June 04, 2025

Radical Acceptance: A Discipline of Presence - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

19 minutes

Radical Acceptance : A Discipline of Presence– The Deeper Thinking Podcast

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

Radical acceptance is not a gentle concession. It is not the quiet tolerance of what cannot be changed, nor the peaceful surrender to a world beyond one’s control. Rather, it is a confrontation with the real that resists interpretation. Unlike resignation, which drapes futility in soft cloth, radical acceptance offers no such comfort—it demands the stripping away of illusion, the standing bare before the incomprehensible, and the refusal to rewrite suffering into narrative closure. The temptation, always, is to place experience into a story that makes it digestible. But radical acceptance rejects that digestion. It is the choice to let what is, remain what is, without folding it into a redemptive arc.

Reflections

Sometimes, the most magnetic people are the ones who let us slow down.

Stillness can be a kind of trust—a way of staying with what hasn’t yet taken shape.

When we make peace with our own strangeness, others begin to bring theirs into the light.

Presence doesn’t need to announce itself. It holds space, quietly.

Listening, when done without urgency, becomes a form of shelter.

Why Listen?

Explore how presence—not performance—transforms attention into connection.

Learn how silence, ambiguity, and slowness enable deeper forms of meaning.

Engage with thinkers like Martin Buber and Simone Weil on ethics of presence.

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Bibliography

Blanchot, Maurice. 1993. The Infinite Conversation. Translated by Susan Hanson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.

Camus, Albert. 1991. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage International.

Fuchs, Thomas. 2018. “Presence in Absence. The Ambiguity of Lived Space in Mourning.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17 (3): 531–549.

Geller, Jesse. 2017. “Radical Acceptance in Existential Psychotherapy.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 57 (5): 401–424.

Gooding, Paul. 2020. “Refusing Closure: Aesthetics of the Unresolved in Contemporary Literature.” Textual Practice 34 (6): 961–980.

Han, Byung-Chul. 2015. The Burnout Society. Translated by Erik Butler. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kristeva, Julia. 1989. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

Laing, R.D. 1965. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. New York: Pantheon Books.

Le Guin, Ursula K. 2004. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” In Dancing at the Edge of the World, 165–170. New York: Grove Press.

Lingis, Alphonso. 1998. Dangerous Emotions. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Nhat Hanh, Thich. 1998. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. New York: Broadway Books.

Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weil, Simone. 2002. Gravity and Grace. Translated by Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr. London: Routledge.

Yalom, Irvin D. 1980. Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

Buber, Martin. 1970. I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Scribner.

Rogers, Carl. 1980. A Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Bibliography Relevance

Martin Buber: Offers a foundational model of relational dialogue as sacred encounter (I–Thou).

Simone Weil: Illuminates the ethical dimensions of attention as love.

Carl Rogers: Grounds the episode’s psychology of presence, safety, and authentic self-expression.

#PhilosophyOfPresence #MartinBuber #SimoneWeil #CarlRogers #SlowThinking #EthicalListening #QuietDepth #DeeperLife #SelfExpression #SpaceHolding #CharismaRedefined

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