Tara Brach - Ask the Friend for Love

Episode Date: April 21, 2017

Ask the Friend for Love - Prayer, when cultivated consciously, energizes and guides us on the spiritual path. This talk investigates the difference between wanting, with its narrow fixation, and the prayer that arises out of our deep heart's longing. We explore how living prayer, the prayer that arises from consciously inhabiting longing, can carry us home to loving presence. As John O'Donahue writes, prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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 makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. I'll begin by sharing a brief story of my own which was three weeks before 9-11. I was a speaker at a conference and it took place in the Twin Towers. So it's kind of was point, it's still poignant as in memory. It was a Buddhist conference there. And the theme of the conference was really how we heal and awaken. What really helps us to heal and awaken and find freedom. And there were five of us that were opening the conference. And we were each asked to give a 10-minute talk on really what we felt like was the essence of the path that helps us be free. And the other four people that were invited to speak

were elders in the Buddhist tradition. I was a real newbie, but I was a female and I think they needed a woman. I'm not sure. But anyway, there I was. And I was second in the lineup which felt really just right because when you're second you have the first 10 minutes just to kind of arrive, you know,

and you're there, but then you don't have to wait. You don't have to like, you know, any of you that have spoken in front of groups, no. So I was a second, I was kind of, so the first speaker, Richard Baker, Roshi, very well known. disciple of Suzuki Roshi, got up to do his sharing. And he looked around and he said,

transformation and awakening comes down to two things, intention and attention. And then he bowed and he sat down. And I was on. So I got up there and I was a little bit frozen. Everything in me wanted to go, what he said, you know, one of those. And to be honest, that's the end of the story. I have no idea what I said. But I've, but what he said is stuck with me. Because I think it's one of the most pithy

and profound summations. If you think of it, everything we're doing is a training in how to pay attention. How do we pay attention in a way that frees our heart? and what guides how we pay attention is our intention. Like what's mattering to us?

And if we know what matters to us is presence, our love, our truth, how we pay attention is going to be energized by that. The Buddha said the entire world comes out of the tip of intention. Our reality, our actions, our behaviors, our thoughts, our words, thing is, you know, what we're intending, what's mattering to us, what feels important to us. And as we know, our intention has many levels. And at any given time we might be hooked on a certain level of intention, like it may be very unconscious kind of intention, where I want to be more comfortable so I'm kind of shifting how I'm sitting. And that's one level. We

might not even know we're intending something, but it's driving our behavior. to the most enlightened moment where something in us knows that more than anything in the world, what matters to us is to realize the truth of who we are and live from that. And then our intention gets very, very here. So we'll explore tonight, and the language I'd like to use for intention is that of aspiration and prayer. Because when our intention gets very deep and very sincere, it's got a heart quality that Melissa described. Just this wholeheartedness where we get incredibly sincere,

not sappy sincere, because there's a truthfulness there, a real clarity. And prayer, when it's very awake, has that. So I'd like to speak about prayer, really the kind of the heart's passion and the way the heart can direct our path. and just to say that you wouldn't be here tonight without intention, without some quality, some longing in your heart for something that has to do with waking up.

And you wouldn't choose to spend real time with loved ones like really show up unless there was a quality of intention. And you wouldn't be drawn to creative expression without intention. It's really what creates our life. And of course our intention can get very tight and narrowed and diluted and then we get into activities and behaviors that aren't so wholesome. So we'll explore that too. So we start the class always when I'm teaching with a reflection on what matters.

