Tara Brach - 2014-09-24 - Awakening from the Landlocked Self

Episode Date: September 26, 2014

Awakening from the Landlocked Self - The Buddha taught that our suffering arises from forgetting who we are. This talk explores the trance of identifying as Somebody, and the compassionate witnessing that allows us to discover the freedom of our natural being.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. There's a poet, an Indian poet from the 1600s, name is Tukharam. I'd like to read you a brief poem translated by Daniel Ladinsky that he wrote. I was meditating with my cat the other day, and all of a sudden she shouted, what happened? I knew exactly what she meant, but I encouraged her to say more, feeling that if she got it all out on the table,

she would sleep better that night. So I responded, tell me more, dear, and she soulfully meowed, well, I was mingled with the sky, I was comets whizzing here and there, I was suns and heat, hell, I was galaxies,

but now look, I am landlocked in fur. To this, I said, know exactly what you mean. What to say about conversation between mystics? Tell me more and she's soulfully meowed. It's great. So I love it because it has such a poignant way of expressing this way that we all remember and forget that there's something we might feel a sense of expansiveness and openness and openness and in a moment we can get triggered to go, you know, and all of a sudden we're confined back

in that familiar self again. And after I read that, I was reminded of one of my earliest kind of transpersonal experiences. I don't even know how old I was, you know, eight, nine, ten, where I started imagining and sensing that I was living inside this bubble and there was all these thoughts and things happening inside me, yet in some way there was something out there, some consciousness, something bigger, but I couldn't get out of my bubble. And that stayed with me for a number of years. And it's very much what I find, a kind of arctypal experience that many of us have where

we're trying to get out of an enclosed space, a trap. It's in dreams, it's in myths. It's one of those pervasive senses of being kind of in some way cut off. off from something and trying to find our way back. And in a way, it's really the major theme of all spiritual life, that there is something more we intuit and we're in a process of waking up to it. And we can sense when we're not living inside the fullness and the wholeness and the truth. There's a story some of you might remember about a young boy who his mother was pregnant

And after she had her baby, his little sister, he asked if he could spend some time with the infant. And he did. He went to her cradle, and the parents were outside the door listening. And what he said to this little infant was, please tell me about God. I'm beginning to forget. So the Buddha taught, and this is probably the most kind of elegant or simple way of describing it, that our suffering comes from forgetting who we are. that we live inside a kind of trance of an idea of a self, a somebody.

And that's, the self-sense shifts some, but there's some kind of continuing themes in it. And it's a smaller self that has to do with our roles and the way we think we appear to others and our deepest wants and fears and the way our body is. It's that self-sense that we get identified with. And it's the undercurrent. are really wanting fearing.

That's the most familiar core sense of the self, the earliest. And so all spiritual paths in some way are offering ways of paying attention and ways of living that help us to wake up from that identity, that confined identity, that landlocked sense. And the shift in identity, as we, And we have it many moments. We just don't really get familiar with it. I mean, there are moments that we feel this wonder at nature.

It's just this amazing mystery of how things are, just being outside, or moments where we feel a real sense of connection with others. Or moments when we just get really quiet. And we can sense a mystery that's lurking that we've kind of pulled away from. But the spiritual path is really a sense of tapping into that larger sense of being over and over again until that love, that consciousness, that openness, that wakefulness is more familiar of who we really are

than any of the smaller cells we were living inside. That's kind of the essence, in my understanding. I love the way Srinar Sargadatta puts it because, in a way that, in a way that, that larger sense of being means that we're nothing, I mean we're nobody, we're not identified with a somebody, but we're the whole, everything. And the way he puts it, and I think it's so beautiful, is wisdom tells me I'm nothing. Love tells me I'm everything. And between the two, my life flows.

We're going to explore this a little tonight's talk, but just to say that this isn't just Buddhism. This is really every spiritual, mystical path in some way is pointing to this possibility of no-thingness. We're not confined or landlocked in this sense of real belonging to the whole. And, you know, I say every religion that sometimes it's a sense of the humility or humbleness of, you know, not making ourselves so important. There's a wonderful story during Sabbath services.

