Tara Brach - 2015-01-21 - Listening to the Calling of Our Hearts

Episode Date: January 24, 2015

2015-01-21 - Listening to the Calling of Our Hearts - In any moment, our intention - what we are energetically wanting - shapes our life experience. While our deepest intention may be to realize and live from loving awareness, we are often driven by egoic fear and grasping. This talk explores how mindfulness can recognize our prevailing intention, and by staying present, kind and accepting, we can reconnect with the deeper longings that carry us to awakening and freedom.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Namaste and welcome. In the Buddhist tradition, there are jataka tales, which are stories of the Buddha's past lives, all the different incarnations. There are a kind of mythological way of teaching the different qualities of compassion and wisdom that the Buddha realized over lifetimes. And in one of the tales, it's of a good merchant who is in a village in northern India. And he's in his shop, but he sees a kind of luminous, very bright, energetic being walking through the town square.

And this being radiates a kind of compassion that just draws this merchant, just wakes up his heart. and all he wants to do is follow him and serve him and really participate in that field of living from an open heart. So he prepares a tray of nourishment for the bodhisattva that he saw and he starts bringing it and starts walking, feeling this joy of following his heart, of really moving towards truth. And then between him and the bodhisattva, the ground broke open

and it became really dark and demons started appearing. And so this is the appearance of Mara, who's the shadow side. And the voices that came at the good merchant said things like, go back, it's too dangerous. Besides, you can't really handle what will happen on the path. Besides, you're too busy. You have other things to do. And besides, you don't deserve to be on this path anyway.

And every other message you can imagine would come at him, came at him. And so he was about to turn around because it was. It was pretty compelling, these energies of the shadow side. But then he remembered this incredible sweetness and beauty of the longing of his heart to give his life to awakening, to compassion. And he took just a few more steps towards this radiant being. And of course, Mara disappeared and the ground all came together again. and he's standing in front of him

and the being says to him, well done bodhisattva. You too are a bodhisattva. And he says this. He says, walk on, walk on through all the fears and difficulties, and you will know of freedom and peace beyond all imagining.

Follow the call of your heart. So this is a story with the basic teaching that really is right at the, ground of the Bodhisattva path, the path of awakening beings, which is that our life arises, as the Buddha said it, from the tip of intention, that when we are aligned with what our heart longs for, we're really home. And my sense is that each of us has had a taste of really sensing, this is what matters to me. This is what my heart cares about, whether it's the sense of wonder when we're beholding natural beauty, are the feeling of freedom when we're serving in some way,

are the experience of creativity, or a deep realization of truth, of how it is, and that we're just in love with truth. But we've touched it, and we touch it. We have these moments of clarity in our life. It might be when a child is born, or when we're saying our wedding vows, or when somebody's dying. We have these moments where it becomes absolutely clear what really matters to us.

And we have huge swaths of time where the voice of Mara might not be that the ground's broken apart and there's darkness and thunder and lightning, but we have that whisper in our voice of, you should do this, and this is what's expected, and you don't deserve, and all the voices of Mara that keep us small and not really remembering.

Does this make sense? Are we together on this one? So tonight what we're really exploring is the power of aspiration. How do we remember what matters when it's so easy to forget? Each of these classes in the meditation, I begin with some invitation to listen and to sense, well, what really matters? What's our intention?

And I've had many people share with me that they'll ask that question and I don't know. You know, it's like, you know, there's no deep sense of what I aspire for. And that's really an interesting thing. I mean, do you know? When this question comes up, what really matters?

What's right at the core of what's important in your life? Do you know? One thing I've found is that it doesn't matter if I've known in the past. I have to re-know it in a totally fresh way in the moment for it to be compelling. So a lot of us have in the past touched on something, and we've kind of packaged it into, oh, this is a lot of it. this is what matters in my life. But aspiration has to be living.

So it's like, do you really know? I mean, is it alive in you right now? And what we find is that aspiration and presence go hand in hand. That unless we've had some time to get into our bodies and get into our hearts and really be present, we cannot touch into that very moist, sincere, place in us, the quality, where there's a sense of devotion to what we love. It's more mental. So that's one of the first realizations is that presence is necessary to really feel the aspiration that then energizes our life and that we are mostly, when we're cut off, we're in our minds.

And for most of us, there's some degree of stress we're living in. And when we're reacting to this stress. In other words, we're in traffic or we're late to an appointment or afraid of a performance or in some way caught up in that there's not enough time feeling. You know that one? There's not enough time. If you're experiencing that, in those moments, you're not inhabiting the presence that'll let you really be in touch with what matters. in those moments of stress, the attention gets narrow and fixated rather than open and deep and in touch. We're in a trance.

