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Radical Acceptance

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Tara Brach

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Radical Acceptance Kindle Edition

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In our current times of global crises and spiking collective anxiety, Tara Brach’s transformative practice of Radical Acceptance offers a pathway to inner freedom and a more compassionate world.

This classic work now features an insightful new introduction, an exclusive bonus chapter, and additional guided meditations.

“Radical Acceptance offers us an invitation to embrace ourselves with all our pain, fear, and anxieties, and to step lightly yet firmly on the path of understanding and compassion.”—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork—all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach’s forty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students.

Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she shows us how we can stop being at war with ourselves and begin to live fully every precious moment of our lives.

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November 23, 2004
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The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience.
Highlighted by 10,459 Kindle readers
Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion.
Highlighted by 8,767 Kindle readers
Our enjoyment is tainted by anxiety about keeping what we have and our compulsion to reach out and get more.
Highlighted by 8,344 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Radical acceptance empowers change: Healing fear and shame and building loving relationships

Teachings come alive through real stories, interpretations of Buddhist tales, guided meditations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A psychotherapist and Buddhist meditation teacher in the tradition of Jack Kornfield (who contributes a foreword), first-time author Brach offers readers a rich compendium of stories and techniques designed to help people awaken from what she calls "the trance of unworthiness." The sense of self-hatred and fearful isolation that afflicts so many people in the West can be transformed with the steady application of a loving attention infused with the insights of the Buddhist tradition, according to Brach. Interweaving stories from her own life as a hardworking single mother with many wonderful anecdotes culled from her therapy practice and her work as a leader of meditation retreats, Brach offers myriad examples of how our pain can become a doorway to love and liberation. An older Catholic woman in one of Brach's weekend workshops, for example, recounts how she learned to ask God to help hold her pain. Like her colleagues Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein and others in the Vipassana or Insight meditation tradition, Brach is open-minded about where she gathers inspiration. Garnishing her gentle advice and guided meditation with beautiful bits of poetry and well-loved if familiar dharma stories, Brach describes what it can mean to open to the reality of other people, to live in love, to belong to the world. Obviously the fruit of the author's own long and honest search, this is a consoling and practical guide that can help people find a light within themselves.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“An important, fresh voice from the ranks of modern dharma teacher-writers.”—Yoga Journal

“A consoling and practical guide that can help people find a light within themselves.”—Publishers Weekly

“A clear, practical and caring guide.”—Sharon Salzberg, New York Times bestselling author of Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience and Lovingkindness

“Tara Brach, perhaps more than any other spiritual teacher of our time, deeply understands self-compassion: both why we need it and how to cultivate it. This classic is a must-read for anyone wanting to develop a healthier and more loving relationship with themselves.”—Kristin Neff, Ph.D., author of Fierce Self-Compassion

“Radical Acceptance continues to be the wisdom for so many of us to tend to our fear of a rapidly changing world as well as offering us real tools to help build a new world grounded in fierce love and care for our communities.”—Lama Rod Owens, author of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors

“An invitation to heal our pain by accepting our heart.”—Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessing

“Through her deep experience as a therapist, buddhist meditation teacher, yogi, and mother, Tara Brach shines light upon the vital subject of learning to realise inner completeness, wholeness, and healing.”—Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within

“An insightful, warmhearted, and important contribution.”—Tara Bennett-Goleman, author of Emotional Alchemy

“Overflows with wonderful characters whose struggles we recognize as our own. . . Tara Brach skillfully weaves together some of the most important new insights in contemporary psychotherapy with one of the central psychological insights of the Buddha: There is no part of ourselves we need to exile from our awareness and our love. Radical Acceptance is a book, and a practice, that we all need.”—Stephen Cope, author of The Great Work of Your Life

“Radical Acceptance offers gentle wisdom and tender healing, a most excellent medicine for our unworthiness and longing. Breathe, soften, and let these compassionate teachings bless your heart.”—Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

About the Author

Tara Brach, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and popular teacher of mindfulness (vipassana) meditation. She is founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, and teaches meditation at centers throughout the United States. She is also the author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge.

