Tara Brach - After the RAIN (retreat talk) (2018-04-29)

Episode Date: May 5, 2018

After the RAIN (retreat talk) (2018-04-29) - This talk offers an in-depth exploration of RAIN, applying the wings of mindfulness and compassion to painful domains of trance. We bring special attention to the fruit of RAIN, the realization of who we are beyond any limiting identity.  Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara  

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really matters. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Good evening. Welcome. I've been really appreciating you, your practice, your presence. It feels like a long time that we've been hanging out here together. You know, it's been 48 hours. I don't know if some of you know that, the term jiffy, like I'll be back in a jiffy, it actually has a scientific meaning, and a jiffy equals one one hundredth of a second. If you get bored with this talk, you can compute how many jiffies you've been here for. But even if you felt you were sleeping through a lot or distracted or whatever, there is a real amazing power to having that intention

to be present through time, and we start seeing more and more. And initially, a lot of what we start seeing, you may have noticed, is the patterns of leaving, you know, how we go into trance, you know, the patterns of getting distracted with planning or wanting or worrying or judging or whatever. And the other layer of what, and I saw this in the groups, and I suspect many of you are seeing is that whenever we get caught, you know, and whatever it is, you know, in some way, whether it's judging or just in some proliferation, anger, fear, hand in hand is a sense of some personal badness. Like, in some way I'm failing, I'm not good, this shouldn't be happening.

The Buddha called it the second arrow. We have the first arrow of something different. and painful, and then we add on personal badness to it. I'm curious how many of you have been noticing that, the second arrow. Yeah. It's pretty pervasive. And I think of it as

the first arrow is the natural conditioning of our limbic system to take over, which it does. You know, the wants and the fears. And then the second arrow is the aversion in our limbic system that assigns blame. Right? And I think of it

limbic squared. It's like it's double. It's double the difficulty. So in Buddhism, the core suffering, the core suffering is sometimes described very simply as forgetting the truth of who we are. The core suffering is that we get identified with what's less than our beingness. We get identified with the storyline. of a separate self. And often that storyline is what you'd call a bad story of a, you know, a very diminished, something's wrong, failing self. And it's often also a special self, a kind of important self, a little bit of a superior self. And actually, we swing a lot. And both of them in a deep way are not who we are and create a sense of that home.

sickness, whether you're feeling special and important or inferior. Does that make sense? It's going to cut off from the realness. So we suffer and it's not because stories happen or because fear is happening or because wanting is happening. We suffer because that starts defining the sense of me. It's like we get small. So there's a Scandinavian story that I've always loved that you all know, and if you don't know it in particular, you know the kind of theme. And in it, the king and the queen, the kingdom's, you know, entering some really dicey financial times. And so the king of the queen go to the dragon's hoard to get alone, so to speak. And the dragon said, sure, just one little request in return.

sure, your daughter's hand in marriage. They had to kind of do what they felt. So they went back and they told their daughter, the princess, that, well, she was going to have to marry the dragon. And she was a resourceful young woman, so she kind of took it in stride, and she went to the far end of the marketplace where the wise woman of the village lived

and consulted with her, and this is a wise woman with her dozens of children and grandchildren. And the wise woman said, well, do you want to marry the dragon? And she said, no. And she said, I think we can make this work out for you. So she started whispering her ear and the first thing she said is she'll have to get 10 wedding gowns. Okay, she could work that out. And then whispered some more and they agreed on the plan. Okay, the wedding day comes. You know, everybody, all the townspeople are there. It's a pretty bad time for the princess. But she makes her way through it, holds herself upright. They go.

to the bridal area where they're supposed to be having their night of bliss together, the bridal chambers, and the dragon said, well, my dear, shouldn't we be consummating our wedding in his dragony way? And she said, but of course,

and he said, doesn't that mean you take off your clothing? I will. I just ask one small favor from you, since I'm going to be taking wine off, to make myself more pleasing to you, I just ask that you take off some of yours. He says, but of course.

So she takes off a gown, and then he takes off some of the dragony metals and stuff that had been kind of attached to him. Whoops, there's another gown. And so she takes off that gown, and he takes off some, you know, reptiles have to kind of get rid of some scales. He does that.

