Tara Brach - 2014-10-08 - Part 2 - Unconditional Love

Episode Date: October 10, 2014

2014-10-01 - Part 2 - 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. So, good evening. I'd like to begin this particular talk with a poem from Mary Oliver. It's called Little Dog's Rhapsody in the night. He puts his cheek against mine and makes small, expressive sounds. And when I'm awake or awake enough, he turns. turns upside down, four paws in the air, and his eyes dark and fervent. Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again. Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over he gets to ask, I get to tell. So what a beautiful tribute to uncomplicated loving. Right? So this is the second of a two-part series on Unconditioned the love on evolving our hearts. And in the last class we talked about loving the life that's right here. You might remember Srinarga Data, that wonderful Indian master's plea. He says,

all I plea with you is this, make love of yourself perfect. And it's really an invitation to commit ourselves to including our own being and our hearts, to really cherishing the life that's right here with this understanding that it's only if we really open our hearts to the being, to the life, to the body, to the aliveness right here, that we're actually open to our world. So tonight we extend it. It's these widening circles of belonging. And because it's part of Earth Care Week, we'll really link this in to this deep recognition that if we are to act on behalf of our earth, we have to feel our love and our belonging to the earth, that we are the earth, that there will not be the energy to help heal and save our world if it's not out of loving.

So how to wake up that loving? So it's really inclusive, very embracing. And this class will have a number of reflections, be more experiential. And the ground of waking up loving is that it matters to us. There has to be some purposefulness, some intention towards it, because it's so easy to get closed down and to not bring our attention to what really matters. So we'll begin our first reflection really with aspiration. Does this matter to me?

And if it matters, what's in the way? So I'd like to start right in with a reflection and invite you to kind of close your eyes. And as you pause, feel that you could let the attention drop into the body, the awareness come into the body, feeling the breath at the heart, feeling the state of your heart right now. Perhaps as a way of considering your aspiration, you might bring to mind somebody that you care of.

about and wish that you felt closer to, wish there was more of an alive experience of loving, maybe even another person, someone in your circle, someone who's dear and you wish there was more intimacy. You might take a moment to, in a sense, move forward in time, that inquiry of being at the end of your life looking back and sensing what really would not most matter about the life you're living right now. If you're at the end of your life looking back, what would be important? What would be important in these relationships and all relationships? What matters?

And the indicator of arriving in a true aspiration, a deep aspiration, you'll feel a quality of sincerity. If there's a felt sense that'll let you know, yes, okay, this matters, I'm connecting. It's a kind of sincerity and innocence to it. You might bring your intention towards love back in time right here and now to one of the people you were reflecting on, someone that you'd like to feel closer to, more intimacy with, and then just look closer with curiosity,

not judging, but just look closer in sense, what is between me and experiencing more loving? here? What's between me and feeling more connection, more open-heartedness? You might ask that same question and another relationship that's important. What's between me and really connecting with others? Just notice what comes up. For some, as you ask that question, you might sense it's just kind of dissociated or numb. It's like just the body or heart's not really there responding. Maybe you've been preoccupied. Or you might have some some strong feeling come up like fear or a sense of insufficiency, like something's missing

inside me. Or maybe it's anger, like they're not really there for you. Just sense what comes up. And the real inquiry is, what is it inside me that's getting in the way? That's the valuable inquiry. What are the beliefs, the feelings, the reactions? Now this is an inquiry that we could spend years on. We're just dipping in a bit, but just let that be, that curiosity be alive in you as we continue to reflect together. If you'd like, and take a few full breaths and open up your eyes. Okay, so this is the beginning, is that we sense, okay, love, connection, it matters, and okay, and then this honest look at what's between me and really that open-heartedness. And for some of us what we find is that it matters,

but we've been in a kind of abstraction, we've been preoccupied, and we're just not in our bodies or our hearts. There's just not a lot of feeling going on. So some might find there was a kind of dissociative sense. For some of us might feel like we start paying attention to a relationship and realize that we're tight in defenses because we don't really feel accepted or loved or special are important to another person? Are there some fear that we're going to get hurt and we're afraid to open? There's a lot of different things that can come up.

