Tara Brach - 2015-02-25 - From Dragons to Schmoos - Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence

Episode Date: February 28, 2015

2015-02-25 - From Dragons to Schmoos - Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence - The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons - the difficult emotions and related behaviors that are a deeply conditioned part of the human experience. In this talk we explore the awakening that is possible as we recognize our reactive patterns and instead of judgment, offer a loving and healing presence.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Namaste and welcome. I'd like to begin by sharing a story I heard when Ram Dass, who many of you might know as the author, Be Here Now, and a real icon in this generation's spiritual world. Well, Ram Dass was in D.C. probably 12 years ago, maybe more. And he described how when he first started practice, when he first started praying and meditating and so on, it was probably 40 years before that, he said, you know, I was filled with judgment and craving and anger and impatience. And now, after decades of a whole range of spiritual practices, he says, I'm still filled with anger and rage and craving and impatience. He said, but the difference is now they're like these little schmooze that kind of come and go,

they don't cause me suffering. And I really like that because in a way it's our proverbial bad news, good news thing, which is that whatever the core issues, the challenging, difficult emotions you've been struggling with, whether it's feelings of insecurity or fear or aggression, deficiency, Whatever they are, it's very likely they'll keep arising throughout your life. That's the bad news, size of it, so to speak. The good news is that if you continue to deepen your capacity for a presence, for a kind presence, what arises won't cause suffering.

They won't, instead of being the dragons, they'll be more like those little schmooze that are there, and they can be uncomfortable, but they don't confine your sense of who you are. And I think of this pathway of really spiritually awakening as we face the difficulties. I think of Rilke is one of his most famous verses really describes it perfectly, and many of you probably are familiar with this one. But I'd like to let this be a centerpiece of our reflections together in this class. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just ones with beauty and courage.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. So the tonight's talk is titled from dragons to schmooze. And it's really about responding to vulnerability with love. It's this path of spiritual awakening that comes as we relate to our humanness and the challenges with a wise heart. So we'll focus on the dragons of our inner life, and as I often do, I'll invite you to get in touch with some. But to say up front that it naturally extends, which means that if we look at the at the violence in the world and the hatred, the racism, the injustice, if we look at

it closely, how we relate to others as bad other, how others can become an enemy when they hold different beliefs and so on, if we really investigate, it only happens because we're unable to meet our own dragons, the aggression, the fear, the fears with a quality of compassion. And when we start learning to do that, when we start facing our fears and sensing the vulnerability and feeling a quality of kindness, then we don't project badness onto others. I mean, not only that, said more positively, the more we open to our own dragons with compassion, the more we look at others, and even those that seem the most different, and see past the differences to the vulnerability,

and the humanness and the goodness. So this practice of how to meet the dragons is really, to me, the hope for peace on earth. Okay. There's an understanding that the heart of Buddhism is compassion and the heart of compassion is compassion for ourselves. And by ourselves we mean for the life that's right here. We have to start right where we are.

So our first inquiry really is, okay, how are each of us relating to the strong and difficult emotions that periodically or frequently arise? How do we do it? And these kind of primitive layers of our emotional reactivity. And I thought as a model of relating to the inner life, I'd start with a little story I came upon, the ring bearer at the way. wedding was the bride's nephew. Okay, and he was about four or five years old. So when it came for his time to walk down the aisle, he completely froze. And everybody's

waving him on, all eyes are on him. So finally he starts to walk towards the front, but he stops about ten feet down the aisle, and he growls really loudly at the people in the seats. And then every ten feet, he stops, and he makes this ferocious face, and he starts growling.

So after the ceremony, the bride thanked him graciously for playing such an important role in her wedding. And then she just got curious. She said, so why were you growling as you were walking down the aisle? And he told her, well, I thought that's how a good ring bear should do it. So he knew how to relate to the inner dragons. So if we begin to reflect honestly for ourselves, how do we relate when we get reactive? often it's a different story. And maybe to ground this and make it a bit more tangible,

you might check in. I'll just guide you in this. You might close your eyes and scan through the recent past, or maybe it's a little more distant for some, when the inner weather, as we might call it, when you got emotionally reactive, got a little stormy. Maybe you were angry or maybe the reaction was one of real fear. Maybe you turned against yourself and felt

