Zinrainder

i think of reality acceptance as that acceptance that shows up in the presence of facts i can name and am aware of.  i accept all that i know about the world, and  that it is not the way i want it to be in this moment.  i see the account and the balance sheet and sit with my response in the moment, using opposite action to tolerate the presence of what i don’t want, and the absence of what i do.  i think of it like an accountant who does not like the sum, and yet finds a way to work with it anyway.  

i think of radical acceptance as that acceptance that shows up independent of any specific facts. for me it is radical just because i don’t actually know what i’m accepting in this moment.  i accept all that i know, and all the rest as well. for me it is an acceptance that steps off, far beyond all observable discrepancies and hopes and dreams.  i suspect that for me it is much more like what an artist does than an accountant.   i do not mean to judge artists as “better” than accountants in any way.  simply to observe how i see them engaged in different activities, and to notice that for me different means different, not better or worse.  i think of behavior as simply followed by more behavior, and that skills are adequate to the situation i encounter.  i suspect radical acceptance showed up because (historically) our minds were always going far beyond what was given in experience (Marsha Linehan writes about this in her memoir) and we needed an acceptance that would go there with us?