But under them all, the core, whether we're cut off, or we're afraid, or we feel shame or insufficiency, there is a sense of something's wrong. There's some core sense of something's wrong or missing that makes it so that we can't really

engage and be open. It's very deep conditioning. Just keep investigating and sense what's really under there and there's usually when we sense that we're not able to feel, we want to feel there's some, something's wrong here, something's missing. I like the way Woody Allen puts it. He says, life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering. And it's all over much too soon. So there's that negativity bias. So this deep sense, something's wrong, either with me or with you or with life that stops us, is really the core expression of a separate self. That if we have a feeling of being a separate self,

there's going to be some fear, some not okayness that gets in the way of feeling loving connection. And that feeling of not okayness underlies all. the strategies we have that further separate us, all our strategies of defending and pretending and manipulating and so on, which we're going to look at in a few moments. But underneath that, I'm not okay, something's not okay. So you might think of it. This is a very simplified version of existence that we come into existence and there's a perception of separation.

And right on top of that there's a sense of, oh, something's not okay. And then on top of that is develop some strategies to control things. Does that make sense? Separate? Not okay? Okay, you got to manage it now. That managing part is what is commonly called the ego. That's that separate self that's trying to navigate things. And I like to think of it kind of in the terms of a space suit that we come into a challenging environment where things feel not okay.

naturally put on a space suit of different strategies to try to make ourselves more safe, to get some satisfaction, to try to forge whatever attachments we can that are secure. And the more challenging the environment, in other words, the more we've encountered early on, abuse and trauma, or maybe we're in a culture where we're a minority that has been oppressed, maybe we're in a warlike situation. The more challenging, the more activated our space suit. The more activated the limiting beliefs that are guiding us, the more activated the defenses or the aggression. It's just a really natural response to a challenging environment. Now here's where the suffering sets in in terms of spiritually waking up is that it's very natural to develop this egoic navigating

organism that's operating. It's very, very, it's kind of finding its way. The suffering is that we come to identify with the space suit and we forget the beingness. Okay? We forget the that the one who's listening right now. We forget the one who has that tenderness and responsiveness when we see somebody suffering or who gets awed by beauty. We forget yet the awareness, the light that's within us, and come to perceive ourselves as the egoic self, the space suit. We lose touch with our essence. When we do, we lose touch with that capacity to feel our connection with each other and feeling intimate becomes really hard. Okay, this is Rumi. Rumi says, gamble everything for love. If you're a true human being, half

heartedness doesn't reach into majesty. Gamble everything for love. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses. So my down-dirty translation of that is we really long to love and be loved, but we get waylaid by substitutes. We get caught up in our control strategies, our ways. of trying to ease ourselves or feel better about ourselves or win approval, those are the mean-spirited roadhouses and we lose track of real loving. So it becomes really key on the spiritual path, on evolving, unconditional loving to catch on to those roadhouses, to be aware of our control strategies that we get identified with. Because anything that is outside of our control,

of consciousness we get identified with. It keeps us from essence. So if you've got a control strategy going on which includes certain beliefs and certain feelings that's not in your awareness, then that's going to help to define your sense of who you are and keep you from wholeness.

So I'm just going to name some of them and just try them on and see what seems to fit for you and then we'll do another reflection on this. Okay, so one of the conditions, control strategies is that we try to control others, we try to manipulate in the way we present ourselves to get them to think of us in a certain way. And watch yourself with other people. How much is your behavior and your way of being so that you'll have other people perceive you in a certain light? So they'll be impressed with you, or they'll

like you, or they'll think you're intelligent, or they'll sense you as an important person, or a fun person. And just to know that in the moments that we're trying to control to get a certain response or make an impression, in those moments we're not available to commune. We're not available for intimacy. That's one. Another control strategy is we control to get something we want from another person. We want their help, their advice, their time, their attention, their money, whatever it is.