ashamed or a lot of self-judgment or self-aversion. So remind yourself of an incident, a situation. Might have been in a close relationship. A partner or children might be something at work. Maybe it's surrounded an addictive behavior. The time when you felt caught and stuck in a strong emotion, And the more you can evoke the situation, the more you'll be able to investigate it. So you might kind of bring yourself right there and sense what was going on and what you were seeing around you,

who you might have been with, if you were with someone what their expression was or what they were saying, how they were behaving. The most important, just sense inside you what it was like. What were you believing in those moments about yourself or about the world? Were the thoughts and the feelings in those moments, familiar ones? Was it a familiar sense of yourself? Was your way of behaving familiar? What's your sense of yourself when you're inside that, when you're stuck? Do you like your reactive self?

Is there at the same time you're reacting a layer of self-judgment in there? Does it feel like this is who you really are when you're in the reaction? You can continue to investigate if you'd like with your eyes closed or you can open your eyes. But what we're looking at is, okay, so what's it like when the dragons are really activated? And for most of us, rather than in some way having the presence to see, oh, there's some vulnerability back there. There's something really going on inside me. Some part of me feels helpless as hurting.

it tends to be for most of us that if not right during it very soon after we have a lot of aversion and judgment towards the self that got caught. How many of you noticed that? Just out of interest. Can I see that there was a judgment towards yourself? Okay. And so for those of you who are listening to this as a podcast, that was most of us. I'd say 90, 95%. So this is the grounds of what I often call the trance of unworthiness, so the trance of unloavability, that we have a natural weather system of dragonness comes up, and then we don't like ourselves for it. And it happens enough that we have some deep sense that something's wrong with me. And it's reinforced by a society,

that says being out of control or being stuck in these emotions is bad or wrong. And as I mentioned, not only do we think I'm bad, we then scan others and we are very quick to pick out the dragonness in others and judge them for being not okay too. So trance of unworthiness, and the reason I call it a trance is because often we're caught in the anger or we're caught in the fear and we're not always aware of the background assumption of I'm bad for feeling this, I'm bad for being like this. We don't always catch that layer and yet the sense of something's wrong with me is very, very pervasive in our psyches and it has, even though it's not always in the front lines, it has a dramatic effect on us.

So there's a few understandings that are helpful as we begin to understand. unpack the trance of unworthiness that I want to just walk through. Because attacking ourselves for our emotional reactivity is just another dragon attacking a dragon. Does that make sense? It's another layer of aversion. So if we're not aware of it, it controls us. And in a deeper way, whatever we can't embrace, whenever we can't see that, vulnerability and regard it with tenderness that's behind or underneath the dragons,

then it controls us. In other words, our identity gets hitched because we're not in presence. So an important understanding is that this process of going into emotional reactivity and then having aversion to ourselves for it is not personal. It's very universal. that every one of us, if we look at our bodies and our nervous system and our brain, every one of us is rigged. We have the reptilian part of our brain. We're rigged to defend. We're rigged to chase after what we want.

We are rigged that way. You know, there's a bottom-up system by which when something happens in our environment, we feel threatened way sooner than our frontal cortex can have a rational idea about it, way sooner that. And just an instant, from the bottom up, we have a reptilian limbic system reaction of emotion. Way before we can even have any real cognition about it. And often, it's strong enough that it hijacks our whole system.

This happens to everyone. If we've been traumatized, it happens more. But it happens to all of us that we get hijacked. And one of my favorite illustrations of this comes from Dan Csie. who's a psychiatrist and he describes he says he puts out his hand and this is how he demonstrates it and you can see my hand with it he says that the thumb here is this is the right here is well we have first thing let me start with the

the wrist here come up is the brain stem where the reptilian part of the brain is and we have the limbic system here and then my fingers going over it are the frontal cortex so this is the brain as it normally is with the limbic system kind of in the middle there. But what happens when we get a surge of emotion, immediate reaction from bottom up, is that we sometimes flip our lid and we lose the connection with what's there.

Usually what happens is emotions are signal, there's kind of informing from bottom up, and then the top down says, okay, it's not that big a deal. In fact, this happened before, and here's what happened afterwards, and really you were okay. and we're all together still.