One rabbi kneels down and puts his forehead to the ground and he's going, I'm nobody, I'm nobody. And the canter looks at him and thinks, hmm, that's kind of a good thing to do. So he puts his forehead to the ground and he starts saying, I'm nobody, I'm nobody, real passionate. Well, Ben Shapiro in the fifth row is watching them and he thinks, that must be a pretty good idea to do.

So he puts his forehead to the ground. It goes, you know, I'm nobody. I'm nobody. And the rabbi nudges the canter, look who thinks he's nobody. So it can become like this goal, like I want to become no self. I want to become nobody.

And that becomes another thing. So not like that. I do want to honor that this is the first night of Rosh Hashanah. And in that spirit, in the Jewish tradition, this is really the season of reflection and repentance. recommitment. And I love truly spiritual holidays where it's like this is an opportunity any moment is, but this kind of collects our attention to say, why not recommit to what's most precious to us? What a beautiful thing. So as I was mentioning tonight, the recommitment

is to recognize where we're landlocked, where we're, where we're, in that trance of living in a smaller container than is what we really are, where our thoughts and our obsessions and our have to have things this way and our control and keeps us small. And to look together at ways that we can loosen that identity that's so small up and get a glimmer or start resting in our capacity for hold. wholeheartedness, for tenderness, for wakefulness. So sometimes there's a concern, because people have read in the spiritual literature that you have to really be somebody before you can be nobody.

How many of you have you heard that kind of expression before? You have to have an ego before you can transcend it? Can I just see by hands? I'm curious how out there that notion is. Yeah. Well, there's some wisdom and truth that if there's not some integration and some sense of differentiation as a self and there's a world out there, that can lead to a fragmented way of pursuing meditation. And no matter where we are developmentally, there is a growing recognition that to truly be happy, We have to have some taste of belonging to this love or consciousness or mystery that's larger than the egoic self. Some taste of it. That's what really enlivens us.

When we're having a good time, when we're really feeling happy, and I invite you to stop and check this out, when you're really feeling a sense of happiness, contentment, gratitude, if you look behind that, you'll find that there's a quality of presence of wakefulness that's making it possible. And it's really the experience of the presence itself that we're loving. Just check it out. So Buddha psychology focuses us on the ways that we get caught in a small identity. We lose presence. We get tight.

and how we open out of that. And in Buddhist psychology, the patterns that we're mostly looking at are the patterns of grasping, how we spend a lot of our day. If we watch, we're kind of going after things, wanting things a certain way, trying to get something, trying to gain some advantage. Most of our thinking, if we're honest, is about our self and what's going to make us feel better

or have us feel good because we got something done or protect us against something that could go wrong. So Buddhist psychology just says, don't judge that, because if you judge that, you're just adding another layer of selfing, okay? But just notice. Because if you notice it, you won't be so trapped inside it. Similarly, Buddhist psychologist says,

notice where there's resistance because the whole sense of self gets formed out of the ways that we try to hold on are the ways we try to resist experience. Let me say that again, that landlocked self is formed by the ways that in some manner we're trying to push away what's happening or grasp onto it.

I'll give you some examples because if you deepen your attention to your own patterns where you're really wanting things a certain way or really upset, you'll sense behind it that there's a real coagulated solid self sense. It's very familiar and not only is it familiar at the same time this is all happening you're not liking yourself. Lily Tomlin puts it this way she said I always wanted to be somebody I just should have been more specific because being somebody when we're

caught in our somebodyhood because it's landlock because it's not the truth of who we are. It doesn't feel so good. I remember when I went to my first retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, somebody put up this cute little sign that said, self-knowledge isn't always good news. So we begin to look and say, okay, you might think, okay, I'm not so caught up in some bodiness, but it sure comes clear in the moments that we're really wanting something. So we start sensing, what is it we're really wanting? And for some of us, it has to do with relationship. We want approval from somebody, particular.