And I'm curious if you'd be willing. If we could hear just a few people say out loud, when you reflected tonight and maybe even at the of the meditation when I said really what what is it that matters what came up for you and when I say just a few words if you could just say like three or four words like and loud so we can hear each other what came up and if you raise your hand I'll just point and let's just hear what's a little bit in the room in terms of intention tonight so if you don't mind what a few people yeah peace of mind thank you what else yeah to know the beloved in me hmm

Yeah. Opportunity to serve. Nice. Yeah. Highest quality of life. Thank you. Freedom from suffering. Freedom from suffering. To love as hard as I can. Yeah. Yeah. To be fully here. Yeah. Yeah. Feeling of coming home to myself. So, thank you by the way. So if we feel, what's the kind of calm denominator feeling tone of these, you know, coming home to myself, peace, to love as hard as I can. They all have a quality of reconnecting, coming back to what's here, to belong to what's here, to be here. If we start investigating our intention, in some way we want to come back to belonging, to love, to peace, to presence. There's a, sometimes it's described as a backward step. It's coming back to what's here and precious, but perhaps we've forgotten.

So then the question is, what if we remembered our intention many, many, many times a day? I mean, what if you said to yourself like 400 times a day, I want to love as hard as I can, or I want to touch peace or I want to be here what would happen to your life I'll tell you one of the phrases that comes to mind for me

as much as I possible is Hafiz who says ask the friend for love ask him again for I have heard that whatever one's heart praise for the most that's what one gets doesn't that ring of truth that what you

you really pray for the most when you're inhabiting your prayer, you're just available. It comes. So I don't speak that often about prayer and it's deeply much a part of the Buddhist tradition and all of the wisdom and spiritual traditions because prayer happens in our hearts. It just happens. But the possibility is we can become very conscious of it. Now, William James wrote that the beginning of every religion is the cry for help. So that in a ways that's the kind of primal prayer. It's like on some level we get deposited or we arrive here and it's like, you know, confusing, difficult, scary.

All of a sudden we feel separate and we had maybe felt like we were merged with the maternal surround. You know, it's like blaring lights, the whole deal. So there's a help that goes on. One friend of mine described recently on the phone she said that she had this time where she was really, really distressed and she was on a street corner in the city at nighttime and she was crying and it was nice that it was nighttime because people didn't see.

And she found herself crying, I want my mother. I want my mother. Her mother had been gone for a handful of years but what was more interesting to her was that she and her mother had a very complex relationship, not one where a mother was kind of that maternal surround. But there was some very deep thing, I want my mother.

And it's very much in us that when we're in trouble, it's like who amongst us hasn't instinctively turned our thoughts upward during a kind of crisis or whatever, or maybe when something involving a child, just no matter what, whatever's out there, whatever that intelligence or whatever is benevolent in this universe, please help. A lot of us. Because there's some sense that there's something beyond this egoic self that's afraid. So when we're caught in that egoic self, we intuit that and we reach

towards it. And there is something beyond this egoic self. You know, what it is we might come down to realizing is our own awakened nature but it's beyond our egoic self. So we reach towards it. I grew up Unitarian, and one of my favorite lines from the Unitarians is when they are saying a prayer to God, it's actually the address is to whom it may concern, which I always liked. By the way, the Unitarians also say Moses received the ten suggestions. Very Unitarian. So many got introduced to prayer early. one three-year-old. This is one three-year-old's prayer.

Our father, who does art in heaven. Harold is his name. I love that. This is another at Sunday school. They were teaching how one should pray to God because God created everything, including human beings.

So little Johnny seemed, especially in town where they told him how Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs. So he's told, go ahead and pray because God has created everything. Later in the week, his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill and he had his palms together and she's saying, Johnny, what's the matter? Little Johnny responded,

I have a pain in my side. I think I'm going to have a wife. So when we're in trouble, we reach towards what we perceive as a source of help. And this inclination, as I say, it intuit something large. larger that we belong to. What I call mindful prayer or living prayer is the very deliberate practice of making this very conscious, that as we reach out, we reach out consciously and discover what's really here. So as we explore this tonight, we're going to be exploring what we call mature prayer, which is that kind of consciousness. And it's got two expressions.

And one way that mature prayer gets expressed is when there is some feeling of separation and we start touching the longing that's there. Much as I invite you each time we start to say, well, what are you longing for? We just sense, well, what is there that really matters to us? And that's one expression of mature prayer is to feel our longing, to reach out from longing. Please, may I pray as hard as I can? May I feel, may I love as hard as I can? It's that kind of prayer.