Another gown. This goes on and on. I'm not going to take you through all the layers, but, you know, she takes off a dress and finally it gets like he's digging his dragon claws into his body to pull out parts of himself until finally she's the ninth gown and he's like, his form's beginning to change when he's ripping himself apart. And as she takes off the tenth gown, he had taken off so much of his dragonness that as you can imagine what she be held in. front of her was, yes, a handsome prince. Thank you. Needed help with it. And she took the advice of the old woman from the marketplace with the dozens of children. They did have a night of wedded bliss. So, what do we get from this story? It's kind of a fun story, but that really in our

path and practice, as we deepen attention, there are as lay. layer after layer of opening, layers that we had thought were self, we just start bringing attention to in a way that makes them increasingly transparent. We still have our coverings, but we don't get identified with them. More and more the light and radiance of our beingness, it shines through. And what I'd like to do in tonight's talk is explore the quality of our beingness. qualities of awareness that really help free us from identifying with the coverings, that really allow us to realize and trust who we are. And it's really the two wings of awareness. To be

able to release the identity with the coverings, we need to be able to really see deeply what's here. Oh, this is the pattern that's going on. And we need to be able to hold whatever we see, This is a second wing, with a profound compassion. Seeing, or you might say understanding, presence, mindfulness, and heartfulness. These are the two wings. So we'll look at the two wings as really the medicine that dissolves the trance, dissolves the scales. And what we'll do is explore this in what I think of as three arctippal stages of waking up. And I'm going to invite this to be very hands-on.

I'm going to keep asking you to reflect so that we can kind of move together through the three stages. The first one is recognizing the patterning of trance, recognizing, oh, this is a layering of scales right here. There's some identification. I'm stuck. That's the first one.

The second of the stages is activating the two wings, really deepening that investigating and seeing what's there, really recognizing. what's going on with an understanding and bringing kindness to it, the two wings. And the third is getting increasingly familiar with the truth of who we are, really learning to rest in and be that light and love. Those are three. So there's a few basic apostolets and one of them is that the more you pay attention, just by being here. 48 hours, the more you see the trance. The more you start seeing, I mean, how many times

did you notice, oh, I'm off in that trance of thinking? And then in some way, wake up some, you know, a lot of times. We notice more and more how it's happening. Sometimes the noticing is like, I can't believe I'm this caught up. I mean, I remember, I think it was the first time I went to the Forest Refuge. It's up in Massachusetts, I think it was a six-week stay. And the beginning, for whatever reason, I kind of had an easy landing, and I got pretty collected and felt pretty good. About four days in, a lot of the stories from back home started appearing in a whole new way where they were really catching me. We had some conflict in our board with IMCW, which wasn't the first time, but it was there. And I remember,

you know, kind of like I started obsessing and mulling over that and then, you know, and a lot of judging flying around that and then starting to judge how I was practicing with it and judging the judging and then judging the judging of the judge. Like we're talking about third hour, fourth arrow. You know, I just, I was astonished at how wall-to-wall judging was. It just, it just, felt like every moment there was some background commentary, we sometimes call it selfing. It's that activity of in some way asserting the self, the self that wants things different, that thinks things should be different, attacking itself. So much selfing. I was driving myself nuts with all the yammering. And part of it was that I was really more aware of what goes on a lot in the

background. This is kind of chronic like this, don't like that. This is good. this shouldn't be happening. And there was a moment that I really saw that, okay, this is Duka, this is suffering of a sort. And everybody has this. And there was that sense, and I've brought it in here a few times on purpose, I use the language of this belongs, meaning it's part of reality. And if I can just get, okay, this is just part of things. and when I did it then, it was the first time I remember that language coming in, there was right away more space, just saying this belongs. And I make this a practice now.

You know, when anything comes up that I'm thinking things are off, it shouldn't be this way, I should feel different. This belongs. And what happens in that space is it does become clear that it's not my judging, it's just the judging. These minds judge. That's what they do. a lot, you know, which creates, of course, more space. And so the judgment scale start

becoming more transparent. So one of the basic principles here is that whatever we practice gets stronger. And if we practice judging a lot, we really are deepening those neuropathways that have to do with judging. And if we start practicing seeing the judging and saying, this belongs and getting a little more space, then all the identification with the judging begins to loosen and soften. So what happens when what we practice puts us into trance is basically we are in those moments a judging self, a wanting self, a fearful self. We've lost sight of our larger being. We're identified as the dragon, so to speak, okay? And when that's going on, we're seeing through the scales, we're seeing others as dragons too. And it might be

that what we're seeing them as really elevated beings, but we're seeing an other that's not real. You can't see reality when you're caught in a small self. Now, developmentally, both in terms of human evolution and in an individual lifetime, it's part of our nature to get ideas. identified and to feel like a self. That's just part of how it goes. And we have the capacity to pay attention in a way that reconnects us with a larger sense of who we are. But not to shame or get down on ourselves for regressing or becoming small just to know it's just a stage. There's a story of an eight-year-old who loses a tooth, and she's curious about the tooth fairy,

and she finally says, Mom, are you the tooth fairy? Mom figures it's probably the right time developmentally to break the news, so she tells her, well, yeah, I am. And little girl heads to the door. Then she turns around and says quizzically, how do you get into other kids' houses? So it's like, it's right that she would be kind of in that wobbly in between. But what happens if we're, you know, 48 and wondering about the tooth fairy or other things?

