Tara Brach - 2014-12-10 - Part 1: Intimacy with Life

Episode Date: December 13, 2014

2014-12-10 - Part 1: Intimacy with Life - This season is one of celebrating the light and love that is our unifying source. And yet at these times our society is being forced to face its deep patterning of racial oppression, amongst other expressions of violence. These two talks investigate the process of turning against ourselves and others, and how intentional and deep presence can heal the suffering of separation.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. So I heard a holiday story. I thought I'd share of a family that invited a little bit larger number of guests than usual last year. And so it was quite hectic and frantic for the mom who was trying to get everything together last minute. Finally, everybody arrived. They all sat down to eat and she said to her six-year-old daughter, honey, why don't you say the blessing tonight? And the little girl said, but I don't know what to say. And she said, well, just say what you hear mommy say. Oh, Lord, why did I invite all these people for dinners? So here we are. We're entering the season. And it's really, as most of us know, it's across the board pretty much

of different faiths, whether we're talking about Kwanza or the Christians or the Jews or Buddhist Hindus, the same spirit around now of kind of lighting the candle that has to do with the light that lives in all of us, sensing a collectivity and a love and a belonging. And I like this Hasidic story. A Jewish rabbi asks his pupils how they can tell when the night had ended and the day had begun, because that's the time for the holy prayers. And they came up with different kinds of responses. Is it when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it's a sheep or a dog?

No, said the rabbi. Is it when you can clearly see the lines in your own palm? Or is it when you can see a tree in the distance and tell if it's a fig or a pear tree? And each time the rabbi said no. So finally they said, okay, so what's the answer? And his response was this. It's when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that they are your sister or your brother.

Until then it is still night. So we have this call from really our own hearts and from all the different face. It's really about sensing our connectedness. The Zen teaching is this, that really being enlightened means to be. to be intimate with all things, with all beings. And so we start sensing, what does that really mean? To be intimate with all things, with all beings. And I think for many of us,

because we're so aware of what's going on in our society, there's a pretty stark contrast here of this season of really cherishing and revering life and so much forgetting. So much pain, I call it unreal other, when we really sense others as others that we can violate, others that we can condemn. So the recent events, the killing of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and so many others that we're hearing about, when we start sensing that, it's jarring, it's painful, and it brings up really profound grief.

A few hours ago, I and a couple of other teachers from the, the DC area meditation community went into a vigil that was the delegation of grieving mothers. Some of you might have heard of it. Very powerful. It took place in front of the Justice Department. And it was very simply done. One mother after another who had had their son killed just spoke a bit. And I'll just name a few.

you a feeling. Valerie Bell, mother of Sean Bill, a 23-year-old unarmed man, killed on his wedding day. November 25, 2006, in a barrage of 50 shots fired into his car by New York plain-closed police officers. The officers thought his friend had a gun. They didn't. The officers were acquitted. Then Danette Chavez from New York lost her 19-year-old son. After being shot in a gunfire exchange, not with police, Gregory Chavez died just a block from Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx when police prevented him from receiving medical treatment. Colette Flanagan from Dallas, Texas, lost her only son when he was 25 years old on March 10, 2013. He was unarmed and shot seven times by a Dallas policeman once in the back. Wanda Johnson, son Oscar Grant, was shot in the back and killed by a transit police officer.

at a train station in Oakland. Constance Malcolm is the mother of Ramarley Graham, who was 18 years old in 2012 when a New York police officer shot and killed him at his own home. He was suspected of carrying a gun in public, but no gun was found on him in the bathroom he was shot in or anywhere in the house. And it goes on and on that we listened to these women, one described how it was the day before her birthday,

and her son had been planning her birthday party, and now every year that's what comes up. He was shot that day. Another describes how his son kept saying, I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything. And his last words were, why did you shoot me? So I share this because it's very much in my body and heart right, this moment, just coming back from this,

but to know that we can't see that everyone, is our sister or our brother, unless we are willing to pause and look up close and sense who's here. And that includes pausing and sensing inward what's going on. In other words, the very beginning of being intimate with all things is really pausing and coming into presence with another, with ourselves. That's why it was a powerful vigil because it was such a close-in feeling. with real humans.

