Tara Brach - The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance - When we are caught in self-judgment, we forget the truth of who we are – our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of Radical Acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. There's a cartoon from years ago and it's, there's a large shark looking very discouraged, talking to his buddy. And what he's saying is that the pressure to be great is just too much. I would rather be known as the just okay white shark. And, you know, I often talk about our feelings of failure, the challenges of accepting ourselves and each other just as we are, radical acceptance. And this is a special season for me, as I think many are aware, the 20th anniversary edition of radical acceptance is coming out. It's actually out now, I think.

think. And over the last year or so, I've been adding material so that really addresses our current world and finding in ever-deepening ways how the basic practices are so relevant, so crucial. So I wanted to make this all available in an anniversary edition. So for this class, I have chosen a recent and kind of classic talk on radical acceptance. And I hope you'll enjoy it. And I wanted to say a few more words before starting. I recently heard a story about a woman with a brain injury who would sometimes fall to the floor and people around her would rush to immediately get her back on her feet before she was quite ready. And she shared that she said, I think people rush to help me up because they're so uncomfortable with seeing an adult

lying on the floor. But what I really need is for someone to get down on the ground with me. I was so moved by that. It's so powerful. It made me think about how often when we're with somebody who's having a hard time, we so quickly jumped to trying to fix and we know it for ourselves when we're struggling. How what we really are longing for is for someone to simply be with us without any judgment, without trying to fix, just accepting and loving us and keeping company, getting on the ground with us. So it's natural that we're going to act to help others, in this case, help someone stand up. And our action will be a response from presence, from heart, not just a reflex to avoid feeling discomfort.

It's so important when we encounter challenges that we can pause and open to and accept and be with what arises. Otherwise, we're in reactivity. We're not responding. And this is the essence of radical acceptance. It's that accepting presence that gives rise to a wise response in a way, it's the prerequisite to acting in this world with real intelligence and with real compassion. And it's so crucial in our world right now. There's so much suffering from the growing divides and

violence. And when we react to what's coming up, when we react with whether it's judgment or hatred or anger, we become divided from our heart and from presence. we're not able to really respond with our full intelligence. It feels, my friends, that we need growing numbers of us, growing numbers that are developing this capacity for radical acceptance, for this heart presence, this capacity to pause and to stay on the ground, stay connected, to be fully present with the pain of the moment, so that we can respond, not react, respond from care, from presence.

Okay, so this is a bit of a warm-up. I hope you'll find the talk that's about to come really valuable. And of course, I hope you'll get hold of the new edition, the 20th anniversary edition of Radical Acceptance, and I'll be grateful for any help you can give in spreading the word. Okay, thank you, my first. friends. Namaste and welcome. I begin with a little story about a couple who had been married for 60 years and to stay together for all that long, you have to be completely honest with your partner.

So the husband and wife were really open and they shared everything and they didn't have secrets from each other except for one thing. The wife kept a shoebox in the closet and she asked her husband not to open it or even to ask about it. And the man didn't really actually think about the box until it was about 60 years in. His wife got very sick and the doctor said she wouldn't make it and trying to sort out her their affairs. The husband took the shoe box to his wife's bedside. And she agreed it was time for him to see what's inside. And his eyes widened as he discovered $95,000 and two crochet dolls in the box. And so the old woman explained, well, you know, when we were to be married, my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never find

fault with your partner, to never argue. She told me that I've ever got angry with you. It was caught up in blame or resentment. I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll. The husband was really deeply dodged. Two dolls meant she was really only angry with him twice in 60 years. Honey, he said, after really being overcome with emotions, that explains the dolls. But what about all the money? Where did it come from? She said, oh, that. Well, that's the money I made from selling all the dolls. So, as we know, we're fault-finding beings. You know, out of our insecurity, we find fault, and we often fixate on the imperfections and ourselves and each other in life.