We want to be special. We want attention in some way. And for others, there's an addictive thing with substance that we know we get really solid when we're really wanting food, and we want it secretly when we can get away with it without somebody else being around, or we're in a conversation, but we're really wanting more wine,

and we're waiting for a break in the conversation. There's that tension, that grasping. Or when we get into our self-improvement projects and we really want to be different in some way, you know, with our body, losing weight or the ways we look. There's one story I heard a guy named Jim divorces at 15. He's in a kind of mid-life crisis. And he says, I'm going to take control of my life.

So he gets a fast sport car and he diets and he jogs and he takes a lot of sun baths and new outfits, and then to top it off, he gets a new haircut. And he's walking out of the barbershop when he's hit by a bus. And as he lies dying, he cries out, God, how could you do this to me? At which point, God responds to tell you the truth, Jim, I didn't recognize you. Now, I will admit that does not really illustrate my point too much.

I thought it was cute. So just let's reflect together for a while. moment, okay? And the inquiry is this. If you just check and sense in the last few days or last week when you really wanted something to be a certain way, or you wanted to get something, and whether it had to do with something at work, something on the job, something from another person, whether it had to do with something where there's some addictive behavior, when you really wanted something. And you might even experiment and feel your body and sense when you're really wanting something and play around with this just to get a feeling for it.

What happens in your body? You might even let yourself explore right now, letting your body go into the posture of wanting mind. Are you leaning forward? Is there some tightness or tension or clenching? What's the mind like? Notice when you're wanting, something, what's your sense of yourself? What's the somebody like? You get familiar a little with the wanting self. We know it, we do know it. And then just sense, do you like that self? What's your attitude towards that self? Can you sense what is sometimes called the second arrow? The first arrow is that we're wanting. The second arrow is that we're not liking the wanting. Can you sense that? You can continue to meditate. I'm just going to put out

the other side of it, we all also have ways we resist what's going on when we are aversive. And for some of us, it's when it comes up when we've lost some valuable possession. Maybe you've lost a document you're working on or a piece of jewelry or lost your iPhone. Our version can come up. Our partner leaves the kitchen a mess day after day. or in some way it comes with judging other people, how things are going. So you might sense when in last week or so you got caught in aversion where you were angry or judgmental or fearful about something,

afraid of not performing well in some way at work or social situation. Take a few moments and let yourself go inside the experience of aversion in a certain situation, the not liking, the fear or the anger, the judgment. And again, play with it, experiment, feel your body, what's your body like when you're in aversion. And when that pattern is running, what's your sense of yourself? And how are you relating to the aversive self? Do you like yourself? Or can you sense a second arrow?

Take a few full breaths and come back, as we'll keep on exploring. the key element in being able to awaken from the landlock self, from the somebodyhood, is really just seeing it. But it's not seeing it in a kind of distant, oh yeah, that's happening way. There's a quality of real gentle interest and friendliness. And we're going to go there, but first I want to say that some of the greatest despair that I encounter in people when I work with them at retreats or otherwise is that sense that the patterns have been going and going and going for decades

and decades that they're really, really stuck in a self that they don't like. That is probably the greatest despair. It's got a kind of hopeless feeling like the patterns are so strong. And the, you know, going into whatever the aversion is and the judgment towards others or it may be the pattern of, you know, I'm still pushing others away with my neediness, the grasping, and I can't, you know, what am I supposed to do with that insecurity, or the pattern of controlling other people and how that ends up affecting intimacy, or the patterns of depression or overeating, whatever it is.

They seem really, really very locked in, how apologetic we can get, or accommodating, you know, whatever the pattern. So the good news is this, that no matter how tenacious, the patterning seems, and this is the truth, it's mutable, it's changeable, that it's a habit. And just as habits are created, habits can be undone. So that our personal identity, this somebodyhood, that feels so core, is not really core core.