We don't often take the time to pause and to connect with the realness inside and around us. And yet that's exactly what's needed to heal our world. Gandhi's probably one of the most famous statement for many is be the change you seek, you know, and that we need to act. We really need to act for social justice, for healing the earth, we have to be out there,

and our actions need to be guided by the wisest part of our being, both. So I say that because one of the most impressive things about Gandhi's life to me was that each week, he took a day each week, and he pulled back from action, and on that day he meditated and prayed, and he said he did it so that his activism would come from the most awake part of his being. So this is, to me, this is a very, very powerful interweaving and a time in history where we need to be aware of it, that it's very much a part of being a spiritually awake person

to speak out for peace, for justice, for the healing of our earth, and it's essential to do it from consciousness. what we know a basic theme in the Buddhist teachings and most spiritual teachings are it's totally part of our nature to forget, to get caught in unreal other and unreal self and aggression and avoidance. We all forget. That's just a given. A mother who's an art teacher at a university was explaining to her.

four-year-old, her job, teaching art. And the child's response was, you mean they forgot? We forget. So that's one basic Dharma theme is forgetting. And the other is we have this capacity to remember. We have this capacity to become intimate. See, the forgetting is like a pulling away from our being and from presence. And we have this capacity to remember to get very, very, awake and in touch with and tender with the life inside us and the life around us. And I love the way the Buddha put it that he said, I would not have taught this if it was not possible. Possible.

Really. So this class and next week's class will be on intimacy with life and this week will be emphasizing how to deepen our intimacy with the life that's inside us. and next week with all beings, and they're inseparable, of course, but I have to have a way of dividing up the classes, so that's how we're doing it. And I find it helpful to think of forgetting as a reaction to stress. So something comes along, and it's unpleasant or unfamiliar, or in some way feels out of our control and tense,

and what we do is we contract. We're just like the sea an enemy. Our nervous system pulls back. And when we contract, you know, when we close off in some way, that's trance. When we're in a contraction, when we're pulling away from something difficult, we get small and self-enclosed and we forget our belonging. We forget the larger world. So if you think of it as stress,

the other response is something difficult comes along and we pause and we go, okay, my normal reaction is to contract and we're going to go into how that contraction looks but maybe it's possible to do it differently. You know, maybe instead I can just stay. You know, because a lot of our practice is learning to stay, to not react. Some of you might remember the biosphere in Arizona that was started, I think, in 1987,

and it was an experiment went on about five years with this enclosed structure where it was actually being looked at for space colonization, and the question is what are the interactions of life systems in a closed structure going to be like? And it was unsuccessful for a whole variety of reasons, But one reason in particular I thought was really interesting. Basically, the conclusion was we can't live indefinitely in a closed system. But the reason I thought was interesting was that they couldn't grow trees in the biosphere. And the scientists discovered that trees require wind to form the heartwood of a tree.

In other words, for a tree to survive, there has to be wind. and in the same way we need the winds of life, including the stressful winds to really awaken our hearts. It's just part of how it works. It's not like we become free because we've gotten rid of stressors. We become free because we've learned to engage with the stressors in a way that tenderizes and wakes up. our heart. So you might, as I often do, I like to do an exercise where we'll explore, okay, how can I be intimate with life when I'm stressed? And you might just for now begin to sense, so what are the circumstances that are the winds that blow that are difficult for you right now?