And most aren't so clever at monetizing. We're not so grafting. There's an anonymous saying that goes like this. who is unhappy, the one who finds fault. And the reality is that if we're habitual in judging, you know, and blaming, then we're suffering. And as we know, often the deepest suffering is because we target ourselves. We're at war with ourselves. So this will be a little bit of the focus for this reflection because one of the core domains, of spiritual awakening is stopping the war. And there's a Zen teaching that

enlightenment, freedom comes from being without anxiety about imperfection. So the imperfections here but if we can be with it without reactivity, it's said, you can say it more positively that the freedom comes from the acceptance of the life that's right here. And I call it radical acceptance because it's an unconditional care and presence with life just as it is in this moment. So we're going to explore together, you know, what this means in our lives, how our relationship with imperfection, how learning the art of radical acceptance really awakens our heart's wisdom and it allows for, you know, very deep healing and awakening. And this talk will be really focusing on radical acceptance of our

own imperfections. So maybe a bit on the word imperfection. You know, it's the nature of nature to have imbalances, instability, chaos, unpredictability. You know, there are physical faults in the Earth's crust and the ongoing violent weather events, you know, there. is before the emergency of climate change. There's been violent weather events through history, exploding supernovas and really the stress of perpetual change. So the only reason that we exist in material form, you know, with molecules and bodies and galaxies, is an asymmetry of matter and anti-matter produced from the Big Bang. And physicists say that the universe,

while it's currently expanding, gravity will cause it to eventually collapse, killing all, life everywhere. So, imperfection, instability, forces of molecular, traction, repulsion, that's the name of the game. And we are nature in here, human form. You know, we're shaped by these same forces of conditioning, of irresistible attractions

and aversions and inner storms and societal conflict and revolution and chaos. So I'm framing it this way because the grounds of radical acceptance is a wise understanding that imperfection is intrinsic to all life forms. So maybe I'll share a story that I think expresses this in a really pointed way. A number of years ago is probably now about 20 years ago. A dear friend of mine, Luiso Montero Diaz, who's a teacher in our D.C. community, we together went out with the goal of finding a Buddha statue for the Wednesday night class. we looked at a lot of them. And we finally fell for one. It just felt just right. It had a kind of

androgynous look, a really wonderful blend of masculine and feminine of wisdom and compassion. And so we were really excited to have it at class. And I remember after teaching the class that night and letting people know about our new Buddha, there were a few people looking closely at it standing around it and I noticed that one or two of them kind of had their heads tilted. And they called me over and pointed out that the cast of the statue was leaning. It was imperfect. So, you know, we had found this imperfect Buddha statue and we actually started playfully nicknaming our community, the Sangha of the Leaning Buddha.

and just as a way to help us all make peace with, you know, the universality of imperfection. So I really loved that teaching of the leaning Buddha. It was very helpful. And it's very much like a story I tell frequently of that solid gold Buddha that was covered with plaster and clay. that, you know, our spirits incarnate and develop these imperfect casts or coverings, you know, our imperfect bodies and our imperfect emotions and personalities and habits. And they're all subject to the forces of conditioning, you know, generational trauma and very addicted, speedy, violent divided society, our genetics, our biography.

So we all have these casts or coverings that are from forces that are outside of our control. They're not personal. You know, there's an understanding that you're not thinking your own thoughts. You're thinking society's thoughts. You know, the strands of society that are most proximate. So this is the challenge or the problem. cause of suffering, that we take our imperfect leanings personally. You know, we feel anxiety or shame or badness because of imperfections as if they define our essence. And as social beings, if you feel

that your essence is bad, you know, if you feel like your imperfections means your essence is bad, that translates to you'll be rejected, you'll be separate, you'll be alone. So it's a life-death matter. So think about it. I mean, how much we take personally. When we take our, you know, emotions and our habits personally, we tend to think we lean in a particularly offensive way that we're worse than others. You know, that my depression or my insecurity or the way I eat too much sugar or whatever it is that we take personally, that we're to blame for that and that it's more problematic than what other people are dealing with. You know, we have this delusion that others are reasonably normal, that we're

the one that's really leaning. I mean, really, if you think about it, how many have felt surprised when you find out that, say, somebody that you seems well put together, maybe that you admired, actually is struggling with a major prescription drug problem or has been in an abusive relationship or in some ways been breaking the law, you know. We get surprised. We get surprised at all the craziness in what had seemed like a normal family. You know, really is that. any family that's actually normal? I can just say, the older I get, the more it seems clear that any idea are appearance of normalcy are just ideas and appearances, you know, that everyone you meet is grappling with their version of leaning, of imperfection, and many taking it

very personally. So here's the thing. if we take our caste, our insecurities, our obsessions, our addictions personally, we're going to suffer. It's like sensing that there's this self here behind the curtain. It's like the Wizard of Oz who owns and should be managing this body, mind behavior, and that we're falling short on the job. You know, when we take it personally, it's like as if I should be able to control this. I remember there was this T-shirt and it won one of the T-shirt awards and it said on it, I suffer occasional delusions of adequacy.

