and now" of your breath and body sensations. When you do this, there can be a change in the quality of the awareness of feelings or thoughts: a freshness of perspective that allows you to take a wider view of your experience rather than getting caught up in it.
If you only use the practice as an "escape hatch," a brief moment when you can retreat and relax before advancing again, you will probably derive some short term benefits, but it may not be so helpful in the long-run because you will not have changed your perspective on what gives rise to feeling stressed and pressured. A good example is what happens when you are caught in a downpour. Who has not run for shelter, stood in a doorway or telephone booth to get out of the rain? You may stand there awhile, hoping it will stop, but if the rain continues, sooner or later, you will have to face the fact that you cannot escape getting wet in the rain-it's still there. If you rush out into the rain and get drenched, you may find yourself cursing it, which only adds to your discomfort. If you can stop clinging to the hope that it will stop raining, when you go back out into the rain you may find that, although you get wet, your relationship to it has changed the whole experience. Doing this allows you to look more closely at the rain itself. You might even find the rain as compelling and fun as a child does! [Try substituting ‘my current problem' in place of the word ‘rain'.]
Summary
Once again, the main idea behind acceptance is that we learn to relate to things (pain, depression, and life's problems) differently. We are not trying to "fix" anything. Meditation with acceptance practice is not just another subtle technique designed to fix things. Segal, Williams, and Teasdale clarify the difference between fixing and acceptance in the following passage from their book, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse (2002) (page 239):
"one of the main themes underpinning the entire MBCT program is that, inasmuch as we tend to try to fix our problems (however subtly), we run the risk of getting caught in the loop in which we match ourselves against some ideal standard, then find ourselves (and our attempts to fix things) falling short. If this occurs it puts us back in the "doing/driven" mode and we are likely to simply end up ruminating about how, if mediation doesn't "work," perhaps we have reached the end of the road and had better give up on everything. MBCT is based on the radical (in the sense of going to the root) notion that the best way "to get somewhere" is not to try to get anywhere at all, but to open to the way things actually are in this moment; that direct perception and observation will show us new ways of navigating outside the "box" of our habitual patterns of reacting, seeing, and thinking about things."
The thirteenth century poet, Rumi, describes the essence of acceptance in his poem "The Guest House."
"The Guest House"
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
