Tara Brach - Ask Me Anything with Tara and Jonathan (Part 2)

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Ask Me Anything with Tara and Jonathan (Part 2) - Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as the interviewer.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarbrock.com. Welcome, friends. Namaste. So glad you're with us. So last May, I invited questions for an ask me anything, and hundreds of really, really cool questions came in. And so we did one session. I did it with Jonathan Faust. my husband, and, you know, it was kind of an interview, conversation. And of course, we only got to a handful, so we wanted to do another round and just explore some of the themes you all brought up. So here we are. Jonathan, as I mentioned, is my husband, a teaching partner, and like myself, offers weekly talks and meditations on this podcast, as well as half-day and day-long workshops and retreats. You can find out more about them, jonathanbous.com.

So welcome, dear. Well, thank you, honey. How's the weather over in your side of the house? It's always a little cooler on this side. Probably because I have my heat blasting at 85. Something like that. Yeah. We've got some great questions.

So I think we've got a really good kind of loaded here ahead of us. Jump on in. All right. Well, we'll just dive in. So here's the first one. How can we be mindful and present in all our moments? I can't imagine trying to keep mindful of my breath or sounds or sensations and getting anything done.

Yeah. Yeah. So how do we be mindful right here as we're talking to each other and onward? it's a really wonderful question. And the main thing that helps me is to think of mindfulness as a very flexible lens and you can widen it and you can narrow it. So it might be in a formal sitting practice that it's a much more narrow focus lens, more microscopic, where you're really attending to and investigating the breath or sound or the emotions of it. of the moment. It's just like that, much more focused. And then during the day, the kind of

the lens can widen and still aware of what's going on, but, you know, more comprehensive. It's a more broad, receptive kind of attention. And it helps me to keep remembering that mindfulness doesn't arise when there's a tense kind of effort. It's more of a relaxing back kind of presence to be mindful in the midst of doing. So if you're walking, be aware, okay, walking, feeling the sensations, if you're showering, if you're just aware of showering, if you're cleaning or paying bills or whatever you're doing, responding to email, just having that background witnessing awareness of, okay, so this is what's happening. So right now, as I'm speaking and I'm seeing you, Jonathan, it's just to have that kind of awareness in the background that this is

what is happening in the moment. And what helps me is to slow down. In the moments of slowing down, I'm going back here more, pausing. It helps me during the day to take breaks from screens. I mean, just the rule of thumb, just get away from a screen and reground in your body. Years ago, I had, there's this meditation mem that said, don't just do something, sit there, you know, that kind of thing. And clearly, we're going to be engaged in doing, and we can do it mindfully. So, Jonathan, your comments. Well, it's so interesting. And I think there's so much of a question around, like, what skillful?

like what is the state I'm trying to invoke? Like, you know, the folly of multitasking. It's really clear that when you try to do five things simultaneously, it's just not very effective. So realizing that I can choose to narrow the lens, focus on one thing at a time, you know, and then get this satisfaction. And actually there's a certain kind of joy that comes in when I can focus.

And then other times when it's, as you said, it's more natural to kind of widen. your attention and you become more aware of like being the open monitor of what's changing. And then and then that whole idea of wide open awareness. Like one of my favorite things of like being at the ocean is actually like watching people who are sitting on the beach because they're all, they're pretty much all kind of sitting there like this. The sky, the horizon, that sense of like wide open spaciousness.

And I think that's one of the powerful things about practice is that we can actually narrow the lens and widen the lens. Now, sometimes we actually have the ability to be aware of how we're wanting to focus, whether it be narrow or more wide open. I love that reminder of one thing at a time because it's so rare nowadays. and we're so habituated to fracturing our attention and multitasking. And there's so much research on how when we do that, there's nothing that we're doing that we bring as much intelligence or creativity to. So I just wanted to toss that back in. And also, you have a great kind of mantra story about doing, you know,

and how, you know, the importance of being also that I kind of wanted to invite forward. You remind me what it is. I read how to do with Frank Sinatra. Oh, no. Right. Yes, it was sought who said to be as to do. and it was Camus was said to do is to be

and then it all got summed up so beautifully like I think bringing Sinatra when he came forward with doby dooby-doo yes I think

eliciting the depth of that teaching I really appreciated I knew there was something in there I just couldn't remember but the other thing is though

there's so much around like this elusive flow state You know, and it's really interesting. When you look at the components of the flow state, it really is through absorption. It is through that sense of like, remove the distractions, get immersed. And something I try to remember when I see my 85 emails. So here's another question on meditation. It seems meditation is about quieting thoughts.