It's very strong, but it can be dissolved. We can awaken from that sense of self. And this is at the very heart of the path, a trust that that's possible. And even if we feel like, yeah, but I don't have that trust, just to know that it's possible

to awaken the trust if you want to, that that can be your prayer. It may be I don't trust I can ever change, but my prayer is to trust that. Do you see what I'm saying? Even if you're feeling the core problem of, I'm stuck and I don't trust, it'll ever be different. If you wish it could be different, pray for it. Because in reality, and this is one of the most powerful of the Buddhist teachings,

he said, I would not teach you about the possibility of happiness and freedom if it were not so. Trust it or pray to trust it. because there's something that we long for. There's a love we long for. We long to love without holding back. We long to live in something more whole, more true, more real, more connected. And if we long for it, it's because something in us knows about it. And we can't know about it unless it's there.

It's part of us in some way. Science, of course, confirms that it's mutable that in the last 15, 20 years, neuroplasticity has become the languaging of it. That, and it's a metaphor for us that's as useful as anything else, that neurons that fire together, wired together, which means that if you keep having certain kinds of thoughts and certain kinds of feelings, they'll get wired together and they'll become the habit. The Buddha put it this way, 2600 years ago,

that whatever you frequently think and ponder upon, that will become the inclination of your mind. So, do we frequently ponder and think about what's wrong with us or what's wrong with other people? A lot of us do, and that becomes the pattern. And just the way we can practice anxiety and depression, we can practice generosity, we can practice compassion.

We can practice so often use this gesture of putting a hand on the heart, even if you don't mean it, just the activity, even if you intend to be kind, but you don't feel kind, that can change in a very deep way your relationship with your inner life. We're now coming down to the pathway of really unwiring the somebodyhood, the limited somebodyhood. Okay? We're saying like how do we unwire this landlock self? And one way of understanding it is to really dedicate or recommit to compassionate witnessing of what's happening to with a compassionate, mindful way, notice, okay, here's how, here's the thoughts and feelings right now that are making this happen. We need to pause and witness

with compassion. What are we witnessing? All these different layers of selfing. It usually can be narrowed down in a clean way if you want to just begin to practice very quickly to our thoughts, our felt sense, and our behavior. So we feel stuck. This is the cue.

The cue is, if you want to practice more compassionate witnessing, whenever you're feeling stuck in some way, feeling tight, feeling uncomfortable, feeling reactive, when you know you're not aligned. That's when you go pause and, okay, bear witness, what am I thinking right now? What am I believing? I often ask myself that. When I'm really feeling bad in some way, what am I believing right now? Because if it's out of your awareness, it controls you.

But if you can compassionately witness it, you have more choice. Then you bring the compassionate witness to the felt sense. What am I feeling? Feel your body. Now that takes practice because a lot of us are kind of cut off and living up here. Feel your body because if it's out of awareness, it'll control what's going on. If it's in awareness, you actually come into more aliveness and more freedom.

What am I believing? What am I feeling? And notice your behavior. or am I withdrawing? Am I criticizing? Am I getting busy? Am I playing out an addiction? Now, one of the inquiries that's really powerful in this compassionate witnessing is to notice what's the sense of somebody right here? Even as you're listening right now, what's the sense of somebody? Is there a somebody who is listening? Somebody's trying to catch on to something or isn't sure it fits them? What's a somebody who's something? It's a somebody who's

Sometimes it's very faint and sometimes it's really, really acute, very visceral, very easy to find, the somebodyness. If there's strong wanting, strong fearing, really strong. You'll feel it. So the process of compassionate witnessing begins, as I'm just describing, with noticing the thoughts, the feelings, the behaviors. But there's a second piece beyond the recognizing of it that's essential. Because I've been talking about how usually along with somebodyhood there's a second arrow of I don't like this person.