And this isn't to make us wrong. And we are designed, our nervous system is designed to go into fight-flight-free. So we spend many moments where we're in that level of kind of limbic reactivity. We're not in touch in a deep way. And we're mostly turning in our minds. And what's really interesting is even when we're in a really mental, speedy place, still our feelings, whether we're in touch with them or not, are driving our decisions and our behavior.

Chief Justice Douglas said 90% of the Supreme Court's decisions are made from emotions, and the other 10% are the justifications for what the decision was. I just think that's really interesting. Carlos Gashinaata put it this way. Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. So feelings drive us.

And when we're in that trance, that stress trance, the trance of Mara where the shadow side, where the self-doubts are really and the fears are running the show, we get cut off. And our day is, the shape of our day is not coming from our deep aspiration,

it's more coming from our fears than our grasping. So a little check-in, okay? Let's take a moment, just to pause and think about today. And this inquiry tonight will have the most bare fruit if it's really truly out of interest and kindness, not adding another judgment that we often do. So as you reflect on today, you might just sense the shape of today and the activities

and see if you can sense a little bit of what was driving your behaviors and your activity. Where was it coming from? How much of today was a response to really sensing your, the calling of your heart. How much was it really a response more what we might call a limbic response of stress and trying to relieve stress? In one of her poems Mary Oliver describes kneeling prayer-like in a field and she's contemplating with wonder a grasshopper who's gazing around with enormous complicated eyes. She writes this. Tell me what else should

I have done. Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Okay, so opening your eyes if you'd like. So there's a basic principle on the spiritual path. It's like kind of a law of physics that the more awake and present you get, the more you get in touch with that it matters to you to be awake and present, the intention, which then energizes you more in the direction of waking up and being present. So there's this spiraling. Okay, does that make sense? The function of aspiration and that spiraling is one of energizing. It moves you towards deepening attention, creating more space to really arrive. It motivates you in deepening your attention with others. So there's more of a

sense of the field of loving. And then the more that you deepen your attention, of course, the more waking up happens. So it's a beautiful kind of spiral. And there's a lot of power to intentionally reflecting on aspiration. Okay. Suzuki Roshi is one of my favorite lines, and that is, he says, the most important thing is remembering the most important thing. So we'll look more at the trance of the forgetting and getting cut off, because when we become mindful of it, there's actually more remembering. And so when we're forgetting, we're basically in the grip of the egoic self. That's when the reptilian, mammalian systems are in full gear, and there's contraction.

and it's around security and safety and power and pleasure and then we're cut off from the higher centers that include the heart really that allow for a full embodiment, a full sensitivity, a perspective, empathy, contact. So what happens when we're cut off? What happens to our intention when we're cut off? Well, in a societal way, when we're cut off, when we're cut off from our body, we also get cut off from the earth. And then if we're cut off, we don't care about the earth,

so we don't respond to the needs of the earth. We can't sense the needs of the earth right now. We don't have the long range view of what's happening because we're in the grip of the limbic system, which is, I want, I need now, right? So you can see what happens societally when we get cut off from our body earth. And when we get cut off, we can't sense the suffering of those around us.

Being cut off from your body means that empathy goes down. We can't sense the suffering of the animals we eat. So we just, it's like factory farming, the cruelty of it. It's not something our system registers when we're cut off. When we're cut off, we're cut off from the suffering of those that seem different from us, whether it's because of race or sexual orientation or gender orientation or gender. we're cut off from those who seem different. So if we don't connect and communicate,

we can't respond to that suffering. We know it even closer in a daily way. When we're cut off and when we're in our limbic response to the world, our stress response to the world, we go into addictive thinking. Okay, we go into kind of a compulsive types of thinking, and we go into a kind of sub-a-kind of sort of, seeking approval. We're trying to feel safer so we're chronically seeking approval.