But when we flip our lid, there's no, none of that perspective or our wisdom, our humor, our mindfulness to get us into balance. Well, as I mentioned, every one of us knows what that's like, where we're just caught in our limbic reaction. You know what it's like when you're angry?

There might be some distant part of you that's saying, you know, this isn't going to help the situation if you say this, And we know what it's like when you're in an argument, you know when you're in an argument, and somewhere in the middle you realize that you're not right? Have you ever had that happen? And how hard it is to back off? That's that reptilian system just saying onward, onward.

So we get stuck. And add on to that, we're pack animals and we need to belong. And so when we get caught in reactivity, there's a part of us. it knows that we could get punished for this. So then we add on shame and guilt. Okay? So this is the ego's predicament. It is driven and shaped by all sorts of reptilian,

limbic, emotional stuff, and it doesn't like itself for it. Okay? So that's the predicament we're in. Okay? The dragons are there, and then we have added dragons that don't like us. It's a super ego not liking the id

if you like that kind of a shape of. So we're at war. And this is a Jules Fifer's take. He says, I grew up to have my father's walk, my father's posture, my father's manners of speech, my father's opinions, and my mother's disdain for my father. It's sad, right? So the trance of unworthiness, the trance of unlovable, if you look at your own life and you scan and you sense when you're caught in it and you know it, You know, when you're feeling like a failure in some way, you feel like you blew it, you feel like you're not enough, you know how much that affects things, how hard it is to enjoy a moment or how hard it is to relax,

that in some way it really constricts our energy. It actually stops our natural intelligence from flowing. So what happens is that we then have to try to prove that we're okay. We try to mount up evidence that we're okay. And it doesn't work because there's another part of us saying, no, you know, there's the Washington Post for a while had these T-shirt contests. I remember one year the winner was, I have occasional delusions of adequacy.

So sometimes the trance of unworthy isn't in the form of totally trashing ourselves. It's just this chronic sense of not enough. I remember a cartoon with a dog on a kind of psychiatrist couch, and he's saying, you know, it's always good dog this and good dog that, but is it ever great dog? So we get caught in some way in the feelings of insufficiency, and then you can look at a lot of what we do each day as trying to make up for that. a lot of what we do each day these self-improvement projects you know we organize ourselves trying to feel better

sometimes we do it in really really hurtful ways kind of addictive behavior should just to so we don't have to feel that rawness of not okay that's one of the ways we do it but we also get busy and try to accomplish a lot to prove we're okay and sadly I call these false refuges

because not that they're bad, but they don't work. Because as many of you know, you can check this off the list and get this accomplished and even get some recognition for that. And it's like about four seconds before you're focused on the next thing that you might fail in or you have to do right. It doesn't, the fixes don't last long, right? And we can see with the trance of unworthiness how hitched we are to being right, to proving ourselves as right. I remember a story about a little girl

talking to her teacher about whales, and the teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because of the size of its throat. The little girl stated, well, Jonah was swallowed by a whale, and the teacher again said, just not possible. So the little girl said, well, when I go to heaven, I'll ask Jonah. Teacher says, well, what if Jonah went to hell? And the little girl said, well, then you ask him. So we know it. You know, this is a silly example,

but we know how not only are we hooked on being right and how wars are fought, you know, around who's right. And we also know there's a kind of a wonderful saying, do you want to be right or do you want to really feel connected and loving? And we know that we have to be able to put aside that proving of ourselves to really establish a sense of connection. So the trance of unworthy and unlovable, when that kind of aggressive dragon possesses us and turns on ourselves,

and we're at war with ourselves, it really makes it very difficult to have a sense of, of intimacy with others. I think of that as one of the most profound sufferings that comes from it, that it's hard to trust that others would value us or love us if we

are thinking that we're bad in some way. Next month I'm going to be doing an online course on relationships, and this is one of the central themes is how do we wake up from the trance of unworthiness so we can begin to really connect and

a deeper way. There's actually right now on my website, please check it out if you'd like, some videos that just address that particular issue. But I wanted to share with you a quote I love from Thomas Merton about this. He says, of what a veil is it if we can travel to the moon, if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is is the most important of all journeys, and without it, all the rest are useless. So we'll examine more together now. You know, how do we come into an intimate and wise relationship with our inner life? How do we encounter the dragons and wake up in the process versus being possessed, our turning into being at war with ourselves? And maybe this would