And then all of a sudden there's some pain to that. There's real suffering to that. So often we think of it like a caterpillar and a cocoon. You know, when you start coming against the edges of the cocoon, when you're living in a small self and you really have the capacity but aren't yet exercising it, to rest in something larger, you feel the grip of that. And when we think of, well, what brings us all here?

Every one of us intuits that beingness, that open-heartedness, tenderness, wakefulness that's possible. Or we would not be drawn here. We would not be spending this time. And it's that sense of emerging caterpillar. We know there's something larger to rest in. So the beginning of looking, the beginning of seeing the trance is to see, oh, there's some stuckness here.

Here's a pattern of stuckness. So now let's look at the patterns. I'm going to ask you to check in these last two days really what you've noticed when you've been kind of in the trance. And one of the main patternings goes around that sense of something's missing, I want something more. And you might have noticed wanting mine here. little bit. Wanting mind here might have taken the form of, oh, let's see, I want to be

more comfortable, I want more food, I want another shower, I want to read something, I want to go online, it could be that level of things. And it might be light or if you felt like it was really strong, then you'll have noticed you are in a smaller self. But it happens. It happens really regularly that we get into the wanting mind that here might be I want, and it gets stronger one has to do with other people. I want to look good to other people. You'd think that here at a retreat where we're not even looking at each other, that wouldn't matter, but it does. I'm not going to ask for hand raise here. It does. When you're doing walking meditation, you might have noticed that you're both doing walking meditation

and imagining how other people are seeing you do walking meditation. Again, no hand raises, but we do that kind of thing. I remember for myself, at times in retreat, when I'm bet to have a meeting, like a group or an individual meeting, being a bit torn between something I really wanted to learn and grow and edge and how I wanted to appear in the group. It's like making an impression matters. So we start seeing who are we when we're wanting to make an impression?

Because you know we've left that larger sense of being. We just leave. So there's a sense that, I like to spend this one, Zen Roshi, who describes Zen Roshi's meeting with a novice at, and in some sort of a monastic setting, but in this kind of a meeting about practice. and at the end of the practice meeting, the Roshi says,

I've never met anyone so thoughtless in my life. Keep up the good work. And then the response is, thank you, master, thank you master. Making a good impression. So I'm going to ask you to check that out. And just to sense how much wanting there is

around how other people perceive us. we tend to think we're being spontaneous or real or natural but much of our behavior, especially when we're talking, is to elicit a certain response from others that has to do with being approved, respected, cared about. Okay? So here's the reflection I'd like you to do. If you will, close your eyes

and in this pause, just let yourself arrive so that you kind of get in touch with right here, presence, whatever way best helps you to inhabit your full being, your full presence, your body, your heart. And bring to mind someone whose opinion matters to you, whose respect matters to you, some level of affection matters to you. It doesn't have to be all three fully, but somebody who you care about what they think. And imagine you're with them in some place you might be with them. what is it you want them to see about you?

What don't you want them to see about you? In the sense, you're witnessing now, what are the ways you behave to get what you want, to get them to see you in a certain way, look good, sound good? Now step inside that self that's trying to have them experience you in a certain way and just sense what it's like.

What's it like when you're in that self that's trying to get something from another in a certain way. What's it like in your body, your heart? But you're feeling that a bit. You're feeling the sense of what you might call the congealed egoic self. You're the self that's, you're right in this moment, it's the wanting cell. The more you're wanting, the more glue there is, the more solid it is. So just to witness that right now, and as you're witnessing it, just sense, okay, so this is recognizing. You're recognizing the small self. and then allowing not to add another arrow.

Just, oh, so this is what it's like because the more you're familiar with it, oh, that's it, I'm in that space, okay, wake up. The more choice you have. That's one way that we leave presence, it's one way that we leave presence and go into a small cell, a trans pattern. Now there's another trans pattern which is, when we sense something's wrong and we want to take flight. I'm going to ask you to reflect on that in a moment.