So here's the point that our suffering is not because of the imperfection. It's because we add on to the reality that there's imperfection that this is bad and on bad. Not when we add on to it that you're bad. There's a metaphor you might remember. I love this one from Buddhist psychology. And it's as if we go through life and we get shot repeatedly by two arrows. And the first arrow is the inevitable pain of imperfection, the physical pain that arises in our life or the grief or the hurt or the anger or the fear. That's the first arrow.

The second arrow, and this is what's important, is when we make ourselves bad for what's happening. So the first arrow is inevitable. We cannot avoid the different range of intense painful emotions or physical feelings that are painful. We can't avoid that. The second arrow thinking, oh, this means I'm bad, that's optional. That's the place we have some agency. That's the place where we can, the pain will still be there, but we can avoid the suffering. So this is what I want to look into more because it's when we add the second arrow that we solidify that sense of a bad self. So, for example, this last week, I had a stretch of fatigue that was more intense than usual for me. And so along with being tired and

low energy, there was kind of this sense of crankiness. And I started noticing after a while that I was feeling increasingly grim and a kind of cynicism that comes when I'm actually feeling self-aversion. So I started inquiring and I could sense this belief like in some way I'm falling short. The fatigue is my fault. I'm not doing a good job taking care of myself. And then with that, and I don't like this grim, cranky self. So the first arrow, you know, the fatigue, thinking I was bad, the second arrow really ended up contracting and bringing me down. Now, I have seen the second arrowing frequently enough that it doesn't last long.

But when we second arrow repeatedly and we don't notice it, when we're continually telling ourselves, we're bad for what's happening. It locks in deeply. My daughter-in-law is a nurse who works with high-risk births and mothers are often very, very ill that she works with. And we were talking this week and she was describing how many patients she has that blame themselves for their illness. So it's not just that they're there in the hospital feeling terrible. but they're also feeling terrible about themselves. Like, I made bad decisions. I didn't take good care of myself.

I have bad life habits. You know, I am bad. So just to know that the most painful and difficult inner experiences we have attract a second arrow of saying, this means I'm bad. You know, if I'm angry, I'm a bad person for feeling angry. You know, if I'm jealous, something's wrong with me. I'm bad. If I'm hurt, I shouldn't feel like that.

If I'm depressed, something's wrong with me. Addictive behavior, I'm bad. And when we go from imperfect to I'm bad, the trance of unworthiness locks in. And it impacts our whole life. It really creates a deep sense of not belonging, of separation. And you know the signs of the trance of unworthiness. You know, one of the big ones is that we're always comparing ourselves to more perfect others, you know, people who are more perfect in their looks or their intelligence or their professional

success, their spiritual way of being. someone sent me a cartoon this week, a person's entering the kingdom of heaven and God's on the throne and God is, as you might sometimes imagine a dog because, and this is the caption, the dog saying, so the joyful, loving, eternally forgiving nature of dogs never tipped you off. So we know the signs. You know, we're comparing ourselves to others. we try to, we try out endless ways of trying to perfect ourselves, you know, and trying to control ourselves, self-control, you know, Garrison Killers as my ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under

English law at that time. We try to control ourselves. The trance of unworthiness means we're just really afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes mean a lot because they go right to bad self-feelings. And not only are we inwardly down on ourselves, in the trance of unworthiness we tend to also get very addicted to directing blame outward. This is a silly one from Yogi Berra. He says, I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat. And if it keeps up,

I change bats. After all, if I know it's not my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself? Sorry, that one's silly. But the real deal is that when we feel insecure, we need to fixate on others' imperfections. We try to make ourselves more right and put others down. And the deep insecurities there, but the way it plays out is fixating on others. And of course, it can lead to huge violence. It's the grounds of fundamentalism. I'm right, you're wrong. We wouldn't need to feel so right if we weren't basically feeling insecure. I mean, I think of Hitler, who's been psychoanalyzed more than maybe anybody on the planet. And he had a deep fear of his own impurity, you know, of birth defects, there was incest in his family, he really wanted to cover.