But don't we need to think? Don't we have to plan the future? be goal-oriented, figure out how to get from there, from here to there, or from there to here? For sure. Thinking is essential for surviving and flourishing, and it's part of spiritual practice, wise reflection. I am thinking now to respond to this question. And our brain is a predicting machine. It's just part of the way we're wired and we're wired to lean into the future. We're regularly computing what will happen and how to proceed. And we have a map in our mind with an idea of what's going on right here and an idea of the future and some sense of a path. So that's just

part of what guides us in navigating. And just to think of what it means if we're regularly living inside that map of a future, because then life feels like we're always on our way somewhere, that we're not actually right here. You might reflect those of you listening right now, if that's true for you, how much you're actually sensing that you're on your way someplace else. And then what do we miss when we're moving towards some future goal and we're not right here? I think often about this story that came out in the Washington Post. This is years ago now of a man was playing a violin in the subway and thousands and thousands of people passed by him that morning. And the only ones that stopped were children.

And it turned out that that man was a very famous musician, Joshua Bell, and super talented. And this was a social science research project of the Washington Post to see how many people would stop when they were on their way someplace else and really take in the magic of what he was offering. our habit is to be on our way somewhere. And so we have to set goals, we have to think, we have to plan, and we also need mindfulness and full presence so that we can sense when it's too much and when we're right here this moment is the place to be. Most of our planning and our thoughts are pretty fear-driven.

and we overdo it. And I always think of that little story of the woman who sends her son an email, and the email says, start worrying details to follow. So nice to come back right here and know when not to be caught up in the planning, in that map of the mind. Jonathan, what do you think? Well, I had something to add to that story about Joshua Bell. because everyone walked by, except for children, except for one person.

Stacey Furukawa, who happened to be a meditation, a practitioner of meditation, who was part of the meditation group at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington. So there is something about mindfulness and being aware, which I thought was kind of cool. Oh, I like it. Well, I mean, we have a ritual. you and I that will often go for walks and we'll have that meandering kind of conversation and often we're planning and thinking and so on. But there are times that will absolutely stop and stand still and look at each other. And I'll say something like, this is it, right here, right now, this is it. And then you'll go, no, no, no. No, no. This is it. Yes.

This, right now. Sorry, it's this. It makes a difference to just know we're going to be inclined to planning and thinking ahead, and the real preciousness is right here now. Well, just to acknowledge Ram Dass, you know, who famously said, you know, the mind, you know, is a wonderful servant and a lousy master, you know, that, you know, this amazing prediction machine, which can be of service and which can kind of torture us, torturous at the same time. And I think there is something very powerful, you know, about inquiry,

about using the kind of questions that can elicit thoughts that can help us solve problems and do all kinds of things. If I have a project ahead of me, I'll ask myself, oh, how do I want to feel at the end of this? And quite often, the thoughts that follow that, question can actually provide me some really interesting insights. I'm right there with you. There's a power to that. And there's also a power to the inquiry of, you know, if there's no future, if I'm not on my way to something else, who am I? What's really true? And just, you might even just imagine that as you, as you listen, you know, if there's no problem to solve, if there's no goal to get to. If there's no future, who am I? So this is a domain that that deserves our attention.

We know we need to set goals. We know thinking's part of survival and how to drop at all. So this question is actually right along these lines of practice and being aware of the mind. I've been practicing meditation on and off. And most of the time when I sit, I'm restless. I plan my day or I worry about things. I have such a busy mind, and I don't think I'll get rid of all this thinking. Is it possible? I'm just not cut out for meditation. This.