If you want to open your eyes for now, you can. But these, again, are versions of what I call self-ing. Other people do, too. It's very in the Buddhist domain. But it's a way we leave presence and go into trance because there's a sense something's wrong. And we might do it by numbing with foods and with other substances. We might do it by sleeping a lot,

disengaging in a lot of different ways, obsessive thinking, we're trying to get away from something, okay? We're trying to distract ourselves. Sometimes it takes the form of denying that something's happening. You know, others have it worse or, you know, pretending things are okay. That's another way that we get away from that something wrong feeling. It's like that old chestnut. Some of you may have heard of, you know, the Buddha has jumped off like a 50-story skyscraper and around the two, 25th floor, somebody sees him, he's moving slowly, passing by and says, hey, are you okay? And he goes, so far, so good. It's like acting like, okay? And that keeps us from

connecting. Just to share with you one of our live sessions for our teacher training program that a few of you here are in, one particular day, there was a break between the morning sessions each morning, and a number of people headed right, boom, to the coffee shop. And four women were in line, and one after another, they went to the cashier, and each one of them had this really large chocolate candy. So by the fourth one, she said, what's going on at that training? And they said, oh, we just finished part one on grief. This is a break. We're going back for part two, you know. So we have our strategies. That's one of them. The big one I want to pay attention to is when we feel like something's wrong and the strategy

is fight. And that fight strategy is the one that most commonly is when we start blaming and judging and some way going at war with others and ourselves. At retreat, it could be the level of blaming of something's wrong with the retreat or something's wrong with the food or the teachers or somebody else that's here. is breathing too loud or took my spot or, you know, and yet at retreat, because we're jiffy by jiffy by jiffy by jiffy, it can get really built up. So you can really sense that you've locked in to a real deep grudge. So that's the kind of fight energy at retreat. But in daily

life, it can be very bitter, and you might bring that in here, a very bitter sense of blame or anger towards someone in your life. It can be very, very deep, and when we're inside it, we're in a very deep trance. We're very far removed from the wholeness of our being. Even when it's not deep bitterness and resentment, our unforgivingness, but it's like the ongoing resentments, the ongoing late kind of level of judging, judging, you should be different, you should be different. it has an effect on us that separates us from our wholeness.

It's like the two women on the bench and one says, Oe-Ve-Ve, and then the other one responds, Oi-Ve. And then the first one says, okay, enough about the children. That feeling? We've just on and on. But the thing that is true, and this is sad, is that criticism is the number one biggest thing, that most of us will say happen to us, right? We got criticized a lot. And so it's in

it's conditioned and it's in us. And we know that we're not present and attuned. In the moment that you're thinking another should be different, you're not as attuned. You're not as there. And so to take a look at this without adding a second arrow can be really, really important. So that's what I'd like to do now, if you will, just to close your eyes. And again, take a moment to invite yourself right here and bring to your mind a situation where someone who's more on the close-in side of things that you're judging, that you have some judgment towards, where you'd like a little bit more awareness,

and bring yourself right into a situation that has happened recently. or it could be happening where you're judging that person. Mind yourself of where you are, see them here inside your mind and feel the sense of the judging. And again, very consciously examine what's it like when there's judging mind activated. How does this body feel, this heart? You might notice as you examine that along with judging is self-aversion, just to notice that. So there's judging another and compounding it with not liking myself. And for right now, see if you can witness that.

Okay, this is the trance of judging mind. Just recognize and allow it to be there. Because it's only when we witness it kindly that there's any possibility of choice, just be familiar. So this is the judging self. This is the trance of judging. Now, the most pervasive form of judging is self-blame, that I'm falling short. If you can open your eyes, if you'd like, for a few moments.

And you might have noticed that here, comparing to other people, in some way, sensing, well, I'm the only one in here that's everyone else is like this sitting Buddha and I'm all over the place. Maybe somebody had that. The comparing, the sensing on every front in some way not meeting my soul. standard, should be different. And of course, for most of us, we intellectually know that punishing ourselves with blame, with judgment, with criticism, with hatred, does not help us, right? We know that. There's a teaching from the HMSA tradition, HEMSA's nonviolence

to all living beings. This is actually a little bit of a women need to translate a little on this one. This is the teaching. It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there are always way to solve problems without using violence. That's a hymsa, nonviolence. So the selfing that is self-aversion, I'm unworthy,

you know, is the scale right, deep down, that is often the hardest to see through. And so our next reflection is going into the trance of unworthiness, just taking a look at it. And then we're going to explore how we can begin to work with these. So again, you might close your eyes, moving into presence. So you might reflect on when recently, today, yesterday,

or if not then, some recent time, that sense of something's wrong with me came out. with my body, how I'm meditating, my mind, how I'm treating others, how I'm relating to others, maybe some addictive behavior. Some belief, I should be different. And as you did before, sense what it's like when you're in it. Step right inside it. I should be different inside that belief, how you feel when you're believing that? What's it like when those particular dragon scales are really shaping your identity? The small, efficient self. Each one of these self identities appears, the wanting self, the fighting, aversive self, judging others, the self-judging self.