And it gets very interesting. You might have noticed if you really look closer at what's happening in any communication, how much of what's going on is in some way wanting the other person to have a favorable impression. Have you noticed that? Yeah. So we don't, instead of being spontaneous and real and in touch with what matters were narrowed. One of my favorite illustrations, some of you might remember, this took place when a woman from Michigan was vacationing in a New England town, and it's the same town that Paul Newman visited regularly. And one Sunday morning, she goes up to take her weekly walk, and her habit is to do this hike, and then she treats herself to a double-dipped chocolate ice cream cone. She goes to the parlor where she gets the ice cream cone and there he's sitting. And so

she just goes off in her mind. Her heart skips a beat as she sees those famous baby blue eyes. And then she starts talking to herself. She goes, okay, hold yourself together. You're a happily married woman. Take it. Be cool. Just be demure. Just walk over to the counter. Don't, you know, so she's talking to herself on how she should be. This is getting cut off. She gets her ice cream cone in one hand change in the other and she tries to glide out without even a glance in his direction. She's really doing, being cool, but she gets the ice cream cone, I mean, she gets to the car and realizes she has her change, but no ice cream cone. Oh my God, what did I do with the ice cream cone? So she thinks maybe it's on the rack or something. So she goes back in there and looks, but there's

no ice cream cone in the rack and the guy who's behind the counter doesn't have it. And so finally she looks in Paul Newman's direction and he breaks out in that very familiar, warm, friendly grin and he said you put it in your purse every one of us knows how when we get self-conscious

then the self ends up appearing in even more embarrassing clumsy, clutzy weird ways so it just happens. So addictive thinking and this self-consciousness and seeking approval and then when we're cut off the judgments, and that's the biggest sign of being cut off from the calling of your heart

is being caught in a judgmental state of mind. It's the biggest trap. It's the most tight and small one. It keeps us really disconnected from what matters. So what we find when we're in our stress reactivity in any of these forms is that we've lost touch with heart. wisdom with our deepest motivation and then what we do is being driven more by our wants and fears one man wrote a letter to the IRS saying I've been unable to sleep knowing that I cheated on my income tax I've understated my taxable income and I've enclosed a check for a hundred and fifty dollars if I still can't sleep I'll send the rest so we see the drivers that are behind our actions

And for many of us, it's not until the ground really shakes beneath us, until, you know, it's like the refrigerator falling from the 10th story. We have to, in some way, have a wake-up that takes us from that level of wanting, fearing-driven kind of intentions more to where our heart lives. I remember one woman who described what her life was like when she got cancer, and had, I think her daughter was two years old, and she didn't know how long she'd have, but it was very shaky.

And she had been very much of a type A type mom. She'd dored her daughter, but she also was a professional and worked and, you know, just juggling a busy life like so many of us. But that diagnosis, having the biopsy, positive and really not knowing. She had one mantra and her mantra was no time to rush. And I feel like for so many of us, if we could just remember that, that we take, we have this assumption that we have, you know, that's just going to go on and on. It's not. That's the most sure thing that we can remember. It's not. And it is that.

this wild and precious life. And we sometimes think, well, I'm going to get this done and this done and just get this together and then I'm going to really deepen my attention to my loved ones. And then I'm going to really learn more about touching some peace here. So we're waiting in a way. So the vantage of being at the end of the life looking back, it becomes much clearer and that's when we start waking up from trance. Rumi, I love the way he puts it, he says that, you know, we get waylaid on the path by,

he describes it as mean-spirited roadhouses. You know, we're on the journey, we keep going off. So now we'll shift gears and start asking the question really, what wakes us up from more egoic intention? That's the more fear-driven and grasping, really to a liberating intention, to the calling of our heart. what helps us shift. We can take, this is a guideline, D.H. Lawrence, he writes,

men are not free doing just what they like. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes, and there's getting down to the deepest self. It takes some diving. So in a way, that's the message, that we need to dive and we need to dive every day and probably many times a day, because if we so quickly get smaller,

So we look at, well, what's the practice of awakening aspiration? How does that look? How can we take this on? And as I mentioned earlier, it begins with really a practice of coming into presence, a present-centered attention, because that's the only way we can get in touch with our longing, lives in our bodies and our hearts. So in daily life, what that means is in the midst of stress, in the midst of conflict, the midst of whatever,

it requires some remembrance to pause and to come into presence and ask ourselves, what is my deepest intention right now, to really look? I'm going to tell you a story that gives a kind of sense of that because our intentions are layered. And when we pause, if you pause in the middle of your day and you're stressed,

The first layers you're going to get to are going to be layers of a more small self wanting something. And that's okay. That's a given part of the way that we're designed. But if we are present and aware of that intention, and that's what mindfulness actually serves, we can drop in deeper. But we have to be willing to beininely accept and allow and forgive the surface layers. This is an example from the younger generation, mom's preparing pancakes for her son, Kevin's five, Ryan's three.