Actress and director Cassandra Campbell has narrated nearly two hundred audiobooks and has received multiple Audie Awards and more than twenty AudioFile Earphones Awards, including for Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Trance of Unworthiness

You will be walking some night . . .

It will be clear to you suddenly

that you were about to escape,

and that you are guilty: you misread

the complex instructions, you are not

a member, you lost your card

or never had one . . .

Wendell Berry

For years I've had a recurring dream in which I am caught in a futile struggle to get somewhere. Sometimes I'm running up a hill; sometimes I am climbing over boulders or swimming against a current. Often a loved one is in trouble or something bad is about to happen. My mind is speeding frantically, but my body feels heavy and exhausted; I move as if through molasses. I know I should be able to handle the problem, but no matter how hard I try, I can't get where I need to go. Completely alone and shadowed by the fear of failure, I am trapped in my dilemma. Nothing else in the world exists but that.

This dream captures the essence of the trance of unworthiness. In our dreams we often seem to be the protagonist in a pre-scripted drama, fated to react to our circumstances in a given way. We seem unaware that choices and options might exist. When we are in the trance and caught up in our stories and fears about how we might fail, we are in much the same state. We are living in a waking dream that completely defines and delimits our experience of life. The rest of the world is merely a backdrop as we struggle to get somewhere, to be a better person, to accomplish, to avoid making mistakes. As in a dream, we take our stories to be the truth--a compelling reality--and they consume most of our attention. While we eat lunch or drive home from work, while we talk to our partners or read to our children at night, we continue to replay our worries and plans. Inherent in the trance is the belief that no matter how hard we try, we are always, in some way, falling short.

Feeling unworthy goes hand in hand with feeling separate from others, separate from life. If we are defective, how can we possibly belong? It's a vicious cycle: The more deficient we feel, the more separate and vulnerable we feel. Underneath our fear of being flawed is a more primal fear that something is wrong with life, that something bad is going to happen. Our reaction to this fear is to feel blame, even hatred, toward whatever we consider the source of the problem: ourselves, others, life itself. But even when we have directed our aversion outward, deep down we still feel vulnerable.

Our feelings of unworthiness and alienation from others give rise to various forms of suffering. For some, the most glaring expression is addiction. It may be to alcohol, food or drugs. Others feel addicted to a relationship, dependent on a particular person or people in order to feel they are complete and that life is worth living. Some try to feel important through long hours of grueling work--an addiction that our culture often applauds. Some create outer enemies and are always at war with the world.

The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved. Many of us live with an undercurrent of depression or hopelessness about ever feeling close to other people. We fear that if they realize we are boring or stupid, selfish or insecure, they'll reject us. If we're not attractive enough, we may never be loved in an intimate, romantic way. We yearn for an unquestioned experience of belonging, to feel at home with ourselves and others, at ease and fully accepted. But the trance of unworthiness keeps the sweetness of belonging out of reach.

The trance of unworthiness intensifies when our lives feel painful and out of control. We may assume that our physical sickness or emotional depression is our own fault--the result of our bad genes or our lack of discipline and willpower. We may feel that the loss of a job or a painful divorce is a reflection of our personal flaws. If we had only done better, if we were somehow different, things would have gone right. While we might place the blame on someone else, we still tacitly blame ourselves for getting into the situation in the first place.

Even if we ourselves are not suffering or in pain, if someone close to us--a partner or a child--is, we can take this as further proof of our inadequacy. One of my psychotherapy clients has a thirteen-year-old son who was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. She has tried everything she can to help--doctors, diet, acupuncture, drugs, love. Yet still he suffers from academic setbacks and feels socially isolated. He is convinced that he is a "loser" and, out of pain and frustration, frequently lashes out in rage. Regardless of her loving efforts, she lives in anguish, feeling that she is failing her son and should be doing more.

