Tara Brach - 2015-04-29 - Investigating Reality - Beyond an Interpreted World

Episode Date: May 2, 2015

2015-04-29 - Investigating Reality - Beyond an Interpreted World - The skillful use of inquiry - asking questions in a way that energizes and focuses our attention - brings what is hidden into the light of awareness.  This talk explores the healing that arises as we investigate the unseen, unfelt parts of our psyche, and the freedom discovered as we look into the very essence of who we are.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Namaste. There's a story of a family at the beach, father, and two sons, and the four-year-old gets really excited and grabs his father's hand and pulls him to the shoreline where there's a dead seagull and he said, what happened, what's wrong? And his father, in a very reassuring voice, said, you know, he died and he went to heaven. And the boy looked puzzled and he said, so did God throw him out?

Did he throw him back? And I love that, just that little vignette, because, you know, in a way, it's cute, but what it points to is how, you know, we move through our day and we have a, instead of direct reality, we have these different stories and ideas and beliefs that are in a way, the veils between us and the living mystery that's here. And so a very integral part of any path of waking up is really examining those veils, really sensing, is this real? What's happening here? There's a beautiful little set of lines from Heldegaard of Bingham.

And she writes, we cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that's interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light. So there's something about this sense of an interpreted world

that really rings true to me. that the terror and the true adventure is to be able to see past the veils of whether it's handed over to us by our culture or the beliefs we constructed early on that are really shaped by fear and shaped by wanting, can we see past it? And in the Buddhist teachings, this capacity for us,

inquiry, this interest in wanting to know reality, investigation. It's considered a real key facet of spiritual awakening. In fact, in Buddhist psychology, it's described as one of the key factors of enlightenment, this quality of investigating to reveal truth. This question, you know, what is this really? This life. One of my favorite phrases in Pali is ehipasico and it means come see for yourself and it was described that in the Buddha's life he would you know there's many many teachings about how things are but over and over again he'd say a hipposico that we that we need to pay attention directly to our own experience the only freedom that's possible is when each of us looks to

directly. He said, don't take my word for it. Ehipasiko. So the traditional metaphor then is taking, being in a dark room and taking a light and shining it on the, on whatever's in the room. And so that if you don't have a light, you keep bumping against the furniture and hurting yourself. But once you shine a light, you can see what's there. And the understanding being that if we have a lot in our unconscious mind, if we don't see behind our interpretations, we'll keep repeating the same patterns. And how many of us know that, know in our own lives how, whether it's an addictive pattern that we just haven't looked under of overconsuming or distracting ourselves in some way or overworking, or whether it's a pattern of pushing people away with our judgment

or our demands or being defensive, whatever it is. trance exists, this reactivity exists because it's not examined. So one of the stories that I've liked is it's a story about Lester Levinson, who was the founder of the Sedona Method. And as it happened, when he was in his 40s, he became very, very sick. He had heart failure and colon cancer and a number of other difficulties. And at one point his doctor basically sent him home from the hospital to die. He said, don't move around a lot, and you're going to die anyway.

But he didn't say it quite like that, but that was what it was. So Lester began reflecting because he was an incredibly educated guy. He had studied all the world philosophies and so on, and he started saying, well, where did it get me? Where did all this intellectual knowledge get me? And so he decided to drop his interpreted world in a way. and just directly ask his body, you know, what are you believing? Really shine a light.

What is the core interpretation? What are you believing? Kind of asked the sickness in him. What are you believing? What are you holding on to? And what he found was the core belief was a demand, really, that life should be different than it is. There was this pervasive at the hub sense.

It's not the way it should be. it should be different. And what I'm imagining is in some way he let himself feel what it was like to be living with that belief. Because if we take any of our core beliefs that are really shaped by fear and delusion and we sense, well, what's it like to be believing that?