You know, there's a meditation master who was once asked to describe the world, and his response was, lost in thought. And that came to mind because this, isn't for you who's asking that question. This isn't your personal predicament. I mean, most of us have busy minds and spent a lot of time lost in thought. I mean, if you think about the last day or the last few hours and where were you, it's a lot of virtual reality, thinking. And so thinking is part of surviving and thriving, and we overdo it. We're addicted to thinking. And the purpose of meditation is not to get rid of thinking.

And if we think we're trying to eliminate thoughts, we'll be at war with our mind for the rest of our lives, basically. The intention here is to be mindful of thinking, to get quiet enough so that you become aware that thinking is going on. And then there's some choice in relating to thoughts, because some thoughts are, incredibly useful, and many, many thoughts actually perpetuate moods of anxiety and tightness. So an image that's helpful for me is that I imagine flying in an airplane and that when we're lost in thought, we're inside a cloud. And that's our world. Our world is the thought. And then when the airplane continues and moves outside of the cloud, the cloud, the cloud. might still be there, but we become aware of this vast world that we're part of. And so in the

moment of being mindful of a thought, noticing, oh, thinking, you're inhabiting an awareness that's larger than the thought. And just in listening to the question, whoever asked it is you're noticing the planning and the worrying thoughts, and that's the first step. And it's really, important just to notice, oh, there's a lot of worrying going on. There's a lot of planning. There's a lot of fantasizing, whatever it is. So a couple of tips in terms of increasing the power of that mindfulness, because it's such a huge tug to get lost inside the thoughts. And one is to practice noting, just to name it. You can either mentally whisper, you can even whisper it out loud, okay, thinking, thinking, or worrying or whatever it is.

There's a lot of research now about the power of notation, of noting, that it really activates the prefrontal cortex. And so there's a more integrated brain and you get less caught in the limbic system, which keeps driving the thoughts. So another tip is when you notice you've been thinking to, because, aware of your senses, become aware of sounds and sensations and feelings, and that'll help to ground you in a larger reality than just the thoughts. And the third one I really want to emphasize in terms of being lost in thought is just start getting really curious about the

difference between what it's like when you're inside thoughts and this living reality, when you kind of wake up and realize the thought, but you then open up to everything else. Just to get curious, to get curious about the gap between the thoughts. So this training of attention, it'll give you more and more capacity to notice when you've been lost and to actually have choice in your life experience because you don't have to follow every train of thought that is hurtling through. So, Jonathan. Well, you know, there's a particular kind of pointing out instruction that I got years ago that I found helpful.

I'm not sure everyone would, but it's sort of that noticing the moment when I'm aware of a thought and it's like noting the inner reactivity. And either it goes toward some form of like chastising myself, like judging myself, like judging myself, like, oh, you lost the anchor again, you know, or like, how long have you been thinking? You know, the, you know, the intense self-judgment that could come with it versus learning how to associate a sense of like pleasure in the waking up. Oh, it's almost like a, it's almost like a mild celebration, you know, but it's like, how can I associate pleasure to waking out of the trans of thought? And part of the pleasure, just kind of reflecting back what you

said is like when I can come back into the senses and completely re-relax, it can be an intensely pleasurable thing. And I find that to be helpful. At times I just find that to be really helpful when I realize like, oh, I'm back. I can relax my tongue. I can feel the weight of my hand. I can feel the sensations in my palms. It's that difference between kind of judging and celebrating the fact that I'm awake again, just for a few nanoseconds. Yeah, I mean, what comes to mind as I hear that is I notice for myself, often when I'm waking up out of thoughts, if they're anxious thoughts, what I'm waking up into is a more actual raw sense of unpleasantness.

But as you say, there is some sense of celebrating because I'd rather be more directly in contact with reality than in reaction to reality and pulled away. Because now I've gotten familiar with the fact that if I can come into my senses and my body, even if it isn't pleasant, even if it's not relaxed the way you described, it's more the truth of what's happening. I have this confidence that that actually creates the deepest happiness, which is this freedom of being able to be with life as it is, that I'm not avoiding something. So I love the way you're framing it, that on some level we can celebrate being more awake every time we open up out of a thought and into a larger reality. Dr. Huberman talks about, you know, part of like being a discipline

is like finding pleasure in the challenge. You know, so when you're kind of come to the edge, you're maxing out some muscles to actually associate pleasure to it. Like, I'm benefit, this is really going to benefit me. It's unpleasant now, but it's really going to benefit me. I remember being on a month-long retreat, and once again, you know, waking up out of the trance of thought, and just a little light came on and said, this is training.