The trance of unworthiness doesn't always show up as overt feelings of shame and deficiency. When I told a good friend that I was writing about unworthiness and how pervasive it is, she took issue. "My main challenge isn't shame, it's pride," she insisted. This woman, a successful writer and teacher, told me how easily she gets caught up in feeling superior to others. She finds many people mentally slow and boring. Because so many people admire her, she often rides surges of feeling special and important. "I'm embarrassed to admit it," she said, "and maybe this is where shame fits in. But I like having people look up to me . . . that's when I feel good about myself." My friend is playing out the flip side of the trance. She went on to acknowledge that during dry periods, times when she isn't feeling productive or useful or admired, she does slip into feeling unworthy. Rather than simply recognizing her talents and enjoying her strengths, she needs the reassurance of feeling special or superior.

Convinced that we are not good enough, we can never relax. We stay on guard, monitoring ourselves for shortcomings. When we inevitably find them, we feel even more insecure and undeserving. We have to try even harder. The irony of all of this is . . . where do we think we are going anyway? One meditation student told me that he felt as if he were steamrolling through his days, driven by the feeling that he needed to do more. In a wistful tone he added, "I'm skimming over life and racing to the finish line--death."

When I talk about the suffering of unworthiness in my meditation classes, I frequently notice students nodding their heads, some of them in tears. They may be realizing for the first time that the shame they feel is not their own personal burden, that it is felt by many. Afterward some of them stay to talk. They confide that feeling undeserving has made it impossible for them to ask for help or to let themselves feel held by another's love. Some recognize that their sense of unworthiness and insecurity has kept them from realizing their dreams. Often students tell me that their habit of feeling chronically deficient has made them continually doubt that they are meditating correctly and mistrust that they are growing spiritually.

A number of them have told me that, in their early days on the spiritual path, they assumed their feelings of inadequacy would be transcended through a dedicated practice of meditation. Yet even though meditation has helped them in important ways, they find that deep pockets of shame and insecurity have a stubborn way of persisting--sometimes despite decades of practice. Perhaps they have pursued a style of meditation that wasn't well suited for their emotional temperament, or perhaps they needed the additional support of psychotherapy to uncover and heal deep wounds. Whatever the reasons, the failure to relieve this suffering through spiritual practice can bring up a basic doubt about whether we can ever be truly happy and free.

Bringing an Unworthy Self into Spiritual Life

In their comments, I hear echoes of my own story. After graduating from college, I moved into an ashram, a spiritual community, and enthusiastically devoted myself to the lifestyle for almost twelve years. I felt I had found a path through which I could purify myself and transcend the imperfections of my ego--the self and its strategies. We were required to awaken every day at 3:30 a.m., take a cold shower, and then from four until six-thirty do a sadhana (spiritual discipline) of yoga, meditation, chanting and prayer. By breakfast time I often felt as if I were floating in a glowing, loving, blissful state. I was at one with the loving awareness I call the Beloved and experienced this to be my own deepest essence. I didn't feel bad or good about myself, I just felt good.

By the end of breakfast, or a bit later in the morning, my habitual thoughts and behaviors would start creeping in again. Just as they had in college, those ever-recurring feelings of insecurity and selfishness would let me know I was falling short. Unless I found the time for more yoga and meditation, I would often find myself feeling once again like my familiar small-minded, not-okay self. Then I'd go to bed, wake up and start over again.

While I touched genuine peace and openheartedness, my inner critic continued to assess my level of purity. I mistrusted myself for the ways I would pretend to be positive when underneath I felt lonely or afraid. While I loved the yoga and meditation practices, I was embarrassed by my need to impress others with the strength of my practice. I wanted others to see me as a deep meditator and devoted yogi, a person who served her world with care and generosity. Meanwhile, I judged other people for being slack in their discipline, and judged myself for being so judgmental. Even in the midst of community, I often felt lonely and alone.