The second kind of prayer comes from a sense of fullness where we're already in love, and it's the overflow, it's just that expression of gratitude, or of gratitude in helping others, wanting for others that love. So we'll spend most of the time on the first kind of prayer, which is how we cultivate this prayer when we're feeling a sense of yearning and separation, how we can empower that prayer, make it very conscious. But just to say that in most Buddhist ceremonies or rituals, gatherings, both prayers are there, we start with the prayer of longing where we ask for refuge in truth, refuge in presence,

refuge in love, refuge in awareness. There's that longing for that. And then we practice our practices. And then at the end, it's kind of like held in these two prayers, is offering our blessings. It's like feeling that fullness and saying, may all beings be filled with loving kindness. May there be peace on earth, peace everywhere.

So it's that overflowing. So those are the two, again, the two kinds of prayers. Let me ask here, how many of you, when you face difficulty pray? I just see by hands? How many of you pray in some way? Some form. Keep your hands up for a moment.

I'm really interested. writing about this right now and I'm very curious to see. Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you this. How many find you pray regularly? It's just it's really a regular part of your meditation. Can I see my hands? Good. How many of you find that when you do pray it helps? Same hands are going up. Okay. For those of you listening and not here in Bethesda tonight, I would say that about three-quarters to four-fifths had that. their hands up. Now, we have a range of experience with prayer, and I find that sometimes those with a religious background are a very strong doctrine in the family, including atheists. So, but religious

are atheists, but strong, actually shy away from prayer. When it's been very religious, there's sometimes very limiting associations, like with a judgmental God or some superior God and I'm an inferior your being and there's some guilt or fear that goes with it. Projections of a kind of God that we're praying to that make us pull away. But even more so I found that people turn to Buddhism because they want to get more clarity and truth and feel that prayers in some way, it's been merged with desires and wants, that why would I pray? It's just like reinforcing the wanting selfish self, you know?

And it's reinforcing separateness. I'm praying that I'm feeling like there's a me and I'm praying to do something out there. So there's some that come to Buddhism to sense of a more of a non-dual experience and think prayer is somewhat a lower form of spiritual practice. When prayer is not awake, when it's not mindful, it actually can play into a sense of separateness and it can play into the ego. And just to speak on that for a moment, that we all yearned for belonging in a deep way.

It's a very wise longing. It's actually awareness calling us home. But that longing gets fixated in narrow ways for each of us, really. We have a deep yearning to wake up to all that we can be. And yet that yearning, that wanting to belong to wholeness, whatever, fixates. And it can fixate in very, very small ways. like please may I get everything done on my list today. You know, because then I'll feel better.

Then I'll feel more belonging in some way. Or please may I win, may this lottery ticket do it for me? Or may I get this parking space. But, you know, may my team win, you know. May my favorite restaurant be open. One story, one woman approaches her priest and says, Father, I have a problem. I have two female talking parrots, but they only know how to say one thing.

What do they say? The priest inquired. They only know how to say, Hi, we're prostitutes. Want to have some fun? Ooh, that's terrible, the priest exclaim, but I have a solution to your problem. Bring your two female parrots over to my house and I'll put them with my two male-talking parrots whom I taught to pray and to read the Bible.

My parents will teach your parents to stop saying that terrible phrase, and your female parrots will learn to praise and worship. Oh, thank you, the woman responded. The next day the woman brings her female parrots to the priest's house. His two male parrots are holding rosary beads and praying in their cage. Can you see where this is going? So the lady puts her two female parrots in with the male parrots. And immediately the female parrots say,

hi, we're prostitutes. Want to have some fun? And one male parrot looks over to the other male parrot and exclaims, put the beads away. Our prayers have been answered. So prayer can get fixated. And we know it in the very daily ways that we get fixated on trying to get somebody's favorable attention or getting the job we want or please may my teen get into his first choice of colleges

or maybe more intense, may please save this marriage. So our prayers get focused and it's very natural that we fixate on whatever will soothe or make us feel better for the time being. But the truth is, if we paid attention to any of the places where we have really strong wants and paid attention, we'd start sensing what was underneath. So I share this story with you where a woman with a lifelong eating disorder remembered a pivotal moment when after running away from her home and being returned by the police, she'd asked her mother for mother loved her.

