Sustaining and Embodying Acceptance

This topic is more personally motivated than anything, but it did poke its head into our last discussion a bit. Lately I have been deeply contemplating what acceptance really is beyond a mere acknowledgment/shrug towards our circumstances. There is a subtlety to our inner attitudes that isn't often recognized. The more I wonder about acceptance, the more it feels like an attitude completely void of desired outcome and of strategy/calculation toward that outcome. How do we authentically engage in acceptance without indirectly admitting our real feelings of rejection toward whatever is we are attempting to accept? In some ways that might sound like we must resort to a negative kind of passivity/apathy toward life, or a bitter form of self-denial. How do we distinguish acceptance from this manipulative or even punitive type of dejection? It seems embodying acceptance requires paying very close attention to our emotional reality. Is there a way to sustain this sort of endless surrender to however things are WITH an endless surrender to how we want them to be?

Let's discuss it :)