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Direct vs indirect Acceptance and the three characteristics + equanimity

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Hi all.
At the moment I am very puzzled about the relationship between insight practice (seeing 3Cs), equanimity and acceptance. Some explanation may be useful, if there is one.

Here's my situation:
I've been doing >400 hours of ajahn tong style noting (adapted mahasi noting) and maybe had a fruition once. I have traversed the knowledges of insight up to equanimity 4 times, the last 2 times starting at A&P.
On retreat, the three characteristics show themselves in great abundance. At home they're not as obvious, but they're still there.
I'm getting more equanimous on the whole. I notice that I hardly get really obsessed about anything and mostly stay calm. (Well, not really, but much more than before I started practicing.)

But then there's the acceptance thing. I seem not to be capable of 'doing' it. I had some depression problem, which later turned into an intense anxiety problem. Now there's still a lot of restlessness left, and there seem to be some psychological issues somewhere under the surface. There seems to some basic resistance to what is there, and I absolutely can't stop it. The few times I tried to intentionally give up resistance completely, some kind of white flash appeared and would just 'knock me back'. Whenever I merely consider the idea of total acceptance of what's there at this moment, my body starts shaking and brings up all kind of resistance to this. There is a LOT of fear to accept what is there. It's quite impressive.
I'm also working with a psychologist, but so far it hasn't been very fruitful with this issue.
I also read "get out of your mind and into your life" by Steven Hayes, which seems to be a good book about "acceptance and commitment therapy", which includes mindfulness as a crucial component. According to this book it isn't uncommon that it's so difficult to accept things. It also offers a technique to deal with this difficulty, but it seems to be unnecessarily complicated.

I used to think that acceptance just means "lack of non-acceptance" and that insight practice would throw light on "non-acceptance" which would later be dropped automatically.
But now I'm rather coming to the conclusion that this is just a small part of what acceptance is. In MCTB it says that acceptance is a necessary requirement to enter equanimity. But I DID enter equanimity several times (and am currently in it) but I'm certainly not accepting of my experience here and now.

So what does it all mean? Is acceptance just another skill (like equanimity, insight, metta, ...) which needs special training?
If so, how is it done? This seems vitally important to me at the moment, yet acceptance is hardly talked about here in detail.
Or should acceptance be a by-product of insight meditation and I'm just doing it wrong?

RE: Direct vs indirect Acceptance and the three characteristics + equa
Answer
4/4/13 1:23 PM as a reply to bernd the broter.
bernd the broter:
But now I'm rather coming to the conclusion that this is just a small part of what acceptance is. In MCTB it says that acceptance is a necessary requirement to enter equanimity. But I DID enter equanimity several times (and am currently in it) but I'm certainly not accepting of my experience here and now.

So what does it all mean? Is acceptance just another skill (like equanimity, insight, metta, ...) which needs special training?
If so, how is it done?


Acceptance is equanimity-as-a-skill, maybe with some metta thrown in. It can happen as a result of insight practice, but it's a hard way to procced when you have that kind of anxiety coming up.

The fact that you experienced equanimity-as-an-insight-stage in one setting does not mean you have developed equnamity-as-a-skill to the extent you need for all circumstances in your life. For circumstances which cause anxiety, it is probably easier to first develop metta for those circumstances and the experience of the anxiety. I find that provides the stability necessary to do the insight work.