I'm training my mind. And there's something, there's something kind of juicy about that. I really reminding ourselves that this is a, you know, This is a practice of focus and then refocus. Like something's happening inside that can be tremendously beneficial, even though it's a challenge. Yeah, that's a beautiful reminder that more than anything, we want to be fully who we are.

So any way of evolving, even when it has edginess and unpleasantness, the evolving itself is really gratifying. Well, here we are continuing right along this theme, The next question, they're just kind of lining themselves up here. How do I know when I'm meditating, when to pay attention to thoughts? Sometimes my thoughts seem so creative that I'm having meaningful insights. It's a great question because it's true that the more we step out of autopilot, you know, the more we're actually present, then the habitual patterns of thinking shift.

and there's actually room for more creative and potentially insightful thoughts. So there's actually a type of meditation that is explicitly dedicated to cultivating that kind of thinking. It's an intentional way of contemplation. And the way it's practice is, first you do take some time intentionally relaxing and quieting the mind. So there really is a quality of full presence. But then into that presence, you drop in an inquiry. You know, what's the nature of impermanence? You know, what does it really mean to die?

What are the roots of suffering? You know, what arouses love? What really brings freedom? You ask questions and you kind of drop them into that open presence. And so you are paying attention to the thoughts that arise. and you might even journal. So that's a whole part of meditation. But I want to say that that's different

from the formal training of mindfulness, which isn't fighting thinking. But it's as we've been describing, it's to notice it and then relax open and rediscover the larger space of awareness that thinking's happening in and then to rest in that larger space so that thoughts can be there but we're not identified.

And so I do want to reiterate that that's invaluable. Contemplation's a really useful thing, but it's invaluable to get the knack of waking up out of thoughts and sensing, oh, that was virtual reality. This is larger than our thoughts. Our thoughts are always symbolic. They're pointing to reality. So when we open up out of thoughts, we can rest in that reality. And there's one of my teachers, when I say my teachers, one of the spiritual masters that's most influenced me, he's been gone for a long time. Srinarsar Gadata has a quote I love.

And he says this. He says that the real world is beyond our thoughts and ideas. is as we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, thoughts of right and wrong, of inner and outer. But to see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It's not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes. So, yes, there are creative thoughts, insightful thoughts. There are times to dedicate to exploring them, and to not miss out. on the radical freedom of waking up from thoughts so that we're living in a larger truth?

You know, there's something really interesting around, you know, this practice of a positive, something's called insight meditation, you know, so every now and then, we, we experience something that's beyond a linear, rational mind. You know, we're outside the frame of this, you know, finite mind, and we see some larger reality, you know, and here's this amazing insight. And I know for myself, I get kind of attached to the idea of having more and more insights, you know. And I remember once being on a retreat and just thinking, okay, what's the anatomy of an insight? How like, how do I, how do I make an insight happen? You know, of course, as I contemplated, it was like, relax and receive, let go the desire for anything other than what's here.

that's the anatomy of an insight. You know, we can't make it happen. All we can do is kind of create the most optimal space. And part of that includes just noticing thoughts and realizing that we are not our thoughts. And it's such a fascinating dance because the doorway through to seeing beyond thoughts is really just that falling back into presence.

falling back to be the witness. A little more of thoughts. Here's a question. I keep getting caught in the same obsessive cycling thoughts. How do I stop them? It's pretty much everyone I know has seasons of obsessing, if not seasons, you know, ongoingness. And if you think of thoughts as repeating visitors, and some of them, are really intrusive, it's a sign that something wants attention.