And for some of you, it's going to be health. There's something to do with your health, there's something to do with the well-being of somebody that is very dear to you. It might be something to do in a relationship, a conflict, something at work. And just to know the trance is when that stress brings up reactivity and in some way you get tight. And the beginning of really the path to decondition is probably one of the best words for it. The trance reactivity is just to know that's your intention, that your intention is that your intention

is to not go into that reactivity. So a story for you, I shared this in true refuge, was when a woman, this is some years back now, came to a, I think it was a weekend, and told me that her husband was dying, but they agreed that she should come to the weekend because she was going to be the one to accompany him through his passing. They were Catholics, but they decided that she was really going to be there for him rather than a priest. And so she came to the retreat to kind of anchor herself more in presence. And really what she wanted to know was, how do you do this? I mean, how do you really keep company with the dying?

It was almost like she was looking for a 101 in death and dying. and from a Buddhist perspective. And my response was pretty much, all you can do is really love them. Just offer your loving presence and allow whatever happens to happen. But because they were Catholics, I added something that Father Thomas Keating had taught,

and we had co-taught at a compassion conference a few weeks earlier. and it was something that struck me, which was whatever arises inside you in some way say, I consent. Because everything is going to go through you as you're being with somebody that's dying, and just to keep letting things happen, not make them wrong. So several weeks after her partner died, she got in touch. And she told me what had happened.

And she went home and she had the intention, as I'm talking about, to not go into reactivity, to be present and to say I can sense so strong grief would come up or fear or a feeling of, you know, I'm not doing a right was the worst part for her. She kept, you know, strategizing on how she should really show up for him. And one night she described how he had said something like, you know, I don't think I have very long now. And her response was, oh dear, today was a good day. Don't worry about that.

Let me just get you some tea, something like that. And in that moment, it was like she was 10,000 miles away from him. So there was this huge distance. And so as she was boiling water, she started to pray, may I truly say I consent? You know, may I really, really bring love and presence to this? Because by not letting what was happening just be there, she was creating distance. So she said after that the I consent went really, really deep.

That whatever came up, including this great angst of loss and the anxiety of how things were going, she would just keep pausing, and she'd feel the life in her body, and she'd feel the squeeze and the egg. And she said, and I'll just read to you the spark because I wrote it down, she said, Tara, when I allowed myself to pause and come home to this presence, I did know how to be with him. So she intuitively knew how to whisper words of support or when to be totally quiet, when to touch him.

She knew. She said that in that presence I could open to the fullness of his, spirit, there's no longer a sense of him and me. Rather, we were a field of loving, total openness, warmth, and light. He's gone, but that living field of loving is always with me. So this is maybe the stress under all the stresses, which is our apprehension of loss, that we're going to lose these bodies, we're going to lose what we love. And then all the layers of grief and fear and not doing it right, doing our life right that are layered around it. And I share this story because to me it's such a powerful example of becoming intimate

with our experience, even when it's the most difficult. So our inquiry for most of us that really can be helpful is to start asking, well, how am I, what's between me and presence? you know, what is between me and being at home with myself? And we start finding all the ways that we're reacting to stress rather than saying I consent. And the moment that you start saying, what is between me and really feeling love right now

or feeling open-hearted or feeling present, we starts finding all the mental and physical ways that we're tightening. We go into this kind of forgetting trance. For her, the trance was, I'm failing, I'm not doing this right. That was the mental contraction. That was her stress reaction that blocked her. Then there were physical ways that her body would tighten. And then behavioral like, oh honey, it's been okay, let's have tea,

like not really contacting the moment. We all have ways of leaving the moment, of leaving intimacy. Every one of us has our strategies. So rather than opening to the winds of experience and saying, I consent, instead of digesting what's happening, we create blockages. And over the years, our strategies that we keep playing mean that those blockages get more and more thick and kind of caked on. And so we're not as available or permeable to the life around us.

And it takes a lot of energy to keep blocking ourselves so we might find we're fatigued. And if you really start exploring, well, how am I blocked? And there's mental ways we block ourselves with certain thought patterns and there's physical tightness. For those that are interested in chakras, you can sense different energy centers get really tight and there's not much movement and aliveness and flow. When we're trying to, when we feel disempowered and threatened, we tighten in the belly. In fact, most of us, if we really check, if we're having a strong, difficult emotional reaction, there's going to be like plates of armoring around the belly.

