Tara Brach - 2015-04-01 - Three Liberating Gifts: Part 2 - Inner Fire

Episode Date: April 4, 2015

2015-04-01 - Three Liberating Gifts: Part 2 - Inner Fire - This 3 part series is based on a teaching story from the Upanishads that shows our potential to awaken from an ego-based trance and discover the full luminosity and freedom of our natural awareness. In each class we'll explore one of the three gifts considered as essential on the spiritual path. The first is the capacity to forgive, to let go of the blame and resentment that prevents our hearts from being open and free.  The second gift is "inner fire," the capacity to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to what we most cherish. The third gift is a "mirror" or the capacity to look deeply into our own hearts and minds and realize the truth of who we are. Each class includes guided meditations that explore how these gifts can be nourished right here and now in our lives.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Namaste and welcome. I'd like to begin this class with a short NPR story. It was entitled The Slow Internet Movement, and they reported that hipster cities like Portland, Oregon, are sprouting internet cafes that only offer dial-up access to the web. The cafes give customers slow. Poor's and slow internet. Here you can order your coffee and spend four hours checking your email all for 99 cents an hour. I heard this and I thought, oh the sacred pause, it's spreading,

you know, not everybody's addicted to speed and not everybody's trying to get there rather than to be here. And then I read on and the date was April 1st. So speed still rules, I guess. So our last class we explored the three gifts. We began a three-part series, really, exploring the three gifts that support us on a spiritual journey, on a journey of awakening, our heart, and our spirit. And it's based on a teaching story from the Upanishads that I've always loved,

and I tend to revisit once every couple of years because I find it always has new nuances that I really find helpful. So in this story, the protagonist, Natchiketa is a young man who got into a conflict with his father, and his father said, you know, in the heat of anger, I give you to Lord Yama, and Lord Yama is the god of death. And Natchikata, being a very concrete thinking young man, went off and pursued encountering the god of death.

And he endured all sorts of, you know, pain and fatigue and hunger, and he had to wait for three days until Lord Yama got back to his kingdom. And Lord Yama was really impressed with this young man's diligence and perseverance, and he said, I'll grant you any three wishes that you'd like. The stories built around this. And Nachi Keta, keep in mind he was facing the Lord of Death, his wishes were informed by the wisdom of impermanence. And his first witch that we explored last week was the wishes.

for forgiveness, that he could let go of the armor of hatred and blame towards his father and towards any being. Because Natchik Tja realized that to really free himself, he couldn't be carrying that kind of tight heart of judgment or hatred. And we can see it in our own life that if we really sense how fleeting things are, if we sense, you know, whether it's our child or a partner or friend, if we were on our deathbed, would we be holding any resentment or blame? And for most of us, we wouldn't. Most of us would really have that wisdom of what's true, that it's fleeting, we let go and want to live with an open heart. So that was the first of the wishes, and it was granted. And the second wish, which is the theme of tonight, is called

inner fire, which I think is a great name. Inner fire has to do with connecting with what really matters, living our life out of that sense of, okay, this is what my heart really yearns for, letting that guide us. The third gift, which we'll be exploring next week, is called the mirror, and it's a gift of being able to look and really see the truth, the vastness, the depth of what we really are. So inner fire. I'll just use some language that helps me to relate to it. It's quality of profound interest and profound love for the aliveness that's here. And it's a capacity to give ourselves wholeheartedly. So you might sense in your life where have you really given yourself, whether it's to a relationship with a loved one or just

to a creative project, are for some to service when you really feel your heart alive with the cause, and to many, to this spiritual inquiry, you know, really this, really this yearning to come home into a presence and an awakefulness and an openness that really is who we are. So the question is, where do we give ourselves wholeheartedly? That's the inner fire. And a key understanding for me is that the more that we are aligned with inner fire, like in the moments that you're remembering what really matters, in those moments you're actually more inhabiting who you are. There's a direct connection between connecting with what your heart longs for

and actually being who you are. And the opposite holds true too. when we're caught in pursuing more narrow-minded goals, we're living in a much more contracted state. Our identity is more contracted. So this is what we're going to be looking at and just a sense that we all have inner fire, just the way the acorn wants to become the oak.

There's an urge in each of us. It's intrinsic to what we are to become who we can be, to manifest, to realize the timeless quality, the loving quality of the awareness that's here. That urges in each of us. I've discovered in working with myself and other people that there are markers that kind of let us know when we're getting more aligned with what matters. And one of the words that has most resonated for me is sincerity. You know how it is when you're with somebody that's really sincere?

