Written by Lydia Scott – To be at peace, truly at peace, you must be able to accept and understand. Radical acceptance is an idea that you can accept anything that occurs in your life or other people’s lives and be at peace. You can forgive people, or even institutions and organizations. Acceptance does not mean that you approve of the situation. It means that you understand the situation as it is.

This idea also applies to radical acceptance of yourself and of your behaviors. It does not mean that you condone what you’ve done in the past. It means that you can see yourself for how you behaved. Let’s make a distinction here. Your behavior is not you, not the essence of you. In A Course in Miracles (ACIM) it speaks about “What is not real cannot be threatened. What is unreal does not exist. Herein lies the peace of God.”

To help make this distinction, look at the essence of you. Your essence, your spirit, is reality. Your essence is not your body or your behavior. This is not a reason to act in unloving ways toward other people though. Your body can be threatened. It can get sick. It can be killed. Other people can experience pain related to your behavior. You can experience pain related to others behavior toward you. Pain is an experience. It’s a feeling and feelings are separate from your essence. Feelings are not necessarily facts.

These ideas can be difficult to understand. They were for me at first. Terrible things happen in this world and it can be very difficult for us to understand why a benevolent God would let these things go on.

There is a reason. We humans have free will. How we respond is a choice. You can choose to respond with radical acceptance and understanding. Before you can understand a situation and what you were meant to learn from it, you have to accept it. Acceptance precedes understanding. To truly understand why someone may be behaving a certain way, you can practice radical acceptance, suspend judgment and ask, “What is this for? I desire to be shown.”

By appealing to your super consciousness, your higher-power, your true power, your Great Companion, you can be shown another way to view the situation thereby gaining radical acceptance. By asking and truly listening, you can be shown a completely different way to view things that will bring you peace. If it brings peace, you should understand.

There can be great opportunities for learning in these situations, for everyone involved. It may take a while but I encourage you to practice radical acceptance. I am no stranger to it. I had to find it in very serious situations that included my precious children. It can be done.

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Lydia Scott is a counselor, addiction specialist and is currently working on a doctorate in metaphysics at AIHT. She is cofounder of a nonprofit providing supportive services and programs for recovering addicts. For more information on radical acceptance and similar topics visit – LydiaScott.com or RainbowGates.com. Lydia is the author of the soon to be published book Storming Emerald City and Rainbow Gates, the companion workbook.