And what that actually does is it keeps us from an authentic sense of empowerment. It's not until we loosen and soften and feel a flow there that we can feel empowered. Similarly, the heart. We get hurt, we get wounded, we tighten. We don't want to feel the rawness so we tighten against it. What does that mean? We can't take in love, we can't give out love as well. Let's say we got told that what we were, we would say something and then get criticized or punished. The throat, communication, that's the chakra of communication, tightens. then we don't express ourselves well, or our voice comes out really high or really shaky or really low. That's the contraction there.

I'm just giving examples of how when we block the winds, when we don't say I consent, those blockages stop the flow of energy that actually allows the intelligence and love of the universe to move through us. We can't be intimate with life. there's a wonderful line from Carl Jung. He says, and I'm going to paraphrase it because I don't have the exact words, but he says really that the deep suffering of children and their parents is the unlive life of the parents, the unlived life of the parents. And by that he doesn't mean, oh, I wanted to be a musician and instill him an accountant.

That's not the level he's talking. Our unlived life causes suffering. Unlived life is when we haven't lived or processed the loneliness or the sorrow or the fear or the anger or the shame. When instead we pushed it under, the energy we push under is still there, but it's the blockage. And then we do all these strategies to avoid it. The unlived life, unprocessed, trauma, fear. Okay, so the main way that we maintain unlived life, that we keep the blockages, that we're not able to be intimate, is through our incessant inner dialogue.

It's the addiction to thinking. When we live in a mental control tower, we leave our bodies. And that's what initially we're trying to do. It's too much to tolerate when we're young and wounded, so we have to leave our bodies. But we just keep on leaving. Some of you might remember from one of the Let's see the line is Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body It's a novel

So our culture worships the brain And early on we have pressures as you know to get it right In fact we're in some way given the idea that if we're think hard enough We can solve any problem So there's a huge amount of fear that builds around how good our minds are And yet we get to be. get really addicted to thinking, and then we try to pretend that we know things. I saw this. I love children's responses to questions and seeing what they do with them,

but I'm just going to read you a few that came my way. One question is named six animals which live specifically in the Arctic. And the response is this. Two polar bears and three, and that's crossed off four seals. I thought that was such a great. answer. Two polar bears and four seals. What was Sir Walter Raleh famous for? Response. He's a noted figure in history because he invented cigarettes and started a craze for bicycles. What happens during puberty to a boy? Response. He says goodbye to his childhood and enters adultery. Just one more. What is the vibration? There are good vibrations and bad vibrations. Good vibrations were discovered in the 1960s. So we get lost in this virtual reality, including

getting the answers right. And we know that we can't be intimate with our world and we're lost in thoughts. I mean, as a parent, you can't pay attention to your child if you're preoccupied with planning and thinking things through. And we know what it's like if we're going through something difficult and somebody's response is to help us try to figure it out. And that intimacy is a million miles away. The thoughts that most block intimacy are judgments. The realm that we live in where we're in some way making ourselves wrong or somebody else wrong, that's the domain that most creates separation.

so just to spend a little time there that when there's a sense let's say with self-judgment, something's wrong with me there's a contraction and a reinforcement of all the blocking in the body and the only way to do any healing that leads to intimacy is to come back into the body

and I'll give you an example of this for me that gives you a sense of my strategies for leaving and blocking intimacy and coming back. And the story I thought I'd share, because it's been very much on my mind recently, is a group I'm part of it. Here in Washington, we have spiritual friends groups, groups of about eight people that meet pretty regularly to meditate and share their experience. And then there's different formats for it.

Well, I'm part of a spiritual friends group that doesn't meet quite as often. but it was very on purpose made of a very diverse mix of people. So we have in it a mix of people that are white, people of color, people with different sexual orientations, gender orientations, and onward. Sounds like a lot of different differences. There's only like, I think, 12 of us, but we have a lot of representation there. And the purpose was, I've mentioned the language of unreal other. it's to really wake up out of unreal other.

What is life like for you? It's that inquiry, where we might sense difference. What does it really like to be you? Very powerful group, and right from the beginning, there was sharing in that group such level of vulnerability, and it was beautiful. I was, you know, to have one woman, person of color, who describe what it's like,

the fear she had for her son as a teenager, that, you know, the statistics are that, especially for young men of color who did not graduate from high school, more are in prison than employed. You know, what's going to happen for her son? The real fear of what's happening that's coming into the light now, it's been going on forever, is, you know, the incredible violence again. young African-American men. So just hear it from her.

A mother close in in this group was heartbreaking. And part of what started happening to me after that first meeting was I started feeling really self-conscious and anxious and I found myself trying to say the right things but not feeling so real

myself. And so the morning before we had our second meeting, before the group started, I was meditating and feeling this kind of rising anxiety, like, can I be real and feeling a lot of self-judgment about not being authentic and watching myself, trying, nervous that I would say the right things. And under that judgment was a sense of falling short in general, that I am a leader,

one of the leaders in a spiritual community that is really creeping towards diversity, towards multiculturalism and how much it matters to me but feeling like never doing enough, feeling that kind of guilt and letting other people down. And the background to it is my father was an attorney and he did a lot of civil rights work and it was like very much way back in the early days, very, very active on this front, you know, of fighting racism. And so I was feeling like I wasn't carrying forward, you know, the way I should. So here's how I worked with it and just how I often work with is when I got it, like,

oh, okay, I'm not feeling real in this group because I'm so down on myself. I paused and I use the language real but not true. This is from a Tibetan teacher, Sokni Rimbusha, meaning real, yes, these feelings and thoughts are real, but they aren't the truth. It's not the truth that I'm bad. So let's get underneath and see what's really going on. And I could feel this, the physiology, the actual sensations of fear and shame in my body. And as I opened that, I just let it be there.

And this is like I consent. I said yes to it and let the feelings be there. Underneath those feelings was grief, the sense of the separation that I was creating. And also grief feeling not just wanting to do the right thing, and work for diversity, but just the grief at the real pain that I was coming close into by bearing witness to some of the people's experience in this group. So it was a real deep sense of grieving and longing for there to be more love and a sense of belonging.

Once I could get down to grief, I was able to feel a tenderness towards my own experience. I put my hand on my heart. It's kind of symbolic of that's when I could actually say, I'm sorry and I love you, you know, to the place in me that felt hurting. So that's the moment that there was some real intimacy, really allowing the life that was here with tenderness. And just to finish up the story, being with my friends in that circle that day,

I was actually able to name, the real process that was going on in me, but I had to go through it to be able to speak from authenticity. So I share this with you because we all have the winds that move through us of stress in relationships or at work or with our bodies in different parts of our life. And the challenge is that we are rigged to not want to go into the raw feelings. Every one of our us is rigged to do what we can to avoid them and to stay, you know, coming up with solutions in our mind or blaming ourselves, stay on that level rather than go into where the life is really living inside us. So it takes a conscious commitment, a sense that really getting,

that the winds are what create the heart would, and we have to stay. Now the question comes up, is it always good to stay and it's not? This is not one of those principles or teachings where you always say yes, always say I consent. If you've been traumatized in some way and what you feel is by saying I consent, you're going to end up calling forth huge waves of terror or fear, it's not the right time. There are slower, more gradual, more gentle ways to begin to get in touch with feelings. One is to do the loving-kindness practice instead of directly trying to feel the feelings to create a sense of softening and opening and more safety. Another is to have someone that you trust nearby. There are times for all of us, even when we haven't

been traumatized, that go very, very gently. I was thinking of that some of you might know the thing of how do porcupines make love very carefully, you know, that our wounds are prickly. We go very, very gently and carefully, respect that we've been wounded before. Because it's not easy to process unprocessed pain. So we'll just walk through a little bit of the being with, and then we're going to practice together. And you might think of this intimate attention, with the two classic wings of awareness. And one wing, when we're getting more intimate with our inner life,

is this wing of recognition. So what is actually happening? For me, it was like, oh, okay, so I'm judging myself as falling short. And what's actually the feeling of that? Okay, it's a feeling of shame, of coming to a hollowness and a fear and a squeeze. So that's the wing of what's happening,

the contacting with recognition, our experience. It's like when you're being intimate with another person, it's the wing of really seeking to understand what's really going on for you. The other wing is the wing of allowing. It's that compassionate space where we let whatever we're noticing be held with kindness. So I not only see you and say, what's going on for you and sense where you're vulnerable or disappointed or excite or whatever, it is, but there's also a quality, the second wing, of allowing you to be just as you are,

holding how you are with a quality of tenderness and acceptance. So these are the two wings. I like this poem I'll just share with you that kind of gives you a sense of it with, it's written by Dana Falls called Allow. There's no controlling life. Try corraling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado. Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist and the tide will sweep you off your feet.

Allow and grace will carry you to higher ground. The only safety lies in letting it all in, the wild and the weak, fear, fantasies, failures, and success. When loss rips off the doors, of your heart, our sadness veils your vision with despair, practice becomes simply bearing the truth and the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes. So what we're exploring really is pausing when we encounter the winds. And out of a love for really wanting to be real and connected with our life, out of a commitment to, instead of blocking more,

opening, we begin to practice this presence of, okay, what's really happening here? And how can I be with this? Those are the two questions. If you really want to shift your patterning of responding to stress, what is happening? And can I be with this? Or can I let this be? That's another version. I just want to speak a little bit more about the second wing of letting be and allowing because it's so challenging sometimes that we can feel sometimes.

The winds are so strong that it's really not safe to allow. And that's just, there's a habit of not safe and that we need more of a sense of space and holding and more of a container in order to really let ourselves open. And I mentioned loving kindness practice and I want to kind of give an example. I was thinking of this at the vigil tonight when one of the mothers was sharing her loss and she said, this is so therapeutic to be able to share this with all of you and you could feel in the group

the shared heart that was just of grieving and holding a space together. I think for us to open to the winds, we need to feel a larger sense of belonging. I think sometimes we feel too small that we're going to get completely devastated by it. So there are ways to feel that.

to feel a larger sense of belonging. Ways that we can call on that kind of loving presence that this mother felt in the group or ways that we can kind of let go into it. And it takes practice, but it's quite possible. I think of the therapist, many of you know, Winnicott, who described as a baby that the child can relax when a child senses there's something that's really holding her.

when there's some sense of a steady, ongoing benign presence, it's like a backdrop to her beingness. And this is, when there's good enough parenting, there's a sense that there's a benign presence that when something happens, there's something larger holding life. And that's what allows the child to go on in her beingness to sense her essence, you know, that's okay, so this is who I am, because there's a larger container.

A lot of us didn't get that. And if we begin to reach out towards it or call on it, we can actually discover that container, that benign sense of presence, that field of love. But it takes practice. I think of prayer, John O'Donohue put it this way, that prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging, that when we just sense we want, to belong. Just for me, sometimes if I'm feeling really small and really separate, just the words please love me. And it's kind of put out to the universe, it's like I'm wanting some benign

presence to be bathing me with love. It feels very much right here personal bathing, you know. And just letting myself feel that longing out of that, like really going right into the tenderness of that long eye and actually find that sense of presence. It's the bridge between longing and belonging. I read you. This is called First Lesson by Philip Booth. He says, Lie back, daughter, let your head be tipped back in the cup of my hand. Gently, and I will hold you. Spread your arms wide. Lie out on the stream and look high at the gulls. Remember, when fear cramps your heart what I told you, lie gently and wide to the light-year stars. Lie back and the sea will hold you.