There's profound trust right there. There's no covering. So when we're really feeling our longing and it's not contracted into some substitute kind of fixation, we become really sincere. Another word that helps me is that there's a quality of innocence, that all that jaded, been there, done that, any manipulation, any controlling's gone,

and there's just an innocence that shines through. Those might help you a bit when you sense, what is this inner fire? When the longing's very, very pure, and there's a quality of innocence, and in a sense we're feeling we're being called home. Now, when we're in the grip of fear, which is a lot, a lot of the time,

what happens is that inner fire gets kind of torqued contorted. The energy is still there, but it's torched. And instead of that pure longing and the quality of coming home, it gets torqued into a sense of trying to survive and cope, the coping strategies, and this felt sense is more egoic. So when our motivation is coming from a more fear-based place, then all of a sudden we sense ourselves as that more tight egoic self. And we then spend years or decades, rather than being connected with the power and purity of our inner fire, being driven by fear-based wants that keep us small. And so this is really what we're going to be now diving into.

How does that energy get torqued and how do we get off? And I think Robert Frost puts it in a very interesting way. Something we were withholding made us weak until we found it was ourself. My sense is that we all have an intuitive gauge that lets us know when we're not living from who we are. That's, I think, what Robert Frost means by withholding, when we're withholding that inner fire, that purity. Kabir describes it as a daily sense of failure where we're not quite aligned, so it feels like something. wrong. And then from the Jewish Hasidic tradition, this story. Rabbi Zusha, a pious and revered sage was lying on his deathbed weeping. A student stood by and perplexed. Rabbi, why do you

weep one of them, venture to ask? Surely if anyone is assured a place in the kingdom of heaven, it's you. The sage turned his head towards his beloved students and began to speak softly. if my children, when I stand before the heavenly court, I'm asked, Zushia, why are you not Moses? I shall have no hesitation in affirming I was not born a Moses. If they asked me, why then were you not an Elijah? I shall speak with confidence. Neither am I Elijah.

I weep friends because there is only one question that I fear to be asked. Why were you not Azusha? So this is really the inquiries. Are we inhabiting ourselves? Oscar Wilde says, be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. So as I mentioned, we have fear conditioning. We all have it that pulls us away from resting and inhabiting ourselves in a full way. And this is what Rumi is addressing. We're going to be using this phrase a bit, as you listen. He says, gamble everything for love. If you're a true human being, half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods

at mean-spirited roadhouses. So I have found that phrase zings in my mind a lot. Like, oh, this feels like a roadhouse. You know, because we get way late all the time. Every day, most of us. We get way laid. So we'll look together at how we get waylaid, how this, we have this evolutionary capacity to feel that inner fire, to live from it, and we get arrested at what might be called this arrested development at egoic level where fear contorts it, and we are stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses. So let's take a look and the main mechanism by which this all happens many of you know the the phrase where attention goes energy flows that we have habits of where we pay

attention and you might even consider today because I always think it's good to bring it right really what was today like and how were you paying attention today what was your attention focused on What were the kind of, you can just check in and kind of review the day, just to get a taste. We're going to look into this more fully, but just a sense, you know, what was motivating your activity today? What part of your being was it coming from? Was there a sense of a real yearning or creativity, aliveness? Were your activities and thoughts more pressed and squeezed by feelings?

fear. You can open your eyes, but I'd like to invite you to keep examining, bringing this to your life as we reflect on how we get waylaid. One of the natural expressions of inner fire is that we long to feel fully alive. We have that longing to feel fully alive, to feel awake, to feel in a vibratory way, our senses awake alive. There's a natural joy in feeling fully alive. And when there's fear that yearning to feel fully alive gets fixated on substitutes that bring us kind of a jolt or a current of aliveness that doesn't last.

It's not from a very deep place. So we get it from maybe a hit of a candy bar or chocolate, or we get it from alcohol, our drugs, our sex, our shopping, our reading, or being on the Internet. I was reflecting, because I watch myself, you know, when I see the Internet and I see something like some of you might be aware of Upworthiest, I know if you see that one coming through or Flipboard, where they have all these very popular articles.

and they're incredibly interesting looking, every one of them. And some of them are interesting in a really shallow way, and some aren't, but they grab your attention. Well, this culture we live in is designed to get us waylaid. So we start looking at, well, where have we fixated our attention? So this joy of being alive has gotten really narrowed. I interviewed my son, age 28, about something that I've considered one of his main roadhouses since he was, I think, 13,

which is video games. And I thought before I spoke about him, I should re-interview him because I didn't interview him last time I wrote about him. And so I said, so what is it about that? What is it? And there are clearly some things that are wholesome. And so this isn't like an out-and-out, you know, here's the addiction. So his current favorite is called Path of Exile. Just the name, I mean, really.