We'll feel how our body gets very tight and confined and torched, how it causes dis-ease. So when he shined a light, when he saw the core of his interpreted world and he saw it clearly because it takes really seen clearly, he dropped it. And he healed and he lived for decades past that. And he taught a lot about how we can ask questions

and shine a light. Much in most every wisdom tradition I know in some way values this deep, honest inquiry into what's true. It is said that history repeats itself, which is good because most people don't pay attention the first time anyway. So what we have then is this invitation to deepen attention. And the challenge, I mean, we know that when we move around with this arrogance of, oh, I know how it is, and I'm right,

we know that that's like having a closed fist. There's no openness for information and truth to flow through. And yet it's a kind of armoring because being in what the Zen Buddhist called don't know mind, you know, really open to the mystery, not pretending we know, leaves us very vulnerable. If we really get honest with ourselves, if we're really paying attention, it's so clear that it's all a mystery and we just don't know. We just don't. We don't. We don't know where it all came from or where it's going to or really what is love. Why this existence? We just don't know.

And yet to stay in not knowing, to not hold under some certainty, leaves us vulnerable. To begin to pay attention to what's under our interpretations puts us in touch with real rawness. There's a cartoon I've had for a long time and it's got this doctor who's kind of scratching his chin and a guy is sitting there as patient with this dagger deep, deep in his back and the doctor's saying, it's got to come out, of course, but that does not address the deeper problem. So we have to look under,

and of course we have to move through and solve problems and operate on other levels too. But there's no real freedom unless we're willing to go under our beliefs and sense the vulnerability that lives there, ask the deeper questions. So what motivates us, as I mentioned earlier, is something that's in all of us.

It gets covered over, but it's in all of us. There is some intrinsic yearning to realize truth. There is that yearning to, in some way, inhabit our truth. our wholeness, sense the wholeness of being. So we need to begin to energetically take a look. Let me ask you to reflect for a moment, if you will, as we do often here, just to close your eyes. So here's the question. What is happening inside you right this moment? What's the most predominant experience you're aware of? Now you can keep paying attention, but you might also notice and consider what happened when I asked that really simple question. What happened when I

asked you what you were aware of? What was happening inside? You might notice that the power of a question is that it energizes and directs and deepens our attention. It arouses energy. So this is the spirit of inquiry that we are asking questions that bring our attention to what what's going on right here and now. I want to name before we go on because we're going to explore some, I'm going to have you explore in your own life how to bring a live inquiry, an investigation. But I feel like it's important to say what investigation is not. Many of you are familiar with rain, recognize, allow, investigate with intimate attention,

that those recognizing, allowing, investigating actually reveal a very different sense of who we are when we fully experience that. And often I find that the investigate part of rain is misunderstood. So I want to just take a little bit of time because anything, any form of investigation that takes you away from the present moment, from direct experience, is not the wise investigation I'm talking about on the spiritual path. It could be another kind of investigation and useful in other ways. But it's not the investigation that will reveal the nature of reality and the truth of who you are. So what that means is it's not a process of incessant figuring out. Okay, I am feeling this clutch in my chest because of what happened when I was younger

and how my father treated me when I came up with the wrong answer and then I remember at the dinner table that my mother got him. It's not that, okay? It's not that kind of analytic. This happened because of that happening. And it's not answering an abstract question of why. You know, why is the world the way it is? Some of you might remember, there's so many of them.

these stories of new monks in monasteries and in one of them a novice monk asks the Roshi you know well what happens after we die and you know this old monk says I don't know and the the young novice got really agitated and he said I thought you were a full monk you said I am a monk but not a dead one but you understand it's it's inquiry into what's actually here, not a kind of a hypothetical interpretation about life. So it's also not about, when we ask a question, it's not about getting a right answer. It's a process. When you're investigating, you're just bringing your interest to notice what's happening. If there's a sense that you should be getting to something, that actually interferes with the integrity of the

process. My illustration, Charlie Brown and Linus and Lucy are lying on a grassy mound, and Lucy points the sky. She said, use your imagination. If you do, you can see lots of things in cloud formations. What do you think you see, Linus? Linus says, well, those clouds up there look to me like a map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean. That cloud looks like a little like the profile of Thomas Aiken, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over there gives me an impression of the stoning of Stephen, I can see the Apostle Paul standing to one side. Lucy says, uh-huh, that's very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown? Well, I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsey, but I changed my mind. So again, you get the idea that inquiry

is not about getting somewhere or getting something. It's the quality of attention that's interested and engaged. And it's not a kind of witnessing from a distance, as it said, Zen and the art of reading all the books about Zen. You know, it's not that kind of... So you could listen to and reflect and think about spiritual matters for years and there's no freedom

unless it's the kind of inquiry. What really is happening right now inside you? So let's look a little more closely at how we can use this. And I'm going to explore two related dimensions of inquiry. And one of them is what we might call healing and bringing into awareness, the mentions of our heart and psyche that have been unconscious. Because that is whether you think of Buddhist psychology or Western psychology, it's the unfelt unseen parts of our psyche that perpetuate suffering. So how do we begin to shine a light and sense the beliefs that have been there that have absolutely affected our capacity for intimacy?