And the boys begin to argue over who gets the first pancakes. So finally the mother sees this opportunity to make it into a teaching. And she says, if Jesus were sitting here, he would say, let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait. So Kevin turns to his younger brother and says, Ryan, you can have the first chance at being Jesus. Okay, the story I promised you, this is a really a story about how to wake up in our lives when we've been caught.

I thought I'd share this one because it really touches me that sometimes we're really caught in a narrower intention. It takes a lot to drop in. In this case, there was a brother and sister I knew from ages back, and they were really close in age. And as teenagers, they did a lot together. And even in their early 20s, they go to Audubon camps together and birdwatching. They called each other kiddo, and they were just unusually tight.

In her early 30s, the sister married a really good friend of the brother. But then some bad blood came between her brother and her husband. And as sometimes happens, her brother felt like she was taking sides, and he cut her off. and it was very, very bitter. And the estrangement went on for 12 years. Part of the reason I share this is because I, through my life, increasingly met siblings that have had estrangements and how sad it is.

So it touched me for that. She tried to reach out. She periodically said cards or emails, but she tried to keep the channel open, but the hurt was too much. Then he got sick, as happens. He got, in this case, stomach cancer, fully recovered, but it was one of those great scares. And some months later, she received an email, said, hey, kiddo, it's migration time.

How about going bird watching? So I asked him, well, what turned him around? What let him reopen the channels? And he said, well, you know, this happens to a lot of people. When we get really sick, we take an honest look at our lives. So he said, I knew that for me to live more true, I had to drop my grudges. And it wasn't just towards her. People that hold resentments end up to kind of spread around.

But Bethann, his sister, was the main one. So he basically said, in the face of mortality, I knew what mattered was love. And I think that there's probably not one of us that's listening, either here or through the podcast, that doesn't somewhere deep down know. that when we're really at the end of life looking back, what matters is those moments where there was loving presence. So that's what he came to. So something in him, he said, you know,

he said it was really hard to stop blaming his sister because when he tried to let go of the blame of her being wrong, then he turned it on himself and felt like, well, I'm wrong then. So that was really painful. But what he'd do is every time he'd hit how hard, it was to let go, he'd said to himself, I'm choosing love. That was what he would say. I'm choosing love. He said the hardest part was when he tried to let go and he just had to feel how much hurt was there. And if he said, I'm choosing love, then he said, then what happened was he'd have to open to the hurt

and then hold it. And he said, this is what he told me. He said, I remember the day I let the hurt be as big as it was and found I could hold it, just be kind. It took 12 years to discover that the hurt needed my attention. It needed my attention, not for her to be different. It needed my attention. And I could offer that. I could be with my inner life. That's probably when the healing happened.

So he was with a lot of trepidation that he met Beth Ann for that first time. And he said, as it turned out, when we first heard, the tears and the pent up caring just washed away any hurt. He said the only thing between them when they hugged was their binoculars banging around on their chest. But it just, they were so ready to be close again. So I'm sharing this story because there is something in us, some wisdom in us, that can say, I'm choosing love.

And it'll be real hard. And it doesn't happen all at once. It's like we can't say, I'm choosing love. and have all the layers of hurt or fear melt away. But it's what creates a space for that to happen over time. So this is an example of in the middle of something difficult in our lives, that there's a possibility of very consciously choosing an aspiration from a deeper place. Let's reflect for a moment.

Let's just take a moment to check this out. Just invite yourself to be. at home in the moment. Take a few full breaths. And you might sense where in your life right now there's a situation with some conflict with someone that's close to you. But I wouldn't pick something that's major. You want to be able to have a chance to check out how to work with something and not have it take too long. So for this time, just picks where there's some tension, some conflict, where you get reactive, some relationship where you know there's a kind of reactivity where there's creating distance

either from being irritated or hurt or somebody not cooperating in some way. And let that come to mind. So you kind of bring a typical example to mind of when you might be with this person, and either find yourself judgmental or lashing out or withdrawing or or caught in some way, in some reaction. And explore what would happen if you inwardly paused. And if you inwardly paused and breathed and let yourself come into your body in the midst of it,

just imagine that. Breathing, connecting with your body, connecting with your heart, and investigating with mindfulness, what's my current intention? In other words, what's behind my behaviors right now? Just notice your intention is it to put the other person down, to control how they're behaving, to elicit a certain response from them, to push them away so you can protect yourself, to prove yourself right? Whatever you come up with on these first layers of intention, because when we're stressed or in conflict, it's usually layers of