We're talking about roadhouses and getting waylaid. The Path of Exile. It's very dark, and it's violent. And so I said, okay, so what is it? You know, because it obviously gives pleasure. And so he described it really scientifically how he gets a dopamine fix from it because it has an... He says it's like,

got a reinforcement schedule that hooks you and that all good video games have it, where you get every once in a while, it's a random generator, you get every once in a while the reward that gives you a feeling of mastery or accumulating. In fact, in a lot of the games you can trade what you get for money, real money in the world, so it's really accumulating. So you get hooked on this reinforcement schedule where he gets these jolts of dopamine that make him feel good. And he knows that's not the deep, everlasting, timeless happiness that we're seeking from our depth of our heart. But it's still at a hook. We all have things like that, where we get some fix, and it captures our attention,

and we actually start organizing ourselves and our thinking around it, and we're not available in the moment for that presence that actually taps us into feeling fully alive. Every one of the waylays takes us out of presence, which is the one place where inner fire actually is fueled. Okay, so that's one way. Another facet of inner fire is understanding reality. The deep down, we all have a profound interest in how it all is. It's almost like it's the reality, the reality, the reality, in us that wants to know itself. We want to understand. But that gets narrowed into trying to hold on to knowledge and trying to figure out things and having it become very cognitive,

where we start grasping onto our cognitive map and we have to be right and we're holding on to certainty. Does this all make sense, that kind of narrowing of that deep interest in truth? Okay. So we start trying to figure out things. Like there's a one story of a student that went to a Zen master and asked him, well, what happens after we die? And the Roshi, that's the Zen master, said, you know, I don't know. And the student said, but I thought you were a Zen Roshi. And the response was, I am, but not a dead one. There's a book called Zen and the art of reading all the books about Zen. Okay, so that's just another example, the inner fire to know truth and how it gets contracted.

Then we have the inner fire, each of us has it, to really know connection, belonging, oneness, really being at home, sensing non-separation. And what happens when we get afraid is that that longing to belong to really feel connection turns into attachment, turns into all the ways that we try to seek approval. We know these. We know the ways we get waylaid on that. I often reflect on how so many of our encounters with each other in some way we're behaving in a way to elicit a response of approval.

We want people to feel a certain way about us so we contrive our behaviors to get that. So rather than the spontaneity, you know, we all really long to be loved. for who we are. And yet we are so hooked and presenting a self that we don't get to discover that spontaneity and connection from our realness, from heart to heart, really. There's a saying that dying begins at birth and it accelerates at dinner parties. Okay, so we have a longing to connect, to feel our belonging, and it gets contorted by fear,

and sometimes we grasp after approval. And the other thing we do, because it gets contorted, is we actually push away. As much as we want connection, we actually push away with judgment and aggression because we so much fear the loss of any level of connection. We don't want really to get close. There's a really interesting study that was done in 1998

on rat-torn. pups. The researcher had these young rat pups in a cage and watched them play and they're very spontaneous and rolling and tumbling and they were just one. They were just one entity kind of playing with itself. But then after a few days he put a hair from the fur of a cat in the cage, one hair, and the play stopped completely and gradually left the hair. He left the hair. He left the hair in, it resumed, but never, it was always contained, never at a level of that freedom and connectedness and flow. And so the question is really what happens when a signal of dangers introduced into our environment. And for us to sense in our own lives, what's the cat hair?

What is it in there? That fear that is between us and really loving without holding back, letting in love. So again, I'm hoping you're with me that the inner fire is to love and be loved, but when fear torques it, it can go into judgment and aggression or grasping, and we're not free anymore. Another example of inner fire

is this deep yearning that comes out of feeling our connection with all beings to relieve suffering, to serve each other's freedom. It's deepened us to want to help, and it's not an ego kind of helping. It's just as if, you know, if I had a cut, I'd put a band-aid on it. It's that sense of being part of each other. And yet, when we get afraid, what happens?