And the response was, how could anyone ever love you? So this wasn't new. Her mother had, through her childhood, filled her with ugly critiques and messages of her badness. And this took, it hardened and took decades to heal. So in writing about her youth, this woman described the following bedtime ritual. Okay, so listen to this one. From the age of five or six until I was well into my teens, whenever I had trouble sleeping, I would slip out from under my covers and steal into the kitchen

for a bit of bread or cheese which I would carry back to bed with me. Then I'd pretend my hands belonged to someone else, a comforting, reassuring being without a name, an angel perhaps. The right hand would feed me little bites of cheese or bread and the left hand stroked my cheeks and hair. My eyes closed. I would whisper softly to myself, "'There, there, go to sleep. You're safe now. Everything will be all right. I love you.'"

So like this woman, we all have in some way get hooked on substitutes. We deeply want to feel loving presence, connection here. But we get hooked on substitutes for love. And food is a common one, easily entangled as a source of nourishment. For many of us, I think many, many, many of us have eating disorders to some degree. But other types of fixations too. And I imagine that for this woman in the story, recalling the ritual with her nighttime angel served as a real true awakening on the path.

You know, getting that underneath all the years of fixating on food, there's this part of her that just wanted to sense, it's all right, I love you, feeling loved, feeling belonging. So D.H. Lawrence writes this. He says, men are not free doing just what they want. Men are only free when they're doing what the deepest self likes and there's getting down to the deepest self. It takes some diving. So what allows us to dive? What allows us to go under our habitual fixations to really get to the deepest part of our being

and what that part really longs for? And not as a thought but to actually feel the longing because that's what energizes us. Ask the friend for love. Ask them again. I found that every heart will get what it prays for most. If we get in touch with what matters, our life starts becoming aligned. So how do we drop in? Now, sometimes the dropping in happens spontaneously.

There are times, and I think of it is when we sometimes get backed up against the wall, sometimes everything collapses in our life. and we just are so raw and so in touch with what matters we just from that place we reach out from that depth of it we reach out and we discover something that we had not touched because we had not been so in touch and that's what happened to Ram Dass

when he had a stroke many of you know Ram Dass used to be called Richard Alper that was his given name major teacher of my generation, spiritual teacher, many types of spiritual trainings that he had been exposed to, but at the moment of his stroke, he lay on this gurney, you know, on this, and looks at the pipes at his ceiling,

and no uplifting thoughts or inspiration comes to him. Nothing he's ever trained in, you know, no mantra, no mindfulness, no thoughts of compassion, nothing worked. Okay? And then over the next days, oh, by the way, when nothing worked, this is what he puts it, he summarizes looking back at that crucial moment, he says, I flunked the test. It's like you've done decades of practice in concentration and mindfulness,

and nothing works at the crucial moment. So he said, I flunk the test. But then over the next days he's in physical anguish and powerlessness and despair, And he said, he began to pray to Maharaji, who was his guru, who had died decades ago, but that had been the place of the deepest experience of unconditional love. So he began praying to Maharaji. And he said, I talked to my guru's picture and he spoke to me and he was all around me. He was there as fully as ever.

And Ramdas felt completely surrounded by and filled with loving presence. and it was from then on that he had a way to then deal with the fact that his life was utterly different now because of the stroke. In that moment of fear and separation he had to reach out to what I call an enlarge belonging, to something he intuited his love but it was not in that moment accessible inside him. if the challenge is well but isn't that dualistic to be reaching out, the reality is we spend many moments living in a dualistic reality. If we're honest with ourselves, many moments there's a sense of me and here and a world out there.

