Tara Brach - 2013-04-17 - Entering the Mystery

Episode Date: April 17, 2013

2013-04-17 - Entering the Mystery - John O'Donahue writes, "We are so busy managing our lives, we forget this great mystery we are involved in." This talk looks at the ways we pull away from the mystery and the path of "beginners mind" that enables us to encounter this living world with freshness, courage and wonder. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

There is a story about Mullah Nasrudin who's considered to be a Sufi, wise man and fool. And in this story, he's invited to teach at a large temple. And the congregation is very excited. And the first thing he says is, who knows what I'm going to teach? And, you know, everybody just kind of sits there, and he just shrugs his shoulders and he leaves. And so they're pretty confused.

upset so they invite him again and again everybody's gathered and he says who knows what I'm going to teach and everybody raises their hand he shugs his shoulders and exits third time they invite him and he again you know poses the question who knows what I'm going to teach and this time half the group raises their hand and he says good then you guys can teach the other half and he leaves again So I share that because it's an interesting question what we really know about life. You know, we go around at one level of knowing but there's these huge questions like where did this universe come from and if it, what happened, I mean what started it off? And if there was no starting point, what is eternity mean, really?

Or what is love? I mean, we use that word love all the time. But if we slow down just a bit and sense a loving feeling and go, okay, no, really, what is this? What is love? And then we can wonder about how it is that humans create so much suffering. How is it possible? This blast in Boston caused it. the pain of that. It's just we shake our heads. Or how is it possible that the continued torture Guantanamo? Our nature's violence, we have hundreds of people who have recently been killed in Iran because of an earthquake. And then we have at the same time marbled through everything

this incredibly beautiful spring. Right here in D.C. for those listening, this is when our red and our dog would start doing their thing. It's just beautiful. So what is the deal with the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows? What do we really know? So for me, you know, I was thinking about this and then of course a couple days ago there was yet another in this eternal search for dark matter, another announcement of, hey, possibly might have a glimmer of the particle that accounts for, what is it, like 98% of the universe that we don't know about. It's amazing. We only perceive a small percentage of this universe. So it's an interesting and humbling wake up for me when I realize I go around with some

error of certainty, like I know something and I'll get an email and I'll just respond and like I have an answer or I'll speak with such certainty. My family used to joke with me how I'd mispronounce words, I'd slaughter them but because I said it was such an error of confidence, nobody would say anything, you know. And then I'll look up at the stars. I'll be with someone who's recently lost a beloved and I don't know anything. Those don't know moments. Those are the moments actually, you know, when I'm looking right into the face of the mystery when I feel most real, when there's a kind of innocence and honesty and actually in a liveness. And let me...

ask you this, just a brief kind of reflection, if you will, just to close your eyes and consider in these last weeks some moments when for you you felt really alive, when you felt that sense of whether you call it innocence or realness or aliveness. For some it's when, if we look back in time, if we're around a birth or a death, sometimes it's in nature, beauty, dancing, gardening, music, creativity. You can open your eyes. I think the common denominator when we look in sense, when was I most alive, is when we're living beyond the confines of the thinking mind.

There may be thoughts, but we're awake in our senses, really awake in our senses, and there is a quality of don't know mind. There's an openness. We're not like we don't have the answer. There's a quality of openness. And Joseph Campbell, and this is one of the most renown of his quotes, describes how what we're after is not meaning, although meaning matters, but we're most after living life fully.

We want to live it fully. And you know what happens is we spend a lot of time using our minds and our busy minds and our activity to have some sense of control and then we don't notice this amazing world. We're not awake in the senses. John O'Donohue says that we're so busy managing our experience that we forget this great mystery we're involved with. And that to me really resonates. that most moments were in manager mode.

We're trying to navigate our life. We're trying to get somewhere. And that a lot of the time it's thinking and figuring it out, our beliefs, our mental energy. Again, Joseph Campbell talks about religion as an inoculation against the mystery. But the more we have these ideas about how things are, the less we're actually here, in that inquiry, you know, where we're like really feeling our way into the truth,

hands on. So I think you probably have the flavor of tonight's exploration. We'll be reflecting on really how do we enter the mystery? How do we rest in don't know mind? In other words, get outside that kind of certainty or obsessiveness or figure. figuring out, this is Einstein. I just ran into this one a few days ago. I liked it. He says, we are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the music of the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and

our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music. So, we are the So how do we inoculate? Because as you know, we can't wake up and open up into the mystery if we're doing these kind of activities that keep us one step removed and closed down in our mental trance. So how do we inoculate? And in the Buddhist tradition, what we point to is grasping an aversion. We anoculate because most of us move through life, impersonate. suit of something that we think is going to make it better. So we're looking for either

our soulmate or something that will give us contentment or safety or peace. We're looking for God. We're looking for something that's going to make it all right. And where do we look? Well, we look through our thoughts and our beliefs and mostly we're looking towards the future so that what we're wanting is ahead of us in time and somewhere outside of us. That's most of the time, if you watch the wanting mind or the grasping mind, what we're going after is not here now and it's not within us. It's out there and at another time. Does that make sense?