We start trying to fix each other. We know this is such a complaint in relationships that one person will bring up a difficulty in the other rather than creating a space where there's a togetherness with the vulnerability. there's an immediate tendency to want to fix. And I thought I'd share with you in my own life, I'm no longer in clinical practice. As a psychologist, I spent decades. Early on, I remember one experience with a client that I'll never forget,

and she was struggling with insecurity, the ways that she would drive away men, and she felt like she was very clinging and mistrustful, and she would act in ways that would drive away the people she wanted to be with. And so she felt very much the victim, very lonely, very stuck in that. And I really wanted to help her find her courage and her strength and stop clinging and have relations. I wanted it all to go really well.

I wanted to make a difference. Okay. I wanted to make a difference for her. Okay, you get the idea. So I tried all sorts of strategies. I've always been eclectic, drew some from NLP, and from psychodrama and hypnosis. And, you know, in some way I was trying to fix her.

And I had a wake-up moment when one day she said to me, Tara, I'm sorry for being such a resistant person. She said, I'm sorry I'm such a difficult client. And I realized that I had teamed up with her in fixing her. In other words, I had been reinforcing that she was a problem. problemed person, that something was wrong. And that really kind of broke my heart, and it broke my heart open in a way that I just wanted to see who she was and mirrored. I just wanted to be with her. And so that was my intention, whenever before I would get together, is just loving presence,

just to be present, be real, see her realness. And something shifted. Because I wasn't trying to fix her, something in her began to appreciate more about herself, and she naturally started trusting herself more, and that unfolded in a way that really was meaningful. So I'm sharing this with you because there was something very sincere and pure deep down in my wishes for her, but it was contorted by a fear. My ego wanted to make sure it was working out, and so then it became fixing, not present.

if we start looking at our life, we'll find just looking at today that what was motivating us is usually marbled with fear. There's that, there's the purity in there. We want to be helpful and we want to understand more and we want to be loving. But there's a torque that has it so that we don't quite feel that we're living from that depth. We're not living from the real power or an essence of that inner fire. One of the stories that I think I might have shared it here last, about four months ago or so, that to me has a lot to do with this torquing of the inner fire

took another story in a monastery where a new monk came to work in the monastery and assist the other monks in their activities. and they were copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand. And so he was going to help them do that. But he realized that they were copying from copies. They weren't copying from the original manuscript. So he went to the head abbot and said, you know, if somebody made even a small error,

that would just be continued through time. And the abbot thought he had a really good point. So he agreed to go down to the vaults that were in these caves deep, deep under the monastery and pull out the original documents. So he goes and searches for the manuscripts, but the abbot's gone for many, many hours, and the young monk got worried. So he went down into the vault, to see where the vault was and see where the abbot was, and he finds him banging his head against the wall and crying uncontrollably.

So the young monk asked him, you know, father, father what's wrong? And in a choking voice, the old abbot replies, the word is celebrate. So as we take some time and we look at our lives or we look at any relationship we're in, to the degree we're caught in

substitutes with that person of defending or grasping, to the degree that we're caught in substitutes that take us from really being with that person, the mean-spirited roadhouses, we have forgotten lost touch with the inner fire. And I think a very poignant lens for all of us,

and I mean speak about this a little bit more in closing, is the lens of impermanence. You know, how would we be, how would we behave if we knew there wasn't that much time? And a story that has always struck me, a woman described being with her father when he was dying, And through her life, he had been a kind of larger-than-life figure, who's a well-known, very respected architect

and designed buildings and urban centers and many very highly praised pieces of work. And they had always had a distant relationship because he had really been off having his career and his work was a center of attention. And that had caused her a lot of pain. She had to do a lot of therapy at not feeling like she was special or important.

But now at the end of their life, they were spending a lot of time together. And she recounts asking him the question, what of his accomplishments did he feel most proud of? Because they were talking about his life. And there was a long pause after she asked that question, and he had tears in his eyes. And his response was, you, of course. And I remember when she shared that, when I heard that,

both a sense of kind of tearing up and a sense of how that's true and how he had gotten waylaid and how it mattered that he said it even at the end and how we don't have to wait. That was what it really said to me. That on this path of deepening attention, which is really the blessing of this path, that we're, rather than replaying our habits over and over and over again. Because we're learning this practice of presence, we have choices that we didn't have. And that is the gift that we don't have to get waylaid.

For decades, it can be for days or hours. And I think if there's anything, people sometimes ask me what's different for me, you know, since the early days when I first started meditating and I'll often reflect that I still get the same contractions, fear comes up and I get neurotic about this or driven about that or sometimes mistrusting or whatever it is

judging is a big one but the lag time has decreased so I'm just not inside that narrative for that long because there's something of me that's just learned to pause and go, oh, oh, that's what's happening. And realize that the sense of who I am when I'm in the judging or in the racing around is not really home.

