Tara Brach - Awakening Consciousness in Shadowy Times - Part 2 (2016-11-02)

Episode Date: November 4, 2016

Awakening Consciousness in Shadowy Times - Part 2 - The shadow is the unfaced, unlived fears and emotional pain in our individual and collective psyche. When not brought into awareness it expresses as "no" - the anger, aggression, hopelessness and cynicism that is resisting and opposing life. In this talk we explore how to evolve our consciousness by bringing "yes" - clarity and loving acceptance - to the parts of our being we have been unwilling to feel. This loving "yes" reconnects us to our basic goodness and helps others do the same. 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. The last class we did, the title was Awakening Consciousness in Shadowing Times. And the notion is not that these are especially shadowy because I think all times are shadowy. But I did decide to turn this into a two-part series. just because it is a time that people are kind of noticing the shadow. And so last time we explored a little bit on how to relate to the fear and anger and deceit that feels thick right now,

especially in our current times of having what my husband has called electile dysfunction. So we'll look at it and we've been exploring a little societally, but primarily individually when we're caught in trance and caught in reactivity, and we know that there's unconscious forces we're not really attending to, how do we pay attention to them? How do we wake up? And social scientists have said that fear is seven times as likely as any other attitude to spread socially,

and so it is internally. We have a survival negativity bias, and as soon as something's tripped off, it's very quick that we get looping in fear and get looping and reactivity. So, in order to evolve individually and societally, to counter that negativity bias, we really need to wake up presence,

wake up mindfulness and wake up love. That's the antidote. We'll continue the inquiries I mentioned, and I'd like to begin by naming what I think is one of the most toxic and corrosive, expressions of the shadow, which is cynicism. And I'm real aware of it. I see it in myself, I see it in many of us that it's kind of a default place to go to when things seem horrible, that we get cynical. There was one story of a linguistics professor who was lecturing about,

and he says in English two negatives can make a positive. And he says, but in some languages, for instance, Russian, two negatives still remain a negative. However, there's no language where two positives make a negative. And then a voice from the back piped up, yeah, right. And that's the vibe of it's kind of a been there, done that, jaded, yeah, right kind of thing. And deep down, cynicism is really an expression of fear. It's a mistrust in others' motives. and it's a kind of a giving up of hope.

And I want to say that when we talk about shadow and we talk about cynicism, we talk about politics right now, I'm not referring to the shadow belonging to any one party or any one person. Really, the shadow is an expression of unconscious fear, fear that has not been faced and felt and uncovered. It's universal.

It's everywhere. It's in you and me and all of us. And the spiritual path is waking up to the shadow. It's just saying, oh, okay, it's here, let's look. So we're not controlled and identified with it. Instead, it's held in consciousness. When there's cynicism, one of the tendencies in cynicism is,

I don't want to belong to that system because I don't like it because it's all messed up. and to me that's again another shadow response in a way that's the out if we want to wake up we have to participate and be responsible too which means voting I mean not voting is a sign of cynicism of lack of hope and so part of what I'd like to explore tonight is the importance of not withdrawing and reacting to

to the shadow with more shadow. Okay? Does that make sense? Okay. How to stay engaged. We tend to either back down or just go into a thing of, oh, it all sucks. You know, it's like when there's this little cartoon of dogs in a conversation and one saying, well, I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking. So, on a personal level, we get a personal level, we get a little bit more,

cynical and jaded towards what drives others. We kind of see everybody as though they're all after their own good and so on they're all going to take advantage of us. But our deepest cynicism is usually towards ourselves. And I see that a lot, people carrying a kind of general cynical view towards their own motives and so on. I don't really trust myself kind of a thing. One person in a course I was teaching asked, why should I forgive? myself, I'll just do it over and over again. The bad behavior. Okay?