How do we begin to say real but not true to the beliefs that have had us turned on ourselves or mistrusting others? How do we begin to unearth that? Some of you might remember the classic story of this wise sage who lived deep in the wilderness and you had to travel through really thick underbrush and forward rivers and so on to get to him. And when you'd get to him to really try to get some help, some healing, some spiritual healing, he would first swear you to secrecy. And once you said, okay, I promise, he'd say, okay, there's one question. to ask yourself, and that is, what am I unwilling to feel? What are we unwilling to feel? You might even try that question on just right now and just sense, right this moment,

unwilling to feel. What in some way are you running away from or pulling away from or resisting? For some, it's the fear in our body that we just haven't been willing to acknowledge or befriend. It's there. For most of us, it's just part of our survival equipment, but we're not so willing to feel it. For many, there's a layering of shame, of in some way, feeling personal failure that we haven't held with compassion. Or maybe if we really stay put, we'll find a loneliness that we haven't wanted to come face to face with. Or maybe it's an anger that we haven't given ourselves permission to feel. The challenge is that when we're unwilling to feel something,

those energies then control us in a sense. They shape our experience, and they actually are what we get identified with. The thing we're most unwilling to feel that we're running from is hitched in a deep way to our sense of identity. that loneliness or that anger or that shame. So what happens is when we're unwilling to feel, and I'm talking about in our bodies,

we end up spending a lot of time in our minds, worrying and planning, and we're cut off from our hearts. So it's a really powerful inquiry. I hope you're getting a sense of that. And there's many different ways you can language it. It doesn't have to be what are you unwilling to feel. It might be what is really asking for your attention. are just the simplest version I offered before.

What's happening inside me right now? There's a beautiful teaching by Krishnamurti, a spiritual teacher no longer alive, that the deepest expression of love or the most core expression is purely our attention. When we really are paying attention, that's love. Because for attention to be full, it's not judging,

it's got a quality of presence, receptivity. So inquiry has that quality. We're asking a question and we're deepening our attention with a real receptivity. At the retreat, I just got back from one of the talks was very much based on this, on loving the life that's here, really looking at it, discovering what does it really feel like, holding it, loving it. So one of the retreatants wrote this, he said, it was at that Dharma talk I heard about loving the life that's here.

Well, that starts with knowing what life is here. And that became my question. What life is here now? And what life is here now? And right now, what life is here? That inquiry repeated like a mantra seemed to gradually open the highway from my heart to my brain and stuff started showing up.

It's just another version of this core inquiry that really for all of us begins to open us, give us the capacity to shine the light of awareness on the unseen, unfilled parts of our psyche. So let's explore how do we do this? How do we investigate and begin to shine that light? And I'd like to give an example from my own life and we'll use the acronym Raine because it's so useful if we want to strategically use inquiry and it's so easy

when we get caught in difficulty to forget, well, okay, so how am I supposed to pay attention? Oh, we'll just recognize what's happening right this moment, let it be there, allow it, investigate, and we're going to talk about how more, with kindness, with an intimate attention and then discover really your sense of who you are. So a story about investigation, one that I'll remember probably most of my life until I don't remember things at all, because it occurred about a couple of years after Jonathan and I got together, my husband. So when I first met Jonathan, I was in really good health, and I was running five days a week, and I was very active. And within two years of living together, I was having trouble walking up inclines.

I couldn't swim. I was in this real downward spiral. And as many couples, we got together, and we're really part of the getting together was this great celebration of the fun things we like to do. We like to go boogie boarding, and we'd like to hike. and bike and so here I was two years later not the woman he had married and not in a good way according to me and I found myself getting more distanced distancing and not feeling connected and feeling irritable and kind of judging me and judging him especially when he would try to help me fix myself you know help me get better physically it was like don't fix me but that's what he was doing.