Okay, so given that we're mostly on a pursuit that just right there says we're not paying attention to where the mystery lives, we're leaving. That's one way we do it and it's really that this next moment will contain what this moment does not. There's some sense that it's just not right here. So we're focused on, it's a survival brain that is trying to get away from discomfort and has a map of time and it's on its way somewhere trying to accomplish something. Some of you might remember one of my favorite kind of illustrations is this cartoon, it's

got these three families, this family on three camels, and parents were on one camel, and the kids on the other, and on the thirds, all their belongings. And what you see is being spoken is the child just said something, and the father is saying back, well, you stop asking if we're almost there for crying out loud, we're nomads. So it's very hard for us to rest in that nomadic, just right wherever we are is it. We're on our, somewhere else. And of course we're not only trying to get somewhere else to get something, we're trying to get away from discomfort. So if we start becoming mindful of what's going on right now, we start noticing how many moments in

some way we're trying to reduce discomfort, trying to move away from our restlessness and our uneasiness and our sense that something's not quite right. Those are the two main ways that we inoculate ourselves. In one of the classic myths, which is the myth of Sisyphus, we have the king of Corinth, he's rolling the boulder up the hill, he's been condemned by Hades to do it over and over again. As soon as he gets it to the top of the hill, it just tumbles back down again. And he does it over and over again.

and he's condemned to do this for eternity. Now, that's a myth that almost everybody's heard of, and there's something archetypal in that. We've heard of it, and it sticks in our psyche, because how many of us spend huge swaths of moments pushing or stressing or resisting, but trying to get somewhere, and then having to keep on doing it over and over again?

Because even when we get somewhere, there's still somewhere else to get to. Are we not doing the same exact thing as in the myth? Does that resonate for you? Yeah. So what we intuit is that life is right here while we're pushing the boulder. It's always right here. And we can't begin to enter the mystery unless we start training in stop. stopping pushing. In other words, you know, the Buddha described in a way the suffering of the way we inoculate ourselves is we're pushing the boulder and we just become identified as the pusher in a way. I am the self that's always stressing and pushing and resisting.

It's a narrowed identification and the suffering in that, that when we're pushing the boulder we forget who we really are. If we're stress, we're stressed, we're and on our way somewhere else. We forget the vastness and we forget the innocence and the aliveness and the goodness that's here. Check for yourself when you're in some way pushing or obsessing or stressing.

See if you can stop and notice if your senses are awake. I sometimes find I go for a walk and I'll notice that my mind starts drifting and if I completely stop and stand still, I'll realize how little I was noticing. Try stopping. So you're pushing the boulder, just try stopping and see what happens. So the suffering is that because we are so often inoculating ourselves from the mystery, keeping busy, controlling, pushing, we miss out from really the one place where we can find love and freedom. and we keep using the same strategies to get there that don't work.

We're trying to solve problems and feel better and touch peace and be more alive. But it's as Einstein said, you can't solve a problem from the same state of mind that created it. Most of you know that one? I like the way Will Rogers put it. He said, if stupidity got us into this, how come it can't get us out? So the spiritual path is really using a wise effort to undo the pushing, to learn to be rather than be caught in that doing. And one of my favorite descriptions of this undoing is a poem called reverse living. Okay? And it starts like this. It says life is tough. It takes

up a lot of your time, all your weekends. And what do you get at the end of it? Death, a great reward. I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you should live 20 years in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch.

You go to work. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college. You party until you're ready for high school. You become a little kid, you play, you have no responsibilities. You become a little boy or girl. You go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating, you finish off as a gleam in someone's eye.

So as we explore this path of entering the mystery, of entering the mystery of undoing the ways we leave, The basic practice is mindful presence, that rather than pushing the boulder, we stop, we pause, we become aware. And in that pausing, there's an attitude that is hugely important for touching the mystery. And that is interest or curiosity. Some of you might have read Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, but just to give you the kind of gist of it, because the practice of Zen Mind is called Beginer's Mind.