To unwire it, you have to recognize what's going on and follow that up immediately with a friendly presence. You can't unwire it unless there's a quality of heart in it. It's just essential. You can use a gesture, as I often do. You can use words. You can just simply have the intention to hold it. what's happening with kindness, but the witnessing has to be compassionate witnessing. I'm going to give you some examples in a few moments of how we use this, but I want to just

give you one more piece for compassionate witnessing. So you've recognized it. Okay, I'm having judgmental thoughts and I'm feeling a squeezed feeling in me and I'm pulling away or I'm about to write an email that's not nice. So you witness all that, right? And then you immediately forgive it. You go, it's okay, sweetheart, or in some way you do your offering kindness. Then the third piece, I sometimes use the word drop. You just, okay, rest back again. Let go. Come back into presence, reestablish presence with your senses right here, right now.

Come right into the center of now. Because in the moments that you come fully back, you'll sense a real transparency to the somebodyhood. You can't find the self when you're really, really resting in presence. Okay, so those are the three elements. Witness it, recognize, okay, here are the patterns going on, offer friendliness, and then relax back into your senses. And the somebody gets very transparent.

And that's all you need to do, by the way, because the idea is not to vanquish somebody. somebody, it's just to remember the light that shines through. Okay? Okay, here's your example. I have a couple of examples of this. Part of the inspiration to talk about somebodyhood and the land-like lock self and then the freedom around it was that I've been traveling for about three weeks. And I find that traveling shines a light on our somebody conditioning in a really interesting way because we're out of our normal environments, the normal routines that trigger us. So in a way we're not as much inside the familiar sense of who we are, especially for me,

I was in Italy and very different environment. I wasn't in my normal roles. And so there was a sense of kind of an amorphousness of who I was anyway. But what's interesting about traveling, because the familiar identity can get much more porous, is that when you get triggered, it's very clear that you've come back into your somebodyhood. So I had a few examples. It's like the gremlins, you know, we're back, you know, that one, remember? So there I was traveling, as I'm mentioning, and we went to a place called Sardinia. Some of you might have heard of it. It's an island off of Italy, wonderful, beautiful place. And we're fortunate to have very good friends that hosted us who they speak English. They themselves aren't

English, you know, native language. But they arranged a picnic for us with their friends that are locals there, many generations back Sardinians. They're all Italians. None of them spoke any English. So Jonathan and I were the only English-speaking people and the only ones that really could communicate with us were our two friends.

These folks are really, eager to introduce us to their traditions. They, you know, everything at that picnic, they grew or they made themselves. And so there we were in this beautiful spot high in the mountains where just shepherds over the centuries had used this place, you know, a meadow and flowers and, you know, kind of idyllic. And so I'm going to tell you different ways somebody sprung into action during this picnic. And at first somebody kind of coagulated because it became clear that they're telling some really funny jokes.

Everybody was doubled over, but I had no idea what they were talking about. And people would say things to me and try to bring me out. And, you know, I'm generally glad to talk, but, you know, I didn't know a word of Italian. So I started getting into that sense of not just cluelessness, but something's wrong with me or feeling inadequate or incapable because I just, I was the outsider. So I saw that, that very familiar sense of not necessarily being an outsider because I usually am with a lot of situations where I'm teaching or I'm comfortable, but that sense of not being good at something, not knowing how to do something,

and just feeling incompetent, feeling kind of stupid. Got tight. So then, okay, this is somebody here. So I just felt that kind of somebodyhood. and I just breathed with it, and I was kind of kind of let go some. And then we got playful in Spanish. I know a little bit of Spanish, so we use Spanish as our in-between language. And through the time, it was amazing how much understanding could happen.

So that's somebody that incompetent somebody. Still didn't know what I was doing, but it was fine. Then the hours started passing. Now, I'm an introvert, and I usually only do a little bit of social stuff. and I'm not one for too much hanging out. But this started going on and on and on, and I sort of realized this would be a whole day. And I also had in my mind I wanted to do hike and go swimming.

So my controller, you know, the person has a map of time in her mind and has a control idea we're doing this, but now we're doing this, and then we're doing that. That somebody came up. So I had to work with that somebody and let go and forgive her for being there and just go with the flow. But then time started disappearing, and it got very fluid. Food was really lovely.