be a good point to remind some of you have already heard of this, this very pivotal point in the mythology of the Buddha that I've always found so instructive in working with our inner life. And as some of you know, as a story goes, Mara is the god of greed and hatred and delusion. Mara is really the shadow side. Another way of saying it is Mara is the different forms the dragons take in our inner life that are challenging. So the Buddha had a mythological encounter with the god Mara, which is really like saying he had to be with his own challenging emotions. And through the night of his awakening under the Bodhi tree,

the Buddha encountered all the different versions of Mara, the craving and the lust and the passion and desire, and the fear and the hatred and so on. And he met those attacks with this quality that Rilke described of courageous presence and compassion. And as it goes, when the morning star arose and when the dawn came, the Buddha was awakened and free. And this is back to that good news, bad news thing. Through his life, Mara kept showing up. And this should be a bit of a relief to us because we too know that we keep having these emotions

and it does not mean that we're not continuing to awaken. It just means that they're very strong conditionings in this human nervous system. So Mara kept arising. And so he would be, the Buddha would be holding forth in some way giving a talk in a big meadow and there would be, you know, many people there, and Mara would be lurking around the edges. And Buddha's loyal attendant follower Ananda would come up to him and a little bit panicked, you'd say, oh my gosh, Mara's here, what should we do?

And the Buddha kind of told him to calm down, like, chill and on, it's okay. He'd go to Mara directly. He'd look at him and he'd say, I see you, Mara. Come, let's have tea. I love to share this because for me it's over and over again a reminder of this most powerful and beautiful way that when the very natural risings of reactivity come in us, that it's possible to pause.

And instead of either getting possessed by the emotion or being at war with ourselves in a shame that it's happening, there's this fresh possibility that really frees us where we can just say, okay, I see it. Okay, I see this jealousy, I see this hurt, I see this fear or this aggression. Come, let's have tea. It's a befriending.

Let me be with you. Let me investigate. Find out more about you. Let me bring some kindness to this. So the rest of our time in this talk will be really looking into how we actually do that. I thought I'd share with you a very recent experience that I had. Some of you know I went to a silent retreat. up in New England for a week, about three weeks ago.

And it's inevitable that the dragons or Mara always appear on retreats. It's just part of a retreat experience. So I wasn't surprised that it happened. I had been reflecting on a few of the people in my life, and part of these practice, you know, in addition to mindfulness, is offering loving, kindness and prayers to people. And I was thinking of few relationships, and then realizing, wow, boy, and I've just been really judgmental with that person.

And then I see how, especially a few people in my family, have been kind of locked into, because we were in a kind of stressful situation together. I think very controlling. And I was the oldest of four. And so my role in the family was kind of being the dominant bossy one and carried over into my adult life and small little, increasingly, subtle ways, but there it was. So I had to look at that. I said, okay, so I see you, Mara. I'm looking at my own kind of aggressive and controlling and energies, and I said, okay, so

let's have tea. And immediately as I started saying, okay, we're going to have tea, I realized, well, I wasn't having tea just with the aggression or judgment towards others. I was actually filled with self-aversion for still... living out this judgmental controlling self. So that was the dragon, okay? The dragon was self-aversion. So there I was on my zafu and just saying, okay, we're going to have tea with this self-aversion.

And the first thing I experienced with it was that it was really strong and it really did not want to let up it. There was just like this belief, if I don't stay aversive to this, it'll never go away, I'll never be better. I don't know if any of you've ever had that experience, but I'm going to judge it into death, but that doesn't work.

So I started, remember again, RELCO saying, you know, that these dragons are really princesses in disguise, something helpless and vulnerable. So I started deepening my attention, like, what's really inside this self-aversion? And I could sense that inside this self-aversion was a sense that because of the way I am, because of this aggressiveness,

I'm unlovable. It was this thing of, how could anyone love me if I'm like this? So the self-aversion underneath it was a sense of unlovable, unlovable. And as I allowed myself to, again, having tea means that you're really feeling what's there. It's very embodied.