You know, when I have certain thoughts that just keep coming, it just means that there's something under the thought. There's some roots to the thought that are asking for attention, some fear of falling short or maybe a hurt in a relationship, and it'll keep cycling through until I pay attention. And not only that, as it's cycling through, they affect how we then engage in the world. You know, a repeating thought that's fear-based,

it affects how we approach our work, our relationships. Let's say I have the fear that someone let me down. I'm going to be defensive and blaming in my behavior. Many are familiar with that sequence of that our thoughts end up creating our words, which create our actions, which lead into habits. which create character and our character creates our destiny. So it becomes really compelling to attend to the patterns of obsessive thinking wisely. And the reason is because mindfulness can interrupt the cycling of thoughts.

If you notice, and the way it happens is when you notice that they're there, Let's say, you know, I'm going to fail or this person betrayed me. Attend the emotion underneath the roots. It's like that story many of you might remember of, you know, a wise sage and people would go great distances to get his wisdom. And he'd have them do some meditating and he'd swear them to silence. And he'd say, he'd ask one question. what are you unwilling to feel? What are you unwilling to feel? And I have found that inquiry so powerful when I have repeating thoughts just say, what am I unwilling to feel? And if I then bring

curiosity and kindness, sometimes it's fear or hurt, you know, we can discover whatever is more raw underneath. And if we can meet that with acceptance and with kindness, we can begin to pull out the roots that are continuing to have those thoughts keep reappearing. So that to me is the most basic approach to obsessive thinking. Just pause, what am I unwilling to feel and come into the body with kindness? Jonathan? Yeah, as you know, one of my standard jokes is that, you know, until I started practicing yoga, I just, I thought my body was there to make my head.

portable, you know, and for me, because I'm pretty much a head-oriented person, it's just recognizing, like, every, every thought has a corresponding resonance in my body, you know, and just as my thoughts, you know, lead to speech, lead to behaviors, lead to character, lead to destiny, beneath that is this felt sense, you know, that there's this whole, this whole play of feeling tone that is intimately connected to that thought. And when I can be with that and trace that back and ask myself certain questions, for example, if I'm obsessing on something and a lot of worry, come in contact with that, locate that, sometimes to ask myself, how old is this? Quite often, that can lead to a very rich investigation where I'm moving from that obsessive thought itself

to really tracking it inward and tracking it through time in many ways can be a very powerful practice for me. It's so true that if we can get in touch with the felt sense, it begins to unwind it and sensing how long we've been living with it. Another thing I've noticed is that, especially when people come to retreats

because they are spending more time waking up out of thoughts, there's this revelation that's life-changing, which is, I am not my thoughts. I don't have to believe my thoughts. And that is so empowering. If you can have a thought that has been kind of commandeering your psyche and on some level say, this is just a thought, it's a sound bite, it's an image, I am not my thoughts, you know, I don't have to believe this. There's a huge freedom that opens up to be with this life in a very fresh and creative way.

Which so organically, collides right into the next question, which is about our relationship to ourselves. This is a question about judgment and self-judgment. Tarah, you talk about not judging ourselves. But if I don't judge myself for what is wrong, how else am I going to change? You know, in a way, when I hear that question, it brings up a question and response, which is, have you found judgment helps you to change? Let me start with, there's a real difference between wise discernment, which sees, you know, the ways that we or others are causing harm,

which sees what needs attention. So that's wise discernment and judgment that actually has a quality of aversiveness in it. When we're judging, there's a quality of condemning, rejecting. And for the most part, we seem to lean more towards judging than wise discernment in the way we move through life. And often when I'm doing workshops, I'll do a reflection and then I'll ask people, you know, what's stopping you from holding yourself with kindness or accepting yourself as you are? And it's just what came up in this question. It's the fear that, well, if I do that, I'll never change.

I'll get worse. I'll really, you know, be condemned to being the bad person that I am. And what that shows is that, and this is for all of us that have a harsh inner critic, that harsh inner critic is trying to help us. I mean, it's trying to help us be the person we want to be. but because it's fearful, it has a sense that there's something bad going on and it makes us feel bad. So that's the trouble with judging, is it has an aversive quality and it locks us in a feeling of badness. And I often think about, you know, it's just the most amazing little sentence from the American psychologist Carl Rogers.