And so he spent us time seeing the world as tainted, so much of the world that needed to be eradicated. So the point is that the more that we compare with others, the more that we seek perfectionism, you know, the more that we blame others, the more solid that inner sense, I'm flawed. Something's wrong with me. The more we're identified as a leaning Buddha and we forget the Buddha part of it. So there's both a challenge and a possibility when we consider these stories like the leaning Buddha or the Golden Buddha with the plaster casting. And the challenges we tend to fixate on the fact of leaning or the the plaster casting, you know, we get identified there with the imperfection and the more we judge it,

the more it obscures the gold, the truth of who we really are. So there's the challenge there, that tendency to fixate on the coverings, on the leaning. And then there's the possibility, which is that we can intentionally bring a radical acceptance, a real presence and care to the imperfections, like shift that relationship. So rather than judging it as bad, shift it to a profound presence and acceptance that actually will then reveal our essence, our basic goodness. And this is the invitation of the path that we can learn in the present moment to encounter what's here with an open, accepting heart. And in so doing, we actually reconnect with the truth of the awareness and love that's more

fundamental than any notion of leaning, any imperfection that we've hitched our identity to. And the secret is that the more you trust the gold, the more you trust, not instead of the leaning, the Buddha part, the awake heart part, the actual posture and expressions change. We actually become more aligned. We can't grasp after that if we're saying, oh, I want to be more aligned, then we'll actually not pay attention to the very source, which is the goodness. So I'm going to pause here. I've been speaking a bit and maybe ask you to check inside, do a little bit of a reflection. And that might mean for some of you to close your eyes, to turn your attention inward. And just to ask yourself, well, what are the imperfections

about yourself you typically focus on? What are the ways that you're, you're going to be ways that you lean that you fixate on. And it might have to do with your body or physical appearance. You might have to do with your energy or health. Maybe it's your way of being in a relationship as a parent or partner or friend the way you think you fall short. Maybe the imperfection or the leaning has to do with your mental capacities, your contribution, to the world, your personality. So just to scan and sense, well, where do you really fixate in terms of imperfection? Where do you get identified and say, well, that's me and forget that this is

just conditioning. It's a casting. There's more. Where do you forget? Maybe bring an imperfection, something about you to mine, anger, your own judging, addictive behavior. And just notice how you relate to it. How much second arrowing is there that I'm bad for being this way? How much second arrowing is there? I'm bad for being this way. And see if you can just witness for a bit how that happens, how it seems so personal. how you forget how many live with imperfection that's just part of the conditioning.

Now for a moment, just imagine what would your life be like if you could relate to these particular imperfections with radical acceptance. If you could regard them in this moment with presence and kindness, who would you be? What if you were without anxiety about imperfection? Who would you be? What would your life be like? And if you find it helpful to journal, you might consider taking that question. What would my life be like if I was without anxiety about imperfection?

Who would I be? Just to take that and consider it, reflect with it a bit. And for now, I'd just like to share with you what happens when often I talk to people about radical acceptance. This is the main fear is that if I accept the imperfection, let's say my addictive behavior or how I hurt others, how will I be accountable? How will I change? So I want to say right here as clearly as I can that radical acceptance is an unconditional accepting presence with how we are right in this moment, this current time. It's an allowing presence with what is, which means it's a courageous, honest acknowledgement

of actuality. It's saying these feelings, this pattern of behavior, they're here. And it's not fighting it. It's not resisting it. It's the awake, lucid, heart, space, this is, okay, it's here. I'm allowing that this is here. I'm not adding on badness or bad self to it. Radical acceptance does not mean that you have no intention or want to continue the path of healing and transforming and awakening. In other words, I might have an addictive behavior except that it's occurring and know that there'll be freedom and healing by continuing to attend deeply and move beyond it. Still, I'm not second arrowing saying bad self, not taking it personally. And this is crucial, this allowing presence with what is. I frequently go to the, I think,

brilliant realization from Carl Rogers who said it wasn't until I accepted myself just as I was, that I was free to change. In other words, that this radical acceptance is the precondition to transformation. It takes real dedication not to make a difficult experience or behavior of ours mean we're bad. It's a very deep trance in us, that second arrowing. And from my experience, we don't really dedicate ourselves to radical acceptance until we very directly face the pain of radical non-acceptance of how much we're caught up in personal badness. And I'll share my own story here, which I've actually shared in radical acceptance quite fully in my first book.