In the Beginner's Mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few. The Mind of the Beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept and open to all the possibilities. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few. So this is a real key. The shorthand is don't know mind.

That we get lost in thinking, we think we know we're right, there's certainty, we're in our storyline, and something in us goes, okay, thinking, pause, and then just enters the senses. Like who knows what's true? what's right here now. Let go of the ideas, let go of the certainty, open to this infinite possibilities that are right here now. So the remainder of mindful practice once we have this attitude of curiosity is touch what's right here, contact the senses, you can experience it right now if you just say, well what's happening inside me right now? Contact the senses,

it and let it be there, openness. It's contact and openness. That is the entry to the mystery, contacting the senses and openness. And if you close your eyes for a moment, you can let the breath be a reminder of this entry and sense with the in-breath and sense with the in-breath that you're willingly contacting exactly what's most alive in the body and the heart. So the in-breath is that contactful attention, recognizing what's going on inside you. It's as if you're asking the question, what is happening and the in-breath is bringing your attention to what's happening. The out-breath is connecting to the space that's around you and within you. So you breathe out and kind of let go into that space and sense that whatever you've

contacted is floating in that space. So practice for a few moments breathing in and sensing whatever is most predominant in the sensory awareness, breathing in and contacting with interest, what's here, with willingness, what's here. And then breathing out and sensing that you're letting go into the space that's so vast that includes all the sounds, everything that's happening that you're aware of. Contact and space. Sometimes as we come into mindful presence, it's more important to emphasize the contacting, to really feel what's right in the body. So we might spend a number of breaths mainly emphasizing

that in-breath, especially if we feel dissociated from the senses. There's no way to enter the mystery unless it's through this embodied experience. Sometimes we feel very strongly what's in the senses, but there's no space, in which case you might emphasize the out breath, emphasize visualizing, listening, and sensing the space around you. Even sensing that within the tangles that are difficult to feel, there's space. Contact and space. You can keep feeling your breath if you'd like, but please open your eyes.

So, what happens when we start moving through life and our intention is to wake up out of our trance and come right into this living mystery of what's right here? What do we encounter? Often the first layer of experience we encounter when we enter into this aliveness right here is unpleasant experience. we've been running away from. And so then the practice is can we bring that breath or that contact and openness to what's there? And for me the example recently has been, I've continued to have a quite of a dense schedule and a sense of busyness.

And I've noticed just this week we have family visiting, Jonathan's family is visiting right now. And my egoic self, the one that's pushing the boulders, you know, got some got some umph in there that wants to get, just get stuff done so I'm prepared and so this, so that. And so there's been this sense of when I stop pushing and I try to just be and be relational, the first thing I run into is kind of anxiety, some tension, some looking to be able to get away and get back to work. So this became my place of attention. Like, how do I come into this, to a real spontaneous, creative, loving presence, into that mystery of what's right here when there's most of me wanting to go off and push a boulder,

you know? And so what I kept doing, you know, when I have a few moments on my own, is letting that anxiety be there and just what we are doing. Breathe in. Contact the squeeze and the tightness and breathe out and sense it floating in. something larger. Breathe in, contact it. Breathe out. Since it not only floating in something larger but it's not so dense, there's space inside it. Breathe in, contact it. To continue that practice of presence and start noticing this kind of irony that the reason

I can sense I'm pushing the boulder so that I get everything done so I'm prepared when I do my teaching so I don't let anybody down so I can feel a sense of connection and love and belonging because I haven't disappointed, you know, that whole thing. So I'm aware of that. I'm seeking belonging by pushing, but what is pushing doing? It's taking me away from connection, which is the thing I'm wanting. Does that all make sense? Okay. So it's really helpful. I sit there and start breathing into and start sensing what's behind the anxiety, the fear of failure, the fear of letting people down, and then realizing, oh, you know, very, very, you know, very, way I'm trying to solve that problem is keeping me disconnected. Keep staying with it,

keep staying with it until gradually there's a kind of tenderness and a presence and an awakeness that feels more like home than the one that wants to go push a boulder. It feels more mysterious, more immediate, more alive and then when I go and be with, and it's such a delight these three young children that are visiting us, I can play with them. And I wouldn't have been able to play. I truly would not have been able to play if I didn't pause and bring that presence to the anxious, bolder-pushing energy. Don't know mind.