He said, it wasn't until I accepted myself as I was, that I was free to change. That it's that the acceptance in the moment of who we are to not add that badness is the preconditioned to change. So I can just speak personally that, you know, watching myself over the decades that in the early days, I had a very, very harsh inner judge. judge me for being selfish and for being irritable, for being, you know, not coming through the way I thought I should in relationships for compulsively overeating. You know, the list went on. And I could see over time that my habit of judging deepened my sense of badness, which then fueled the very things I was judging. And I think you all know what I mean by that. So I did, I could see that suffering. So I dedicated, my meditation was very much, in part, a dedication to unwinding judgment and started

with self-judgment because I really did want to be kinder. But just to be clear, I still wanted to change the parts of myself that wise discernment showed me created suffering. So I still wanted to change and grow and evolve, but I didn't want to do it through averse of judgment in the deepest way I wanted to accept myself as I was. So I'd find myself judging myself, you know, and I, and this continues, judgment is still in the wiring. You know, let's say in more current times, judging myself for being selfish in my relationship with you, Jonathan, just sensing a judgment come up. And then my practice now is to pause, you know, to deepen my attention, to sense what might be driving the selfish behavior, you know, what kind of

feelings of fear or tightness or hurt or whatever it is that's judging that, what kind of habits of behave, you know, how the habit gets driven, but, and also sense the pain in being selfish, just the pain of it. And feel compassion towards myself and putting my hand on my heart because it happens a lot that I just see myself coming from a tight place and saying, oh, okay. And if I can arrive in a more compassionate presence, I still care about growing and I'm much more inclined to be less selfish the next round. And it didn't come from aversion. It came from presence and care. So the most important thing, I guess, about this is that self-judgment deep in the way. our sense of personal badness, which then sustains the very things we're judging.

So, Jonathan, I'm here publicly saying that I accept all the ways that I'm selfish with you. Any comments? Jay accepted too. Thank you. I accept it. No, I was once with a group, and I asked this question. And I said, you know, raise your hand if you've ever looked in the mirror and judged yourself. And I was surprised by the amount of laughter because then I asked the second that, you know,

who's ever looked in the mirror and just thought, wow, you look amazing. You know, we have such this built-in negativity bias. And I think there's something that's so powerful about by recognizing. Like everything was born and rare, it said five billion people thinking they're unique is not unique. know, that we are, we just look through this lens of, of so much self-judgment and recognizing that that's just a, that's the nature of the filter through which we, we naturally perceive has been certainly helpful for me. Which brings up an exploration of another question that has to do with the, you could say maybe the antidote, which is the loving kindness practice.

We've got a couple questions on, on loving kindness. kindness. And here's the first question. Loving kindness meditation is really hard for me to do for myself because it brings up so much self-judgment that I don't deserve care. And you'd like to say about that. Yeah, you know, loving kindness can bring this radical healing of the heart and on the way it can be challenging. And first to say a loving kindness meditation, is any way of paying attention that sopens and opens our heart towards ourselves and each other. So it's a very broad category. And especially when we're trying to open ourselves to ourselves,

you know, we have most of us the conditioning to relate to ourselves the way our caregivers related to us in some way. So that means for many of us it can be to neglect ourselves or ignore ourselves. or judge ourselves. I mean, so many have internalized the message that we should be different and we're not okay. And I'll share with you because I just came upon this somewhat recently. I don't know if I shared this one with you, Jonathan. This is a cartoon of a psychologist and a dog, which is a setup for a lot of cartoons. Anyway, and the psychologist is saying, it's not that you're a bad dog. you're a good dog doing bad things. And I love that because it doesn't matter how it's framed,

we still take the message of, I'm bad, you know. And so, okay, we begin some practice of loving kindness or we're in some way trying to offer care to ourselves. And it can feel like we're going through the motions, like really mechanical or that we're faking it or even more painful. It just shines a light on the ways that we really don't like ourselves. And I think probably many of you know what I mean by that. It can bring attention right to where we feel most wounded or bad. So one friend, I'll share her experience, because I thought it was really inspiring. This is Shauna Shapiro, who's an author and a teacher. And when she was in a process of getting divorced, she was filled with self-judgment and shame, and her meditation teacher suggested she do the