It's not a witness from a distance. So I was feeling, okay, this fearful, unlovable place, the vulnerable place. And the more I let myself feel that I could sense that the message that was coming from that unlovable place, it was kind of a calling or a prayer. It was like saying, please love me. So I was getting down to where that real tender place is.

And as soon as I could feel that longing, under the self-aversion, that longing to feel loved, what I could feel that, that's when, love started to be more available. And I actually had an image that I'll share with you that the whole field around me was this kind of tender presence and that in some way I was being kissed on the forehead and in some way the message was, you're lovable.

It's okay. Just a brief aside, it reminded me, some of you might remember I did a talk on the prodigal son and Renewan's understanding of Rembrandt's picture, the prodigal son. And in that picture, you have the father who's got both the kind of feminine and masculine quality with his hands on his son's shoulder, in pure love and forgiveness.

So it had that quality of some of my own awakened heart or some bodhisatt of compassion and some way blessing me with love. This was all a part of having tea. I know it sounds like quite a tea party, but I'm sharing it because when we get turned on ourselves, either we can believe our judgment and in some way stay at war, and then we can ask ourselves, well, what does that do? Do we become a better person? I've never myself improved in any important way because of being down on myself.

So that's empirical for me. So we can either, but we stay locked in it. We think somehow or other, if I just go at myself hard enough, I'll change. We either can stay locked in the old patterning, or we can have tea and pause and start to get to know what's under that self-aversion. And usually under the self-aversion is a fear of unlovable. And inside that fear, there's a longing to feel loved.

And if you can get down to that longing, to that prayerful place, it's really the voice of love calling us home. The longing is love calling us home. So the steps of having tea are first that we have to see that there's a dragon there. So let's say you see the selfish dragon or the angry dragon or the fearful dragon. So the first step is what I call the sacred pause. We see it and we pause and we say, okay, rather than go into my old chain reaction, it's almost like the flip-lid thing, just going to have tea, I'm going to be with this. So it's like I see you, and in some way we're saying yes.

I think the word yes is a resonant one for me because it means not like I like you, I'm happy you're here, but it's acknowledging the reality of, oh, okay, so life in this moment is taking the shape of a dragon. That's the experience right now. So we're saying, I see you, and then, yes, you can be here. And then that seeing of the dragon and that yes starts deepening. We start investigating. Well, what's really going on?

And we investigate by feeling into our body where it lives. You can't have tea with a dragon without feeling into your body, your throat, your chest, your belly, where that energy lives. Otherwise, it's as I described it before, it's kind of an abstract witnessing. Does that make sense? To have tea, you have to be in your body. So we go deeper and we sense, oh, what's under that energy? And inevitably, as Rolka says, we'll find something vulnerable,

something that needs our love. And as soon as we feel that, there's a beautiful saying that prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. As soon as we feel that yearning, we start belonging, we start feeling love itself. So having tea, encountering these dragons and attending and befriending is really, I'd say, an essential alchemy in this path of spiritual awakening. And the sign of awakening, and this I can say for myself at retreat, that I started in the space of being the judging aggressive self.

That was my identity. And then I was in the identity of the judge of the judging aggressive self, okay? And that was the egoic identity I was stuck in. By having tea, by staying present, and it takes some courage because it doesn't feel good, it's hard. But by staying present, there was a shift in identity. And the shift in identity, as you practice, as you start working more and more with the dragons that come,

is the key to waking up. Because you move from either feeling like I am the dragon or I'm the one that hates the dragon to the space of presence and compassion that can include these different energies but is not hitched to them. It's a space of presence and compassion. It's actually very enlivened

because you haven't pushed away the energy. of the dragons. You've included them. Okay, so a big question that often I encounter is, yeah, but when the dragons come, I feel so stuck or so fearful or so confused, are so ashamed that I really can't invite them to tea. I really can't say yes. And so I'd like to say is that we were wounded in relationship and we get healed in relationship. And very often part of awakening, spiritual awakening with the dragons, needs to include others. We need to include the support of others in the field in order to really be able to meet those energies with a full presence. And there's