So I would judge that. I remember one day we have a hammock, and I was on the hammock, and I realized that I was really creating distance. And so I began the rain process, saying, okay, so what's going on? And it began by just recognizing and allowing that I was cutting off and depressed and kind of reactive.

And as a reminder for those of you that aren't so familiar with rain, the A of rain, the allow means just let it be here for now. Don't try to fix it. Just let it be there so you can drop deeper with an investigation. So then I began to sense, well, what am I not willing to feel here? And this is really getting into, you know, what are the interpretations and feelings that I'm, that are really driving me, but I'm not really contacting. And what I got in touch with was this real deep vulnerability that had to do a shame, that I felt ashamed.

My body had kind of betrayed me and ashamed that I wasn't the person that could be a fun partner. I felt like a bad partner. I wasn't a good person to be hooked up with. And that was my interpretation of the whole situation. Remember, when we're in trance, we're believing something that is causing us suffering, and we have feelings related to those beliefs. Because when I'm going to have you do a similar process, that's what you're looking for.

So I was believing that I was a kind of deficient partner, no fun, not desirable, and feeling ashamed about it. And, of course, scared and a lot of other feelings. Part of investigation is sensing, well, what is that place and you really need? And as I began to get in touch with that kind of sense of not being deficient or unlovable, it just wanted me to be really caring and present. So as I often do, and many of you know, I just, there I was in the hammock, and I was just lying there, kind of gently rocking, and I just had my hands on my heart,

And it was just purely, okay, ashamed, feeling scared, hurting, my hands on my heart. And gradually, and I remember the rocking, I feel like I kind of rocked and was rocking presence until I realized that I was more resting in a space that was holding that hurting part than I was identified as the self that was ashamed and hurting. Do you understand that shift in identity? Does that make sense? Because this is the transformational power of rain, and in particular of that kind of investigation with kindness.

That if we can stay present and sense, well, what's the interpretation under there, the belief? What are the feelings that I'm identified with, the shame? And if we can respond to that with kindness, we're no longer hooked. We've shined the light of awareness on that kind of clutched place and things loosen up and we become larger.

Just to give you kind of a completion of the story, that enabled me to talk. I was so caught and so identified and tight that I couldn't really communicate, but once I had kind of brought some presence to things, I still feel vulnerable, It was still embarrassing to say, I feel, I've been feeling like I'm letting you down as a partner, I'm substandard, I'm no fun. That was hard to say.

And he was unable to say, I've been feeling so powerless and efficient that I haven't been able to help you, that I felt like I don't do it right. So we could just confess what was hard. And of course, it opened up a whole different level of intimacy that has continued to unfold. That again is the gift of investigation. What is unseen and unfelt not only prevents us from being intimate with our own lives, but it blocks us with each other. We're not living from a whole place. So if you begin to sense bringing this inquiry, an investigation inward, the most important element

I would say, is the quality of heart, this attitude that you bring to it, and that it's a very gentle attention. If you're digging, if you're aggressive, if there's judgment, it won't work. It's really curiosity and care. I sometimes think of the parts of ourselves that have been outside of the light of awareness, those fear-based interpretations and that pain, as wild and shy creatures that are kind of living in the woods and we want them to come out into the field where the light is and we're saying, okay, what wants attention? What am I unwilling to feel? And we're kind of inviting those creatures out. And if we do it with the quality of acceptance and kindness, if there's a sense of safety, what's there will unfold itself

It makes me think of the field biologist George Shaler. The story that's gotten very famous now is how he was able to discover more about the lifestyle of the great guerrillas that he studied. You know, their mating habits and rituals and how they lived in tribes and how they ate and so on. He found out more than many, many generations of field biologists before him. And when he was asked what he felt made the difference, he had one simple explanation. He said, I didn't carry a gun. I didn't carry a gun. He went and did his investigation without any weaponry,

without any sense of hostility or aggressiveness, It was purely out of interest and care for these very fascinating, amazing creatures with respect. And so it is that as we explore together in these next few minutes is to bring a real interest and respect to whatever's there. And as you know, because it's just a few minutes, it's to give you a taste. with the encouragement to keep going more and more on your own. But just to know that when we invite that, when we have that question, what's happening and we listen for what's happening with kindness, it's like this vibrational hug.