some unmet want or fear, just regard it with compassion. Whatever you're encountering, notice it honestly, but regard with compassion. And now ask yourself, what's my deepest intention? What's my deepest intention? What most matters? This is if you're at the end of your life looking back, what would you most want to be in touch with? And just know this as something that this is your heart's calling, not another should or expectation. This is just something that in your depth matters to you, and by being aware of that, you'll get drawn to it more. You'll find your way there. May your heart's calling guide you. Mary Webb says, if you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your path. We have to dive, go from the surface layers of intentions where the sea

more stormy into a deeper level of tenderness and care. So you can open your eyes if you'd like. So whether it's on a societal level where we look at conflict between ethnic groups, whether we look at racism, whether we look at wars that are going on around the planet, or whether it's in between people, the pausing and the deepening of inquiry of what really makes it really matters here. How can I be relating from my depth is what can transform this world. And it needs to be repeated. You know, if you went in and you felt, well, the deepest intention is to be loving and compassionate, but I don't feel safe enough to do that or something like that. That's fine. We have to keep repeating it. You know, the phrase, many of you are familiar

of it of neurons that fire together, wire together. We've had millions of things. We've had millions of mind moments, so feeling threatened and contracting and then judging or whatever our habits are. So to be able to pause in the midst and recognize that with mindfulness and drop into something deeper and in some way say, I'm choosing love. Even if we're not fully able to, just to know that matters is changing our patterning on a really deep level. Where attention goes, energy flows. if you target one relationship, one relationship in your life right now, because it's really hard to say,

well, everywhere I'm going to just be more loving, I'm going to remember my aspiration. If we get real grand, we don't practice, okay? But if you pick one person that you know you get caught and you contract and you really want to live more from your heart and say, well, when this situation comes up, I'm going to find a way of pausing

and remembering what matters. then you can start seeing a shift in the inner landscape. So the other dimension to know is that the more we have the habit of remembering what's really matters, the more we can navigate the most difficult situations. And I'm inspired by one, share this one. There's a woman who founded a group called He, healing journeys, Jan Adrian. She's been very involved with supporting those who have been touched by cancer. And she gone through cancer herself and she had a chest x-ray to check to see if it

had metastasized to her lungs. And her doctor called or said, well, there is a nodule on the lungs. So she had to get a CT scan. And she got it on a Wednesday and was told the results would be in the next day. Thursday, her anxiety is over the top. and she can't concentrate and she feels like crying all day and then you know she's asking herself what if it's metastasized you she had all this healthy diet and exercise hadn't made a difference so she senses this anger that she'd have to fight the cancer again and she called the doctors off and twice and there was this promise that he called back but he didn't so Thursday night she starts

reading she starts quieting she starts meditating and as she she enters presence, she drops down to a deeper sense of what her aspiration is. And she remembered this prayer, her aspiration, which is really make me an instrument, use me. That may this life serve a larger belonging. That she had found over and over again in her life that in the moments when she felt that in some way she was contributing to something larger. She belonged to a larger field of loving presence. She was part of that field. That's what gave her a sense of real trust. And so she started saying, well, who knows? Maybe I'm going to have this rebound, I don't have to deal with cancer again because that's the way I could be most useful

and supportive in this life. And then she began again to trust that whatever unfolds, it's part of this loving, it's part of this belonging. And it gave her a lot of peace and calm. And she said at the end of the next day she finally got the results her doctor had left town and another doctor called her and there wasn't anything to worry about and she said she celebrated because that was her preference you know she she preferred elf but she was really glad she hadn't gotten the results immediately because it had put her in touch with that aspiration of what really mattered she said this she said she'd also put her in touch with this inner knowing that I will be okay no matter what. I'm not just a body. Someday I know this body won't go on and I will

still be okay. I like being reminded of that periodic. So this reflection that we're exploring together is really how do we shift from our habit of the kind of intentions of I want more of this and I want to get rid of that to this deep aspiration like Jan of may I realize my belonging to all beings, may I live from love? And there's a lot of different ways of languaging it. You know, in the bodhisattva tradition, I love this way of describing the bodhisattva aspiration. It goes like this. May whatever circumstances I'm in, may this serve the awakening of my heart. Whatever the situation, whatever the circumstances.

May this serve the awakening of my heart. There's an amazing power to that aspiration. You might take a moment. Let's just close her eyes and check in. Just give you the opportunity to try on and sense the energy and depth of the Bodhisatt for aspiration by scanning your life for a moment and letting your attention go to wherever you're feeling the most difficulty right now.

