“The opposite to acceptance is avoidance.”

No. The opposite to acceptance is anger. Consider the young child who is angry. What do they do? They shout ‘NO’ and may even physically push away or violently hit what ever it is that they don’t wish to accept. Active, even violent, denial is not avoidance. Avoidance is seeking a way around something or to bypass something that exists: it is you trying not to let that thing impact you. Anger fights and seeks to deny the validity of the very thing itself and that is the root of angers destructive power.

The problem is that anger is seductive and feels productive… and if we’ve been hurt wrongfully or cruelly treated, it even feels righteous. Acceptance… well.. does not. Anger is energetic and feeds a sense of power and we are, as a culture, fairly well addicted to it… so addicted to it that we go looking for things to be angry about.

Meditation and mindfulness… or what you term training of the mind… is simply stepping back enough to make anger (or, indeed, any other emotional state) a choice and not a reflexive or habitual reaction. Once you realize the choices available, you can make them on the basis of your values and ethics and not as a function of which of your ‘buttons’ got ‘pushed.’