It really does allow experience to move, express, and dissolve. So if you'd like to shift how you're sitting or prepare to pay attention more, please do so. Let your attention go inward and take these moments of pausing. Let them be moments of arriving in your body and feeling your breath. You might sense if there's something going on in your life where you're feeling stuck, where you're, you go into some sort of reactivity of anger or fear or hurt, maybe where there's a repeating pattern. And probably for the sake of this exercise, I wouldn't pick something where you feel that there's real deep trauma under it.

And you can bring a situation to mind that most exemplifies this stuckness, where you feel your emotions get triggered in some way, where you go into a kind of trance of reactivity. And even from this starting place, this attitude of... of witnessing and gentleness just to recognize what's happening. Okay, reactivity, fear, hurt, anger, whatever it is. And that's the R of rain and then allow, just to let it be there for now, just agreeing to have it be here. It's like creating even more of a pause.

You're sending a message to your inner life that you're interested in caring and wanting just to bring some more presence to what's here. So you can begin the eye, the investigating by first just noticing what it's like in your body, what's happening. You might sense what you've been unwilling to feel or what you've been kind of resisting or pulling away from that gets stirred up with this. You might notice from the place that's stirred up what that place is believed. What's the interpretation of the world that that place is carrying?

Is that place feel threatened? Is it believing that in some way you're not being loved or respected or appreciated, that you're being undermined, or does it feel that you're in some way failing? What's the interpretation, the belief? As you investigate, just sense as you identify an interpretation, an interpretation or belief, what's it like really to be living with that belief? Just as Lester would sense, if he's believing that the world and other people should change and be different, what's it like to believe your belief?

What goes on in your body when you're really believing it? You might sense how your body is experiencing the worst part of this for you. And with gentleness, continuing to investigate and sense, what is this place in you that's upset most need? How does it want you to be with it? This is where you can experiment. This is investigate with kindness. You might offer some kindness.

Just experimenting by offering what's needed. Presence, kindness, acceptance. It helps you to put your hand on your heart, put your hand on your cheek. You might experiment with that too. offering truly a gentle presence as part of your investigation. And as you offer this presence, just sense who are you if you're not believing the belief? Who are you if you're not living inside the interpreted world? Who are you when you're offering presence? Just relaxing and resting in whatever you're sensing, that field of presence,

of care. You can keep listening with your eyes closed or if you'd like to open your eyes. This investigation as we begin to more actively engage extends naturally to other people. Usually we go around just as we have an interpreted world inside and we have these beliefs we've been just subscribing and others are kind of static figures. to us. We don't look so closely. So much in the same way as when we begin to investigate and say, we begin to sense, well, what's really going on for this person and what does this person need? I was thinking of this today, a friend of mine, I guess it's been about four years ago, was doing emergency relief work in Haiti and I thought of him today because I've been

getting so much information about Nepal and just the tragic circumstances there. And like Nepal in Haiti, it was so devastating. And a friend of mine who was there described this endless need to respond to. But in one particular instance, he was accompanying a very old man with a broken hip to an emergency room. And for many hours this man was in pain and he wasn't getting attention. and my friend just felt his helplessness. He really wanted to make it better and he wasn't able to provide relief.

All he could do was hang out with the guy. And at one point this old man handed him a roll, bread roll. And he broke it in half and he handed half of it to Phil, my friend. And he felt, Phil said he felt really embarrassed and he refused insisting that this man eat it because he needed it more than Phil, He needed it, but he said my feeble attempts to decline the gift were dismissed. He pushed the bread into my hand and motioned me to eat.

