Tara Brach - 2014-10-01 - Part 1 - Unconditional Love

Episode Date: October 3, 2014

2014-10-01 - Part 1 - Unconditional Love - These two talks explore key elements in manifesting our innate capacity for unconditional love. Both talks include teachings and meditative strategies for recognizing our blocks to loving, and, through courageous, embodied presence, discovering who we are when not confined by the limiting beliefs and feelings of an egoic self. The first focuses on accepting and embracing our inner life, and the second, on the awakening of a loving presence that includes the whole of this living world.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Namaste and welcome. In this human realm, perhaps the most core expression of spiritual awakeness is love. And there's an expression, a predicament, a description of a predicament I really like, which is called the big squeeze, which is a big squeeze, which is day by day there's this deep capacity we have to love and to be wise and accepting

and yet we can watch our moments of the day and see how many times were pulled around by all sorts of reactivity and small-mindedness and obsessiveness and judgment and so we're caught in the a squeeze, and you might think of it, you know, in terms of the brain, the squeezes between our older systems, the limbic systems, of fight-flight freeze, and then our more fully activated

frontal cortex. It's like there's, you know, there's kind of who's going to win out in a way. Or you might think of it, just that's developmentally, that there's a lot of strong conditioning, egoic conditioning, and we have a capacity to perceive, and live from a greater sense of wholeness and integration and love. As evolving creatures, it takes intention, an intentional engagement in our own process to awaken the heart. It takes intention to awaken this capacity to really accept unconditionally what's going on. And to really love without holding back, love and express our love, let people know. It takes intention.

It takes intention to let it in some, to put down and be less defended in our heart. So what I'd like to explore this week and next week is this path of unconditional loving and what the key elements are that help us to evolve our own capacity. And as you might imagine, the starting place in any... exploration of unconditional love is how we're regarding the life right here. That's the starting place. So I'll read to one of my favorite verses from Srinar Sargadata, Indian teacher. He says all you need is already within you. Only you must approach yourself with reverence and love. Self-condemnation

and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this. Make love of yourself perfect. Make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing. Give yourself infinity and eternity

and discover that you do not need them. You are beyond. All I plead with you is this. make love of yourself perfect. It's powerful words. So let me unpack a little bit. Like what is it when we're saying make love of yourself? Who's this self we're loving?

And just to perhaps distinguish and say when we're loving ourselves, we're not loving the self that's in the story, the character, the narrative self. We're loving the life that's right here. We're loving and offering care to this different patterning of emotions and feelings and sensations. We're loving the life that's emerging moment to moment. Okay. And then some ask, well, perfect. Isn't that like another,

okay, now do this perfect? I'm falling short on loving myself, you know, and then it's like problems. So the spirit of this plea from Sweden or Sargadatta is one of let it be your deepest intention. Let it be right at the center of your path to love the life that's right here. Because the most important truths are the ones that we always forget. And one of them is you can't be in love with life if you've excluded this portion of life that we call self. Does that resonate for you? Is that, are we together on that part? Okay. Now, just the word love we could spend a lot of time on. For me, the very ground of love is an unconditional acceptance right here and now, that openness

that totally is attending to and accepting what's right here. And it's out of that openness and that acceptance, that contact with what's right here, that the tenderness and sensitivity and responsiveness that we call love is. arises. So sometimes we might say, well, can you feel love for yourself this moment? And we might not feel the full-blown warmth, but there can be the beginnings of an allowing, of an accepting of what's here. And that's the beginnings of loving. We don't have to jump to the full-blown expression. So make love of yourself perfect. What would happen if that even by a matter of a few degrees became more in your consciousness, that commitment to truly feeling a sense of tenderness and acceptance and a care towards what's here. How would your life change? You know, it's worth considering. It ripples out. To offer a metaphor that I find useful, the deep understanding is that

this loving is an intrinsic capacity. It's like an interior sun in our being, this light and warmth, it's always there. But as we know, it's not always something we access or feel because it's covered over by clouds that obscure it. And so a lot of the path is to sense the clouds of beliefs and emotions that we get identified with. We get lost in those clouds. So we forget that openness and light and warmth that really is our deepest nature. We forget who we are. And the Buddha described that as really the core of our suffering, forgetting who we are. So maybe a reflection just to bring this right into the moment for you, just to invite you to close your eyes and take a moment to check in. Take some moments of pausing.

to connect with your senses, to be here. Know that you're here, the sounds that are right here, listening, feeling the aliveness in your body, and feeling your heart, whatever mood is here. And let your intention be right now to hold your own being with an unconditional and accepting presence, this grounds of making love of ourselves perfect, an unconditional accepting presence.