loving kindness practice. And she said, how about every day you say to yourself, good morning, I love you, Shauna. It's a little bit like Jonathan, your thing of looking into the mirror, just every day, good morning, I love you, Shauna. And she said, no way, you know. And then it got adjusted. How about good morning, Shawna, and just put your hand on your heart? And she said, okay, I can do that. So does it for a couple of months, and then she goes back, and her teacher says, okay, it's time for the advanced practice. You know, good morning.

I love you, Shauna. And she did it the next morning, and she could do it, but nothing happened. There was no sense of love or warmth or anything. But she kept it up. And one morning she did it. She had her hand on her heart. and she felt her grandmother's love and her mother's love and her own love and her heart softening. Whatever you practice gets stronger.

You know, so if you're practicing loving kindness, it takes time, you know, it takes patience. And here's the most important thing. Every one of us has to design our own loving kindness practice. We have to, you know, experiment, customize. and just find out what works. It often centers on finding some message of self-care that touches us, that in some way gets dropped in and it in some way brings care and comfort. And so it's a helpful inquiry just to ask your own heart, you know,

what do you wish for? You know, what is the wish you have for yourself that feels most meaningful? Just to ask that. You know, what's the wish that feels most meaningful? What do you most long to experience? For some people, it's, you know, may I accept myself as I am? Just really want that experience of accepting themselves and just offering that prayers like a caring offering.

And another might be, may I touch peace and ease? May I feel joy? Or may I love without holding back? There's just different wishes. and shifting the message if it needs to keep it fresh. For myself, any moment that I in some way send the message, trust your goodness, and I'm pausing to kind of do it in that way, there's a kind of sincerity that comes up in me

that is tender and relaxes me. Just trust your goodness. So what I'm hoping to convey, loving kindness isn't like a cognitive affirmation. It's deeper than that. Some of you might remember that story of the cartoon or the dog that's in a bed and he's sleeping with this headset. And the words coming through the headsets are, you know,

good dokey, you're such a good dokey. Aren't you a good dokey? Yes, you are. you know so it's not that it's not like you are a good person it's more trust your goodness and maybe you can feel the difference in that and i'll just say a few more tips because this is something this is an area that feels so potentially powerful in healing us is that if you want to explore the love and kindness practice begin by just sensing your intention that your intention is to awaken and open your heart, just knowing it matters to you. And, you know, if you're shut down and it's really

hard to offer your self-care, just bring to mind somebody that you love and trust and just sense them offering you care. It helps to sometimes start the love and kindness practice by remembering other people you love that are easy to love and feeling your love for them, you know, just may you be happy and then become aware of your loving because that'll put you in touch with your goodness. What really wakes up loving kindness is getting in touch with goodness. That is the key. Whether it's waking up care for yourself or care for another in the moment that the eyes of the heart see goodness, we get tender. So if you remember your love for another person and then just sense that loving, you'll sense the goodness of that loving, and start feeling more care towards

yourself. Also, reflect on other qualities that you appreciate in yourself, you know, sense what you most care about. If we get in touch with our deepest aspiration, we can sense the goodness of that. Or maybe see yourself as a child and remember, you know, just the innocence and the joy and the curiosity of being a child or sense your future self, where there's a more free flow of wisdom and love. So there are these different ways of moving our attention to come home to sensing goodness and being able to then offer some care. And when you offer care, and this is important, do it a few times so you're really feeling sincere. You're feeling sincere in the midst of it. And, you know, as you offer it, sometimes helpful to have the hand on the heart, feel your breath

at your heart, and then imagine what the words mean. So if you're saying to yourself, may I be happy or may I feel happy, then imagine what that would be like. Imagine it. You might do it for a moment right now, just sense a wish that resonates. something you'd like to wish for yourself, and then offer that wish, and feel the sincerity of your offer, and imagine the manifestation of what you're wishing, and know that what you practice grows stronger. The more that you're seeing your own goodness and offering care inwardly, the more you'll be resting in a place of open-heartedness towards yourself.