That's cynicism. That's no trust in our own goodness and capacity to grow. There's an exercise I sometimes do where it's called, where we kind of explore the acts of kindness that we have done in our lives and then in a group share, just have different people share acts of kindness. And then when we debrief on the exercise, inevitably a good number of people say, well, I can tell you an act of kindness. But if you look at my motives, I was really just trying to feel good about myself, be a good

person, look good to others. It's never just pure kindness. And that's part of our cynicism, that there's a sense of I'm never really doing it right, I'm really never doing it enough. You know what I mean? We get caught in that. It's like it's one of the trance states that it's the deepest for us, is sensing that we can anywhere we look see that we're not enough or our motives have a mix in them that we don't

really like. I love the story of these kindergartners on a bus together, I think they're being dropped off from school or whatever, and one little girl brings a driver a handful of peanuts. And he's surprised and touched and says thanks. and 10 minutes later, she's back with another handful of peanuts. And when it comes to the third time, he says, honey, just you and your friends, you can share and enjoy them. And her response was, oh no, we just like sucking the chocolate off of them.

So the truth is we do have marbled intentions. And there's no question. We have part of us that's always on this good person project, we want to look good to the world, and that's going to be part of the way we act. But there's more. And when we're cynical or when we're looking at how we're falling short, we're forgetting the truth, the real truth of the fact that we do love and we do want to be loved and

we do care about our world. We're forgetting that in the moments of cynicism. It's a very narrow state. So the key to shifting is to begin to pay attention and notice that. trance and also notice what we're missing. You know the newspapers fixate on what is going to be, you know, tinsulating, scandalous, bring up all the emotions of fear and we don't get so much the goodness. There was a story that was different a handful of weeks ago in the Washington Post and

I'll bet a number of you caught it because it really was quite touching. And this was a story about a Georgetown business student who spent a lot of time after hours at school on a project and he ended up befriending one of the university janitors and who was an immigrant from Jamaica and they got to know each other and the janitor instead of being in a role of janitor became a real person and the student instead of being in the role of student became a real person. And so he discovered in this guy,

his creativity and his ambitions, his talents. And it awakened him this whole process of being aware of all the invisible workers on campus that all had a story and a heart and humanity and dimensionality. And so he began doing this fundraising to be able to help those that were less advantaged than the students begin to manifest more of their creativity.

It's called Unsung Heroes. And with this particular janitor, who's a real talented cook, it helped him open a catering business, which had been his dream when he left Jamaica. So they're hoping this will spread. And I share it now, again, because we're talking about how to respond to the shadow that it's part of our evolutionary potential and direction

to move from this kind of fear-based identity with my own tribe, my own group, to really sensing that others are not unreal others, real beings, subjective beings, that like us, want to wake up and have hearts and want to be free and want to be creative and connect. So we move from this separateness to this sense of belonging and collaborating and compassion. And this is the capacity of our most newly evolved part of our brain. This part of our brain when we wake it up is not cynical

because it senses possibility, it senses where we can go. When we talk about waking up and again if you use the brain as a model, as a model, the triune brain, and you see, you know, we got the reptilian and the limbic. And when we're caught in that, we're coming from an unconscious, fear-driven place, and we're going to look at the world like suspicious of motives, bad other, doubt, fear, violence. And when we start activating the prefrontal cortex, it's not like the fear and the aggression go away, but they don't dominate us. And instead we begin to live from a larger sense of our connection and we can notice the shadow but not be driven by it. So I want to explore

with you the two wings of mindfulness and compassion and how they can shine a light on the shadow and transform our identity and how that leaks out. And I was start by the light of the shadow and how we'll start by saying that if you think of it that recognizing is one of the two wings, this capacity of our frontal cortex to notice what's going on so that rather than being inside the fear, we're saying, oh, okay, fear's going on. And the second wing, which is allowing, actually says yes to what's here. Rather than saying, oh, fear is bad or I don't want to feel this, the yes is an acknowledgement of reality. This is what's here right now. In the moment that we resist our grasp, we're identified. In the moment that we recognize and allow, we start

inhabiting a more whole and integrated space of awareness. So that's the direction. And meditation, is the training of activating these two wings. So back to cynicism. Synecism is a way of saying no. And the reason I'm spending time on it is because it's one of the most unseen ways that we narrow and basically say, oh, it's bad or I'm bad.

I want to read you from Stephen Colbert. And you laugh, and this is one of the most serious things he's ever written, ever written, but here we go. He says, cynics don't learn anything. I think he must have been commenting on his character, but anyway. He says, because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt or disappoint us. Cynics always say no.