And knowing that if we have any additional, we have any information, we want to be, they want their help, their advice, their time, their any agenda, if we're looking at the person and wanting such and such, we're not seeing the whole being and we're not available for communing. The more we're very particular about what we want, the less we see. One Indian teacher says, your problem is not that you have strong wants, is that they're not big enough. You don't want enough. If you want all of life, you're not like fixated on one thing,

then you'll be happy, you know. So here's some of you might remember, this is a singles, sad. Single black female seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I'm a very good-looking girl who loves to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping, fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Kindlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. Rub me the right way and watch me respond. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work wearing only what nature gives me. Kiss me and I'm yours. Call. Gives a number and ask for Daisy. Over 15.

thousand men found themselves talking to the Atlanta Humane Society about an eight-week-old black lab retriever. It's the best singles ad ever. Okay, so one control strategy is to try to get what we want. Then there's a control strategy for gaining power. We use judgment, put somebody down, then we're up. We use ways of getting back at people so that we feel empowered. It's kind of passive-aggressive, not respond. in some way, take something from them, hurt them back. It's like the little boy who announces proudly to his dad, I'm going to marry grandma.

And his father says, gently, son, you can't do that. Children don't marry their grandparents. And he says, why not? You married my mom, so I'm going to marry yours. Getting back, you know. Then there's the control strategy where we avoid, we avoid feeling and getting in touch with and paying attention to where people are really in pain or have needs.

There's this fear that their needs or their pain is going to be too much. So we control by really not paying attention to others. People in our close circle that are having a hard time. On some level we'll say the right things and do the right things, but are we really paying attention in a deep way with that inquiry, what's it like for you? We avoid that. We don't want to feel the vulnerability.

We don't want to be that close in. So that's a really big control strategy. And the last one I'll mention is that we control so that we can change people so they'll be more who we want them to be. And this happens a lot in families with, you know, controlling our kids or our partner or parents. Unless we're really, really open to life just as it is, the people around us are part of what we try to make different to get it right. I remember a story that really touched me about Ram Dass told that through his life,

he and his father were kind of at loggerheads. And towards the very end of his father's life, he and his father both started to accept each other for being just as they were and they became close friends just imagine the people close to you and sense what would it be like if I really accepted this person just as they are no effort to have them be different so in the moment we want somebody different again

that's control we're not really loving and we're not available to love fully right then and there. Really, as Thomas Merns said, the beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves. Okay. Now, the point here is not to eliminate our egoic activity. It's to be aware of it. Just be aware of it.

With forgiveness, with kindness, with humor. So it doesn't end up taking over your sense of your identity. Be aware. It will reflect together on this one now, okay? In this pause, I'd like to invite you to, again, feel yourself right here, feel your breath, feel your body. I'd like to invite you to recall feelings you had when someone praises you, sometime in maybe the recent past,

when in some way you got some approval, somebody applauded you, complimented, just sense what it's like when you get that. Feel it in your body and notice what happens. And if you can't exaggerate a little, so you really get a taste of it. And just to contrast that to what happens inside you when you're appreciating and looking at something beautiful outside, Some recent time you might have looked at the night's sky or a changing leaf when you appreciated the sense of the wind or the warmth, the air, the time when you looked at a person, a child when their eyes glowing, a person looking happy, and where you were just appreciating that.

Just to sense the difference between the pleasantness or charge that comes from egoic relating, not to make it wrong, but just notice the difference and what you might consider is essence relating. Again, let's explore this. A time recently, or not so recently, but that you can remember when you succeeded in something, when you won the tennis match or won an award, or won a contract, or won an argument, aced a test, got admitted to a program, something that was flattering, and in some way you won. You made it. And the feelings that come with that. We wouldn't go for that stuff that didn't feel good in some way. What's it like? Just get a taste of how that feels. And contrasted

to moments when you were enjoying the job you're doing, whatever the work is, or maybe absorbed in some creative activity, your work might be creative, maybe art also, or absorbed. Or absorbed or immersed in writing a poem or helping a friend. Again, just to sense the difference between egoic relating and essence. It's okay, we're going back and forth a bit. You might remember a time when you had an experience of power, when you were the boss or the expert or people were looking up to you for something. You were popular or on top in some way.