and if we start to bring them into the light of awareness, we can awaken from them. If you want to open your eyes, please feel free. We often share Joseph Campbell's way of describing awareness this big circle with the line going through the middle. And to the degree that what's going on is above the line in awareness, you're resting more consciously and awake. But to the degree that there's identification

and energies that you're not aware of, like you're judging but you're not aware of, I am caught in the judging self. Are you grasping, but you're not aware of the stuckness? You're under the line. You're in a trance. So really, everything we're doing is to bring us above the line so we can re-inhabit our wholeness.

So, this next piece, this is part number two, is moving forward from once you've recognized, oh, this is a trans pattern, how do you actively start emerging forth? How do you wake up from the cocoon, so to speak? And we're already, just by recognizing you're stuck, you're already part way out, right? If you recognized it, the recognizing and allowing are really the beginning of the two wings. You've already noticed them in trance and you're letting that be, you're holding some space. And that pausing is really important. If you can find yourself judging and just pause, just pause and just let it be there.

Then there is a possibility of deepening presence with the two wings of seeing more clearly and opening with love. For many of us we find that rain, the rain acronym, is a systematic way of guiding us out of trance and the reason it's so helpful is because the degree we're in trance we're not remembering. So it's like it gives you kind of like an anchor to, oh yeah, okay, so I'm recognizing that there's judging mind going on.

Okay, I'm letting it be, I'm allowing it. Those are the first two letters of rain. What's next? We're starting to deepen with investigating. So what's really going on right now? Because the more you look at what's below the line, it automatically is above the line. I is the investigating. And then N to nurture.

To bring that wing of compassion. This, remember, whatever you practice grows stronger, If you practice judging, that gets stronger. If you start bringing awareness to judging, the awareness gets stronger. So I'll give you an example. It's trying to sense what would be a rain story that I might share tonight. And Laugh mentioned a few times the name of this retreat is intimacy with life. So I thought I'd tell you an intimacy story on how rain helps.

somebody in a trance below the line, come above the line. And this was a minister, actually. And he was at an impasse in his marriage because his wife was really dissatisfied. And she was on the verge of saying, let's separate. She wanted him to be able to look her in the eye and be able to say, I love you, and be able to cuddle in bed,

and be able to go dancing with her. she wanted engagement, relatedness. And actually, the more she wanted, the more he felt impossible. Like, there was nothing in him that could soften into it. So we worked together, and, you know, he clearly had a deep sense of deficiency about it, but he still felt very kind of defended with her.

And he also felt very hypocritical because he did a lot of preaching about, love and connection and we all belong. Those kind of, I mean, it was very progressive heart, you know, centered teachings. And he could comfort and guide people when they're in trouble. But he didn't have many close friends. And in his marriage, he really was not able to be close with her. In fact, he really didn't believe he could be close with anyone. There was imposter syndrome. So we started with recognizing and allowing. And he, he recognized the stuckness, the shame, the tension around it all, and he just allowed it.

He recognized his patterns of pulling away, you know, how he would pull away, and allow it. Then we began to investigate. And his belief was, as I mentioned, I can't be close. And underneath that belief was another belief, which is if anybody gets close enough, they'll reject me. That was the belief layer. But when you investigate in Rain, the key thing, it's fine to get the beliefs. We need to know what's going on on that level.

But the key thing, it's not a mental investigation. It's come into the body. Investigate where you're feeling and what you're feeling in the body. The biggest mistake I've seen with Rain misuse is an investigation that starts looping cognitively. It's not that. what was he feeling inside his body? Well, what he was feeling inside his body was a sinking, hollow, achy feeling

that was filled with fear. It was just pure fear. Like when he imagined being more open, being close, cuddling, looking around the eyes, okay, that was fear. So he started investigating more and trying to communicate with the fearful place. It's really helpful.

to communicate with these places. There are all sorts of good questions. I'll name some, but it comes down to what is this place really most need. And for him, what that place needed was to feel that his goodness was seen, that he was lovable, that he was loved. So that's the investigating. The nurture? I said, so how would you say, you see your goodness?