And the background inquiry as you have this intention is to notice if there's anything between me and accepting myself, accepting the life that's right here. Notice how you're relating to your own experience. Is there a quality of acceptance, allowing, gentleness, or is there something getting in the way, something that's blocking the sun? You might widen this,

this inquiry and just sense your life today, yesterday, its last weeks, and how you've been relating to yourself. Just asking again, is there anything between me and accepting myself, regarding myself with presence, gentleness, love? And for now you can take a few breaths and open your eyes as you're ready. And then just know that this can be a very useful inquiry just to ask, is there anything between me and loving myself in this moment? And what we notice is sometimes there may be a real sense of freedom and regarding this inner life and the life everywhere with a real open-heartedness.

But at other times for most of us, because we're creatures of the culture and our conditioning and so on, which I'm going to talk about a little more, we find there are clouds. There is something between us and loving fully, feeling really at home. And when I ask this question, I work with people in residential workshops and so on.

When I say, so what are the clouds? What do we get caught on? And for some, it's, you know, well, actually, when I asked that question, I just couldn't even get in touch with myself. I don't even know what I was loving. So there's kind of a numbness or disconnect. And then for others, well, when I really try to be present, I just feel a lot of fear or I feel a lot of anger or a story about something going on in my life takes me away.

So it's not really loving, accepting presence here. I'm kind of reactive. And then for many, it's when they really check into their lives and say, well, what's between me and really accepting and opening to, to and loving this being here, there's actually a very strong sense of self-aversion or a stream of judgment or criticism that prevents a sense of really being able to embrace this life. So I want to address that tonight because I call this the trance of separation, that in some deep way we, if we look at our day, we can sense that we've kind of left ourselves, we're often thoughts or reactivity, and that often in the trance of separation,

the reactivity, the clouds that we're lost in are storm clouds. They're in some way we're at war with ourselves. It's an undercurrent. We're not always aware of it, but we're often at odds with ourselves. And what I'd like to do is pause, because this is, to me, a very universal and core conditioning to leave our bodies, to kind of, leave the moment and to be turned against ourselves. And I want to ask for you here, how many of you

have noticed that in your life, that you spent a lot of time at war with yourself in some way? Don't be shy because it's helpful to... Okay. So for those listening, that's, that looked like about 90% of the hands here. And I can, I'll join in with my hand, but you get to hear my stories all the time. This is Wendell Berry. You'll be walking. some night, it will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape and that you're guilty. You misread the complex instructions. You are not a member. You lost your card or never had one. When we incarnate, we, along with every other creature in the universe, have some sense of separation. There's a sense of what's inside and a sense of out there. And with that separation,

there is inevitably a core and primal sense of fear. There's some sense that mortal, this is fragile, this is vulnerable material here, it's easily at risk, there's a lot of danger, we're going to die. So that is a basic core scenario. And so there's inevitably unpleasantness. And what happens to us is that there's aversion to the unpleasantness, And then we add what I often refer to from the Buddhist teachings because it's such a good descriptor is the second arrow.

So the first arrow is that core fear and the unpleasantness of it. And the second arrow is this means I'm bad. Feeling bad means I'm bad. We don't often see how that identification, that step of not feeling good and then I'm not good, we don't always notice that that's taken place, but because it's always happening, it's easy to coagulate into some ongoing sense of not okay, I'm not okay. So it's very much reinforced in our culture.

Our cultures are our petri dish, and as we know, it's a competitive one, and we can't avoid the influence of the messages from our culture about what's desirable and good and what's bad. And we can't avoid measuring ourselves. And there's no way that we meet the standard on everything. So it's a kind of a setup. You know, there's all these very, it's a narrow band of standards on intelligence.