It could be in family, at work, any situation. You were the one who knew. And the feelings of that in contrast, to time when you felt the kind of intimacy or companionship with others. You were part of a team. In some way doing something, working, serving, together, maybe enjoying some fun or laughter, camaraderie, sensing the purity of that essence relating.

And to deepen that sense of essence relating, the final part of the reflection, is to just bring to mind for yourself, where there's some uncomplicated love, where there's a human or a pet, where you just feel in a very simple way that open loving flow. And if there's no one that's perfectly uncomplicated, then someone that it's not too complicated, it's fine. Bringing someone to mind and sensing what it's like to love when there's no agenda, when you're not wanting something from that person,

and you're not fearful of something from that person or defending, when there's no judgment, no control. So this is an invitation to sense into, or if you need to imagine, imagine this kind of loving, essence loving, where the other fully allowing the other to be just as here she is no agenda, no wants, no defenses and give yourself the gift

even if that doesn't exist anywhere of imagining that experience with someone that there is some love with imagining if there's no agenda, no wants, no defending, no judging. What's that love like? Who are you when you're opening into that kind of loving flow? And just let yourself feel that as a felt sense, letting it be as edgeless as possible, and as you're ready to take a few breaths and continue to feel that sense of what's possible,

our deepest potential opening your eyes. We'll go into the last part of this, which is really the inquiry of what helps evolve us from the habit of egoic loving into this more essence kind of relating. What helps us? Okay, I know you're thinking video games. But the answer is meditation,

but we're going to talk about particularly how does meditation help us. how does it evolve us? I'd like to say that meditation awakens this capacity for attunement. Mindfulness helps us attune. And the most profound and deepest need we have as infants is to have someone attuned to us.

And meditation helps us attune to our own being in a way it's a kind of spiritual reparenting. But the given is we're hardwired for bonding. I know a lot of you probably saw the march of the penguins, and I was reflecting on that because I was remembering how the parents, this was mostly the fathers, would keep the eggs warm for months and months and months. And then the chicks would hatch in these flocks of thousands and thousands of penguins.

You kind of remember the cacophony, the deafening din of the penguins. And what was amazing is that the parents and the chicks could find each other. they could recognize each other's voices or sounds in the midst of all of that. There's a very deep hard wiring for connection. And what brings it, what evolves, it allows it to flower into unconditional love, to essence love, is this capacity for attunement. Every one of us has the capacity to cultivate that attunement and then really live in a very unconditional loving way.

That's our capacity. And so what we'll explore now is to finish off is just what is it about meditation that does it. And one piece is it allows us to learn to come into our bodies. We can't be attuned to each other if we don't come into our bodies. One Japanese nun from the 15th century said that I meet my life with my whole body. I meet life with my whole body.

Imagine that. I can just feel that, that life is arising. We're just like completely opening to feel it through our bodies. That's the beginning. The second piece is that there's a commitment to being with the vulnerability of it. That rather than looking away when it gets difficult, and this takes courage, and we do it, the pace that it's possible, we begin to stay. We learn to stay and open to the feeling

of that vulnerability. This is one woman's story. She says this is entitled, Something You Never Want to Hear. She said, last night my mother told me she had breast cancer. If you've ever been in a situation like this, you'll recognize the flood of emotions that hit you at once, sadness, guilt, anger, regret. The shock's overwhelming. She describes she went into planning mode, okay, what needs to happen, treatment options, how soon do we get the lump remove, okay, so she goes into that mode, but then, thanks to meditation, here's what she says instead, what am I noticing right now? Hmm, okay, coming into the body, this is where attunement begins to happen.