But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. yes leads to knowledge. Yes is for young people, young in spirit. So for as long as you have the strength to say yes, it's a good one, right? So again, the meditation, path of meditation and really what we're exploring together in this class and in general is how do we evolve ourselves. So rather than being a naysayer that's really trying to control things and get away from what's unpleasant, we have this remembrance in our heart and mind. They can say this too and say yes to what's here. It deconditions cynicism. It gives you access to presence

and to love and to aliveness. Okay, so we're going to look a little further. our saying no is typically unconscious. It's part of our primal conditioning. You know, whenever there's something unpleasant that goes on, our initial reflex, just like a few-celled creature when it's poked, well, that's our no. So when you feel unpleasant, as your body tenses against it, and your mind starts getting busy,

trying to work out a way to solve it, your heart tightens up, and usually you do behaviors to get away from it. So we have a no that goes voop, just like that. The limbic operates really, really quickly. It's like way slower, this frontal cortex that goes, wait a minute, you're saying no, you're tightening up, you're blaming yourself, you're blaming another person, but you don't have to do that. That's slower.

So meditation trains us to catch on more quickly to our no, all right? So it's typically it's our resistance to whatever's uncomfortable. not just unpleasant, but uncomfortable, or unfamiliar, or unpleasant. And right away, there's a perception that something's wrong and typically we're reacting to our no with another no. We end up going into fight, flight, freeze and then we don't like ourselves for it. Tiny little example. Teacher asks her class of small pupils to tell about their acts of kindness to dumb animals.

There were several heart-stirring stories. When it was Tommy's turn, he said proudly, well, I once kicked a boy for kicking a dog. And that's the example of, so we have a no and then we do a no to the no. It's like somebody acts in a bad way and then we hate them for it. It's a no to a no.

So what turns a no into yes is mindfulness, which is intentionally recognizing what's going. on? Okay, what's happening inside me? So you're actually tracking for your nose. How's my body contracting? How am I not liking what's here? It's really, really powerful if you want to deepen mindfulness to not only notice what's going on, let's say sadness or fear or anxiety or whatever's going on inside you, not just to notice it but notice your attitude towards it. It's the feeling tone. It's called Vedana in Pali. If you don't just notice

the fear but notice I don't want this fear here, disliking the fear, then you're including more in awareness. Your awareness is more awake. Okay, so the first step is recognizing what's going on and the second step is to practice yes. And yes, saying yes starts, it doesn't start by going, yes, I love this, I want this to be here, I'm going to embrace and cozy up to my fear. It doesn't start like that. When we're feeling fear, the typical thing is there's some of us going no. So the beginning is saying yes to our no. Okay? Well, you're basically allowing, okay, the fear's here and the not liking the fear is here. You're just recognizing and making room for that. So there's just the slightest bit of a little more space, agreeing to

offer space and not do anything. That's the beginning of something. saying yes. Because otherwise you'd be making a leap you can't make. You can't go from no to yes artificially. All you can do is recognize the no, let's say the fear and the tension, recognize you don't even want to be there with it and say, okay, that's all going on. I'm just going to pause for a moment. That's the beginning of yes. And then if you hang in there, the recognizing gets deeper because this is the capacity of mindfulness to start really noticing all the different layers

oh not only is there fear there's a belief that I'm never enough and that others are going to reject me and then deep down underneath that I'm going to be all alone oh that's that ache of loneliness so you keep going you recognize and the yes keeps going deeper

It goes from just allowing like, okay, I get this is here, I'm not going to do anything, to a profound tenderness. So this is the process. I'm describing right now is the two wings of awareness and how they start deepening and deepening. They're not linear. In other words, you don't always say, okay, I'm going to recognize what's going on and then I'm going to bring the yes. Sometimes something goes on and you immediately find a way to connect to yes, to bring some kindness in, and that actually helps you to be there and then recognize more deeply.

Are you following me on this, these two wings? It can go either way. You can recognize and then bring kindness or you can bring kindness which then lets you recognize. Example. There's been a lot of research where people will be hooked up to and there'll be some fearful stimulus like some shock or something, mild shock. And there's research showing the power of holding somebody's hand when you're feeling fear. The holding the hand is the yes.

