Psychology of Acceptance

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

Psychology and religion are ways for us to “adjust”— the imbalance between ourselves and the world.

Infinite Regression: A loop you fall into trying to remove the feeling of fear. To escape it, the aim is not the complete removal of fear, but the acceptance that fear is part of life.

• Being Zen about the fact that we will be worried sometimes, life will be chaotic sometimes. Seeking to remove all of fear entirely becomes an obsession on its own, and you become attached to fear (by constantly trying to get rid of it), then the fear takes a stronghold. Watts calls this the “infinite regression.”

“And again we are brought to the admission that our motive for wanting to change our motive is the same as our motive for wanting to accept, which, in turn, is the same as our motive for wanting to escape.”

Ultimately, you cannot escape the loop of life even if you try. Given complexity of infinite regression, it seems overwhelming, and it is tempting to just give up entirely. But solution is somewhere in Eastern ideologies. (Some notes on it below.)

Higher Masochism: Watts suggests that diving down into the “bottom of the furnace”, basically exposing yourself to the fullness of fear, may make a lot of sense because it will help you build skills to accept pain.

We think the artifical world is separate from nature, but it’s all part of the same thing. Empire State Building or a bird’s nest, all part of it. We confuse ourselves into thinking we’ve created a separate world, and feel disconnected from it.

The illusion that you feel separate from the world is Maya.

• But if you think of everything as Tao, then even your desire to escape is part of Tao. So, no matter what you worry or don’t worry, that is part of the Tao regardless.
• As my friend Dave noted, “the friction is the living” — the thing we think is separate from life is life itself, for nothing we experience can be separate from it

This chapter should be titled “The Paradox of Acceptance.” Basically whether you accept it or not, it is the case, and all animals are part of it.

It doesn’t solve all of life’s problems, but it puts you in a mindset of ease with which you can more easily approach and work on them.

A story:

“It’s very hot. How should we escape the heat?”

“Let’s go where it’s neither hot nor cold.”

“Where’s that?”

“When it’s hot, we go to the stream. When it’s cold, we go by the fire.”

The story is a metaphor for mental place. So the ‘place’ is a mindset, knowing that we can adapt and flow to whatever is happening, as there are always both aspects to this life

You have the freedom to do anything you want, however much you want. There is no rule set.

Interestingly, going ‘all-out’ on hate becomes boring. “Go ahead, little baby. Cry all you like,” makes you feel a bit embarrased about it. When you can hate an infinite amount without ‘consequence,’ it loses appeal. This is true of happiness, and anything else:

Too much of it and it is not interesting. It is only interesting in the balance with other things.

Sense of ease with the world is what allows you to contemplate and appreciate the little things.

• Mirrors the message from The Little Prince: ‘Too serious’ people only want to talk about spiritual things as if they are higher topics or more important. It’s self-indulgent, the “maya” illusion of importance in comparison to anything else.