Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.

The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.

The muscles used to make a smile actually send a biochemical message to our nervous system that it is safe to relax the flight of freeze response.

We wait for things to be different in order to feel okay with life. As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.

I think of depression as the mechanism that pushes down the pain of that loss. It tries to distance us from the loss but it lowers our whole energy level. I think that's a pervasive way we end up responding to loss or the anticipation of loss. Natural but not necessary.

Longing, felt fully, carries us to belonging.

The process of radical acceptance is to accept that a story has appeared in the mind, and then deepen the attention to see clearly what's happening in the body, to regard those feelings and sensations with kindness and acceptance, and to notice how they come and go.