Or in some way perhaps you're feeling something's going wrong. It shouldn't be like this. I don't want it like this. It could be with your own health. It could be with a relationship with another person. Something to do with work. A loss that you're living with. And notice what happens when in some way you feel that heart prayer,

may this serve the awakening of compassion. May this serve the awakening of my heart wisdom. Sometimes the inquiry is how may this serve? You might sense how this difficulty might help you become more present. become more tender, more accepting, more open, more free. And you can continue either with your eyes closed, your eyes open. There's a question that I often get, which is, well, I feel sometimes an intention, but how do I know it's really a liberating intention?

Like one of those really deep experiences of the calling of the heart. And I want to share with you what I consider the three characteristics of a truly transformative aspiration. We're really in touch with what matters. And one of them is that the aspiration is for a manifesting of what's already here. It's a manifesting of the potential that's already right here. So it's really an aspiration to be all that we are. For the merchant and the story that I read at the beginning, the Jataka tale,

it was an aspiration of loving service, like the really the fullness of who we already was to blossom. It can be an aspiration to have our creativity or our love or our wisdom flower. There's a Bantu tribesmen, a story about the Bantu tribesmen, and one is a description of the father going to each sleeping child, and his prayer is, be who you are. That's one element of a true aspiration. is really, it's not, oh, my aspiration is to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Or, you know, my aspiration is to create an app that will give instant samadhi. It's not something like that, you know, like down the road. It's really unfolding our own being. That's the second one is that an aspiration is embodied. In other words, it's not an idea. It has to be felt in your body. It's like the good merchant when he, when he, when he, when Mara came and he was about to turn around, he had to refill in his heart,

that light and that love and that passion, that devotion to live and serve. So it's embodied. It's in your body. And then the third, well, before I say the third, I want to, this is Oprah Winfrey, she says, before you agree to do anything that might add, even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself, what is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it's right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.

Okay? So an aspiration is for the unfolding of what's here. It's felt in our bodies. And the third thing is it always, always relates to this moment. It's not an aspiration. for down the road. Like in five years I want to be patient and kind. This is St. Augustine says, Dear Lord, please give me chastity and continence, but not yet. So it's for right now. For right now. So we're going to close with a reflection. Just to say that I started with the jataka tale

about the good merchant challenged by Mara, this trance, that this is really all of our our predicament. To some degree we sleepwalk through our days. We go on automatic. For some of us, we can sleep, walk through decades and be dutiful, be caught in conflicts or distracted. You know, the mean-spirited roadhouses, we get caught up. And then sometimes we get shaken awake, or sometimes we just start practicing being more present and start realizing, wow, what really matters to me is so much deeper and wider than where I've been paying attention. So the path of freedom of waking up is having this recognition more and more in our moments. It's like in any moment that you ask yourself what really matters and you have some remembering, you are more

living from the truth of who you are. Okay, so let's close our eyes again and do a final practice. And in this pause you might take a moment to scan through your body and just relax any part of your body that feels that it's tight or tense, that your senses be open. You're aware of the sounds that are here. Where are the sensations in your body? The sense that this is a time now to listen in to really the calling of the heart. For the merchant, it was really taking that next sense. step and arriving in the fullness of his being in that loving presence. So we listen in a sense what is really the step into a more full truth of who we are. And I invite you to begin to reflect by sensing if you had a year to live, if you knew you had a year to live, how would you want

to live it? What would most matter for you? And if you had a month, again, how would you want to live your moments? What would matter to your heart? If you had a day to live, let yourself really arrive in this one. If you had a day to live, how would you want to live it? What would really matter to your heart? And if you had an hour, what would matter to you? If there are just a few moments, right here, just a few moments, what's the calling of your heart in these few moments? What do you want to remember? How do you want to be? Letting time dissolve entirely.

I'm just opening to that calling of the heart. Sensing right down to the very source what the longing is. And just letting go and being that longing, belonging to the love, the truth, the presence. It's right here. May all beings everywhere awaken to the longing of their hearts, to the call of the heart. May all beings everywhere be carried into belonging, into vast love and awareness. May all beings everywhere live from that loving presence. Trust that loving presence.

Be that loving presence. Namaste and blessings. Before we disperse, I just want to acknowledge that that can be a very deep and tender practice. practice. And it's not a one-shot. It's something you can adapt and do in your own way as a way of really coming back. So I want to honor and thank you for participating in that. And it feels good to be with you in that space. Thank you. Yeah. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule,

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