They brought it out, the grilled veggies, and the homemade ricotta, and the homemade breads. And I really loved it. And then another course came out, and I realized this was the first course of about eight courses. And the homemade wine, and they were drinking wine, starting at 1230, and I barely ever drink wine because it gives me a headache.

But, you know, went in Rome. So I was doing a little bit of this. this, a little bit of that, but I was getting really neurotic because I don't eat certain things and they all wanted me to eat everything. So my, you know, kind of eating disorder, neurotic self started shaping up. So then I had to be with that one. But I'm going to tell you about the last one because this one really kind of, the self became very tight. They presented the desserts, you know, cakes and fruit and so on. And then they were very proud to have the final course. And the final course is called Kasu Marzu. And it's cheese. And the cheese has larva in it,

these little worms, like thousands and tens of thousands of little worms in it that make the texture of the cheese very soft. So I was supposed to eat this Kasu-Marzu stuff with the little worms crawling in it. And I started like kind of, I kind of sidled away from the table. And, you know, I was like, you know, okay, when in Rome goes only so far. I'm not in Italy, I'm in Sardinia. But they were saying, Tarah, Tata, come over.

So this tightness, I just kept saying, okay, this one too. And there's this too. And I took my bite of this wormy cheese. And I have to say that it was every bit as disgusting. I mean, but, you know, there was this kind of inner freedom like, okay, I can do this. Now, my point of the story, just so you know, is not that in order to experience nobodyhood,

you have to eat cheese with worms in it. But it's a fascinating thing to have a filter where you're just going to be curious as to how the self-forms. and just in some way go, okay, what's this somebody feel like? How is somebody experiencing this right now? And in the moments that you recognize that somebody has appeared, you're no longer identified that much. You can work with it. You can be humorous.

You can be compassionate. And the truth is, again, we're not trying to get rid of the somebody, but when we're aware of the patterns, That makes room for a more natural intelligence and kindness and compassion and creativity to flow through. So, sometimes the somebody gets really, really strong, and it's a whole different world of how we begin to deconstruct it. It can take, it's not on the moment like I was in the picnic. And I said, oh, okay, somebody this too and went like this.

It's not so sudden. And I'll just give you a very brief example of one friend of mine whose daughter was addicted to heroin and cocaine and a bunch of other drugs. And this lasted over a period of about eight years. And she was in and out of rehab centers. And the somebody that formed in my friend was an enabling mother that every time her daughter would leave the rehab but then hit bottom and beyond the street, she'd take her in and figure out how to get her into the next place. And so that was a somebody that was really hooked, really scared her daughter was going to die,

and just her only behavior was, I have to help. I mean, she knew that she was emashed, but this was the somebody that was really solidified. And it took many, many months of feeling the pain of what was going on for her when she'd imagined surrendering and just handing it over in some way taking this somebody and saying, okay, mother of the universe, you deal with this, I can't do it. She had to go to that level of surrendering her somebodyhood. And when I do this, I do this gesture a lot myself. It's not like I want to get rid of somebody. It's like let this

egoic self be held in something larger. Because the ego can't get rid of the ego. There can be a surrendering that comes from a deeper place than the ego. And so for her, it was many months of trying to surrender that all of her fears and her grasping into a sense of Great Mother of the universe.

That was her language. We can do it, however, there is something larger than the ego we can offer ourselves into. And so for her, in that offering, it opened her up into the depth, of the grief, of feeling, you know, just this profound, bottomless grief. But what happened over time is that somebodyhood, that selfhood of the grasping, fearing mother

loosened some and she began to realize she could create the boundaries that actually could save her and her daughter perhaps in a different way. And she did that, and it forced her daughter actually, to find the place inside her that wanted to live, to hit a real bottom. It forced it. And this story, and it's never ended, they're still alive, but is happy at this point