What do you see? And he said, I don't see any goodness. I just see a totally hypocritical, scared person that can't do it. But when he looked through God's eyes, his sense of God was the loving spirit that pervades the universe. He said, but when I look through God's eyes, then it's different. And then he could start seeing his generosity, that he cared about people, that he was really trying to serve, that he had a lot of longing and a lot of brightness. So he looked through God's eyes and as he could begin to see that, he then could begin to sense

that there was something loving that could hold him. And he could begin to soften. And it was very little bit. And he did a lot of rounds, a lot of rounds of rain. And I'm saying that on purpose because sometimes people do it and say, nothing happened. It was just a little bit, but right away I tightened up again. And that's exactly what happens. You've done millions of rounds of feeling bad about yourself

with all the thoughts and feelings. Rain begins to undo that, but it takes some rounds. One of the best descriptions is, you know, for him was that after many rounds, he started feeling more and more held in care. He could feel some blanket around him of care. And he started sensing that that, care around him was his own heart. It was his own loving. And each round he started getting more and more familiar with that was really who he was. Now, outside him, things were

going slow with his wife, but she knew he was trying so she didn't ask as much, which made it safer. Okay? And upshot of the story is after many, many months. So the first time in 26 years he said, we're feeling each other's hearts and we're taking classes in swing dancing. That was his big pronouncement. It did change his relationship. He had a woman that could really hold a space with him, though, to make it safer, which makes a difference. Now, I want to just review a couple of things because this really is a training with Rain. The first thing we did together tonight was we took some areas of where we go into trance and started recognizing and allowing the patterning.

That's the first step. Just to recognize and allow it, don't add on something. The next step is you begin to investigate. Okay. So for him, there's what's there, it's fear. or does the fear need to remember my goodness, to feel loved? And then you start finding a way to offer that or to receive it. In the inquiry, there's a number of questions you can ask yourself.

I'm just going to give you some right now just to see if that helps you as you're working with yourself. But the main thing is to bring it into the body. You start by saying, well, what really most wants attention? What most wants acceptance? How does it want me to be with it, this part? One wise sage said, what is it that you're running from? These are all questions to the body. What's the worst part of this?

What does this place want to communicate? So you just begin to ask that kind of questions. And then nurturing, you know, there's a saying that it's not survival of the fittest. It's survival of the nurtured. That we all need to know how to nurture ourselves and how to receive nurturing. So often when we're regressed, it's hard to offer to ourselves. But if we can, and we've been doing this here a lot, to do this in some way with our touch, with our words inwardly, with imagery, we begin to sense that we can offer kindness.

If we're not able to offer it to ourselves, then as he did, looking through God. eyes. Or it could be calling on your dog and your dog's love, or a child, or a parent that's not alive, or some figure, a spiritual figure. This story I often tell about myself that was a real shift for me was, now it's been about eight or nine years. Again, I was at the Forest Refuge. That's a place I usually do my retreats. And I had to be. gone into one of those real quicksand places of just everything seemed wrong with me. I just, I just couldn't believe I'd gotten, I was just gone through the holidays and felt like I really hadn't showed up for people and my family, people that I love that I won't have forever

with and I had fallen short. You know, bad daughter, bad mother, bad sister, bad, bad, you know. And so I, you know, I did all the things I teach about that I was still, I was teaching this stuff back then, you know, it's not that long ago, putting my hand in my heart and telling myself stuff and it's okay, sweetheart, you know. The whole deal, I really check, check, check. It was a lost cause. And then I started feeling this desperation of how much, how painful it was to feel that badness, you know. So that's when I really reached out. You know, it was like from this pain and this longing. And the voice in there that felt so bad, the words were, please love me. Just please love me. I just wanted it from somewhere anywhere. You know,

just please love me. And as it got most pure and intense, there was this sense of just washing over of light and love and very distinctly a sense of being kissed on the brow and everything washing through like that. And as I really opened to it, the more I kind of surrendered into it, the more that light and loving was no different from what I was. But it started, and this is why I'm sharing this, from a sense of something outside me because I was regressed. And it was only through the asking and receiving that there was a kind of dissolving to realize, oh, it's what I love the language of love is always loving me, that it's always loving me and that when I'm really awake, I am the love that's loving me. There's no difference.

Part of the reason I'm sharing this is that it's a daily practice now. And this is I'm jumping ahead of myself to part three, which is after the rain, where we really get familiar with who we are. But every day, many times a day usually, when I sense a stuckness in trance in some way that I have congealed into a small self, and it could be a small inferior self or a small superior self because they're both equally painful because they're not real. But when I sense, that and the stuckness of that, it doesn't have to be like a deep angst. It can just be just sensing a smallness, a small-mindedness. Something in me will just, I can feel that there's in some way I'm calling to and receiving and becoming more spacious. And it happens almost instantly now.