If we're in our body and we're awake, we have those mirror neurons and capacities see what's going on for another person. She says, my mother didn't want to talk about those things. My mother was scared and needed to be scared. I debated whether to give her a hug, which sounds terrible I know, but I was barely holding it together and scurrying around, making dinner, pouring over doctor paperwork, staying busy. But being present allowed me to shift to her away. I took a breath. I walked across the room and wrapped my arms around her. It was awkward. It was a side of but it was also a long, necessary one, and then something happened. Slowly, she started rocking side to side, like a mother rocks a child except the child was now the caretaker.

It was a sweet, tiny moment I'll never forget, and one that I surely would have missed were it not for the power of mindfulness. So we ask ourselves in our life how many moments have we missed where we could have paused, come into our body, and stayed with the vulnerability, because it's only if we open to the vulnerability that will respond. And we so often avert our gaze, whether it's with somebody very close to us, or it's with people in our community who are not being treated well, whether it's the animals on this earth who are treated so cruelly to keep keep on allowing humans to consume animals, I think here of factory farming, whether it's

those that we don't know that are in war zones, and we just don't allow ourselves to sense what's it really like. So this is one of the gifts of practice that we think of it like, oh, why would I want to feel more vulnerability? But when our heart gets touched, it gets very, very tender and open. And there's actually a sense of deep gratitude for each of us when that happens. So that's the second piece. And the third piece that mindfulness and attumment allows is it allows us to see the goodness to savor this life. We have a negativity bias. Okay? We all do. We tend to kind of skim over things. And so meditation slows us down so we're available to connect and sense the goodness. I want to read to you from Philip Simmons. It's called Learning to Fall.

He had Lugarik's disease. He's no longer alive and this is one of his stories. He says, my family and I recently spent two weeks out west looking at big things, volcanoes, canyons, oceans, redwoods. Exilarating as it is, beauty on a scale, weary, me. Such great jobs of creation to be stuffed through the visual cortex wrestled into thoughts. I feel too small for the job. After looking at big things, it's a relief to come

back to New Hampshire at berry picking time to focus on small ones, raspberries, a feast of blue. It's a funny thing standing in a berry patch, pinching fruit gently between my fingertips, I feel smaller still. In fact,

when I attend the smallest things. When I hand myself over to moss or mushroom, berry, or beetle, I myself shrink to vanishing. This isn't as bad as it sounds, however. In fact, it's the reason we do such things. Anyone who spent time on her knees in a berry patch or flower bed comes to see this attention to small things as a form of prayer, a way of vanishing for one sweet hour into whatever crumb of creation, we are privileged to take into our hands. So as a way to close and say that this practice of ours of paying attention, of pausing, of coming into our bodies, of attuning, gives us the capacity to see where the pain is, stay, open our hearts with compassion,

respond. And it gives us the opportunity to see the goodness that flows through, through every being, through every part of life, and really let it in. It's as Keogabran says, and forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. So I invite you to listen to this last little reading from Gary Lawless that gives us a sense of what really is needed as we open to Earth Care Week.

So if you just close your eyes and listen for a moment, These are the words of Gary Lawless. He says, when the animals come to us asking for our help, will we know what they are saying? When the plants speak to us using their delicate language, will we be able to answer them? When the planet herself sings to us in our dreams, will we be able to wake ourselves and act?

To invite you just to close your eyes, for a few moments, just for a few moments, and just to sense this earth our enlarged body, just to feel your heart holding this earth with care. And sense your wish, your prayer for the life that's here, your prayer for healing, your prayer for the well-being of all creatures, and in the most basic way, sense your love. your love for the aliveness of this earth, our enlarged body and our home, feeling the earth in your heart. Again, for the last time, just to take a moment to let your eyes close and to feel the heart

space that is here, the shared heart space, that continuous space that's edgeless, inclusive, holding life, holding earth, holding all life. We close with our shared prayer that all beings everywhere be filled with loving presence, be held in loving presence, that all beings everywhere may touch a natural and great peace. May there be healing and peace on earth and everywhere. May all beings everywhere.

awaken and be free. Namaste. 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.