The goal is to accept all of life, as it is.

Acceptance is the opposite of endurance, or "putting up with" pain. It's the amiable recognition that one is a small part of the great pattern of life, and everyone suffers. There's no reason to take suffering personally. There doesn't have to be anyone to blame. Acceptance isn't easy, and it isn't passive.

Acceptance skills include tolerance, non-judgementalness, non-authoritarianism, forgiveness, treating all people as equal in value, letting go, feeling feelings, maintaining hope, nondefensiveness, opening to pain, non-blaming.

The point of acceptance is having inner peace. It's possible to go through life cheerfully. Old pain doesn't have to linger forever. One doesn't need to be angry at life. And even fear can be dealt with by acceptance. Death, for example, is inevitable. It's part of life. And fear of death is the strongest fear most people have. And even death can be accepted.

When I lived in downtown Portland, I had a friend who lived in his van out in the parking lot of my building. He'd been a policeman in Seattle, and one day when he was on patrol he got a call to go to a fire. It was his own house, and he got there in time to carry the bodies of his wife and children out of the smoking ruins. He was so overwhelmed that he broke down and began a downward spiral. 15 years later he was a homeless guy in my parking lot. Everyone has a limit, and if they're overwhelmed beyond that limit, they break down.

But even breakdown isn't permanent. It took me ten years to recover from my son's death, but I did. There isn't anything in life that can't be accepted. Recovery can take a long time, though. Since I believe in reincarnation, I think it can take more than one lifetime. Some traumas could take many lifetimes to recover from. But I believe people are immortal and indominatable, and eventually they recover and grow through everything.

Here's a version of Acceptance Skills you can download: