Tara Brach - 2015-01-14 Refuge in Loving Relationship

Episode Date: January 17, 2015

2015-01-14 Refuge in Loving Relationship - Bringing presence to our relationships reveals our connectedness and essential Oneness. This talk explores two domains of this awakening with others: Realizing our shared vulnerability - that we’re in it together - and recognizing the inherent goodness or sacredness that lives through everyone.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. So welcome. I'd like to start tonight with a short story about a family with a young son. And at night there was a horrendous thunderstorm. And the child was very scared of the lightning and thunder, so he'd cry out. And each time the father would come into the room and calm him down and then say, don't be scared. God is with you. So this happened several times and finally the last time

the little boy said I know God is with me but right now I need someone with skin on. So the last class that we had together we explore what are called the three refuges which are really the three gateways to realizing the fullness and truth of who we are and the first gateway is awareness are described as Buddha nature. The second, the Dharma is truth, which is really the truth of right here now. So there's awareness, there's truth. And the third Sanga, which is spiritual community, is really taking refuge in loving connection, in our relatedness. So this is where we'll be spending some time tonight exploring that third refuge. As I said to one friend here we could decide to do it for the next few decades and we'd keep on finding new ways

of discovering how to come home in that refuge. What happens as we mature on the path is that the very meaning of taking refuge becomes radically deepened. And so there's the classical notion of taking from the harshness of the world, that we're trying to get away from something unsafe and dangerous and go somewhere else. And that's what shifts. And I got an email from one friend in the community who described for herself the shift that when she first was reflecting on these gateways to freedom, she thought of it as either it was a self-improvement guide or an escape hatch, she writes, an escape hatch that I could drop out of whenever the storms inside me were looming. So refuge was a hiding place. Things have very much changed, she writes. Taking refuge

has become for me the exact opposite of hiding. It's the act of seeing and allowing myself to be seen, saying yes to what is here rather than running in the opposite direction. Finding value and growth in the storms and the waves, while being able to touch into some compromise. confidence, however tiny, that right in the center of that hurricane, there is a place of quiet. The only refuge is reality. Anything else, there's something in us that knows that it's not going to work. And each of the gateways are described are facets of reality, awareness, the truth of the moment, and loving relatedness. So we'll look more closely. at what does it mean for each of us? And I really want to invite each of you as you're listening

to reflect on what's the meaning in your life of taking refuge in Sangha, in community, in spiritual community, and loving relatedness. So we can start with the understanding that we're pack animals, and we come from the earth, we're made of earth elements and star elements, we're embedded in this natural world. And that that's our reality. The reality is belonging. And taking refuge in Sanga really means recognizing this belonging because usually we have forgotten and that's where the suffering is.

So when we talk about refuge in Sanga, we're talking about discovering an enlarged sense of our being. It's a shift from our sense of who we are are as a kind of egoic separate self moving through the world and there's people out there to a very deep intuitive sense of belonging to the web brings a lot of freedom the heart's experience is love when we sense of belonging our connectedness the heart feels love so let's start with a little reflection let me invite you to kind of close your eyes for a moment So in Buddhism and most of the wisdom traditions and the contemplative paths,

there's an understanding that a key part of the path is discovering connectedness, feeling our oneness. So the first question I have for you is where right now in your life do you feel the most sense of Sanga, where there's some conscious relating going on, where there's people or a group that you feel you're waking, up in that relationship, that it's part of your path. A relationship where you sense this is part of your awakening heart. It might be in a therapeutic relationship or a peer group, a friend, a partner with a formal spiritual community. And as you review and you might realize, wow, I don't feel like I really have many places of conscious relating. or you might feel like, wow, they're everywhere.

Whichever, try not to judge it, just to acknowledge. And then deepen the inquiry in tense, what is your intention in the domain of relationship? If you were the end of your life looking back, what would matter? I think of some of your more important relationships. What really matters? And how conscious are you of your aspiration?

Do you move through your day with some remembrance? Again, no judging. Or if you judge, be mindful of the judging. Are you conscious of your aspiration in relationships? Okay, you can keep on reflecting on this, but if you'd like to open your eyes, please feel free. There's often a false idea on the spiritual path that in some way we're trying to be more independent

or do it on our own, that we're finding refuge. that it's a self that's finding refuge and growing and learning and making things happen. And I often like to refer to a tricycle that had a Buddhist magazine that had a personal's that said tall, dark, handsome Buddhist looking for himself. You know, I think of it that in the West, for the first number of decades that meditation was getting popularized, it was essentially a kind of lone project. I mean, you might sit with a group of people, but everybody was on their own cushion, and everybody had that kind of sense of being the agent, doing practices for the sake of evolving on the path so we could experience more of an enlightened

state or whatever. And it wasn't that there wasn't a sense that, I mean, there was still an understanding that's good to be helpful to other people and not to cause not to cause violence or harm and so on. But essentially, there was a kind of sense of living in a bubble of separateness trying to evolve our consciousness. And that's common for a lot of us. But I've seen many people do long retreats and come to places of really feeling a sense of openness and emptiness

and a lot of radiance and light and quiet. And then within a day or two of being at home with, family or partner or whatever, the whole thing seeming to crash and being really, really discouraged. And the reality is the retreats are incredibly helpful to be able to go into an environment that's really dedicated to quieting and seeing into the depth of our psyche and discovering really deep insights about the nature of things. Very, very powerful. And if we don't practice with each other, we don't mature. It doesn't integrate.

It doesn't become part of our life. These practices of presence and of waking our hearts need to be done in the relational field. Or they don't really become part of us. So I think often about, and I've shared it with you a number of times, about this experiment with the biosphere in Arizona in I think it was 1987 they did a couple of experiments and the biosphere was this enclosed enclosed area where they were trying to look at how life systems would interact in an enclosure for the sake of space colonization and for a number of

reasons these biospheres didn't work but one of the main reasons was because the trees wouldn't grow and the scientists discovered that trees don't grow unless you have enough wind so they can develop their heartwood and have the strength to grow. They needed wind. And in the same way, we need the winds of the relational field to grow and wake up our hearts. And those winds are sometimes incredibly gentle and soothing and nourishing feeling, and sometimes they're really harsh. We need it all in order to really wake up our hearts. So we'll explore for the rest of this class.

There are two ways that the winds of relationship can wake us up. And I'll tell them to you now and then we'll do them one by one. And the first way is the winds of our vulnerability. When we share our vulnerability, it awakens compassion. And the image you might have with that is holding hands. I'm going to give you an image for both of them. So one way that we wake up is when we can see each other's vulnerability, and we open to that.

And the second way we wake up is when we see each other's goodness. Both are trainings, and the image with seeing each other's goodness is namaste. You know, this bowing. Many of you know the word namaste, and the bow is really, I see the divine in you. And it's a training to be able to pause and quiet and look and see the soul behind the eyes and to see that goodness. So we're going to take both of these. What we look at, when we look at this evolutionary journey of who we are,

is that it's natural to emerge and feel separate. To feel a sense of separateness and selfness is part of the journey. and that as we evolve, we then evolve, and there's actually the apparatus in our brain to allow this, we evolve to actually have a sense of connection and empathy and compassion and be able to collaborate. So that's the kind of direction of evolution. And many of us get arrested at phases where there's still a whole lot of feelings of separate and not so much a feeling of the belonging or connection. due to our culture and due to biology and due to our family circumstances.

Every one of us in order to wake up those parts of our brain that have mirror neurons and can get activated and really feel a sense of belonging, each one of us has two needs. And one of them is to be seen. Now there's that kind of mirroring that says, I really get who you are, understanding. understanding. And the other need is that what seen is loved, that allowing and tenderness. We have the need for both of them. So nurturing human connection is essential for the neural connections to actually be activated. It's like when a rat pop needs to be licked and groomed sufficiently by its mother for its brain to mature.

Right? So we humans need that. It's really part of what we are. There was a story I heard in the early 1900s. There were little infants that were very sick and often couldn't have, didn't have parents that could afford to take care of them properly. It would die in hospitals and children's institutions

for unknown reasons. And often the admissions card on these infants would they'd just be described as hopeless. But one intern would follow this very famous doctor on his rounds, and he was famous because he had unusual success in being able to treat these children that were described as hopeless. So I want to read you what this intern described as happening. What made this doctor have his magic, you know?

And he described a curious and frequent occurrence. After examining one of these infants, Dr. Talbot would write on the child's card in his illegible scrawl. And Dr. Talbot was the doctor that did the miracles. And within days, the child would begin to gain color, to eat more food, to move around with more ease and vitality. And so curious, the intern asked the station nurse about the diagnosis and the prescription. And this is the response. Oh, she said, pointing to the corner of the nursery where a matronly woman rocked with a child in her arms, old Anna. When nothing works, he has a child spend time with old Anna.

We could stop right there because it really says it all. You know, that Mother Teresa says the great disease really of today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of not belonging. And that image of this matronly woman in the corner of the nursery being the medicine, her love was the medicine. Right? It's kind of amazing. So for all of us to some degree, we have some of that wounding of severed belonging

where we didn't get mirrored back. And it's not our parents' fault. It's very much the culture. We're in a very addicted and violent and speedy culture with a lot of ideas of how we should be, a lot of standards to meet, and our parents are messengers of that. So many of us got those messages

that we needed to be different to be loved and accepted. That was basically the message. So we come out of that feeling unworthy and unlovable. And then it plays out in our relationships, and we have our different styles of how it plays out. And some are the insecure avoidant pushing away, and some are the insecure grasping. And some of you might remember,

I think one of Fifeers' Jill's Feiffer's greatest cartoons is of a man and a woman having a kind of stander, off and she's saying, but I love you. And he's saying, don't you threaten me. So, you know, the pursuer and the distancer. But the understanding is this, that while our conditioning that comes out of that feeling of severed belonging, and we all know the ways we play it out in relationships to some degree, it's really strong and it's really persistent, it's also changeable. This is neuroplasticity.

It's kind of the word equals hope, you know, that we can deepen our attention and rewire the brain in a way that changes how we are in relationships

with others. And I would add that we're all doing that in a way. You wouldn't be here unless that was already activated, some yearning to be more awake and open and loving and present. Just that yearning says it's already happening. So we do it in a few different ways in terms of this rewiring. And one of the main ways in meditation, I think of it as spiritual reparenting, that we learn when difficult emotions come

up, rather than leave, rather than being the parent that pretends nothing's happening or, you know, take care of yourself, we stay with ourselves. We learn to keep ourselves company. And that recognition of, oh, I can stay and I can offer some kindness and some presence, that's spiritual reparenting. That's giving that part of ourselves a different experience than it had early on, which is the alchemy of change. Does this make sense right now? So that's the way we do it with an internal meditation. taking refuge in Sangha in a field of relationship is how we can do it interpersonally. And it's not one or the other, it's a both end.

That we got wounded in relationship. We need to heal in relationship. Our healing will not be integrated. The realizations that we come up with that unlovable, that when we offer ourselves care, we start feeling more lovable. It won't be fully integrated unless we're also exploring that in the field of relationship. So how do we do that? So for some of us it happens in a very, that conscious intention that we're bringing to certain relationships

because you can't do it everywhere different people aren't necessarily mutual in their understanding and commitment and creating safe space. But we bring a conscious intention. in relationships towards non-harming, towards being honest, towards playing our edge and naming our vulnerability more actively. So we do that. And so it happens informally with a partner or friend or sibling. And we do it formally. Many of you are in 12-step groups. That's the way we do it. Many of you in this room, for those that are listening, you might know about this, there are spiritual friends,

groups where people get together in groups of about eight and meet every other week and meditate and then share what's going on in their lives, everything from relational challenges to addiction, whatever the struggle is at work. And it's done with an intention to be mindful, to really listen to each other in a way that we are monitoring our own judgments, to play that edge. of being disclosing and to hold each other with a quality of acceptance. That's the field of transformation. So to describe a little bit of this, how this occurs, this transformation, this neural rewiring in community, maybe share a few examples or stories that hopefully

will inspire you to take it further in your own life. One example, a teacher that I am very fond of, Tibetan teacher, just describes being with a student. And they were, they were in a, you know, large gathering. And the student was asked him a question in that gathering about her own state of mind that she had been struggling with different kinds of depression and anxiety. and the medicine she was using wasn't working and she had been in and out of therapy and she was feeling, you know, her mood swings are really intense

and she was feeling a sense of desperation like, will this ever change? Really trapped in the prison of her own very, very painful emotions. And so he had her sit up close to him and talk to her, and, you know, her eyes, she was crying and he listened and then they were silent for a little bit. And then here's what he said. He said, your suffering is mine.

Your fear is mine. You're not alone. Now, I share that because I happened to know that he himself had been going through a very difficult time. He wasn't just making it up. Even if he hadn't, we all know suffering. but his truth-telling and his presence conveyed a reality and talking about his holding hands

that he held hands with her energetically in a way that sent the most important message for waking up which is it's not our personal suffering we're really in it together we're really in it together and if there is a remembrance of it's not just, it's suffering and it's the shared suffering, then we can begin to relate to it in a way that really is healing.

And we need each other for that. I've done day-long workshops where at one point I'll have people in small groups and have them each write down something they're really, really afraid of, maybe a group of five or six or seven. And they'll put the little folded papers, in the middle and each take one that wasn't theirs and then each person will read the paper the fear that they have and the whole group will just hold the space for it until the end you really get that it's not my fear it's the fear and it's not it's not exactly that misery loves

company it's more that when we're suffering the realization that it's really our shared human vulnerability allows us to relate to it with a quality of compassion and wisdom that's healing. Many of you know the science of, they have people with, you know, under the MRI and when they hold hands with somebody while they're under the MRI, oh, they're given shocks. I forgot an important piece. Okay. So that brings up the fear, right? Sorry. And if they hold hands with someone, the fear level goes down. And if it's someone that they know well and trust, the fear level goes down really significantly. Holding hands makes a difference, physically and metaphorically.

I remember one man at a retreat a few years ago was in a group, you know, and that I was leading. And in these groups interviews, it's not really interviews, but where we talk about practice and answer questions, people bring in what's their struggle and he would he brought in the the amount of pain who's feeling around his son's addiction and others brought up there as one woman feeling really lonely because she had never really been in a intimate relationship another brought in something to do with uh oh it was a custody battle i don't remember them all but he described that through the retreat, when he'd feel really stuck, he'd remember the group. And it was if he was holding hands with everybody, and that gave him the space,

it gave him the tenderness. It made him larger he could be with what was going on. So the alchemy of healing and of compassion is to touch what's here and regard it with kindness. and this remembrance of our larger belonging enables us to do it. Kristen Neff has done a wonderful job with teaching about self-compassion. Our compassion in general will say, you know, just remind yourself, okay, this is suffering. And I'm not alone. Others feel it too.

May I be kind to myself? May I hold this with compassion? Okay, a story for you. This is from Michael Mead, who's a renowned storyteller and teacher, and he talks about a healing ritual in Zambia that I think is really incredible. If a member of the tribe becomes ill, emotionally or physically,

the belief is that an ancestor's tooth has lodged itself within the person and is responsible for the sickness. Because all members of the tribe are connected with each other, the suffering of one affects the others and all become involved in healing. The tribe's healing ritual

is based on the understanding that the tooth will come out as the truth comes out. While the sick person must reveal the rage or hatred or lust, he or she is experiencing, for the full truth to be revealed each person in the tribe must express his or her own buried hurts and fears, anger, and disappointment.

The release happens only when everything comes out in the midst of dancing and singing and drumming. The whole village gets cleansed by the release of the tooth through the release of these difficult truths. I think that is sliddle. like, what an amazing ritual and what a beautiful description of how healing happens. Okay, so we're caught in some suffering, some block, some contraction in our being. And where did it come from?

It's an ancestor's tooth. You know, it's through history that we land up. It's not like we ended up having the kind of temperament where we feel aggressive or where we feel intimidated. It's passed on. It's condition. It's ancestors too. And how does it really get healed?

It's when we start realizing everybody's got their fears and their sense of unworthiness and feeling unloved. And if we can name it together in that shared place of vulnerability and tenderness, we begin to sense the who we are that's bigger than the fear or the hatred or the loneliness. And that's where the healing is. So it comes a lot, this refuge in Sanga, through a process of learning to listen deeply so we become the space that others can speak into. They can quiet enough and there enough.

And learning to speak and share what's real for us. One of the most beautiful illustrations that I've heard in terms of the power of community. was in a happening or event at San Quentin some years ago. And they arranged for these monks, that some of you have heard the Tibetan monks, the Gioto Tantric Choir, they do this multivocal chanting. They arranged for them to come to San Quentin

and for them to perform, and then for the San Quintam gospel choir to perform in response. But then it became, the organizers got nervous about it because they were afraid that the gospel choir, African Americans, big men, worked out with weights, and their years in prison had taught them to be born again,

touched by the spirit of Jesus, and their songs were testimonial to the depths of their suffering. But the organizers feared that the Tibetan monks would kind of look like merely foreigners and heathens to these newly awakened Christians, that there be some dividedness, some judgment, some standoffness, or whatever. And in fact, when the heathen monks, quote unquote arrived, the contrast was pretty apparent. Dwarf by the African Americans was a group of small Asian men wearing maroon skirts. So how do you bridge the gap? And I want to read you what a

key sponsor said in introduction, okay? Almost all of these Tibetan men who joined us today have spent years in harsh prisons. The communist Chinese army not only imprisoned them for they're expressing their beliefs but tortured them as well. Somehow they were released or able to escape from prison. Then to find freedom, they walked across the Himalayas the highest mountains on earth. Some tied rags on their feet because they had no good shoes, but even now they're in exile. They're forced to live far from their home, apart from their families and community, and they don't know if they'll ever be able to return. What has kept them going through all of their struggle has been their songs and prayers, and that's what they'll sing for you today.

And in an instant, the gospel choir and the Tibetan monks looked at one another with eyes that shared the vulnerable depths of human sorrow, and they found understanding. Each group sang to the other from the heart, and when their music was finished, they came together to hug and embrace like long, lost brothers. this holding hands, this sharing vulnerability is the hope for our world, that we do it with those where it's easiest and develop that understanding and then that we stretch and widen ourselves and find those that seem different and either directly in our communication

or in our consciousness sense, what's it like to be that person? whether it's a person of different religious views, a person of a different race, a person who is politically different than you, a person from another country that's going through something you can't quite imagine going through. What if we all stretch daily? We'd find that we're holding hands. So take a moment.

We'll just close your eyes and we'll just take a few moments to reflect on this, this dimension of refuge in Sangha, this holding hands, sharing vulnerability. Perhaps to take a moment as you reflect and sense a situation in your life right now that brings up vulnerability, fear, insecurity, maybe feeling unloved or unworthy, feeling frightened about what's around the corner, some loss that you're afraid of. And to take a moment when you let yourself really sense into it, to acknowledge that this is suffering, this is difficult, and then to add on that others experience this too. And you might sense that right now you're listening people right here in this room and

those that are listening podcasts and so on around the world, that we are a field of beings and we all experience different currents of suffering, of feeling lonely, unworthy, unlovable. It happens to all of us, afraid. Others experience this too. You might begin a compassion breath where you let yourself breathe in and feel that you're going to let in love

a very soothing, light-filled, loving, energy, that it's in the field. And let that breath, let that sense of that light and that compassion, breathe that in and let it touch the place in you that feels vulnerable. And since you're doing this, you're holding hands with a lot of us, doing it at the same time, breathing in, breathing in compassion, feel that light and warmth of compassion can soothe the vulnerable place as you hold hands with the rest of us breathing in. You might sense with the out breath that you're breathing out to others your wish for healing. You can imagine with the out breath that you're breathing out light and compassion and care. And if you can begin to really sense

energetically that we're holding hands right now, that we're all breathing in, touching that vulnerability with compassion. They're all breathing out with that wish that we all can be healed and freed. You can begin to sense a heart space that's larger than any individual ego and that's more the truth of who we are than any sense of an isolated self. You can use this compassion breath whenever you feel stuck, just breathing in and feeling where we are where the vulnerability is but letting that light of compassion touch it. And breathing out and sensing you're offering out your care to all those who are struggling in a similar way.

Okay, so opening your eyes. So that's the first domain of refuge and song is that holding hands and that shared field of vulnerability and compassion. The second domain which will spend less time on for tonight because I spent a lot of time and the first is the namaste. And these are both trainings. It's training to stay in and touch the compassion, touch the vulnerability and be with others in it. And it's training to look deeply, to look past the mask, the personality, to see who's really there and looking out.

Sometimes you can sense you're looking at a person and actually look for the color of their eyes. Because if you pause enough and wonder what color this person's eyes are when you're with them, you'll start actually having enough space and presence to sense the sentience, the humanness, the light that's shining through those eyes. So the great gift we give each other is we become mirrors of goodness. This is what we needed early on. Each one of us needed parents and caregivers to remind us and see the soul and spirit shining through. We needed that, and we can do that for each other.

It's amazing when you actually see somebody as they are, and often people don't see each other that way. I'll read you one. This is a grandmother wrote this. She said, after putting a grandchild to bed, change into old slacks and a droopy blouse, and proceeded to wash my hair. Then she heard the kids getting really rambunctious, and her patients grew thin. So she threw a towel around her head

and stormed to the room, putting them back to bed with a stern warning. As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice, who is that? So sometimes people don't see who we are, you know. I remember when I was doing my doctor in psychology, my first supervisor was a very elderly,

clinical psychologist who was totally respected in love by all his clients and colleagues. And if you asked him what his practice was, how he worked with people, he would say, I really look at them and see the beloved, see the divine, and then let them know that. And then within that space we can begin to undo where the blocks are. but the ground level, seeing who they really are. And I'll never forget that, that the power of helping another person remember their goodness, that their heart is pure. Really beautiful.

So we often move through the world and we project on how other people are seeing us, but some people do get through, and sometimes they really really, let us know we're okay in a way that helps us relax. One of my favorite stories is Anthony de Mello. Many of you might know him, a Jesuit priest no longer alive. But he describes a life-changing moment. And he says that he had been neurotic for many years. He said, I was anxious and depressed and selfish. And then he said he adopted one self-improvement project after another to try to change and nothing works. It was on the verge of despair. I think that's very relatable. And part of what was really so painful is even his friends agreed you needed to

change. They were regularly were telling him to be less self-absorbed. So his world stopped one day when a friend said, don't change. I love you just as you are. Don't change. I love you just as you are. those words to just stream through him like pure grace I love you just as you are and he says that

paradoxically it was only when he received permission not to change that he was free to change I think of that a lot because I really believe that in a moment of unconditional love

that can begin to undo those pathways of unworthiness and unloavability that have been there for a lifetime. If we really, really get it that we're seeing something in it. Because the truth is the goodness is here. We just have forgotten. So once we start touching it, that wisdom in us gets, oh yeah, it's true. There is a quality of beingness, a quality of tenderness, of honesty, of wakefulness,

in here that's really shining through this being that is pure goodness. And we begin to trust who we are, which is grace. We're going to, in a few moments, practice this second realm of seeing the goodness. But I wanted to share, again, an email that I got. This was yesterday. And one woman described, she teaches classes in, she teaches juniors and seniors in a high school about meditation and really it's a yoga class. And this week they explored compassion and she gave them different affirmations and so on that would help with that.

And at one point one of them says, can we go around, they're in a circle, can we go around and give everyone a compliment in the room, you know, kind of an affirmation for who they are? So they sat in a circle and that's what they did and each person got to sit in the middle and everybody in the circle would say nice things about that person in the middle, and they get to receive all the love, and then they go back,

and then somebody else comes in, and they had eye contact. So this is juniors and seniors in a regular high school. Lots and lots of comments after. I'll just read one. She said, one of them said, this activity totally made me forget about everything else going on in my life. I feel so here right now. Now they said, can we do this more? It's the best way to bond.

So this is Namaste. And in order to move through life and both let in when other people are seeing us, because so often other people will be offering their love and we're not very good at letting in, to be able to let in and start trusting our own goodness and be able to do that for others, to be able to, for some of us, I mean, I like bowing.

to me it kind of collects and it's like I'm bowing and I'm letting go of the separate self and I'm just honoring the sacredness that lives through all of us. But some people it doesn't have to be that gesture. It's a consciousness. But what if we slowed down and really were able to pause and look at each other and sense who's there and remind each other and actually say it out loud sometimes what we see? It takes intention. Just like it takes intention to play our edge and be more vulnerable

and to hold a space for others to stay in the thick of it, it takes intention to look towards the goodness that's there and mirror it back. So these practices of refuge in Sanga require a kind of purposefulness that this matters to us. So tonight what we've done really is we've looked at these kind of two portals where we opened to the winds, the winds of vulnerability and the winds of purity and goodness. And we'll close by doing the ladder, a little meditation or reflection on the ladder. So if you will, just to find your way of sitting for this last little bit.

And as with all of the heart practices, or really all practice, you might You might begin by just feeling your intention, however it is, what's true for you, your intention in your relational life, how you want to be, what matters. If you were at the end of your life looking back, what would you care about? You might sense in your life someone that is part of your Sangha, your field of relationship, related beings that you sense does mirror your goodness that helps you to trust who you are. Someone who you feel does get your goodness. Someone helps you feel more confident or more trusting,

where you feel a little more at home or spontaneous with that person because you feel accepted. And if there's nobody, and for some of us there's nobody, and that's part of what we're really finding our way into, if there's a pet, that you feel, loved by or if you feel when you're in nature there's some benevolence whether it's nature or a pet or a certain person see if you can just let that in and sense what it's like when you feel in some way the universe is recognizing your goodness and see if you can

relax and just trust your own heart and if there is someone and you're feeling that person does mirror you you might mentally whisper thank you because that person's offering a blessing. And then you begin to explore being a mirror for others. And you might think of someone in your life that you care about and see if you can sense that you're looking at this person for the first time, really for the first time, so you're not influenced by your past knowledge or experience of them. Just look for the first time. Maybe see things that you might have missed because of familiarity.

You can't really love and mirror what you don't see fresh. For the mirroring to be powerful, you need to see it fresh. You have to discover it anew. So really discover this person anew in this moment. This is the only moment you can do it. What do you appreciate? You might imagine in some way letting this person know what you see, in some way bowing and saying namaste and communicating the goodness you see, being a mirror.

Notice how your heart feels when you sense that person receiving the mirror. Notice the heart space that lights up between you. where you become more of a we than an I and a thou. Feel that heart space. And widening the field, you might bring to mind someone where there's a sense of more difference. It doesn't have to be conflict, but somebody who's not as easy for you to really get their consciousness, their spirit. It might be somebody that's got real different opinions or different lifestyle. or you don't feel quite as open to.

Take a moment there to imagine that you could see that person close in. You might imagine seeing that person in a vulnerable moment and sensing how he or she wants to love and be loved just like you. Sense that the one who's looking through those eyes is the same as who's looking through yours. This being wants to live in truth, wants to wake up. In some way offer your namaste, your bow. And just widening the field and sensing all those here,

all those that are reflecting together in the field that aren't here. All our friends and relations spreading out this web of aliveness. Each of these beings, body minds, with this light and consciousness and loving that shines through. through. We'll close with the words of Rumi. If ten lamps are present in one place, each differs from the other, but you can't distinguish whose radiance is whose when you focus on the light. In the field of spirit, there is no division. No individuals exist. Sweet is the on the friend with his friends. Catch hold of the spirit. Help this headstrong self dissolve that

beneath it you may discover unity like a buried treasure. Namaste and 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 IMCW.org.