Human beings have likes and dislikes. When confronted with an experience that we dislike, we often do what we can to prevent, avoid, or minimize it. Whether it is an internal experience like emotions/sensations or an external experience like social interaction, if it makes us uncomfortable, we have countless ways to avoid it.
What happens when we are faced with an experience that we cannot avoid or run away from? In that moment, resistance and denial simply won’t do. Perhaps we are feeling deep sadness about a loss, or gripped by quivering anxiety about an uncertainty. Instead of fighting with or pushing away those feelings, accepting them and making friends with them may actually open the door to true peace.
Even if we understand intellectually that acceptance is the key to inner peace, doing it can be very difficult. Who wants to accept an uncomfortable experience? Who wants to accept an undesirable outcome? For those of us in the throes of suffering, acceptance can seem like a tall order, an impractical solution, or a meaningless platitude. So how do we accept when things feel unacceptable?
If acceptance is too much to ask, perhaps we can start with acknowledge. Can we just acknowledge that the experience is there? Acknowledging the emotion, the sensation, or the situation, recognizing that it’s currently a part of our experience. That’s all. We don’t have to change the feeling or situation, make it go away, or even accept it. We can start with just acknowledging it.
Then, we can try to allow. Can we just allow the experience to be there? What does it mean for you to allow something to just be there? If you have ever been caught in the rain without an umbrella, you have probably gotten wet and felt the dampness of your clothes against your body. You might have had to feel this dampness until you got to where you needed to be in order to dry up or change. So it’s like that. Just allowing the dampness to be there.
If we can spend even just a few seconds allowing an experience to be there, we are already practicing acceptance. Because in those few seconds, we have accepted the experience. Acceptance and nonjudgmental awareness are two sides of the same coin. When we practice the mindfulness technique — noticing our resistance, letting it go, coming back to our breath — when we come back to our experience and allow it to be there, even just for a second, we are practicing acceptance.
The next step is to do it again in the next moment. And then the next moment. We might not always be willing, but that’s okay. We can allow this unwillingness to be there, too. That is nonjudgmental awareness. That is mindfulness and acceptance.
Mindfulness FAQ 