And I often talk about this because I'm so appalled in our educational systems, how still there's just this emphasis on a certain kind of left brain analytic intelligence, that is applauded, and so many kids that have different kinds of intelligences end up feeling like they're not smart. That feels like a real shame, a real tragedy. And then, of course, there's all these standards on how we should look, and how many of us, whether it's a body or face or just general way we dress or whatever, feel in some way not enough.

And then there's standards about success. And then if we're a minority, there's so much of a diminishing value of people that are different from the mainstream, whether it's race, our sexual orientation, or gender orientation, or religion. There's so many ways the culture can make us not okay. Then we have all the standards of proper behavior. First of all, proper emotions. We're not supposed to feel jealous or angry, and there's a whole long list I could give. So every time those challenging emotions come up, some part of us says, okay, anger's here, I'm bad. And then all the ways we're supposed to conduct ourselves, proper behavior.

So we're always monitoring. We're such social creatures run a roller coaster based on how others are responding to us. One story for you. This is a woman who's a top executive in New York City, finance. usually actually goes to work by limo, but there was one day that the weather was so bad that she was forced to take a bus, and so she figures she'll catch up on the news or whatever. Well, she gets on the bus, and she has an embarrassing situation. She has a lot of gas, and she doesn't know what to do about it because it's a bit of a ride.

And so she's like, it would be really embarrassing for to release it to fart. Like, oh, God, I can't do that. but she is listening to the music and she realizes that at certain points of the music it's really loud and she decides to fart to the beat of the music. Okay? Finally she gets to her stop and when she's leaving the bus

everybody's looking at her and it's only after stepping out that she realizes she had her headphones on. So it's a terrible example but I think you get the idea that we have these standards and how many of us in our hearts of hearts know that we're not in some way fitting the standard, by the way we're behaving. So there's the culture that instills a sense of not meeting the standard, not okay.

And then, as most of you know, our early years with caregivers, even before we have a separate sense of self, there's a experience of who we are based on how we're treated and the messages we're getting. So our parents with their own fears and preoccupations were unable most of them to offer that unconditional acceptance, that seeing, true seeing of who we are. And so what happened was that we emerged with a sense of to be okay, I have to be like this, this, and this, and I'm not. So instead of feeling at home in ourselves, we have to kind of construct ourselves to get the approval and love

that matters so much. I'm thinking of one woman, I wrote this up in True Refuge, whose mother was very much of a narcissist, very preoccupied with herself. And she remembers when she was four, her mother saying, you know, I just ran the bath, go take your bath.

She goes into the bathroom and gets into the bathtub and there's two to three inches of lukewarm water. And she remembered at that age having the thought that this is all I'm going to ever get. And this is what I deserve in some ways what I deserve. And through her life she had really hard time, has had. She's been working on it, asking for or thinking she deserves anything from others, some sense of being needy or a past or not important enough.

Very deep the mark of our early relationships. So we're talking about the second arrow, that feelings and emotions come up and very quickly we own them. And it goes from feeling bad to I am bad. The core beliefs, and I want to take some moments with this, the power of our core beliefs are very deeply grooved and very persistent. I'd say that there are our most persistent false refuge. And I call them a false refuge because we might have a core belief

of feeling insufficient or bad. And even though that's really painful, we'd rather have that than not have it because it orientes us. And it gives us a sense of control because then we at least know how we can defend and protect and try to make up for things. So even though bad is, it feels dangerous to feel bad, at least knowing it means we can have some sense of managing our circumstance. And this is the predicament, which is these core beliefs keep on. reinforcing themselves because as so many of you know if you believe that you're insufficient then your emotions and behaviors are going to create situations that are then going to feed what you're believing so we get caught in these these

cycles of being even more deeply identify with a sense of something's wrong with me I'm bad and and when we're feeling deficient we have less access to our resourcefulness the limbic brain is taken over we have less access. Another story, I noted, say, Chiatras was at a guest at a dinner party and his hostess kind of broached the subject that he was most at ease with. She asked him, would you mind telling me how do you detect mental deficiency in somebody who appears normal? And he said, well, nothing's easier. You really, you just ask a simple question which anyone should build a track with no trouble and if that person hesitates that kind of puts you on the track. Well, what sort of question,