I thought, you know, I had this certainty, how to get it done, how to do this, just opening. So there is an Irish teaching, an Irish, wisdom on worrying. Yes, worrying about getting things done, worrying about failing. I'm going to read it to you. It's a proverb. There are only two things to worry about, whether you are well or whether you are ill. If you are well, you have nothing to worry about. If you are ill, you have two things to worry about, whether you will live or whether you would die. Now, if you're going to live, you have nothing to worry about. If you're going to die, you have two things

to worry about. Whether you're going to heaven or whether you're going to hell. If you're If you're going to heaven you have nothing to worry about. If you're going to hell, you'll be hanging out with so many of your friends you won't have to worry. Isn't that great? Now if we could wisely take that message, it would be great. But here we get to the core reason that we inoculate ourselves from the mystery. That the deepest sense of the egoic self, the deepest belief, is that I'm separate and that

ultimately I'm going to be really separate, I'm going to be cut off for good. To extent we have some sense of belonging, I'm going to die, or else I'm going to be separated because other people are going to die. So the deepest fear and pain of the egoic self is loss of contact. And the fear is I cannot let go into the mystery, into the present moment, because all that stuff is going to happen. So the egoic self is spending its life trying to prevent the inevitable, the inevitable by pushing boulders.

When the only way to discover true belonging is to stop pushing. Now it doesn't mean we don't die. When we stop pushing we start discovering in that mystery a timelessness and a presence. We discover what Pema Chodran called the love that will not die. So, story for you that, yeah, written by Paul Purcell, and it's a description, it's in his book The Heart's Code, and it's a real, it's a true story. It starts, oh my God, David, no, cried Glenda, when she saw the bright lights

headed straight for their car. As the squeal of the tires struggling to grip the road became one with her own shriek of helpless terror, she knew that she had lost her husband forever. Moments before the car came crashing through their windshield, the couple had argued over something silly and had been sitting in resentful silence. They had these little scuffles before, but unlike all their previous skirmishes, this time, there would be no opportunity to apologize and reconfirm their love. Three years after the accident, Glenda sat with me in a dimly lit hospital chapel. At her request, I had arranged a meeting between her and the young man whose life had been saved by the gift of her husband's heart.

The heart recipient and his mother were almost a half hour late for the meeting, and I was ready to suggest that we leave. As I stood and took Glenda's hands, she said quietly, no, we have to wait. He's here in the hospital. I felt him arrive about 30 minutes ago. I felt my husband's presence. Please wait with me. Glenda is a practicing family physician.

She's well versed in bioscience and, as I do, admires the rigor and healthy skepticism of modern science. Now, however, the power of something that transcends what science calls common sense was tugging at her heart. David's heart is here, she added. I can't believe I'm saying that to you, but I feel it. His recipient is here in the hospital. At that moment, door opened and a young man and his mother,

walked hurriedly down the central center aisle of the chapel. Sorry, we're late, said the young man with a heavy Spanish accent. We got here a half hour ago, but we couldn't find the chapel. After introductions and awkward attempts at humor about a heart-to-heart meeting between this young wife and her husband's

heart, the usually shy Glenda Bert blurted out, this embarrasses me as much as it must embarrass you, but can I put my hand on your chest and feel his? mean your heart? The young man looked at me and then his mother put his hand to his chest and finally nodded his head. As Glenda reached forward, he unbuttoned his shirt, took her hand,

and gently placed it against his naked chest. What happened next transcends our current view of brain, body, heart, and mind. Glenda's hand began to tremble and tears rolled down her cheek. She closed her eyes and whispered, I love you, David. Everything is copacet. She removed her hand, hug the young man to her chest, and all of us wiped tears from her eyes. Glendon, the young man, sat down and saluated against the stained glass window of the chapel, held hands in silence. Speaking in her heavy Spanish accent, the young man's mother told me, My son uses the word copacetic all the time now.

He never used it before he got his new heart, but after a surgeon, it was the first thing he said to me when he could talk. I don't know what it means. He said everything was copacetic. It's not a word I know in Spanish. Glinda overheard us, her eyes widened. She turned toward us and said, that word was our signal that everything's okay. Every time we argued a made-up,

we both say that everything is copacetic. Our discussion about a magic word that seemed to reveal a code of the heart within him stimulated the young man to share story after story of changes he experienced following his transplant, Described by his mother as a former vegetarian and very health conscious, he now craves meat and fatty foods. A former lover of heavy metal music, he says he now loves 50s rock and roll. He reported recurrent dreams of bright lights coming straight form.