It's not really the sense, the truth of who I am. So this is the invitation as we begin to explore inner fires, to sense we're out of habit we've gotten waylaid and how we can begin to pause and sense, well, not to judge it. it's not our fault. I mean, this is our culture, our conditioning, our genes. It's just not our fault. In fact, if you judge going to mean-spirited roadhouses, that's just another roadhouse, okay? Really? Judgment is. It will waylay you more. But if instead there's this part of you as you pay attention right now that has a yearning to be true to your yearnings, has a yearning to really sense, what matters and live to that, this practice of presence can help you come home. This is Mark Twain.

Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly, love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that made you smile. Twenty years from now, you'll be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So, throw off the bowline, sail away from the safe harbor, Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover. Okay, so where attention goes, energy flows. We'll take a few minutes to reflect now where our attention's been going and how we can pause in the midst of that.

You might let your eyes close. I invite you to recall the words of D.H. Lawrence, who says it's not what the self wants. It's what the deepest self wants. and to find that out it takes some diving. Very easy to live our life being driven around by all the surface waves. Very easy.

So we begin to reflect, and as a way of beginning, just sense where you are right now, feel the sensations in your body, feel your breath. You might ask yourself, as you scan your life a bit, where does your energy get fixated?

What's a lot? a roadhouse that you get waylaid at. And you might consider some of them we've just named. And since there may be like 10,000, but you can pick one for now. Maybe that you're, you get waylaid by trying to prove yourself, your accomplishments, that you're a good person when really you're wanting to just live and serve from that goodness. But you get waylaid trying to prove it. Or maybe, as I describe with my son, you want to feel fully alive, but it gets hitched onto food or alcohol or possessions, accumulating. Or maybe it's that longing to love and be love that gets fixated on approval. Just sense one of the ways that, you know,

that it's kind of a substitute that you get hooked on. They chase after. And as you're reflecting on that, go right to a situation where you sense you're really in it. You're going for the approval or you're judging someone because that's another strategy in a way to try to control things. You're trying to fix someone and make them different. So this is where there's some egoic strategy playing and investigate a little that sense of who you are when you're caught in it. What's the feeling of your self-sense? What does it feel like? Can you sense a kind of confinement or solidity

or self-aversion that comes with it? Often we don't really like ourselves when we're caught at the roadhouse. If you could sense when you're caught what really underneath you're really wanting. If you could do a little diving, as D.H. Lawrence put and sense, what's really under this? What am I really long?

longing for? What's the inner fire that's the energy behind this that got torped? Is it the longing to love and be loved? And this is your way of trying to get that love? Is it that you're seeking to serve, that you're seeking understanding and spiritual realization, but you're grasping after figuring things out and controlling? What's the deep, deep longing? What's the deep longing? What's the inner fire. Do you let yourself drop into that for a moment just sense, yeah, I really long to realize who I am or to love and be loved or to live creatively or whatever it is that you sense as deep down an essence longing? Let yourself step into that and feel that and let it fill you. So you're letting a very pure longing of the heart, a very sincere longing.

and fill you. And as you sense that, again, just to notice, what's that experience of who you are now? Who are you when you're connected with that inner fire? What's your sense of self? The felt sense. Open your eyes as you're ready. The last part of our inquiry tonight is really what can support us in connecting more with that purity, that longing. And the most basic thing is what many of you already have an intention towards, which is practicing presence, mindfulness. Really, that pause, whether it's, you know, the formal practice every day sitting for 20 minutes and really coming back to what's right here and the pauses through the day. And another support that is part of that is to be environments that remind you, that reconnects you with what matters.

I know for myself that when I am gathering and I'm sitting quietly with friends and we're talking about our experience of practice or talking about something that really matters to us, a cause that we really are giving ourselves to, it's in that kind of shared energy that I come more holy into, yeah, this really matters. But there's a reflection of that. I mentioned earlier that can make a big difference, and that is intentionally reflecting on impermanence. When we're young and we're in our sense of immortality, we can get all over the place. Most of us as we get old, it's just part of getting older that it becomes more real, that we don't have that long. I'm not just talking about physical death. I'm talking about how everything

really changes that we can't hold on. Many of you, I think, are probably familiar with the Carlos Kachinata books where the sorcerer Don Juan offers wise teachings, and he describes death as an advisor. And he says that when death makes a slightest gesture, all pettiness falls away. And isn't it true? Isn't it true? It often takes a big jolt in our personal life. to remind us. One woman that I know teaches in elementary school, and some years back she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and as happens, she was just stunned

and so profoundly moved by how many people sent care and took care of her, people letting her know that they loved her. And she's been in remission for a while but she said that in teaching her commitment, what came out of that, was to let every single child she was with that she was teaching know that she cared. Imagine a teacher that really has that intention and is living from that, that every child that she's with in some way she's going to make sure they know that she cares.