she asked. Well, you might ask him, Captain Cook made three trips around the world and died during one of them, which one? The host is thought for a moment, and then with a nervous laugh, she said, you wouldn't happen to have another example, would you? I must confess, I don't know much about history. All right, so I'm going to tell you a personal story, which is I was seven or eight years old and I was at a restaurant and my parents and the waiter was kind of chatting me up and he said to me you look like a smart young lady and that's where the hook came in because then he said I'm going to ask you a question and so okay so I was stealing myself because I wanted to be that smart young lady you know he said what color was George Washington's white horse well I really thought about it

I really really thought about it hard I was going through my memory trying to see if there's any pictures I saw at school and all that and finally I made my best guess which was black. It's really strange what memories come back to you but that was a very distinct memory in my mind you know when we are caught in our struggles around feeling good about ourselves or not we shut down really access to our creativity or intelligence and to love so there's probably not one of us us listening that doesn't know the suffering of when we're feeling not okay. When we truly feel deep down, something's really wrong with us. Most of us know the cycle, too, that it creates. We have some area of our life where we know that we've been in a cycle. I was seeing

one woman I've worked with on and off over the years, you know, anticipates that any group she'll get in, she'll be rejected. She's going to end up not feeling like she belongs. She's going to feel like an outsider. And this is at work, at school, and trainings. And she's very, because of that, very quick to withdraw and to take offense and to cover over, or else she becomes the real vulnerable one,

the patient of the group. And each round, it becomes more and more clear that she's got this belief that she's moved, that's absolutely creating her life. It's so many, I've said many times, I think this is Gandhi and several others have actually described this link that our beliefs create our feelings,

that create our thoughts, create our behaviors, create our character, create our destiny. This is André Nguan, Catholic mystic, teacher, writer. He says, over the years I've come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection.

He says, as soon as someone accuses me or criticized me, as soon as I'm rejected, left alone or abandoned, I find myself thinking, well, that proves it once again. I'm no good. I deserve to be pushed aside for God and rejected. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the beloved. Being the beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. I'm just going to read the last lines again.

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the beloved. Being the beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. Let's look together now at the movement from that, stuck place where I identified in the cloud of, you know, I'm bad, I'm failing, something's wrong, and how we move and wake up back to sensing that sun, that light and warmth, which really is always here, but so often inaccessible, or feels that way. And the movement toward making love of our self-perfect, towards being that beloved, is that we recognize and release the second arrow,

that that sense of, you know, that criticism, that judgment, that voice that's saying, something's wrong with me, that we recognize that and wake up out of that. And here's the main thing that we come right into an embodied experience of the moment. It takes both of those things. the second arrow, okay, I'm down on myself again, opening up beyond that, sensing there's more to this world than that, and coming fully into embodied presence. What sustains the trance is not seeing that we're caught up in that cloud of personal badness and being dissociated from our body.

as long as we're dissociated, we can't heal. So let me give you, first of all, a simple example of that shifting from being lost inside that cloud of not okayness back to something more open. With just an example from this morning, for me, it was a drizzly morning. And I go out walking usually around 6, 6.6.30. And I wake up, and the first thing I do is,

go for a very long walk and I meditate usually outside if it's not too rainy. And this morning I started moving and I have a hill that I have to go up right at the beginning. And I just, my mind went into total complaining grumpiness. A lot of physical discomfort, my hip, my shoulder, felt a little bit of queasy, kept going, going, kept lasting. And then I started having thoughts about, I'm in a demanding stretch of time. of feeling anxious about getting things done, so I was aversive to how my body was feeling, and I'm feeling anxiety, and not liking the anxiety.