And I did so, bewildered and humbled. And he looked quite pleased to share his meal with a near stranger. And he writes, Moments like these continue to deepen my understanding of what it means to disarm myself, to set aside my intellectual firepower and self-protective shield, and to enter into another's world, not to do for them but simply be with them, to realize that he is not waiting to be fixed by me,

the non-broken, the privileged. He's not a broken machine waiting to be fixed. When we start investigating, yes, people need food, they need money, they need all sorts of help. But what we find deep down is people need our, our presence, our love. And we forget that so easily. We're living in an interpreted world that has us much smaller and we see others, we see the mask. So Pema Chodin writes, we don't set out to save the world, we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect

on how our actions affect other people's hearts. The last piece, this is considered the deepest domain of inquiry is this fundamental question, who am I? That our interpreted world has all sorts of stories about the self we take ourselves to be. So most of the time we're going around with this background narrative of who we are. It's like this inner movie that's constantly comparing us to others and evaluating ourselves and fixating on what's wrong and shoulds and what we still need to do. We have a movie, a home movie. We're always running. So there is a tremendous amount of freedom possible when we start sensing, okay, this is the interpreted world, this film, can we turn the attention back and sense who's really

here? And there's several ways of doing this and we'll close tonight with some guided practice on exploring this basic question of who am I. One way that is an on an on-we-you-and-one way that is an on and useful practice. Srinor Sargadata describes it as just this practice of investigating I am. And if you just

kind of close your eyes and sense the words I am and you just sense into so, I am and what is it? What's at the very core or heart or essence of our sense of I am?

This core of existence We start looking at that and what we start finding is that anything we land on, any set of words, any image, any feeling isn't really what the I am is. It's just a particular set of words or feelings or thoughts in that moment. Many times, especially on retreats, I'll move through with this filter of I am, I'll sometimes say, who am I taking myself to be in this moment? And sometimes it'll be, I'll be, you know, let's say in the dining hall, and well, right now I'm embarrassed because I'm a little bit greedy about food

because everything else is kind of removed at retreats that you get to distract yourself with, but food's still there. So it's like, okay, I'm fixated on food. So that's the I am sense. Other times, if I'm about to have an interview, and I remember very well some years back, the I am right before I was going to meet with a teacher, was this kind of yogi,

that wanted to prove I was a good meditator. And at other times the I am I'll be meditating and things will start coming into focus and getting quiet and clear and then all of a sudden, oh, the I am is a good meditator. Okay? And then other times I'm lost in thought and obsessing and this and that, oh, now the I am is a bad meditator. But you get the idea that each time I'll ask myself, well, who am I taking myself to be? it's so clear that that's not really who I am.

I'm not the good meditator or the bad meditator, or the greedy person, or the trying to prove myself person. I mean, those are all just different currents or different temporary waves. So the power of asking I am is almost to see what we're not. If we say I am, it's almost anything we land, on isn't it, so we start sensing the silence and the stillness that's beyond the question. Srinar Sargadatta writes, as you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher.

When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark. Unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. Let me invite you just to pause again. Again, just the words I am,

just sense the basic existence of being right here. You can turn it into a question. You can say, who am I? What am I? You might try this, listen for a few moments, the sounds, the close-in sounds in the room, just letting the sounds watch. through the sounds of these words and the spaces between sounds.

And then just ask yourself, who is listening or what is listening? Gently turn your attention back, who's listening? What's listening? And then let go into whatever you notice. The attitude is what matters. Just curious, relaxed, a light touch. we're exploring, if it feels scary or confusing, you can put it aside. A lot of our investigation is at the level we've been exploring earlier, looking at the

different waves of experience. But now we're looking really past the waves to the essence, this energy of beingness itself, listening to the sounds right now. perhaps feeling the sensations in your body and then just asking who's aware right now what is aware Rumi writes one matter

one energy one light endlessly emanating all things one one one ground yourself strip yourself down to blind loving silence

stay there until you see, you are gazing at the light with its own ageless eyes. So we've been exploring together inquiry as a way of deepening attention, a way of revealing the truth of what is, going beyond our interpreted world. And if we begin to practice and explored in daily life, it really turns our day into an adventure. We start being able to sense, well, what's really going on inside me? or inside this other person? What's really happening?

As Henry Miller put it, the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. So we can bring this to our emotional tangles, shining the light of awareness untangles, so we don't have to keep repeating the same patterns.

We can bring it to others and discover a real sense of intimacy and we can bring it in the deepest way, this inquiry of who am I, to our own being. So again, just as you've been, you can just keep the eyes closed, remembering that inquiry always has to do with what's right here in this moment if we want to discover the nature of reality.

So start fresh in this moment. What's happening inside me right this moment? As you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stand motionless only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher. That light, that source alone is. Go back to that source, that light and abide there. Namaste and thank you for your attention.

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.