But that's because I do it many times a day. And that sense of the being the loving that's holding myself and all beings just becomes more and more deeply, more true than any of those small self stories. It has to be done over and over. One of the descriptions is like when they dye cloth in indigo. They make the color indigo. You take a white cloth and you dip it into the indigo dye and you pull it up and it's just saturated with it. that brilliant color and then it fades really quickly. And then you have to dip it in again and you pull it up. And again, it's that brilliant blue, beautiful, fades, but not quite as much.

Many rounds of dipping into the vat. Many rounds of rain of investigating and nurturing and opening to something larger. Many rounds and then that something larger becomes what you trust. We do this with our inner being, but we also do it relationally. We do reign relationally. If you think for yourself, as a small child, what did you most need? And for most of us, we can sense, well, I needed to be seen. You could say heard, same thing, understood, and I needed to be loved, the two wings.

And this is in a way what we're doing is spiritual reparenting. We're taking the two things we most needed to feel whole and connected and learning to offer it to ourselves, and we can offer it to each other because we all need it. So what are we offering? We're offering that kind of seeing and inquiring and who are you. And it comes down to an attitude. if you want to offer the wing of, you know, clear seeing to someone to help, to let them know you see them,

the attitude has to be one of real interest in care. I love, this is a story I heard on listening to Krista Tippett when she was interviewing Ruby Sales. And Ruby Sales is probably now in her 70s, African-American social activists, very wise, beautiful being. And so this is what Ruby described. She said, a defining moment for me happened when I was getting my locks washed and my locker's daughter came one morning and she had just been hustling all night

and she had sores on her body and she was just an estate, drugs. Something said to me, ask her, ask her, where does it hurt? And I said, Shelly, where does it hurt? And just that simple question unleashed territory in her she had never shared with her mother. And she talked about having been incested,

and she talked about all the things that had happened to her as a child. And she literally shared the source of her pain. And I realized in that moment, listening to her and talking with her, that I needed a larger way to do this work. So there we are with another person, and we bring the recognizing and allowing, oh, there's some stuckness here. Where does it hurt?

what's it like being you? What's really happening inside? The inquiry. And that allows for this space of nurturing where we can do what I think of as the greatest gift for each other which is to mirror each other's goodness, remind each other. Because we all forget.

It's also true in our wider society where we can start recognizing and allowing, seeing the truth of the trance as it takes shape and the suffering of conflict, of unseen bias and hatred, of making unreal others. What if we are part of this whole movement to really see past the scales, to see who's there, to ask, to wonder, and then to be able to offer care? There's one example of this that I want to share with you, and then we're going to end with a meditation in just a few moments.

This is really the essence of circles of reconciliation, of restorative justice. It's these same principles of seeking to understand and then making it right. And so in our wider society, the places we least understand are those who are of difference. So those who lead and are willing to look can start bridging the gap. And this is a story of that. A reporter was the early weeks of the Iraqi war.

And he's watching close up on TV what's happening. And he said, morning of April 3rd, the armies and the Marines were closing in on Baghdad. I happen to be looking up at what a, looking at what a purest. to be a disaster in the making. A small unit of American soldiers was walking along a street and Najaf when hundreds of Iraqis poured out of the buildings

on either side, fists waving, throats taught, they pressed in on the Americans who glanced at one another in terror. The Iraqis were shrieking, frantic with rage. From the way the lens was lurching, the cameraman seemed as frightened as the soldiers.

This is it, I thought. A shot will come from somewhere. The Americans will open fire and the world will witness the melee massacre of the Iraqi war. That moment, an American officer stepped through the crowd, holding his rifle high over his head with the barrel pointed to the ground against the backdrop of the seething crowd. It was a striking gesture, almost biblical. Take a knee, the officer said. Take a knee.

First, the soldiers looked at him as if he were crazy. then one by one, swaying in their bulky body armor and gear, they knelt before the boiling crowd and pointed their guns at the ground. The Iraqis fell silent. Their anger subsided. The officer then ordered his men to withdraw. He was above the line. He was paying attention in some way. What do they need? What's going on for them? and he was able to offer it with that gesture of humility and respect. This is where the hope is for our world. When we talk about what we're doing here and learning to do with ourselves,

so what does these places in us need, rather than adding the second arrow? Pause. In the pause is the power and the freedom. To totally shift from the trance to inhabit what I sometimes call our future self, which is really how true nature lives through these bodies and minds when we're awake. It's a useful term in the relative world, very powerful, because when we talk about just true nature, it sounds very like amorphous, empty radiance, but how for you, in this particular body and mind,

does true nature express itself when you wake up? So we're now turning towards after the rain and after the rain is really important because if some of you are familiar with the earlier versions of rain the end was not nurture there wasn't a compassion piece in it didn't have the full two wings the end was non-identification

and I used to get all these questions like how do you do non-identification? I said I don't know I don't think you do it But the thing is, each of the steps of rain is a subtle doing. We're doing intentional recognizing and intentionally making space allowing. And then we're intentionally deepening with investigating what's really happening. And we're intentionally offering some care. But just like with the real rain, it's after the rain that everything blossoms and manifests, right?