I had the idea that if I really applied myself, it would take eight to ten years to release all my self-absorption and be wise and free. Periodically I would consult teachers I admired from various other spiritual traditions: "So, how am I doing? What else can I do?" Invariably, they would respond, "Just relax." I wasn't exactly sure what ...

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000FC2NHG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bantam; Reprint edition (November 23, 2004)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 23, 2004
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1531 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0553380990

Best Sellers Rank: #18,924 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #5 in TA & NLP Psychotherapy
- #22 in Self-Esteem Self-Help
- #39 in Personal Transformation

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Tara Brach, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, an internationally known teacher of mindfulness meditation, and the founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. She is author of bestselling Radical Acceptance, True Refuge, and Radical Compassion. She has contributed numerous articles to popular magazines and websites.

Tara is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences where she discusses the role of mindfulness in emotional healing and spiritual awakening. She leads accredited workshops for mental health professionals interested in integrating meditation into the practice of psychotherapy. Tara also offers meditation retreats at centers in the United States and in Europe.

Her podcasted talks and meditations are downloaded over 2 million times each month. In addition to her public teaching, Tara is active in bringing meditation into DC area schools, prisons and to underserved populations, and in activities that promote racial justice.

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Food4Thought

This illuminating book is a must read!

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2024

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If you are on the fence about reading this book, my sincere advice is DO IT! “Radical Acceptance” by Tara Brach Ph. D is a profoundly beautiful book about self-acceptance. Brach takes you on a journey of self discovery using her personal stories, guided meditations, case studies and Buddhist teachings. This book contains practical advice and steps on how to implement it into your everyday life. When I picked up this book I thought it would be about accepting things outside of myself or my control but quickly learned that EVERYTHING starts from inside YOU and accepting YOURSELF. This illuminating book is a must read!

*A note of the physical book, the pages are extremely thin. If you think this might not work for you, I would suggest the audiobook or Kindle versions to avoid this as a potential issue.

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eman nep

By far my favorite self-help book (many of which I find banal)

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2016

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All I can say is that this book has been a life life-changing journey for me. By far my favorite self-help book (many of which I find banal), if one could call it that. It includes some profound insights/quotes and stories, along with a comprehensible explanation of some fairly esoteric Buddhist principles.

Often Tara uses the stories and experiences of the people she has met and helped along her path to aid or illustrate a point, which makes it more enjoyable to read than a book in which the author is always speaking to the reader in the abstract. It really helps to humanize her ideas and bring them home. The narrative is very well done.

The book begins by characterizing the commonplace anxieties of modern life, including insecurities around being good enough and the search for satisfaction and purpose. She invites the reader to share her own journey and relate to her experiences. She gives an explanation of what 'Radical Acceptance' is and goes on in the subsequent chapter to share the stories of her friends & clients, using them to illustrate how her teachings have helped liberate them from their experiences.

One of the things Tara does remarkably well is incorporate wisdom, poetry, and stories from various spiritual sources, in a way that really melds into what she is trying to teach. It's clear that she has much more to offer than her personal wisdom, but also the wisdom of teachers past. My favorite quote from the book (regrettably I do not have the source's name) is from a Zen philosopher: "true happiness is learning to live with imperfection". This comes to mind regularly when I am worried about myself or upset that something isn't as I want it to be.

What I like the most about this book is that it really stands apart to me as a Buddhist teaching text. I've embarked on Zen reading before, but this is the first one to actually inspire me to begin my own meditation practice. In fact, I've begun watching her YouTube videos also, and really feel that she is an adept spiritual teacher. That said, I don't think one has to adopt the Buddhist philosophy to get something out of this book, but I guarantee that a read through it will impress upon the reader some of the wisest lessons it has to offer, which I find are much more humanistic than typical religious dogma, and can fit into any belief system.

191 people found this helpful

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John Gaul

Great for becoming more mindful.