That's in her fire. a woman who has been in remission but now her cancer's back and she doesn't have long to live sent me this this is by Raymond Carver called gravy no other word will do but that's what it was gravy gravy these past 10 years alive sober working loving and being loved by a good woman eleven years ago he was told he had six months to live at the rate he was going and he was going nowhere but down. So he changed his ways somehow. He quit drinking.

And the rest? After that, it was all gravy. Every minute of it, up to an including when he was told about, well, some things that were breaking down and building up inside his head. Don't weep for me, he said to his friends. I'm a lucky man.

I've had ten years longer than I or anyone expected. Pure gravy. And don't forget it. Some years ago, probably now it's about 20 years ago, I went with a very dear friend to a weekend retreat with Tickinot Han that he was teaching here in Virginia. And at the end of the retreat, and this is a friend that still a very dear friend, we love each other, we're really busy, we don't spend much time, but when we do it's great. Well, we're in one of those phases where we were really happy we had the time to drive back and forth to the retreat together. So we sat at the retreat. At the end of the retreat, Ticknod Han had us do something that he has done often at retreats. And that is, pause, listen. There we go.

Oh. I remember teaching, I was teaching, I'm going to go back to that story. But I was teaching and we had said turn off cell phones and so on. And in the middle of a meditation, you heard a cell phone go off and the voice went, Mom, Mom, are you there? there? Mom? Mom, will you pick up the phone? It's me. Mom! Mom! Anyway, it was great. It woke us right up. So here we are. We're at the end of the retreat, and Tick-Nat-Han has us get into pairs, and he has us face each other, and first we say namaste, which means I see the sacred or the beauty or the divine in you. And then you hug the person, and you take three breaths. And the first breath you reflect, I'm going to

die. The second breath you're reflecting, you're going to die. And then in the third breath, and we have these precious moments. And I remember the sense of how much it mattered to cherish these moments, how grateful I was to know that we had just moments, and how much I wanted to keep remembering that the death is an advisor. It's not this bad thing. It's the truth of what is that lets us really cherish our moments. So we'll take a few minutes now as a kind of closing to this to reflect together. I think you'll find that this kind of begins to give you some ways that you can pay attention, come home, connect with. with inner fire.

The two real practices I've been naming are to reflect on impermanence and to savor what you love. And as you consider that, just to sense that we have a habit of fixating on what's going to go wrong, but we aren't so good at just pausing when something's delicious or beautiful

or sweet or touches us and taking it in. So one of the practices that's key to begin to open us back into inner fire is when in some way you're touching what you love. Pause. Wait 15 seconds and let yourself really feel the delight or the wonder or the beauty of it. For a new mom, it might be with a child feeling that tenderness and aliveness that comes with, this is what matters, this relationship in this moment. For myself, if I'm walking in the mornings, just to stop and feel that silence and the stillness and beholding this living

world. For a friend in a moment of serving, it's realizing this sense of holding hands. It's not me helping you. It's we're holding hands and savoring that. So I invite you right now to sense if you were at the end of your life looking back, what's something, you're, you're that would really matter. What is it that you look back on and sense, ah, this is something in my life that I really love? You might sense a moment with a loved one, or a moment in nature, serving, savoring, and let yourself go into that experience. So you sense what it is you really are cherishing about it. What is it? Is it that feeling of deep connection? Is it that profound happiness of being really alive, of letting go of a selfness and opening to really

belonging to the world, what is it that you're cherishing? You might sense in your own life if you were to really remember, we don't know how long we have. What would you give yourself to more wholeheartedly? Can you imagine what that would be like giving yourself more wholeheartedly to what you love. And finally, bringing it right close to here and now you might sense for the next few hours, for many of you of this evening or tomorrow, what would it really mean to sense your inner fire, what matters, and to give yourself more wholeheartedly to be aligned? What would it look like? What would it feel like? How would it be? Close with the words of RELCA, you see, I want a lot, perhaps I want everything, the darkness that comes

with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up. You have not grown old, and it's not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret. You have not grown old and it's not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret. Namaste and blessings. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW. org