Glenda responded almost matter-of-factly that her husband loved meat, had played in a Motown rock and roll band while in medical school, and that she too dreams of the lights of that fateful night. So I share that with you because it really brings up that sense of don't know. Who are we? What happens after we die? Can soul or preferences or character capacities get transplanted? We don't know. But there is something in discovering, in hanging out with this mystery and with don't know mind that opens us to a sense of that timeless loving, to a sense of what is beyond this

changing world. Another woman described very recently, she had lost her 32-year-old sons, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend actually for me on the West Coast. She had lost him in a car accident and she had had a dream and she was searching for her son and she was trying to find a way to stay connected to him. in the dream. And she was imagining this huge tree. And in the dream she saw it with deep roots in the earth, tall trunk, branches reaching out skyward, smaller branches branching out, leaves branching out. And in her dream she found her son in the spaces between the branches, in the space

between the leaves. She says she was able to connect with the spirit in the spaces there between the leaves and the different branches, she found her son in the space that was there. Again, the mystery. So this far what we really have explored is how when we're in the face of unpleasantness of loss can we stop pushing, put down our ideas that we know what's going on and enter the moment. I want to bring that same approach. or path to pleasure because here we are. There's a lot of beauty and pleasure around us. And we have this habit of pushing the boulder in a way that's like asphalt over the ground. We just move over the pleasant moments and don't really allow ourselves to savor them.

In fact, there's something called the upper toleration limit where by which we can only take so much in terms of good things before we start having this fear, that that means something bads around the corner. So we start stealing ourselves. And some people have it very, very quickly. I've worked with people that just a beginning, a bit of relaxation or even a glimmer of hope or possibility and immediately the wall comes down

defending against what's around the corner. So as much as we need to come into presence and be able to open to the unpleasant strata to arrive in this living, mystery in the same way we need to feel to open to pleasantness unconditionally. And spring's a good time to practice as beginner's mind where we put aside that we know anything and just pay attention. And so you start noticing, well what happens if you pause and really let this new green, all the chlorophyll just kind of fill your veins and body and being?

happens if you, you know, start really listening to the songs of the birds are really taking in, you know, for us we have, this is a season where the ducks are all, the baby, little baby ducklings are going to be coming out soon, and the Morgansar's already had their babies. And these are, if you watch them on the river, they have this capacity, these tiny little creatures to scoot and they go against a strong current and it just, they look like they have a motor or something. So you're just watching these tiny little little creatures. creatures scoot upstream, it's magic.

It looks amazing to watch. So you start taking and spring and then ask yourself, what is beauty? What is it that we're perceiving that we call beauty? I mean, what is that? That's as deep in inquiry as what is love, as deep an inquiry as how did this universe begin? What is beauty? So slowing down, pausing, making that part of our purpose. practice. Brian Swim talks about the Big Bang, starts the universe, pouring matter through space,

and some of that matter forms stars, residue form planets, everything on Earth, including our living bodies, is formed out of the same material that form the stars and planets. Your bones are made of calcium and magnesium, and there's seawater in your blood. You are the living Earth in this particular form. He says, four and a half billion years ago the earth was a flaming molten ball of rock and now it can sing opera

can you get a sense of how certainty knowing and answer covers over the wonder about all that if we think we know it's like our fists are closed so Mary Holliver has her

teaching on beginner's mind I want to share with you. And it's the title of this poem is mysteries, yes. Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising. How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken. How people come from delight, are the scars of damage to the comfort of a poem. Let me keep my distance always

from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say, look and laugh in astonishment and bow their heads. So we're exploring how in the face of pleasantness or unpleasantness we can pause and come home to this vividness and not know and really celebrate it. I'd like to take a third and final place of

paying attention and that is to possibility that in addition to what we say is here and now this breath this sensation this sound this feeling there's also this unmanifest It's like the fertile void, this potential that's right here in every moment. When we're pushing the boulder, we can't feel hopeful, we can't feel available, and we can't sense possibility in a creative way. Does that make sense? Pushing the boulder means we're in survival brain. There's a rigidity.