It's giving connection. It's in some way activating love. So when you're feeling fear and you do the yes of activating love, what happens? limbic system quiets down. So the wing of love of yes helps to quiet the limbic system. I have a friend Dan Gottlieb who for many years had a radio show from Philadelphia and his story shows the power with these two wings when it starts with the wing of the yes of belonging and connection. And the way his story goes is that when he was a young psychosovoys, he was a young psychotherapist. He got into a horrific car accident and he ended up quadriplegic when he was in the

you know, he was in the ICU and he started getting it what his life was going to be like. He went into a deep, deep despair and he didn't want to live. Then he describes how for about a week in when he was just in the grip of that, a nurse that knew he was a psychologist came in and shared some of her troubles with him. And they spoke some. And she talked about a relationship that was going down and so on. And he was able to say, I know how it is. I know how it is to feel like your life is going downhill.

And just was with her in a really, really caring way. And when she left, she said, you know, something really really. terrible, feels like it lifted. I'm feeling different. And it was a moment he could never forget because he said he closed his eyes and he said, if I can help, I can live with this. And that's something I've never forgotten. Because here he was facing a life that for most people would seem really, really challenging. A lot of loss, huge, huge loss. And that wing of knowing belonging, a larger belonging, if he could be part of something larger, if he could help, he could then be with this, he could live with it.

So that's an example of it can go in either direction. So whether the attitude of know is like really core, like no, I don't want to even live, or whether it's kind of more towards myself, no, I can't stand the way I'm behaving or no, I can't stand the way you're behaving, or whether it's towards society that know of cynicism that says, oh, everybody's just out for themselves and, you know, it's no, you know, it's all trash, it's all going south. In the moment of no, we're in a limbic trance. our mind state is being dominated by our limbic system.

We are disconnected from the parts of our being, our brain and our mind and heart that really knows something larger. We're disconnected, we're in a trance. And so that's when we begin and we get the signal of no. You get more and more familiar with your no. So you go, oh, okay, I'm caught, I'm in a trance. Anytime you're emotionally suffering, you're in a trance. In some way you're at odds with reality.

You're believing something that's not true and you're resisting something. That's a signal. Okay, let's bring out the two wings of awareness. Now, for most of us, the training that seems to be most effective, and I use rain to capsulize it with the two wings, is to recognize and allow what's going on, and then you deepen the two wings, the two wings by investigating and offering nurturance. And I'll give you an example of one man

who got caught in kind of that shadow trance and how he did it. He was, when he was in grammar school, he was bullied. So here he is and he winds up with a supervisor who's really a bully, who basically uses threats and demeaning people in the team and so on to try to control things. And for this man, it brought up a very, very old place of feeling intimidated and enraged. So he realized that he was in the grip of the shadow. Like there was something he really needed to face and feel and be with in order to find his power again. So he started practicing the two wings in the form of rain and he did it at home. You know, he described going home and he would be prepping a report and he'd know that he was going to get trashed by this guy

because just nothing was ever enough, you know, so he would say, okay, let's recognize what's going on here. They are. And when you're recognizing this first wing, it's like you're calling on that witness part of you to just look and say, what is happening inside me right now? That incredible question. And I find it really helpful with the witnessing yourself when you pause and you realize you've been caught in the shadow and a trance of some sort.

Even to imagine that the witness is in front of you in a bubble little looking, so you're kind of like putting your awareness like this and looking back at yourself and seeing this whole looping of the kind of thoughts you're having of I'm never enough and this person's going to treat me this way and I'm going to be rejected and the kind of feelings that are going on in your body. see the whole mix from that witness place. So he did the recognizing and he saw his angry thoughts. He recognized he was seeing his supervisor as a really mean enemy and his feeling of powerlessness so he could so he's witnessing the know all the ways he's contracting.