And so our starting places when we feel the fear and loneliness to reach towards what we think can be of help. And in that reaching we come home to the love. love that was here but hidden. Now people will ask, you know, but I'm not always up against the wall. How do I start getting in touch with that tenderness when it's just the habitual wants that drive my daily life? You know, we're not necessarily struck by a stroke. How do we start opening to that authentic heart that really is the power and the spiritual path? And I'll give you an example. The answer is we always start right where we are.

And I'd like to give you an example in my life where I got caught in a very narrow fixation. And this was when my son was in junior high school and then high school. He, like many of his friends, he loved video games, violent video games. He loved rap music with violent lyrics. He loved paintball and he liked violent action movies. And part of the time I'd go around thinking, what did I do wrong? But I mean I was very, very aversive.

I just wanted him to be different. So my wanting was fixated on. I really want him to have different tastes and not be into this and be into something, you know. And so when I started investigating, I started where I was and started listening to that want. You know, there was a sense of I wanted him to be different because then I'd be less guilty or ashamed

of having brought him up wrong in some way. or then I also wanted him different because I was afraid for his happiness. You know, he won't be happy if these are his tastes and that's what he follows. And that was that piece in it. But then I went deeper and realized underneath that want was I want him to be different so we can be closer. Because as long as this is what he's into and I'm not into it, there's a distance and I wanted him to be more like me so we could be closer.

and that his activity made me feel distanced. So I started paying attention to that and realized I had this longing just to feel more of our loving connection and I felt like that was distancing me. And the more I paid attention to that, this part of asking the friend for love, just feeling okay, so it's about wanting

to have more loving connection. The more my heart relaxed and I was able to set the boundaries that I needed to as a parent because there were certain boundaries I need to set on how much video game watching but I stopped making him wrong for his tastes you see I was actually making him feel bad about himself for just what he was into

and he was into it because he was a male and he's in this culture and that's what he was into and he's still into video games that I can't stand like he drags me into look at them and say look you'll appreciate the graphics They're incredibly sophisticated and beautiful. And I'll look and I'll see people like creaming each other and blood spurting

and still not like it, but it's different because now he not just likes video games, he also, his tastes have broadened and he likes some of the things I like and it's not an issue in that way. But my point is this, that whenever we

have a charged want, like a really charged want, if we listen deeply, we're going to find underneath that charged want, something very pure and powerful and important. But we have to take the time to dive deeply. So I want to invite you to take a moment and do a brief reflection tonight. I'd like you to send something going on in your life where you have a strong want. Something strong, compelling.

It may be a want to change your partner in some way. Maybe it's a want for financial security, or for a certain person to return your affections, or to make it in some job or business venture, or to change the appearance of your body. Maybe you want someone's approval. Send something strong that you want that's charged and whatever it is that you're wanting. see if you can trace back a little to what's underneath it. You might ask, well, if I got that, if this person changed or I succeeded in this venture

or had more financial security or got this approval, what would I get? Maybe what you're wanting is to get rid of a fear of something. What would I get if I didn't have that fear or if this person changed? In other words, what do you really want? Are you wanting some peace so you can relax and enjoy your moments, belong to your moments? Are you wanting somebody to change so you can feel your connection more, your love more, as I did?

Are you wanting to change yourself so you can be more at home in yourself so you can just relax and enjoy your life? You can peel the onion by just continuing to sense with your heart, well what would that really give me? What do I really want? Usually we find there's some kind of homecoming that we're yearning for to be at home in our lives and in our heart. You can continue this process on your own.

I just read you from Srinargarata and Indian teachers says the problem with you is not that you have wants or desires but that you desire so little. Why not desire at all? Why not want complete fulfillment, joy, freedom? Ask the friend for love. Ask him again. for I have learned that every heart will get what it prays foremost. Okay, open your eyes if you'd like.

So then the inquiry comes. We've talked a little bit about how do we arrive a little more at longing when we're just in our daily fixations. What about when we're really up against the wall and afraid and feeling alone? And it just doesn't happen as easily as it happened for Ram Dass. What about the times we're really, really stuck and we need help? And here I share with you one friend, Francie, who had metastasized breast cancer, and she had been on the spiritual path a very long time and had an idea about how to go through this process

in a way that was spiritual, an idea about it, about being brave and having faith and having strength. And her way of going through it meant that she couldn't really show her friends when she was scared. And so she got to feeling very isolated. And when we spoke, she started telling me about the amount of fear because it was clear that she wasn't going to have long. In fact, her doctors had told her she had no more than three months. How to work with that fear.

