Tag Archive for: acceptance

Bearing Witness

Bearing witness requires that we remain open to all that life brings us; birth and death, beauty and ugliness, joy and pain, beginnings and endings.

Mindfulness as Dialectic

The dissonance we feel around the apparent contradictions we encounter in life can cause much of our suffering when we are resistant to it. Taking a dialectical approach to our mindfulness practice can help us open to all of life's apparent contradictions and find greater freedom.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema

Mindfulness of Distress

A dedicated mindfulness practice can help prepare us to meet life's inevitable challenges with greater wisdom and ease. This might allow us to decrease our own suffering and prevent ourselves from mindlessly causing or exacerbating harm to others.

Opening to Truth

Like a tailor makes a “bespoke suit” for a particular customer, our unexamined minds have a tendency tailor our own “bespoke truth” that satisfies our preferences. But, when we ignore or exclude aspects of reality that we don't prefer, we miss out on important information that could be helpful in making wise choices.

The Power of Paradox

Mindfulness practice is filled with paradoxes - things that seems absurd or antithetical at first glance, but upon closer inspection, turn out to be true. They provide powerful lessons that things aren't always as they seem and prompt us to look more closely at our experiences.

Radical Self-Acceptance

The cultivation of mindfulness is just one crucial step in our journey toward greater balance. Radical self-acceptance allows us to bring our whole selves to our experience so that we can respond skillfully to what is here. It encourages us to face facts, have an honest and direct relationship with ourselves and our lives, and ultimately become the lamp that guides us along the path to greater peace and freedom.

Radical Acceptance

When we learn to radically accept reality, we become boundless because we are liberated from resistance and illusion.

The Paradox of Acceptance

Mindfulness can help us find acceptance, which is compassionate presence - acknowledging what is without judgment.

Equanimity Now

Equanimity is a state of calm and composure - a balance of the mind, that can be cultivated through practice and embodied, even under stress.

Non-Striving

Non-striving is one of the fundamental attitudes of mindfulness consciously cultivated during practice, according to Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Letting Go and Letting Be

Letting go and letting be are skills that can be cultivated through mindfulness practice and are necessary ingredients for the kind of acceptance from which the deepest and most enduring form of change emerges.

Acceptance: Opening to What Is

Acceptance is an attitude cultivated through mindfulness practice of leaning into experience - an opening to, rather than resisting, what is here.

Patience: Letting Things Unfold

Jon Kabat-Zinn defines the mindful attitude of patience as the understanding and acceptance of the fact that "sometimes things must unfold in their own time".