So it is that when you've really offered those two wings of awareness to the life that's right here, that's when afterwards there's a kind of a dissolving of the layers and you're actually become the radiance itself. You're resting in and becoming awareness and love itself. Don't just speed on to the next thing. This is the time to pause and save it. And for each of us, we have moments of non-identification through the day. We have glimpses, and especially at retreat, moments when it gets quiet, or moments when

there's just a sense of wonder and it's very pure the beauty around us. Or you might be at a metamed meditation and just feel tenderness. And those are moments when there's not a coagulation of self. There's no self-being going on. self and going on. They're just being. But they're just glimpses. And as the Tibetan say, it's unstable. We have those glimpses of our future self, of just that presence and life coming through us, but we're not inhabiting it in a regular way. So this last piece, which is how do we get familiar? How do we do the rain process and feel over time that sensing

when you have that experience of just openness and tenderness, and how does that become really trusted and live from? Oh, nobly born, this is from the Tibetans. Do not forget the luminous nature of your own mind. Trust it, it is home. In the West, there's some language now on how to shift these tenets, temporary states of, oh, okay, this is, you know, just resting to more of a trait, an ongoing way of being. So yes, we still get little and stuck, but we're really, really sensing,

even when we're stuck, we're not believing the thoughts. We know that there's a larger beingness and there's some refuge in that. And the trick is, and the Westerners, I think, do it this well, is what sometimes sometimes called installing, which means that when you touch a place that you know feels like home, rest in it, stay, have the intention to stay. Not grasping because of course that won't work. But don't go on so fast. Don't move on to something. They say 15 to 30 seconds and here's why. It's very, I think this is really interesting. We have that negativity bias. When we have negative states, we fixate. We soak it in. We immerse in it. And what happens is

negative experience much more quickly goes into our implicit memory and shapes all of our decisions and our sense of self. Positive experiences? Our survival equipment makes it so they don't go so quickly into our implicit memory and become part of the fabric of our reality. But 15 to 30 seconds makes them stickier and they go in. So when you experience some moments of non-grasping, some moments of, this is enough, some moments of tenderness,

of sensing the background of presence, it's really home, just rest of it. Just let it be all that it is. Get familiar with it. We'll close. with a reflection that I call it a future self-meditation that just helps with that familiarity. I may take a few long, deep breaths to collect your attention with each out-breath,

releasing any tension in your body that's accumulated. Allow your imagination to play a little. Imagine you could journey into the future, depending on your age, anywhere from five years to 25 years, in other words, if you're younger journey ahead further, you're going to go ahead, you know, five years, 25 years and encounter your future self. It's an older, more awake, more evolved version of yourself. It's this mind and body as it's expressing when there's not so much self-preoccupation left. when awake and loving awareness can shine through. So you're encountering this future self.

And you might even visualize your future self's home, where your future self is in this home, how your future self looks, maybe clothing, hair, facial expression. Especially the look in their eyes as you meet. Notice what their presence is like, how it feels to be with them. Feel free, when I use the word future self, you can also substitute with high self or awakened heart self or whatever works for you. Sense that you're letting your future self know about something you're judging yourself for,

maybe you're judging yourself for judging, for fear, for your anger, for ways you've behaved with others, for addictive behaviors, for not being who you think you should be, Since you're naming that out loud and naming the most difficult part of it, kind of what it's about, what you're believing and feeling about yourself, where you're recognizing, naming, making space for the patterning. Now you can imagine, if you will, your future self can communicate by filling you with their awareness, allowing you to look with their eyes and see with their heart right now, since your future self just filling you so you can really witness with the

presence of your future self just how the small self is stuck and see the suffering, how the small self might feel out of control, I can't help this kind of feeling, the fear of the ramifications, the vulnerability, and sense how you might offer some nurturing, what that small part of yourself needs. So from your future self offering care, offering the message that might be helpful. And sensing that you can gently feel yourself right again in this moment with your breath, right where you are, still sensing in the background, that wisdom, that love of your future self. And sensing whatever message or reminder your future self is offering, you can keep connecting

with, the days and weeks to come. You might sense how the love and wisdom of your most devolved being lives in you now and always. And trust, with practice you'll naturally access and inhabit and live from this awakened heart with increasing ease. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabroch.com. home.