And then I even stopped walking because I realized, oh, I'm not liking myself right now. Because it wasn't only that I was feeling physical discomfort and anxiety, I wasn't liking the self that was feeling so aversive. Now, that added piece, is the hook that we that can create our mood and stuckness and repeating of patterns for decades so I paused that was that was the moment of pausing and I just started I just recognized okay this is a judgment about self and I started coming back into my body I said okay it's okay to feel anxious it's like this

weather system it's okay to feel it and it's okay to feel the sensations in my body and it's okay to feel aversion. In other words, it's okay to feel what I'm feeling. And in the moments of recognizing that second arrow and then coming back and just making it okay what was going on, that's when there was a sense of a more expanding open. That's when I wasn't any longer inside that small grumpy cloud of not okayness. I was back into a quality of presence that I still didn't feel comfortable. But that There was no hook that there was something wrong with me. In the moment that you become mindful and aware of the second arrow, you're no longer hooked by it.

There's still going to be some experience of it, but if you're really aware of it and you come into a full embodied presence, it's no longer such a hook. Because you, your awareness, is larger than that cloud. Keep going. The bottom line core teaching is that whatever is not an awareness controls us. So if you're assuming that something's wrong with you and that's in the background and you're not aware of it, it will keep your whole system contracted. So how do we loosen that second arrow? For me this morning it wasn't really hard because I've been working with the second arrow

since I was 20 and it's very familiar and this is what I've spent lots and lots of moments going, oh, this again, okay? But there are times that that second arrow has a really deep hook. And for many of us, the core beliefs, really, it doesn't feel like a belief. It feels like truth. It's our body saying, something is wrong with me. So I want to spend the last part of this exploration on how do we begin to loosen that hook? because I feel like that's the key element for so many of us

for coming into a really true sense of freedom. And there's two major strategies I want to explore or mention on how we loosen it. So if you are caught in the sense of something's fundamentally wrong with me, I do not have the capacity to be intimate with others. if people really got to know me, they wouldn't like me. If we have some fundamental sense of no matter what happens, I'm going to fail, there are some different ways we can start saying,

okay, that's the belief. How do I wake up from believing it so much? And one way is, I think of it as kind of going for the big picture. And by that I mean we start realizing that that belief and experience of ourselves is conditioned not only necessarily from our childhood, but even from past generations. This is important because if you can get that what you're experiencing was set in motion generations back,

you really start getting it's not your fault, you know? And that's a really big deal. Now, this is, we'll go to science right now. This is from December 1st, 2013, from the BBC News, there was an article about a study from nature neuroscience and it showed how mice trained to avoid a smell past their aversion onto their grandchildren. And that might not sound like a big deal, but what it's saying is that behavior can be affected by events in previous generations that are passed on through genetic memory. So the trauma somebody experiences in a war are from abuse, are from, are from an accident.

Some of the emotions and experiences around that can be passed on and passed on. So there's some deep sense of I'm endangered. It's not our fault that we have a sense of chronic endangerment. There's been generations of genetic memory passing it on. I have worked with many people that the shift point in their healing process is when they looked at all the conditions. that gave rise to the behaviors that they hated about themselves.

They realized, oh, well, when I was in the womb, my mother was drinking alcohol, or my mother was experiencing the rage of my father. Or when I was, after I was born, my parents split, and there was the kind of depression that there was nothing at all coming my way. So, of course, I'm grabbing. In other words, when we start seeing

how everything we dislike, has a cause. It really has a cause. I often call this, you know, I refer to that metaphor with the dog with the leg in a trap, that in some way our legs in a trap were just acting exactly how any human being with the nervous system would act due to certain causes and conditions. It's in those moments something in us gets, and it's not just intellectual. Wow.

It's really not my fault. And I've seen that that realization does not make us irresponsible. It does the opposite. It's like in that moment of realizing it's something loose and so we actually can respond to our circumstances from a lot more intelligence and compassion. There was one man who has come to who I've known for years, different conferences and so on,

an author somewhat well known who we got to know each other and shared some and he's very very ambitious and some of the things he shared is some that he feels most vulnerable about is how competitive he is with other authors and people in his field and how much he really wants to be the star and how much in searching for that and trying to get that you know he he inflates himself and does some pretending and also does some gossiping and putting other people down, thinks he's really embarrassed about. So he was sharing that because we've shared what's real some. And that the shift for him, because he's got a meditation practice, was that when he saw

that behavior that really, in a sense, disgusted him, you know, that just felt so small-minded, he went under and he said, okay, what's really driving it? And he got to the place that he realized it was coming from, he wanted to be the best and the most popular and so on, because he wanted to be loved. And he could see when he looked at his childhood, in this case, father was very, again, well-known, very narcissistic. He got very rewarded when he performed well

and kind of ignored when he didn't. And really had this unmet need to have a feeling that he'd be loved for who he was. So he got hooked on trying to be loved for something, for being an icon of some sort. But when he could see the suffering and the yearning in the mixed, he could say it's not my fault. It's not my fault. This is happening.