We're living in a script in our mind. It has certain beliefs of what we have to do to be okay. It's got the belief that we have to be a certain way for others to like us and approve of us. Pushing the boulder means we're not open to possibilities in those moments. And some of the beliefs that we are living with are most of them actually are fear-based. So when we're pushing the boulder not only are we not open to possibility, we're very certain about what the bad things are going to happen. So there's a lot of current,

courage to stop pushing, given that when we're pushing, we're afraid bad things are going to happen. And yet, with the courage of letting go and letting be and not knowing, being able to say, okay, I don't know, this whole world of possibility opens up. Story. A priest was walking down a street when he saw a little boy jumping up and down trying to ring a doorbell. The poor kid was too small and the bell was too high. So the priest went up and rang the for the little fellow. Then turning to the kid with a benevolent smile, I said, what do we do now? The little fellow said, run like hell. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know. So what we're exploring here is how do we step out of our patterning?

Probably the biggest despair that comes my way is when people describe being caught, being stuck in a reactivity with other people or within themselves or an addiction that they've been struggling with since they were in their teens and that same patterning is going on. They've been pushing the boulder or resisting or defending or whatever in the same exact ways. And there's that despair of I'll never change. So the practice we're exploring does take a lot of courage because we have the same deep patterning and what's required is that we challenge our beliefs and that we stop, we pause,

and we contact what's here. So we'll do a brief reflection in a few moments that just to give you a sense of that. And in this reflection, I'm going to invite you to pick somewhere that you've been pushing the boulder somewhere in your life. that you know you keep running the same pattern and where you know you've got a limiting belief about what's possible. So it might be that you're pushing hard to get things done so that you can feel that you're worthwhile or you're pushing hard or resisting because you're afraid you're going to be rejected or not approved of for something. It may be that

in some way you're keeping a distance from others, that's your way of pushing the boulder because you're afraid you'll never really be intimate. Just somewhere, and if pushing the boulder doesn't, that metaphor doesn't work, somewhere where you're caught in a reactivity and you know there's a belief in there that you're going to fail, you're not enough, something's wrong, you need to be different, and take a moment of it. sense what it's like to live inside the belief. Whatever limiting belief you can tell your that is operating in there. Sometimes it's just the belief that how you are now people aren't going to like. Maybe it's the belief that something bads around the corner. Maybe it's

a really deep sense of fundamentally flawed, not okay. Take some moments to sense what it's like to live with that belief, how it's affected your life. how it's stopped you from living fully. And as I described before with the breath, see if you can just use the breath to feel how the belief is living inside you, with curiosity, if it's a belief of, I'll always fail, just to breathe in and sense,

what's it feel like to believe that? Breathe in and contact the feeling. Breathe out and sense of space. How does it feel to believe that People aren't attracted to you. People won't love you. Or you'll never succeed in something. Breathe in and contact the feeling.

Breathe out and sense space. So you're bringing mindfulness to a place where you're stuck. Instead of pushing the boulder and believing the belief and acting according to the belief, you're pausing. You're investigating. You're breathing with it. Breathing with the experience in your body. Now ask yourself,

what would my life be like if I didn't believe this? Just be open for a moment. Just totally put everything aside. Don't know mine. What would my life be like? Try it. Don't know mind. What would my life be like?

You might just get a felt sense. What would my life be like if I didn't believe this? Who would I be? Ask that. Who would I be if I didn't believe this? Who would I be if I stopped pushing the boulder? Just sense what comes up and let go and just live from that right now. Just be what you're experiencing.

Beyond the words, just be that. Be that groundlessness, that openness, that freedom, and whatever else goes with it, be it. Be willing to not know but to inhabit your experience. This is Mary Oliver. She says, still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled, to cast aside the weight of facts. And maybe even to float a little above this difficult world,

I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing, that the light is everything, that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom and fading, and I do. What if you didn't believe anything was wrong with you? Who would you be? You can keep meditating, keep your eyes closed.

We'll conclude by just sensing the word mystery has been used by some to mean God or the sacred, something we can't describe, we can't really conceptualize, but we can live it. And our gateway to living it is this simple pausing and opening to what's right here, contacting and opening. The breath can be a tool. Contact and open to the unpleasant,

contact and open to the pleasant, open to the possibilities that are here. Einstein says when we connect with that mystery, that sacredness, these lives become the instruments through which the soul plays music. When you open into the mystery and rest in the mystery, then there's a natural responsiveness when you see suffering to care and to help, when you see beauty to celebrate.

These last few moments like to invite you to just let your senses be wide open, letting go of thoughts of any kind and just listening to the sounds, letting them wash through you, opening to the aliveness and the space in the body, and then letting go into this change. flowing flow, this living mystery that's right here, being the mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing, that the light is everything, that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom and fading, and I do. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of

Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is imcw.org. Thank you very much.