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Meditation on Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance

I use the term 'radical' in its earlier figurative sense of 'essential', or 'rooted in'. In this sense, 'radical acceptance' is a state rooted in, or essential to, acceptance of the conditions or situation in which we find ourselves. I would add that as 'acceptance', it is also rooted in consciousness - it is not just a matter of being in the situation in which we find ourselves, but also of consciously accepting and perceiving that it-is-as-it-is.

Pure Consciousness - our essential nature - inevitable perceives through the lenses of experiences; through our biographically lived embodied selves; through our sensory limitations (different to those of, for example, bees or sea urchins). Radical acceptance sees this through the eyes of wisdom, of love, of truth, and renounces all activities of 'dominance' or of seeking to control through our ego-centric will, instead relinquishing the world as it is to itself - a kind of pure surrender, yielding control to the flow of life itself.

There is a letting go of any attachment to what could be, or to what could have been (if only), or even to what might be. There is an acceptance of, for example, death as a dissolution of a world view that incorporates the other as part of the extension of oneself (whether that other be a pet, a remote person, or a close friend or lover). Our own radical acceptance that the flowing changes of the world is as an oceanic stream of constant movement, of change, or ebbs and flows in dance with the movements of the Earth's own dance with the Sun and the Moon.

Radical acceptance begins with this threefold aspect of Love, Wisdom and Truth, in turn leading to acceptance of what is true, with inner wisdom, and flowing love. Embracing what is just as it is, compassionate observer to the reality of life's flows, rooted in the reality of the ever graced present.