And then that ended up creating more space, more like opening out of the cloud. He had more sense of, you know, his heart was a little bit softer towards himself, and it actually shifted the behaviors. It's Not My Fault is an incredibly powerful tool if you find you're completely turned on yourself. But it doesn't end there. There's more. But that's just one way to start loosening it. Now there's another way that has to do with sensing the belief that's there and sensing how real it is to you,

but in some way getting that it doesn't mean it's true. and I'd say that the main thing people get when they leave a retreat, especially the first retreat, in some way, and I've had so many tell me this, it's saying, you know, I realize I don't have to believe my thoughts. So I'd like to give you an example of how I loosened up a core belief with this sense that this phrase real but not true, which I got from Sokney-rimbeshé, a Tibetan teacher.

So the background to my belief is that my parents were very social activists, very politically active, involved with civil rights and poverty and economic justice and so on. And when I was younger, you know, college and after college, I also was quite active. But then when I got into the consciousness business, so to speak, I spent a lot more time in terms of working with inner life and on that realm and less active. But all along felt guilty because in some way my parents were, you know, I kind of idolized what they were doing and felt like I should be doing it all. You know, I should be doing the inner work and also the outer work and involved with every cause and so on. So this is the kind of a background in some way always falling toward not contributing enough.

And that was for a number of years. And I remember, you know, I started working with it. as in many of the ways I've been talking about. But about five years ago, it came up again. I realized it was laden but not gone. And it spiked because we were getting more and more involved in this community around issues of diversity. And it was such a close to my heart area.

I have many good friends that have suffered directly from a lack of meaningful inclusion in the Buddhist Sanghas. And it might not appear that Buddha Sanghas are not welcoming sungas, but a real lack of sensitivity, especially people of color. And so this was really a live issue for me. And I remember after one particular board meeting, and we were beginning to respond, and the affinity sanghas are growing, and beginning in the board and amongst the teachers to start really looking more deeply. And I remember after one board meeting. It hitting me that I'm a leader in this community

and how essential it is that I commit more energy and leadership in this area and the sense of deficiency that immediately came after that knowing there's no way I could commit what I would think was enough. So I went home and I really felt this flooded sense of shame and falling short around something that meant so much to me that I just wasn't enough. And so I deepened my attention. I just want to give you my process because it was a very

powerful one where I said, okay, here's the belief that I'm falling short. In some way, I'm not a good enough person because I'm not giving myself enough. And I remembered this, the language of real but not true. I said, okay, this feels really real. It really feels bad inside. But in some way, it's not the truth of who I am. So I wanted to keep inquiring. So I sensed, okay, how does believing this feel in my body? And when I believe that I am in some way not doing enough, there's a sense of shame, there's a kind of ache, a hollowness, a kind of pulling away from life, really getting small. So I fully allowed the sense of badness, the feeling feeling of the felt sense in my body.

And then I asked myself, well, what is it like to live with this? What's the effect this has when it's alive in me on my life? And I started sensing directly how that very guilt and shame actually created distance between me and myself and me and others. And it actually made it so it cut me off from the authentic caring. guilt cut me off from caring. And then I asked myself really, you know, I felt the sense of I really want to undo this, this I'm bad feeling. And so I started saying, well, what would it be like without this not enough?