that I had in my 20s very much realized the trance of unworthiness and, you know, practicing with it, with meditation and with self-compassion. But I was pretty hooked on comparing mind and self-judging. When I was 27, I had been in the ashram for a while, a spiritual community, and I was publicly attacked and berated by the lead meditation teacher in a very aggressive, abusive way. I had had a miscarriage, and a few days afterwards, he had me stand up in front of a group of people, and he just went at me saying he blamed it. He said, you had a miscarriage because of your ego. All you care about is your work, your ambition.

I was in the middle of a PhD program then. He said, all you care about is yourself. You know, you had sex, but you didn't really care about having a child. It was so very demeaning, very shaming. And it put me into most painful inner crisis I had ever had, which was it played right into my self-doubts about being a bad, you know, feeling I was a bad person, that I was selfish, ambitious, egotistical. and I realize that either I believe that message, you're bad, are I found a way of accepting

whatever imperfections were there, but still basically trusting my goodness, the purity of my heart. That was the choice there, you know. Do I believe him? Do I believe these messages and believe the messages of my own self-doubt? Or do I find a way of accepting myself that's so profound that I really can trust basic goodness? And I think it was the spiritual survivor in me that really chose and it came through a prayer you know i i felt this very very deep prayer that in a sense i was like calling on the beloved calling on the loving awareness that pervades this whole universe and saying please please may i love and accept myself just as i am may i love and accept myself just as i am that prayer didn't mean I didn't want to keep growing and waking up and moving beyond

being, you know, kind of playing out imperfect stuff. It didn't mean that. It just meant, may I love and accept what's right here. You know, facing the reality of imperfection but not holding it so personally, not taking it as a stain on my basic goodness. And I can promise you, that this path of radical acceptance has not stopped me from attending to the imperfections. You know, the different ways that I saw myself through the years being driven or selfish or controlling or aggressive. It actually made it possible to wake up from habits that cause me and others harm because the foundation was one of presence and care. So there is an organic sequence, friends. It really is very, very intuitive and organic that we need to start by accepting the waves

that are here, the imperfections. And from that presence and acceptance, we start sensing and trusting more and more the loving awareness, the purity that's our essence, and being able to then bring attention to whatever we want to work on in a much more intelligent way, because we're not so identified. It doesn't feel so personal. So to get a little practical here, for most of us, there's a whole constellation of imperfections to keep us feeling there's something wrong. that keep us self-aversive and anxious. So the practice that works is just to start with right where we are, with whatever's arising in us. And each round, it doesn't matter the particular content, each round will deepen the strength of that resolve to hold what's here with kindness, with

acceptance, and to sense like we're holding the waves and remembering the ocean until the ocean, the who we really are becomes more and more of the truth that we can rest in. So another example that wasn't that long ago of how this practice can work was with a student. I've known his family for years and three children, and he found himself becoming increasingly short-tempered, judgmental, harsh, really, angry blaming, caught in it with his 14-year-old who, and his 14-year-old had his own very strong temper, his own anger. He was kind of a domineering personality with his younger, you know, aggressive with his younger siblings and very disrespectful towards his dad. He was 14. And his wife was

increasingly upset with him for not controlling his temper. And he felt self-hatred for losing his temper again and again at his son. And so we were working together and he shared a recent outbreak of his temper. It happened early in the pandemic. His wife had kind of walked in when he was losing his temper and really wanted him to start therapy online. And what had happened was it was his son's night for cleaning up after dinner. His son disappeared. He found him in his room on his computer, told him to come clean up, came to the kitchen, put away a little bit of food, and left it still a mess. And again, he disappeared back into the video games, not schoolwork. So when his father found him there a second round, he just started yelling at him, saying,

you know, you're making life hard for everyone, you know, and really blasting him just when his wife entered the room. And so when we worked with it, and you can work with it. You can work with something where an imperfection that happened recently and just bring it into your mind and really start to gain some insight. So we brought Rain to that episode. And he began with recognizing in him and he could still feel both his anger and also a shame about his anger. Okay, so that was the cluster there. And the A of Rain, allow means rather than adding more to it, just let that be there. And the eye of rain is investigate. And that's where he could sense the background belief going on while he's disrespecting me and causing trouble.