And then he allows, again from that witnessing place it's just like let that all be there. Let's really stop. Allowing is like stop all the reactivity and just be with what's here. Let it be here for now. And then from that it allows the deepening of the two wings. I, let's investigate the eye. And with the eye, you know, if you're witnessing looking down at yourself, the eye you have to get inside yourself. So it's like that, that awareness, spreads and it's around you and it's inside you see you're feeling the fear from the inside out and investigating. What does it really feel like? And what you'll find with investigating is that whatever you begin to bring your full attention to, it starts unfolding and there

may be something else that wants attention. And for him the anger turned to fear and turned to shame, that there was a sense of weakness, like a fundamental sense of I'm just not not okay. He wouldn't be treating me this way. I wouldn't have been bullied back then if I was okay. So it went down to a very young place of feeling weak and ashamed. That's the eye. And then the nurture, the nurture is the swing again of love. For nurturing, he wanted to call on the most loving part of himself and the most loving part of himself came out with his son, because with his son he could be a very protective and strong and caring presence. With his son he kind of brought that empowerment and blessing. So he called on that

father within him that could be with his son and sense that that's the more evolved part of him, just really in some way holding him and giving him strength and encouragement and care. That was the nurturing. In those moments where he felt that nurturing coming in, that nurturing presence, he started sensing that the who he was was no longer the bullied little kid or the intimidated person working for somebody. But he more felt that he was inhabiting that awareness that was empowered and caring and awake. In other words, by paying attention to the shadow with these two wings, he woke up to

that awareness that's bigger than the shadow. And that's the promise, that's the invitation of the path, that when we're stuck, when we're caught by unfazed fear, unfaced shame, we have the capacity to activate these two wings of paying attention and wake ourselves up into who we really are. And we're no longer in that small identity, that limited self that we get hooked on. Just to finish up that story, he had a practice that many, many rounds when there's a core belief of, you know, there's something wrong with me and others are going to take advantage of me and bully me and so on, it takes many rounds.

But what he found was that the more he brought that kind of the father to his son to his own being, the more he felt empowered. And the effect at work was his boss was still a bully but it modified. It wasn't as much and he just was not as torqued by it which is really the idea he wasn't victimized anymore. So those are the steps basically and we're going to practice them in a few moments of when we feel caught and the way we know we're caught, we all know it's when we're repeating a pattern, we're in some way that we've done over and over again where we get triggered in a certain

situation and either we're blaming another person, blaming ourselves, withdrawn, we know those patterns, we're caught in the shadow. Let's try it out. Let's just take a moment. It never hurts to spend a few minutes bringing awareness to where we're caught. As you would within a meditation, begin by inviting yourself right here into the moment. Feel your breath and feel your presence. And bring to mind a situation where you're reactive, or in some way you end up turning against yourself

or turning against another person. Something that triggers you. It could be your own behavior, could be something another person says, could be something at work, another person's behavior. Where you know you go into know, where you contract,

where you get angry or blaming or hurt, turn the blame against yourself or the other. So rather than just feeling your feelings, you're saying no. situation like that and let yourself run that in your mind like a film but pause when you're right in the thick of it. You know that you're caught in that reactivity where you feel small and stuck and this is where you begin to just recognize what's going on and if it helps you to sense that you're

calling on that part of yourself that can witness what's going on. It helps to imagine you're kind of looking at yourself from above and in front of you from that vantage and just sensing the no thoughts, the thoughts that are in some way negative towards yourself or others. You're recognizing whatever feelings are predominant. It might be confusion or fear, doubt, sensations if you're aware of them. So you're recognizing the no. This is the limbic self from that witness place.

And from the witness place, let there be an allowing. Even if you don't like it, include that in what you're allowing. You're allowing all the thoughts and feelings are there and you're even allowing that you don't like that it's happening. You're just pausing and letting be. That'll let you begin to deepen that wing of recognition and turn it into investigating. And to investigate, let your awareness spread so you're surrounding

and infusing your whole body with awareness. So you're feeling from the inside out too. Just begin to investigate, what's really happening inside in this? What's the worst part of this from you? What's the emotion that you feel the strongest? It might be the question, what are you unwilling to feel? What's the most difficult thing about this?

Is it a feeling of fear or a feeling of shame? Is there some grief around loss? Investigate means you get very intimate with and in touch with what's going on inside your body, the felt sense that's there. And you continue to allow it to be there. It's as if you could let all the feelings that you're getting in touch with investigating, just let them float in something larger and bringing in that wing of nurturing.

just a deep yes, a very kind yes to anything you're experiencing, as if you could bathe in care. And sometimes it helps to feel that you're offering that kindness and love from the highest, most loving part of your being, your most evolved, awake heart for some of us, the sense of this is the future self, what you're becoming, that absolute unconditionally loving, loving presence can hold the pain and discomfort with tenderness. Or you can imagine someone that you know that's incredibly loving and imagine that their energy is flowing in and if it helps to put your hand on your heart to deepen the nurturing.