What would it be like, and you can sense this question too for your life, what would it be like if you really weren't living with a sense of not enough? Or something's missing, something's wrong. wrong. And instantly I could feel, in this particular thing around the issue of diversity, that if I wasn't living with the not enough, I'd actually have this huge curiosity. I'd be really wanting to seek to understand how is it that this has arisen so much sense of suffering and violence and separation and blindness. How did it happen? And I'd want to understand and I'd have this more yearning to connect in an authentic way, but I'd feel like without the pressure of not

enough, a kind of creativity and interest in the process and care rather than a kind of dutiful and feeling crunched. The final question I asked, who would I be if I wasn't feeling that guilt and shame? And I could immediately feel that sense of I would just be loving presence. Without that guilt and shame, without that second arrow of something's wrong, I would relax back into love. Now, I want to say that there wasn't a one-shot, I have to again and again when I feel that sense of I'm not doing enough, I have to again go, okay, it's real but not true, and I feel how it feels in your body, feel it, okay? Feel it really strongly, sense the effect of that. Okay, what would it be like if I didn't believe that?

Who would I be? and again it go from being inside that cloud of a not enough not okay person to back to that space of awareness where the sun can shine through read you a poem Pesha Joyce Gertler finally on my way to yes I bump into all the places where I said no to my life all the untended wounds those coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again and I lift them one by one close to my heart and I say holy holy

and I lift them one by one close to my heart and I say holy holy so tonight we're talking about undoing that conditioning to turn on ourselves and I wanted to read this poem holy holy because I've come to look at these times where I find myself caught in that cloud of not okay as an amazing opportunity. Because each time that I pause and really deepen attention, it becomes a gateway back to that

space of loving. Each time that I really take the time to say real but not true or it's not my fault. And I come into my body and in some way I feel that compassion towards that pain and discomfort of self-aversion, I start melting back into loving. the key pieces are to have the intention if you leave here or leave tonight or leave this talk with just a little more intention

to make love of yourself perfect you'll be alert for when you're caught in that cloud of self-aversion and judgment the second step you have to interrupt that self-talk and the judging thought and either in some way say it's not my fault or real but not true and come into the living feeling

Come in and go ahead and feel in your body how the aversion feels. Cry it. Let yourself cry with it. Offer yourself kindness for it. And offer forgiveness. Because the other side of presence with the places we say no is holy, holy, holy. This is Yates. He says, I am content to follow to its source.

every event in action are in thought, measure the lot, forgive myself the lot, when such as I cast out remorse, so great a sweetness flows into the breasts, we must laugh and we must sing, we are blessed by everything, everything we look upon is blessed. There is deep, deep freedom on the other side of that sense of not okay, and we have to pay attention. So we'll close, just take a couple of moments to do a kind of scan I like to do, to loosen up the tangles. So as we close, we're exploring really this pathway to unconditional loving. We begin with the life that's right here, sensing how we can notice what's between us and loving presence. And just bring that holy, holy, that.

feeling it in our body, bringing tenderness, and discover the blessing on the other side, that sunlight of loving presence. So just in a simple way right now, you might scan and sense what's going on in your body, whatever sensations are here. Notice if there's places of tension or tightness. Notice if there's any places of tension or tightness.

of chronic or acute unpleasantness. And letting yourself really feel your body from the inside out, notice if there's any resistance, any aversion to what's going on in your body right now. Just including an awareness, the life of the body, and sense if there's anything between you and unconditional acceptance, just allowing it to be as it is, including the felt sense in the body, emotions,

If there's any anxiety or fear, sadness, or maybe you feel sleepy or numb, whatever the state of heart-mind is right now, can you unconditionally accept this? Or is there some adversiveness, some sense of, I'm not okay, because this doesn't feel okay? I shouldn't be feeling this. Something's wrong with me. bringing it into the light of awareness, noticing in a broader way if there's something going on in your life that has you at war with yourself, and sensing your intention to wake up out of that cloud of self-aversion if it's there, sensing the possibility of noticing the beliefs that are there about yourself,

and saying it's not my fault, or it's real but not true, it's not who I am. sensing the possibility of opening with courage and great tenderness to how you're experiencing shame or self-aversion in the body, holy, offering care and forgiveness, making love of yourself perfect. From Dorothy Hunt, in this choiceless, never-ending flow of life, there's an infinite array of choices. One alone brings happiness. to love what is, closing with the prayer that we might awaken that heart of unconditional loving

to embrace the life within and around us that all beings everywhere might recognize the very essence as loving presence. And to live from that, may there be peace, healing, and freedom. for all living beings everywhere. 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.org.