But worse, the belief, I'm out of control. I'm bad. I'm hurting others that I love. I'm ruining relationships. I'm hurting my family and with that a tremendous amount of of shame and fear and I could feel him very identified it this is when taking it very personally the leaning Buddha you know really bad self when I said is it familiar this feeling of bad self and he paused for a long time and he said very much because he was remembering himself as a young, you know, maybe 11, 10, 12, I don't know, but as a really angry, frustrated child himself and being very out of control. And his mother had been sick. She had breast cancer. She was

young and had breast cancer. His father was just completely enraged at him because he kept, you know, he, his father even told him, you're making your mother sick. You're a bad kid, you know. And he was, you know, when he was telling me this, he had tears in his eyes. He said, I couldn't help it. I was just this hyperactive kid bouncing against the walls. Nobody was paying attention to me. Everybody was too busy. And so I asked him, well, what is that ashamed young part in you most need? This is the part that's ashamed of his anger out of controlness. What does that part need. And this is, again, part of that inquiry, that investigation, that presence. And he knew he needed that deep, profound acceptance, that forgiveness, that you're still lovable. And I said, you know,

who could communicate it fast? And his mom, who's been dead for a while? He said, my mother, she knew I couldn't help it. So then in a rain, nurturing, he just imagined kind of the spirit or energy of his mother saying, forgiven, forgiven. I know you can't help it. I love you as you are. Profound acceptance. And it gave him more ease, his adult self more ease, just to feel that that energy was being accepted, forgiven. And it gave him more of a sense of open-heartedness. and when we started talking and he said, I can't believe I didn't really just see it more directly. I couldn't help it back then, acting out like that. And my son can't help it.

He can't help it when he loses his temper, when he gets caught in his energies and his emotions. And so his practice was really radical acceptance of his own experience. You know, of course he intended not to lose his temper, but radical. acceptance of what was going on inside him and it extended to a son to know that you know he needed to set boundaries with his son but not slam him with rage. More than that he knew a son needed attention from getting in touch with his own young self. I got an email several months later because I kind of want to give you a sense of where this unfolded to what happened when he was really intending radical acceptance.

being the forgiving mother energy towards himself, he said he started to take his son rock climbing because it was something that had always let him get very focused, very relaxed. And the son really took to it and they were returning home from one of their outings and his son said something to him like, you know, I feel kind of crazy at home. And he asked him what he man and the son clammed up, he was 14. But he said to him, you know, when I was your age, you know, I was like you, really strong and full of energy, and I sometimes felt crazy at home too. And to be honest, I still do. His son kind of cracked a smile. But then he got more serious and he said to his son, you know, there's nothing. I regret more than when that crazy

ends up as anger at you. I'm so, so sorry. And it really touches me to share that, you know, just the email and what he was finding was that his, the change, the shift in him, being more open and more intelligent and how he dealt with his son didn't come from hating himself for his anger. You had to go through a process of radical acceptance of forgiving that that leaning in him was there, not letting it be so personal like it was his badness. It was just, it was conditioned, it was there. And if he, as he could hold it like that, he was then more able to see what his son needed and respond to his son. But here's the thing. Sometimes we can't embrace the imperfection alone.

Sometimes we just can't have enough perspective sense that it's not so personal. And we need others to remind us, to remind us that we're forgivable, that essentially we're good. And we can do that. We can, like he did bring to mind someone who loves us. It doesn't matter whether they're alive or not, but just sense the radical acceptance from another being. It could be a spiritual figure. I call on the beloved. It could be Buddha, Jesus. Could be someone currently in our life and it could be done actively. There's a story maybe to share with you. One woman who needed that kind of in-person support, she had found out when she was in-threaty with her adult daughter, they did some joint therapy together. Her daughter revealed that her stepfather,

who was this woman's second husband, had sexually abused her for several years. During a time this woman had been drinking and oblivious to it. So this woman spiraled into a very dark hole of self-hatred. You know, it's just the pain of knowing that on some level she had allowed harm to her daughter. And she went to a retired teacher. She had been in school with her, also Catholic priest, told him of, you know, her horrible failings and the feelings of desperate. she was suicidal really. What he do is he took her hand in his and I'm doing it right now and he drew a circle, you know, in the center of her hand and said, you know, this is the place you're living right now and it's filled with anger and self-hatred and shame and it's really painful.