I think perhaps we have time for one more question before we close. My 14-year-old struggles with low self-esteem. What I suggest, therapy, joining sports teams, anything. He gets angry and he feels helpless and feels like he's failing. I'm glad we're doing this question because I'm so aware, especially currently, of the teams, our teens, the low self-esteem and the pain. So many teens are in, anxiety, depression, and it's getting worse. I mean, that young people are like the rest. Older people are addicted to social media and there's less real contact that actually helps our hearts be happy.

So the starting place as a parent of a teen who's struggling is self-compacted. because it's so hard to have someone you love struggling. So just take the time to just feel kind towards what you're experiencing because your response to your child, to your loved one, will come from a more wise and awake heart place if you first offered care inwardly. I mean, I remember some years back a couple parents came to talk to me because their son in his early 20s was living at home, was completely disengaged, not working, hated himself, withdrawn. And, you know, they had suggested therapy, which he didn't want to do. So they were just saying, well, what can we do?

You know, the wife saying, you know, should I send white life? you know, they're wondering, should they be setting boundaries, forcing them to work. So I asked them a question. I said it was kind of a reflective thing of, well, tell me what you love about him. What do you must appreciate? So I'm basically asking them, you know, tell me about his goodness. And they listed it, you know, which included, you know, his amazingly creative guy, incredibly kind, generous, funny and fun when he wasn't completely oppressed as he was now.

And I could see as they share that, their heart's open. So I said, this is your meditation right now. Every day, just meditate on his goodness. And let him know what you love, you know, let him know what you appreciate. And I saw them a few months later, and there was just so much more openness and warmth and lightness and relating. And an opportunity had come up for him to volunteer doing, I think it was digital engineering or something, sound engineering, which he took on, and then he started, he was going to sign up

the next semester for community college. So I share this story because there is such power in being a mirror of goodness for each other, such power in it. And so it doesn't mean we don't look directly at where our teens are struggling and find a way to work directly with the pain. it doesn't mean that we don't do what we can about our society in terms of social media and the atmosphere our teens are growing up in, but it means that individually we make it our deepest intention to remind them of what we love. I always think of Arn Gorbork who wrote to love somebody is to learn the song in their heart and sing it to them when they have forgotten. Yeah, so Jonathan, mirroring goodness, just anything you want to share?

Well, you know, I'm not a parent, but I was a teenager. And I'm just aware in my own life and certainly with those that I, you know, but I'm with that so much of our pain comes from some identified unmen need. And I think, and I'm imagining as a parent to really ask yourself, what are you hoping for? what is it that you're wanting, to investigate and to be with that. And certainly when we're with others, to open up that question is a very powerful way of beginning to move beneath, you know, the surface behaviors to really sense what is it under this that is needing some attention. Now, what is the unmet deed?

What are you hoping for? What are you wanting? That can evoke a certain, certainly a vulnerability. but also a lot of tenderness that goes with it. It's such a beautiful question because if we look at somebody who's hurting, lonely, low self-esteem and we ask ourselves, well,

just to think of that person and sense, what do you need? You know, where does it hurt and what do you need? So often what we get is they need our loving and some reminder of their goodness. and maybe to close in that spirit all of us together, since this is so pervasive, to take a moment to reflect as we close.

And you might bring to mind somebody in your circles, you know, family, friend, colleague, who's having a hard time right now. You might bring them to mind and close in. And as Jonathan says, just to ask that question, Just imagine you're talking to them and their inner selves and saying, well, what do you need? What do you most need? You might sense the quality of loving that they need. And perhaps even imagine with that person letting them know something you appreciate about them, being an active mirror of goodness. And imagine what it would be like for them to take it in. hear you're altering the sense the field, the heart space that opens up, the healing that becomes

possible. And so, friends, as we close, just to sense this wish that we all might be mirrors of goodness and remember our own. And I want to thank you for joining us. And Jonathan, thank you. This is just a, it's a total delight to be able to do this together. So blessings to all.