because her daughter did go through the process of recovery. Doesn't always work out in a happy way, but the truth is we can't find the most creative, intelligent and compassionate response until we hand over the somebody and give ourselves access to a more universal energy that can flow through us. So again I want to say we're not trying to get rid of the ego. We need kind of the ego itself to strategize and navigate and move us through and be the one who banters with other people or be the one in a role that is an authority in some situations and a

student and others. We need the ego excel. But the egoic self, if we think that's who we are, is primarily going to be driven by fear and wanting. If we can remember the nobody, the wholeness of who we are. If we can remember that field of awakeness and tenderness and mystery that's really our source, then the somebody's that emerge through us will be filled with that light and that intelligence. In a few moments, we're going to do a practice of compassionate witnessing. But I just want to invite you in an informal way to practice because this can be such a powerful filter as you move through the day

to just begin to notice when there's been a coagulation into a self-sense that's really smaller than who you are. I mean, you can just say, is this really who I am? notice it, notice the kind of thoughts and feelings that feel most familiar. This is the somebodyness. Is this really who I am? You can make it a practice informally when you're doing activities that don't involve a lot of thinking, like when you're washing the dishes or if you go for a walk or you're taking a shower or driving. Just have the intention.

I'm going to notice when there's a somebody that arises. When certain feelings or reactions happen. And you can even use the word somebody, just very gently. Okay, somebody has arisen and get curious and get kind because often there's a bit of self-judgment with it. Last thing I'll mention before we practice is the key moment when we really dissolve the identification with somebody is when through our senses we're fully here.

When we're not living in any narrative, when the sounds are here that are right now arising, and there's a listening, and there's a feeling of the life and the body, when there's just this simple awakeness and openness, there's no ground for somebody to stand on. It's groundless. Most of the time we're living in a map that has time,

there's a present and a future, and we're on our way somewhere. Most moments, we're doing a task that we're trying to get done and we're on our way somewhere. And in those moments, there's some interference if we're believing in that self that's on the way that stops us from really living in this dynamic being. in this dynamic beingness. So I want to read you a poem and then we'll practice.

This poem is called Talk About Walking. Where am I going? I'm going out, out for a walk. I don't know where except outside. Outside argument, out beyond wallpapered walls, outside wherever it is where nobody ever imagines, beyond where computers circumvent emotion. where somebody shortened specks for rivets for airframes on today's flights.

I'm taking off on my own two feet. I'm going to clear my head to watch mare's tales instead of TV, to listen to trees and silence, to see if I can still breathe. I'm going to be alone with myself, to see how it feels to embrace what my feet tell my head, what wind says in my good ear. I mean to let myself be embraced, to let go, feeling so centripetally old. Do I know where I'm going? I don't. Or how long or far I have,

no idea, no map. I said I was going to take a walk. When I'll be back, I'm not going to say. You can get the feeling that it takes some intention to get outside our map, our landlocked self, to bear witness to the patterning, to be kind of, towards it and then to very on purpose re-enter this living moment to take our walk and not know where we're going or when we're coming back to just be okay so let's practice a little and then we'll close says you come into stillness and and close your eyes like to offer the words of RELCA who says let everything happen to you beauty and terror

just keep going no feeling is final so just let everything happen to you see if you can rest as this openness that this whole world is playing in sense how out of the silence pours sound out of the stillness

this whole play of sensation just let everything happen let life be just as it is senses awake and open being that openness That's your intention just to be noticing if there's some leaving of presence into some sense of somebodyhood. You notice the thoughts, the future, the past, and just sense how that coagulates into

a somebody, a narrative. When you notice, just relax again. Witness, if you sense that there's any judgment, offer a gesture of kindness. and then come back into your senses right here. Sense what it means to come back right here to the center of now, the center of now in this wakeful presence. Is there any sense of a self, of a somebody? You might even ask, who am I?

And then not to think, but rather relax back and sense the center of now. Wisdom tells me I'm nothing. Love tells me I'm everything. Between the two, my life flows. Namaste, thank you. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule,

or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.com. org.