nothing weak about that. There's nothing to be embarrassed about that. We, are not separate. We have to wake up together. I was very much reminded of that a number of years ago. I was working with a woman who had gone through a very major trauma. She, as she was married and she was an alcoholic, and without knowing it, her husband was abusing her daughter. sexually. And that went on for about eight years, and she didn't find out about until her daughter as an adult was in her own process of healing and confronted her mother. So this woman, when she found out that she had been clueless and her daughter had been being abused, went to a Jesuit priest who she had actually been a professor years earlier who she trusted and told him what had

happened. It told him that she felt near suicidal, that her level of rage and shame was huge. So this was an example. She could not have tea with that enormity of her feelings. And so he listened to her, and then he took her hand in his big priestly hand, and he drew a circle in the middle of her hand. And he said, this is where you're living right now. It's a place of anguish. And it's a place of fear and rage and her. and shame. And you have to feel those feelings, but please remember this. And he put his big priestly hand over hers.

He said, this is the mercy of the divine. He said, there is a forgiveness in this universe. Please feel it. Because if you can remember this compassion, this forgiveness, then you can awaken. You can heal. You'll discover a compassion within yourself you had never known.

So her practice, this is a practice of having tea, but with help, her practice over the next months was when all these feelings would come up and they kept coming up and storming through her. She would imagine his hand on hers and imagine that there was this loving energy in the universe that was merciful. And forgiveness didn't mean to forget or didn't mean to say, oh, it was okay. It just meant that her basic personhood, her basic essence of a being was goodness. She was just a normal human that was imperfect.

So she'd imagine this hand on hers. And she said, gradually, that hand became replaced by her own tender heart. But gradually, first it took a sense of her belonging to others and the priests and a sense of a divinity that was way large, than her little self. And then gradually she sensed that that largeness was her own awakened heart. But it took time. And I share that story with you because it's so easy to feel that we're supposed to be doing it on our own.

And one of the kind of patriarchal mythologies is that the dragons, the way they get conquered, you have this knight, you know, that's the lone knight in shining armor going out with his sword. and it's not that. There's a quality of a wise heart that sees the dragon, sees a vulnerability that's there, and responds with care. And sometimes it's what we call doing it on our own in an inner process, and sometimes we do it with each other and help each other in relating to the dragons. For closing, there's a story that Oriah Mountain Dreamer,

tells about her own experience. She describes teaching a day-long workshop. She says at the end of a very long day of teaching, a woman came up to her afterwards and asked her if she could meditate on her own. She says, can I do this all on my own? And Ariya's response was yes. I'm sure you can, although many people find it easier to establish a meditation practice with the help of a group. It's just hard to keep up the discipline on your own. your own. And then the woman named Isabel said, but what will it give me? What will I get if I do this every day? And her tone took on a whining quality and I'll read the rest of this. And I felt my irritation rising as she continued, how fast will it work? Will I feel a difference after a

week? How will I know it's working? This is exactly the kind of thing I detested. The quest for a quick fix, the desire for guaranteed outcomes, the simple answer. Do this and you'll get that. My sons were waiting for me and I wanted to go home. I took a deep breath, looked directly at Isabel, and set my nap-sac down on the floor. I tried to slow down my words thinking that maybe if I spoke slower, I would feel more patient. Well, I said, meditation is more a process than a goal-oriented activity. It can help you become more aware of what is going on in and around you, and this can help reduce stress.

My best advice is to try it and just be patient with yourself. I picked up my bag and started to button my coat. I really did have to leave, and I wanted to get out while I was feeling virtuous for not snapping her head off. But as I started to move away, Isabelle suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm with surprising strength. But what I want to know, she said, her voice rising in a crescendo that bordered on real panic

is, will it help me find God? If I meditate, well, I have an experience of something or someone out there listening, something really with me. A wave of desperation swept out from her through me, and I was surprised to find my eyes filled with tears. This woman wasn't looking for an easy answer or guaranteed formula because she was lazy. She didn't want a simple plan because she was unable or unwilling to think critically about what would work. She wanted something she knew would work and work quickly because she was hanging on by her fingernails.

She wanted something that would work in a week because she was afraid she simply wasn't going to make. it through months or years. I put my hand gently over Isabelle's where it gripped my arm. It's okay, Isabel. We all feel desperate at times, I said. Nobody does it by themselves. We all need help. Her hand relaxed a little beneath mine, and she started to cry. We talked for a while longer. There is no them. There's only us. When I left, I did not leave one of them. I said goodbye to one of us, a human being doing the best she can, searching for the home for which all our hearts long. So under the dragons, under our reactive emotions, there's fears, there's longings. and it takes a real commitment, a real dedication, and a courage, as Rolka puts it.

