total acceptance

[Plenum]

You didn't define what you mean by 'acceptance.'

well, I think the opposite to acceptance would be denial.

Denial would be an inability to come to terms with 'reality' and what has taken place. In it's place, all sorts of stories and narratives are constructed to 'explain' what happened, rather than acknowledging the mutual circumstances of the self and the event/other-self.

Sometimes it's best to intensify or magnify the situation, to see it more clearly. For the sake of analysis, let's take a situation which would be quite likely to generate non-acceptance, or the experience of denial. The loss of a long-term relationship.

The 7 Stages of Grieving (a pop-term, but for the sake of consideration and analysis, let's just use it).

The Stages of Grief:

Shock and Disbelief - The person may not be able to comprehend that the relationship has really ended, and these feelings may be all consuming. This stage may overlap with the next stage which is:

Denial - The person may not accept that the relationship is over and may continue to pursue their ex partner.

Anger - The person may seek to blame their ex partner for the break up, ruminating on their faults and feeling and expressing a great deal of annoyance and hostility towards them.

Bargaining - The person may seek to win their partner back, promising to change or make compromises.

Guilt - The person may blame themselves for the break up, and may at this time have a very low sense of self esteem. They may wish they had done things differently, or said things differently and take on board all of the blame.

Depression - The person may have feelings of sadness or hopelessness, withdraw from social relationships and spend a lot of time brooding and ruminating. They may cling on to memories of their partner, play the same songs repeatedly and day dream about what might have been.

Acceptance - The person now begins to feel a fresh sense of hope, and they think of their partner less often. They will not feel the same sense of raw pain, and will resume social relationships. They may even begin to seek out a new partner. From time to time they may feel nostalgic, but they will accept that the relationship is now over.

I think the point that Raz was making is that Total Acceptance as a concept and an approach would be akin to jumping to the last stage of the process and just 'accepting', without having passed through the intermediate stages of processing the experience.

It would be like trying to eat raw rice grains, without having gone through the process of sifting, soaking, heating, and thoroughly cooking the rice so that it was in a digestible form, and able to be fully integrated into the self.

Even though the above stages of 'grieving' apply to an extreme situation, I think it applies to any expectations we have of reality, and what happens when they don't conform to what we expected.

If one is truly honest, one can see these steps unfolding when we receive unwelcome news, or something that we find quite disagreeable.

The mature thing to do is then, yes, express the emotions authentically, but also to work through the various stages with a compassionate eye towards self and other.

It doesn't happen instantly, and it doesn't happen easily.

But acceptance is very much part of a process; and doesn't just happen because the attitude is directed that way (although it does open the doorway and prepare the pathway immensely if that attitude is already pre-existing).