And I'm giving you this example because this is a really important one. Every one of us is going to lose all the beings we love, including this body, How do we turn to the friend and ask for love and ask for some sort of peace when we're really, really scared? So for her, I asked her to get in touch with the fear and what was the fear saying? And the fear was saying help. And that's usually what happens when we really are scared and there's something in us that's just going help, very big help.

And then I asked her to deepen her attention. and I asked her, what does that fear most want? If there was help, what does it want? And then she took some time. What is that fear want? What is it most need? And if it could say it in words. And the words were very simple, three words.

Please love me. Please love me. And I asked her, who do you want to address that to? What's the source of it? Who do you most want to love you? and it was her mother who had passed away a while ago. And I had her say it out loud, please love me. And I invited her to sense,

what would it be like if you felt that love? Okay? And she said, if I felt it, it would be like I was in my mother's arms. So she said it out loud and imagined feeling that love. And then I said, who else? And so she went through a process. And then we took probably 15, 20 minutes, where she was thinking of all the different people,

and it included her dog, where she just wanted to say, please love me, and feel embraced by their love. And all her friends, her dog, she said, please love me to the trees that she loved the most on her property. Please love me, please love me. First she was saying it, and she was whispering it,

and then she was saying it out loud, and then it was slower and slower, but she had started it and she was sobbing, but she got very quiet, and she was just going, please love me, and there would be a period of silence, and you just feel the wash happening of just being held and embraced.

At the end, she told me that she said, the world is loving me, and now there's just love. And for those last, it wasn't three months, it really turned out to be more like one month. But for that last month, she let her friends hold her. she, in letting her friend's holder, had a heart that was as wide as the world, she was holding them,

she found a refuge of great peace. But it started from just letting that longing of her heart, please love me, be spoken. This is Rumi. Cry out. Don't be stolid and silent. Cry out. Cry out with your pain. Lament.

and let the milk of loving flow into you. So there's a power to prayer, that when we feel the longing and we reach out from that longing, there's a power, there's a profound receptivity in those moments. This is John O'Donohue, who I feel has taught me more about prayer than anyone else. John O'Donohue, Catholic, poet, writer, passed away about four years ago or three years ago. This is what he says. Prayer is the voice of longing.

It reaches outwards and inwards to unearth our ancient belonging. So we sense with Francie how she reached inward to feel her longing to inhabit it. Please love me, please love me. How it reached outward, she sensed the source what she was longing for. and unearth that ancient belonging, that it's the bridge. Prayer is the bridge from longing to belonging. When we want something, if you want something, you can only manifest what you already have.

You can't pray for something unless you already know it from the inside. You can't pray for love unless something in you intuit its love. You have to know about it. You can't pray for peace unless you can't pray for peace, unless there's something in you that knows about peace, knows to pray for it. Does that make sense? That there has to be an intuition of what you're praying for. And so it's almost like when you're feeling a longing,

you trace it back to its source. And you come back to that place to you that already knows, that the gem is already embedded in the longing. Jesus says, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you've received it. In other words, feel the longing.

Imagine receiving it. Imagine it. Image in. And it'll already be there. Because it always was there. You just forgot. I'd like to share with you a Dominican nun who had been practicing for many, many years. And she said that as a nun, I made up this question, especially as I

learned more about prayer. And her question was, where is Jesus now? Like in any moment, where is Jesus now? She says, Jesus would come to me at night as a strong, comforting spirit. On many occasions, a spiritual ecstasy rushed through every part of my body. I couldn't really talk about it, though I felt radiant and profoundly fulfilled, he flooded my heart with such love. To some it might sound like heresy, but Jesus is here among us in every human and every stone, in our deeds, in our successes, and our errors. What a beautiful kingdom to awaken to, the divine presence in the world. So it's really a practice of mindfulness.