And then he said, what you need to do is remember this and he, he put it as a big priest hands over hers and he said, this is the boundless mercy of the divine. This is the love of the universe. It's not a blind eye to the harm, but not to recoil from embracing your being, knowing your pure heart. That's the capacity of that loving awareness. And if you can feel this, and again, you know, that circle in the middle of the end, honestly face the feelings and experience of what you're going through. But also remember this, the kingdom of mercy, as he put it, you'll discover the healing of compassion. So for months, she was completely locked into that very vicious kind of self-haden every time it would get strong. She'd

sense that priest's hand over hers, that kind of field of mercy, the radical acceptance really of the universe and gradually she could find that her own awareness could hold her with that same loving, full, tender acceptance. And as that happened, she was increasingly able to hold a space for her daughter that was very, very healing and loving, which had not been possible when she had been at war with herself. We need help. We often need. We often need. others to help us remember that it's not so personal and that our basic essence is pure. We need that, whether it's a reminder from whatever sense of a spiritual figure or people we trust, we need that, that yes, there's a leaning and the leaning can be incredibly hurtful. You know, we're all imperfect. We

didn't sign up for our particular conditioning. We didn't sign up for it. It's not our fault. And there's a place of agency. It's not our fault. It's not our fault. It's not our fault. The addictions, the anger, the fears, the depression, the sorrows, the jealousy. It's not our fault. and the place of agency is in the present moment there's a possibility of in some way seeing it, feeling it and making room for it with a deep acceptance. It's courageous, it's honest, it's coming back home to a larger sense of being. And when we do that, we actually start trusting who we are and having fresh, ways of working with the parts of ourselves that have been difficult.

So we're going to explore this in our closing meditation, how to work with the leaning parts of ourselves. I just want to kind of summarize by naming what really are to me the two great gifts of radical acceptance, why I keep coming back to it in my own life and in teaching. and one is that when we accept the leanings, the conditioning, the imperfections, and we don't make it so personal, we don't add on bad self, but we're just open to it. There's a profound wisdom that arises that we really are not defined by the imperfection. They're there. It's like waves in an ocean, they're there.

But that oceanness is still who we are, and we come home to that. We see ever more clearly in a moment of self-judgment, it blocks the gold. It blocks the sense of who we really are. So the first gift of radical acceptance of releasing that second arrow of blame is it reveals the truth, the wholeness, the purity of our spirit. The second is that when we've opened our hearts to ourself in this way, that's the way we truly open our hearts to the world. If we're down on our own imperfections, we are not really open to the world. And that lets us, when we do open to ourselves, let's us help others embrace their imperfections

the priests could do for the woman. And in a fundamental way, the more we open. into ourselves, the more we truly feel a reverence for life everywhere. We sense how all beings are an expression of the gold. We see past the mass, past the coverings. Radical acceptance is really the only way we can be truly intimate. You know, in any moment that we have an agenda like the other person has to be different for us to love them, we're miles and miles away from connection. I remember Ram Dass, a spiritual teacher, Ram Dass used to talk about his relationship with his father. He talked about it a lot. And he said it changed radically when his father was kind of

approaching, it was really an elder approaching death. He said, I finally allowed him to be who he was instead of trying to make him into who I thought he should be. And he stopped trying to make me into who he thought I should be. And we became friends. So again, friends, it doesn't mean that when someone behaves hurtfully are in the wider community when we encounter, let's say, social injustice, that we go off and crochet dolls, you know, or that we in some way condoning or that we be passive. You know, out of a love for life, we need to act. And the possibility is that we have the isn't to first arrive in that courageous, radical acceptance of what's happening right now,

whatever it is. And from that presence, from that open-hearted space, from that clarity, then we respond. And then we create the boundaries we need or we protect others, we protect ourselves, we speak out, we know to go into nature, go rock climbing, whatever it is that moves towards more healing. So I'd like to close and give you a chance to, again, survey this leaning Buddha of your own being, this imperfect body and mind and personality and constellation of behaviors. And to, we'll practice a little, you might again consider if there's any part of the leaning that you most react to, that you'd benefit from exploring more radical acceptance. So again, to scan in sense if there's a behavior that's very hard to accept, an emotion