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2023

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The topics and anecdotes provided by the author were useful and relatable examples to helping me find ways to be more mindful and improve my connection to life. Not an easy read as the content takes tremendous focus, but it is worth it.

10 people found this helpful

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Chicago Pete

Well done. Melding of psychology and philosophy

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2024

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Well written and filled with personal anecdotes and impressions. For a more in-depth study of many principles check out “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” if you find the practices pertinent.

2 people found this helpful

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Joe Hurshman

Hooooo boy

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2024

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This book was a heavy duty read, it was like watching breaking bad, you had to go through it slowly. The lessons within as well as the meditations have been transformative in my life. This book does not beat around the bush and is a non-stop and brutally honest ride through the soul. Really helped me grapple with cPTSD and childhood trauma.

8 people found this helpful

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PF

Non-Buddhist Review

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2015

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I am not Buddhist and my rudimentary understanding of Buddhism does not allow me to speak to that aspect of the book. My review is based solely from a self-help standpoint.
This book was recommended to me as an extension of cognitive behavioral therapy.
I found it unnecessary to have an understanding of Buddhism to comprehend or wholly gain from it. The chapters have a great flow, with a building block nature so no cherry picking chapters. There are guided meditations at the end of chapters so you can apply the concepts personally. There are also several anecdotal examples throughout the chapters, making it easier to relate the concepts to actual people. This is necessary because a big problem I had was getting over the flowery wording of the concepts i.e. "Only through true compassion can one fly with the wings of the true self" (I made up that quote for example purposes). The flowery wording may be a product of the Buddhism theme or it could just be the author's way of saying the same concept 100 times over.
If you can get past the wording, you'll find some true wisdom about how to recognize the physiological responses to emotions, how to sit with the discomfort and pain of your emotions, developing compassion for oneself and meditation as a means of awareness.
Having little experience with self-help books, I would definitely recommend this book. It's easy to read and very detailed so it doesn't feel like a book of clichés.

4 people found this helpful

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Monti Tanner

A Transformative Journey to Self-Acceptance

Reviewed in Canada on March 24, 2023

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"Radical Acceptance" by Dr. Tara Brach is nothing short of life-changing. This remarkable book offers profound insights and practical guidance that have the power to transform not only the reader's relationship with themselves, but also their relationships with others.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is, "It takes courage to tell the truth about how we feel, especially since we don't ever really know how it will be received." This quote resonated with me deeply because it highlights the vulnerability required in being honest about our emotions. Dr. Brach emphasizes the importance of facing our fears, embracing our feelings, and being true to ourselves.

Dr. Brach's teachings on mindfulness and self-compassion are presented in a way that makes them accessible and relatable to readers from all walks of life. Her writing is clear, compassionate, and deeply resonant, allowing readers to easily grasp and apply the concepts to their own lives.

Another powerful quote from the book is, "While it takes courage to be vulnerable, the reward is sweet: we awaken compassion and genuine intimacy in our relationships with others." This line truly encapsulates the transformative potential of radical acceptance. By embracing our own vulnerability, we open ourselves up to deeper connections with others and create space for true understanding and empathy.

"Radical Acceptance" is a must-read for anyone seeking personal growth, self-compassion, and deeper relationships. Dr. Tara Brach masterfully guides readers on a journey of self-discovery that has the power to change lives. I cannot recommend this book highly enough; it is an essential addition to any personal development library.

One person found this helpful

Indira

Amazing

Reviewed in Germany on April 9, 2024

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Book arrived in perfect condition and the book itself is a must read for everyone!

Caesar Valdes Lopez

Buen libro

Reviewed in Mexico on May 13, 2021

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Me gusto

Affonso Scarante

The Pause

Reviewed in Brazil on August 29, 2019

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The pause was the main lesson for me in this book. To pause and be aware during our daily lives is a practice I've being doing since I started this book. I'll probably be reading this book again in the future, with a more mature mind. Thanks Tara!

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