Lie back and the sea will hold you. That basic trust is not always there, but it's possible to touch into. Again, this is those words from the Buddha that I would not be teaching this if it was not possible. It's possible because it's really the essence of what we are, that presence. When we're in a trance we feel separate from it, but we can start reaching out to that essence. It's like when you feel separate, it seems like you're reaching out to something out there, but actually you're reaching out to the wholeness, the beingness that's really what you are. It's okay that you don't know that when you're reaching out.

Just feel the longing and reach out. rest back, practice resting back. So tonight we're just beginning this exploration really. We could just spend the rest of, I was about to say the year, but there's not so much of this year, but we could keep going on it. But it's such a powerful way to begin to sense your life. How can I be more intimate with this moment, with this heart right here, with you, are you, are you? What's between me and feeling more intimate right in this moment? When you begin to ask that question, just the posing of the question,

you begin to sense how either the mind is creating static to separate you, or your sense how the body's clenched in a way that you're really not letting life flow through you. You might sense a belief that I can't be intimate because there's something wrong. We start sensing the different currents that keep us. And in that recognition, as we start opening into our bodies, we start coming back to that heartwood. You know, we start coming back to that presence that's here. So I'd like to practice a little together.

I'd like to close tonight with a short practice of intimacy with life. So in this pausing, find a way to sit comfortably. take a moment to close your eyes and feel your breath, let the breath help collect your attention. So the invitation is to sense in this season, whatever you might be aware of that is, are the winds of stress for you right now, where you might be getting reactive. And I'd pick something that's not, that doesn't feel traumatizing, but something you'd like to find some more freedom in relating to, where you'd like to reconnect to a sense of intimacy with your own being in the midst of. You might find that it's a situation with another person that's

evoking hurt or anger or fear might be something that you're worried about, somebody that's dear, might be that you're struggling with something to do with your own health. And whatever it is, begin, this is always what opens the door, with just sensing your highest intention. You might have the language of, may I find a way to be more intimate with my inner life, more at home with myself. The classic Bodhisattva prayer, the Bodhisattva is the being that's awakening, awakening being in the Buddhist tradition is, you know, really may this difficulty serve the awakening of heart and mind, intimacy with all beings.

So just sensing your intention and let the situation come close to mind. So you sense kind of like you're watching a movie, just the frame of the movie when you really feel provoked, reactive. It involves another person. you might see that person's face, eyes, what they're saying. But sense that you can freeze the frame, so you have the opportunity to really deepen your attention right here. Remember the two wings.

The first wing is, if you want to be intimate with yourself, is to understand or contact more, what's actually going on inside you. You might notice there's some belief about yourself in the world, how another person is, what that person might be feeling or how they're relating to you or what's wrong with you and there might be some feelings in your heart area of fear or hurt or anger see if you can bring that second wing of letting it be of eye consent of kindness to whatever you're noticing so even as you explore this intimacy with inner life experience, even if you're not feeling anything right now,

then to offer a presence and acceptance of that. And for many it's helpful as you're doing this just to gently place your hand on your heart. Light touch. So that the hand, it's like you're really offering with touch. It's a gesture of that second wing, a real loving presence. It's noticing what's here. and in some way offering care to it. So there's this intention towards intimacy with our inner life.

You might sense, well, what is it like to just start to shift into that to really bring an intimate presence to what's right here? The words of Henry Nguyen, he says, you have to let go of the need to stay in control of your pain and trust the healing power of your heart. there your hurts can find a safe place to be received and once they've been received they lose their power to inflict damage and become fruitful soil for new life

I'd like to invite you to close by offering whatever wish most resonates right now to your own heart we close with a brief prayer of loving kindness may we embrace our inner life May we open to the realness that's right here and belong to our full aliveness, our full awake heart. And may this openness of heart include all beings. May we truly see all beings as part of our heart, cherish all beings, realize the shared

heart space and awareness that's our essence. May there be love and understanding between all beings. May there be peace. May there be peace. May all beings awaken and be free. Namaste and blessings. 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 are IMCW.org.