He says, bravely, act bravely. When they come up, instead of hating ourselves or getting completely lost, in some way to be willing to pause and sense, you know, what's here? Can we say yes to the life that's here? For the woman I described that was helped by that Jesuit priest, after she learned to really be with what was there for herself, tell you a little more of the story, she was in therapy with her daughter,

and she was able to then experience her daughter's anger and disappointment and hurt and see inside it that vulnerability in her daughter and really be a present. presence and a kindness, be the mother that she couldn't be earlier as a more grown-up adult. And I share that because as I started tonight, I said, we begin with the life that's here. We begin with really learning how to bring a compassionate presence to what Clarissa Estes calls the Not Beautiful. And as we do it, this naturally has this experience of

widening the circles and we begin to move through our life and see others, especially those we might have sensed as different, as really not okay. Are those that were different and we didn't even just sense them as like me, human, vulnerable. We begin to see the vulnerability. We begin to see the goodness in others behind the mask and that sense of separation dissolves. There's really this deep sense of you're not other. We're in this together. We're in this together. So that's what arises, there's a shift in identity, rather the self that's the bad self or the other that's a bad other. There's a sense of presence that we all belong to that arises because we've paused and

we've said yes to the life that's here with kindness. We'll take the last few minutes and just bring this right into the moment in our own lives. It's a very short practice. To sense this as a pause, there's an opportunity to be a little more intimate with the life that's right here. You begin by just noticing how it is for you, right, this moment. I invited you to reflect on a time where you were emotionally caught in reactivity. You might scan and sense if there's anything right now.

going on in your life where you just, you know that there's at least the potential to be in reaction to get caught. And I wouldn't pick something that's like a 10 on the chart, more like a 5 or 6 or 3, not too strong. But something going on where you know you have the tendency to get angry or irritated or fearful or insecure. And with some curiosity, you might put yourself in the situation. And just for these few moments right now, so that you're envisioning what it is that triggers you. If it's what a person's saying to you, what's going on at work, a deadline, something going on with your child, somebody in the family. Just let it be close in for a moment. can get a little bit of a taste of the dragons that begin to take shape and feel your body.

Because part of pausing and sensing, okay, so here's Mara or the dragons, and just sense the possibility just noticing and saying, okay, I see you. I see this insecurity or this jealousy or this aggression or this fear. And let's have tea. And notice what happens if you just investigate the reactivity a little. If you start breathing and feeling it in your body, and just regarding it with a gentle attention, with the spirit of yes, which means that you're allowing it to be there,

not judging it. You're just letting this life that's here be as it is. And you might sense into where the vulnerability is. What's under the reaction? Can you sense where there might be some fear or some hurt, some longing to know that you're okay or loved? See if you can sense into the most vulnerable place within you right now and just offer a very simple gesture of kindness. It might be a mental whisper of it's okay. There's a few words I like to say which is I'm sorry and I love you, meaning I'm sorry for the suffering and I love you.

And if you'd like, you can even put your hand on your heart, which I think deepens that communicating with our inner life and just sense, experiment with sending some kindness to the vulnerable place. Sensing as Rolka said that this is something helpless that really needs our love. This is the deepest yes that you can offer, this tender, tender presence. You might even sense as you offer this tenderness, that quality of heart space that opens up

so that if you imagine another person in your life, you can just sense who comes up, anyone who might be having a hard time right now, sense the capacity to really attune to the vulnerability, vulnerability in that person, to include that person in this gentle and tender presence, this deep yes, and then you can begin to intuit how wide the circle can be, that you can begin to move through your day and include more and more beings with this compassionate presence. We close with a very short poem by Donna Faults in the shared quiet,

An invitation arises like a white dove lifting from a limb and taking flight come and live in truth take your place in the flow of grace draw aside the veil you thought would always separate your heart from love all you ever longed for is before you in this moment

if you dare draw in a breath and whisper yes Namaste and blessings. Thank you. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.