Where is Jesus now, like this moment, what we're longing for? Isn't it really here? asking that question. So what I'm really exploring with you tonight is living prayer. It's not a mechanical prayer. It's not a habitual ritual from a formal religion. It's an experiment. And I'm exploring with you tonight

because in the last three, four, five years it's become an increasingly central part of my practice that sometimes I'll be practicing paying attention, but at other times it's really getting in touch with that longing and expressing it and living from it. And what I found is that the deeper the longing is, the more powerful the prayer and the more powerful the experience that comes out of it.

And so part of it's an experiment about how to get in touch with that longing. The times for me that I am most turned towards prayer are usually when I'm feeling sick, when I'm feeling physically sick, and I've shared a number of times here that I've had a lot of chronic sickness and at times it gets to the point that there's a profound uncertainty about what will I be able to do, will I ever get better, can I count on being well enough to do certain things I've planned to do? When I hit real uncertainty, there's a lot of fear and a lot

of aloneness in that. And so at those times when I practice prayer, it's a very deliberate and intense practice. And what I'll do is just as I describe with Francie is I'll say, okay, that afraid, alone place, what is it most want? What is it most need? And in some way it's the same. It needs to feel belonging. What I found is if I, more than anything in the world, when I'm feeling scared and alone, I want to trust that this body, this heart, this being belongs to loving awareness. That that's what I am. I want to trust that. It's like if I sometimes think of it this way, that if I had just a few minutes to live,

I knew I was going to die. More than anything, what would it be that if I could remember would hold everything for me? And what that would be was realizing and trusting that what I am is loving presence. that's what I belong to, that's what I am. So at those times that I'm scared, I will feel that longing to trust and remember that, and then I will call on loving presence. And for me, that's kind of an imagining of a field of light and warmth and love that surrounds me and then just absolutely bathing me.

So I'll call on and feel that sense of being bathed and surrounded and held in that. And then of just offering, it's as if I had two hands offering out, offering the pain, the fear, the longing, the loneliness into that field. And the more there's a sense of being bathed and the more there's a sense of surrendering into that field, there's no longer a separation, there's no longer loving presence out there. It's not like a deity that's distant. There's just a sense of belonging to love, that that's what I am. But I share this with you because it doesn't start there.

It starts with prayer. It starts with a sense of separation and longing and reaching towards that and imagining that. Rilke writes, I yearn to be held in the great hands of your heart. Oh, let them take me now. Into them I place these fragments my life and you God spend them however you want. So I began tonight with this description or context of intention and attention, that if we have a deep intention, whether it's to belong to loving presence, or to touch peace, are to

fulfilling the complete potential of this being human, which to me is no different than anything else we describe on the spiritual path to fulfill our potential. If we have a longing, if it's a passion of the heart and we remember it regularly, that's what will happen. It drives our attention, it directs our attention. When we're in trouble, when it's difficult as I've described in a few stories, there's that sense of loneliness or fear, just a sense what that place wants and really inhabit the wanting. Cry out as Rumi says.

Lament. Stay awake as you do it. Imagine the loving pouring in. Imagine it. If you can imagine it, it happens. So there's this dimension of prayer where we're reaching out and then there's a dimension of prayer where we're feeling that fullness and it's overflowing and there's that us which just sees the beauty of the sunset or the gleam in a child's eye and just is feeling

this gratitude and praise. There's a story of Kabir, a shoemaker, and as he works, he's always repeating the mantra, Ram, Ram, Ram is God or the divine. Day in and day out, 20 years, and one day, Ram appears. And Ram says, and Kabir sees Ram, and he says, Who are you? And he goes, I'm Ram.