or a way of thinking that you're really aversive to, and you might think, there's so many, and it doesn't matter what you practice with. Anything that you choose can be a useful portal for you. So just choosing something and feel your intention as we begin really towards more truth, more awareness, more open-heartedness, and bring your curiosity to this as we begin the reign of self-compassion, the reign of radical acceptance. to be aware of whatever you're judging. You might bring it close in. Maybe you're feeling it right now and you what you're judging,

your own fear or your own judgment, or maybe you're feeling some sense of jealousy or anger or maybe there's a behavior that's recent, that's part of your current life that you are judging. And bring it right close in. and just notice the thoughts and feelings that come up around this imperfection, this way you lean. Invite you to start with whatever feels strongest. So you begin by recognizing, okay, I'm feeling shame or fear or anger, self-version.

So recognize means you just name what you're noticing. And then allow means just let it be there. If it's self-aversion, okay, feeling self-aversion. Just to name it, it's like this. Let it be there. Matt gives you the possibility of beginning to investigate to feel more sense of perspective and truth. And you might notice what you're believing

when you are encountering this imperfection. Maybe you're believing that you're bad, because you're hurting others and you're bad because you're hurting yourself, that you should be different, you should be able to control, you should be able to improve. Often there's a should. So notice what you're believing and with whatever you're believing. Feel in your body what it's like when you're down on yourself. When you're believing you're bad. Feel in your body, maybe there's a sinking feeling, a contraction, that tightness. Notice where it's happening. And you might put your hand on your heart just to keep your attention right here in your body.

Often there's a lot that goes on in the throat or chest or belly. But also putting your hand on your heart as a way of accompanying. It's a beginning of really softening and opening and acceptance. You might breathe with what you're feeling. This is the place inside that's identified with badness. Just to feel it and deepen your attention and just notice what does this place need right now to let go a little, to open, to be more at peace. What would you need to remember or to trust? For some, the reminder is just trust your goodness or some that the need is to be

feel forgiven and you can sense that. For some it's just some basic okayness that you're not alone, that others feel it too. And as you sense what's needed, this is where we go to the end of rain, nurturing, offer it. Just sense that you can call on a very awake awareness that's here, a loving, awake awareness and offer what's needed. You might hear the message, to trust your goodness and offer it, or forgiven, forgiven, or it's okay, sweetheart, sense this larger awareness that's really who you are offering a reminder to that stuck place that's identified and feeling bad. And if it helps to have the message come from another, that's quite fine. From someone you know cares and loves you is wise.

or maybe from a loving spiritual figure. You can imagine like those priest's hands that there's an embrace of something larger saying to let go, it's okay. This is like a wave. It's a part of you. It's not the fullness, the wholeness. Forgive, forgive. Let it in.

Take some courage. Take some willingness. Let in that possibility of forgiveness that your essence is forgiveness. your essence is pure, tender heart space. As you feel ready, let yourself sense the presence that's here, what's emerged, what's shifted, sensing the awareness that's here that can include life's imperfections, the different waves of emotion, feelings, thoughts. Just remembering the ocean, that what moves through is not so personal, that what you are judging, the imperfection, the leaning, everyone has imperfection and leaning.

It's not so personal. There's room. And sensing in that space the inherent goodness, the awakeness, the tenderness, the tenderness shining through. And again, you might just ask yourself, who would you be if you can meet more and more of your moments with radical acceptance, with this unconditional, caring, inclusive presence? I'd like to close with a poem that I love and that I share quite regularly. this is from my friend, poet, Dana Faults. Why wait for your awakening?

Why wait for your awakening? Would you hold back when the beloved beckons? Would you say eyes downcast? I'm not worthy. I'm afraid. My motives aren't pure. Do you value your reasons for staying small more than the light shining through the open door?

Forgive yourself. forgive yourself. Now is the only time you have to be whole. Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true nature. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Please, oh please, don't continue to believe your stories of separation and failure. This is the day of your awakening. Thank you, my friends. for your presence, for your willingness to explore and open my prayers that we can hold hands and continue to embrace this changing life with all its challenges and messiness and mystery and keep reminding each other and ourselves of the love and the awareness that's our essence.

Namaste and blessings.