The acronym RAIN is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness and compassion using the following four steps: When we encounter desire in any form—whether it’s desire for food, companionship, a new gadget, or anything else—we should meet it without resistance and without letting it possess us. We should meet desire with mindfulness; in other words, with Radical Acceptance. In doing so, we’ll find that we can experience desire but live freely in spite of it.

Something I absolutely cherish about this book is kind and gentle repetition. I would read a concept and compartmentalize it as something I either had heard before, already knew, or couldn't possibly work. Then she'd reintroduce the same concept with a case study, a personal example or simply restated. Eventually even my stubborn mind was able to accept and hear the message it was trying so hard to avoid and reject. So the first step of radical acceptance is to practice the sacred art of pausing. This allows us to fully access our intelligence and heart. We tend to get caught up in familiar narratives or judge ourselves in familiar ways. So, if we can simply tune into what’s happening in our bodies, we can recognize particular feelings. I found it difficult to finish this book... I found a lot of wisdom in it but I also felt frustrated with it most of the time. By becoming so focused on ourselves, and chasing what we think we want, we cut ourselves off from the things that fulfill our greatest needs: those things that keep us connected to ourselves and each other.Therefore, this chapter discusses various ways to see people (including ourselves) differently. It goes over several practices we can use to see past the negative emotions and stories we’ve built up about ourselves and those around us, and to rediscover the Buddha nature in everyone. Recognizing Essential Goodness There is only one world, the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.” pg. 45 But there were a few key sections, and really the overarching concept, that were just so useful and important and applicable. I liked a lot how she used real life anecdotes about people applying these concepts to their own challenges.

The most profound impact that this book had was not while I was reading it but later, when I would try and become frustrated at being unable to implement it's teachings. I would chastise myself or the book or ideas and suddenly become aware that I was falling into a pattern explicitly detailed here and given instructions on how to unravel the habits I had become so used to. I first came to Buddhism because I was raised by an atheist and a new ager, and wanted to be part of an organized religion but felt uncomfortable with God and the Bible. Yet as much as I loved Buddhist philosophy, the spiritual communities that have sprung up around it here in the US can be difficult to navigate. The intense hierarchy of a collectivist based culture such as Tibet translates poorly into the individualistic one of the West, and both teachers and students here can easily loose their way. I was able to scratch the surface, but there was much that was lost on me. With our American drive for excellence and superiority, it's easy to be pretentious and competitive in one's quest for spiritual understanding, and all I can say for myself is that I'm very glad I am open to being mistaken. I'm also on a somewhat hippy-dippy "journey" in general to reshape/revitalize my spirituality which I thought had been permanently killed and buried, and which I'm really enjoying being able to connect with in new ways. And reading about different spiritual experiences people have with these meditation techniques, and feeling the familiarity of it all from when I used to pray on my knees to Jesus, really reawakened a desire to use that part of myself. The image of the Buddha seated under the bodhi tree is one of the great mythic symbols depicting the power of the pause. Siddhartha was no longer clinging to pleasure or running away from any part of his experience. He was making himself absolutely available to the changing stream of life. This attitude of neither grasping nor pushing away any experience has come to be known as the Middle Way, and it characterizes the engaged presence we awaken in pausing. In the pause, we, like Siddhartha, become available to whatever life brings us, including the unfaced, unfelt parts of our psyche.” pg. 60Reconnecting with the essential goodness in ourselves and others is one of the primary goals of radical acceptance. What if we could not take pain so personally and accept that we all feel pain, and wish to be free of it? What if we could recognize and have compassion for others? In Conclusion The trance of unworthiness is a prison that leads to self-destructive behaviors such as drinking too much, over-eating, smoking, losing our tempers, withdrawing, or whatever other so-called coping mechanisms we think will help. The fact is that the inability to accept ourselves is what leads us to spiral into patterns of self-destructive behaviors. Is The West to Blame? It’s also easy to mistakenly consider yes as a technique to get rid of unpleasant feelings and make us feel better. Saying yes is not a way of manipulating our experience, but rather an aid to opening to life as it is. While we might, as I experienced on retreat, say yes and feel lighter and happier, this is not necessarily what happens. If we say yes to a feeling of sadness, for instance, it might swell into full-blown grieving. Yet regardless of how our experience unfolds, by agreeing to what is here, we offer it the space to express and move through us.” pg. 83 One of the most painful and pervasive forms of suffering in our culture is the belief that “something is wrong with me.” For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much--just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us think that, deep down, we are just not okay.

We practice Radical Acceptance by pausing and then meeting whatever is happening inside us with this kind of unconditional friendliness. Instead of turning our jealous thoughts or angry feelings into the enemy, we pay attention in a way that enables us to recognize and touch an experience with care. Nothing is wrong—whatever is happening is just ‘real life.’ Such unconditional friendliness is the spirit of Radical Acceptance.” pg. 75 In this final chapter, we discuss how Radical Acceptance can help us finally see beyond the illusions and narratives that we build up around ourselves. Buddhists believe that there’s no such thing as the “self.” Buddhism teaches that each of us is part of a universal presence of awareness and love, rather than an individual entity. We’re born from that universal presence, and we return to it when we die. Thoughts of unworthiness also create feelings of isolation. When we don’t think that we’re good enough, we assume that others think the same thing. We find it hard to trust people who offer us love, friendship, or even simple encouragement. Letting Go of PerfectionOne of the most common regrets experienced by people on their deathbeds is that they didn't live a life that was true to themselves. The core of our suffering often comes down to not feeling like we’re "enough." Brach terms this the "trance of unworthiness." The trance of unworthiness leads to shame and a 'tendency towards self-aversion, the feeling of being at war with oneself.' Being at war with oneself is a constant argument about what's wrong with us. If we believe that we have an abundance of flaws, we can't ever truly express ourselves or have the confidence to lead creative, spontaneous, rich, and abundant lives. What's more, have you ever tried to relax when you're anxious? It's impossible, right?

I've been studying Buddhism since I went to India in 2006 to learn from Geshe Sonam Rinchen at the Tibetan Library and Archives in Dharmasala, India, and with the Dalai Lama at a mass teaching. Translating a religion from one culture to another is an immense task, and one that has been happening seriously for Buddhism the only in the last fifty years or so. Being alive includes feeling pain, sometimes intense pain. . . .Given the very real relationship between pain and loss, no wonder we add on the belief that pain means ‘something is wrong.’ No wonder we respond with fear and compulsively try to manage or eliminate our pain.” pg. 106 I'm not particularly spiritual, or good at sitting still and meditating. But, since I've been listening to this book, I've made more efforts throughout the day to hold a caring thought to my body and myself, especially in the moments in which I don't feel great about things. If it hasn't opened the gates of happiness, it definitely has helped in making me realize I spend way too much time running away from negative thoughts, and trying to distract myself with ephemeral things, rather than facing them.The previous chapters introduced Radical Acceptance and explained why we all need it. In chapters 3-5 we’ll begin exploring techniques to bring Radical Acceptance into our lives. We all commit mistakes, we all feel shame and guilt. But the first stage towards finding others�� forgiveness is accepting the pain, and feeling compassion for oneself.