So, then he says, well, why are you here? And Ram says, why am I here? You've been calling me for years. Now I've come. What do you want? You know? And so Kabir says, well I don't want anything and and Ram says why have you been repeating my name and Kabir just said I just love repeating your name and so for the years to come

whenever wherever Kabir would go he'd be followed by Ram and the sound Kabir Kabir Kabir Kabir so there's just this prayerfulness that comes from appreciating life just celebrating what's here and and and there's a quality with that of really offering the benefits of our practice, of offering our blessings. One of my friend's mothers, she's now, I think 94, an hour each day she prays and what she does is she includes everyone in her circle, which is hundreds and she just offers blessings. You know, feel love, feel happy, be healthy, love, love, love.

She just offers it and, you know, she's now she's, in hospice care, incredibly peaceful, happy person. And there's a sense that there's no loneliness when our hearts are generous. This is the other aspect of prayer. They're very related. So we ask and we just open ourselves to receive the blessings and we offer out the blessings like breathing in and breathing out. And we'll close on that note with a brief reflection.

I'd like to take some of the elements of what we've just done, and this will give you a chance to see how it is for you. If you've been sitting for a long time, you're uncomfortable with your chair, just move around a little and find your way of sitting for these last maybe three minutes or so, four minutes, where we'll explore a little of this living prayer. And if prayer is not something that's a familiar part of your life,

just bring your wise and open curiosity. just openness, attitude of experiment to this little meditation. Just letting yourself arrive. You might feel your breath. And as you connect with the inflow and outflow, just relax a little bit. That parts of your body that might have tightened relax. And as we often do, just to invite whatever might be challenging in your life, just invite that to come into consciousness,

some difficulty that you'd like to have more freedom around. It might be something that brings up fear, something that makes you feel a sense of failure, great sorrow that you're struggling with, perhaps anger. In my sense, what's most difficult about this, what are you afraid it's going to happen? How does this take away from your life?

So that you can contact a bit in your body, your throat, your chest, your belly, the words living in you, the sense of maybe tightness or fear or hurt, upset. And this meditation, it might be that you can't fully contact it right now, but it'll give you a sense of how to practice just to feel into where it's difficult and just sense what is this place in me really most need or want? What is this place in me want to trust or to experience? from the inside. Perhaps it's a sense of just being cared about or loved,

being safe, being connected, being at home and yourself, trusting your own goodness. What do you need to trust or know or feel or experience? You might for a moment visualize that you are moving up a path up a mountain and you're feeling this difficulty is in your heart, you're aware of it, you're on a trail, if you're not visual just to get a sense of this,

and you're kind of winding up through trees, maybe there's a stream, but you're moving up a mountain, and that when you get to a clearing, and there will be a clearing, that whatever you perceive as perhaps the source of what you need will be there. And it may be that what's there is a formless sense of presence,

intelligence, love, or it might be a form, it might be that there's a being there that can be a source for you of what you need. A Buddha or Jesus, Mother Mary, Divine Mother, some embodiment. It may be that what's there is a part of nature or a dog, maybe what's there is a being on this earth like the Dalai Lama or could be Mother Teresa is there. being that's past. So just sense coming to a clearing and having some form or formless being, a quality of being there, that could be a source for you of what you need, that this being is welcoming you, that being sees you, cares about you, so that you come close, you can see the eyes of this

being if there's a form, filled with love. Just imagine coming into stillness. imagine receiving what you most need. Imagine receiving the reassurance, the light, the love, the peace, the clarity. Give yourself the gift right now of imagining what you need and receiving it. Like feeling it pour into you, bathe you. If it's love, let it wash through every cell and the spaces between the cells, you might feel that you can surrender into loving presence, merge with loving presence, or with peace, and it feels difficult and you feel separate, simply ask to experience what you want to experience with the sincerity of your heart

and just keep asking tonight, tomorrow, the next day, because this is a life practice. Prayer gets deeper and stronger over time. Ask the friend for love. Ask him again. For I have found that every heart will get what it prays for most. And together we offer our aspiration that all beings everywhere might awaken to the goodness and love that's their very nature.

awaken to the intelligence, awaken to the freedom that's innately our birthright, that all beings everywhere might touch great peace, that there be peace on earth and peace everywhere, may all beings realize their potential and be free. Namaste. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.