for many of us that helps. So you're really bringing this very loving and kind and wise attention to what's been the shadow, what's been unseen and unfelt. You're including it in the awareness that's really who you are. And you might sense as you let this presence and this yes to what's here be incredibly full and deep and profound, who you are when there's no resistance to what's here, who you are when there's just

presence and an unconditional yes. Okay, so now we're just going to last part of this class, we'll be widening this out to look at how when we say no how it influences the other people around us, because no is contagious. Remember, seven times more likely to have fear spread, right? Well, it's also contagious when we say yes, but when we say no, if we're saying no to ourself, if we say no to ourself in big ways, it's going to be a lot of defensiveness, our aggression, our rigidity with others. Even if we're not saying no to ourselves in a big way, even if it's a more subtle way,

like the know that I should be with you but I should be doing more to help you, I should with you but I should be being a better person. That's still a no, that's a not enough sense. And that has an effect on how we relate to other people. And I want to share a story about a friend of mine who was, I think it was in Haiti, that he went down to Haiti as part of a nonprofit that was helping out there after all the, not most recently, but after all the suffering and chaos. I think about eight years ago.

And he was accompanying an old man who had broken his hip to the emergency room. And this friend of mine, Phil, has a super high standard for himself. He really, really is into service and he really wanted to be of help. And this guy was in pain and he wasn't getting attention and there he was in the emergency room. So Phil describes his helplessness and not being able to provide relief. All he could do is hang out with him and keep him company. The no was, I'm not doing enough. At some point, someone handed the old man a bread roll.

And this is what Phil says, something miraculous happened. The old man broke his bread roll in half and stretched out his hand towards mine. An acute sense of surprise and embarrassment came over me. At first I refuse his offer insisting to eat it for surely he needed it more than I. But my feeble attempts to decline the gift were wholeheartedly dismissed as he pushed the bread into my hand, motioning me to eat. And so I did, me looking bewildered and humbled, and he looking quite pleased to share his meal with a near stranger. Now, what was happening here to me is really quite beautiful, that the shadow, the no, was a subtle one. Oh, I'm the helper, you're the helpie. I'm the fixer,

you're the patient. You're broken, I'm not. There's a subtle, distancing in the way he said no to himself is actually making this man unreal and other. And the man broke through that. He reached out. He reminded him of, here we are, we're just humans. And it made him feel good. And it actually brought them to a different level of consciousness and connection. It was a yes. What we're really exploring is the different domains of no and how to begin to find out and get familiar with your layers of it because we all have layers of contraction. And for some it's very, you can sense it physically where your body's armored. For some it's emotional reactivity, others' beliefs like I'm not enough. And for many of us

in relating not only to our society but to others around us there's a kind of cynicism about whether humans are really good or not. There's a kind of a doubt about others and doubt about ourselves. And our job in a way. And when I say job, I mean as beings that are waking up to evolve ourselves towards yes, to shine the light on where we get caught in our know. And we can see it sometimes it's remembering the yes with others, the way for Dan got leave, it just absolutely changed him.

And then we become with yes, less cynical, less defended, less aggressive. I love the way the story about Roberto DiVancisco went. This is an Argentino golfer. And he once won a tournament and he got a nice check for the tournament and smiled for the cameras, prepared to leave. and in the parking lot, he was really lovely new to this, a young woman approached her, congratulated him, and then told her that her son was seriously ill,

could be dying. She didn't know how she could pay the doctor's bills. So he's known as a gentleman. He was so touched by the story, he took his penny, endorsed the day's winnings to her, and he basically said, make some good days for the baby. A couple of weeks later, he's at another country club, and one of the officials came over and said,

that some of the boys in the parking lot at the last tournament had told him what happened about that young woman. He said, well, I have news for you, she's a phony. There's no sick baby. She had no children at all. She fleeced you, my friend. You mean there's no baby who's dying? said Roberto. That's right, said the official. Why, that's the best news I've heard all week. When we encounter someone who's cynical, we can feel the armoring. And when we encounter someone who's sincere, we begin to trust life. Sincerity is one of the most beautiful things we can find in ourselves or each other. It's a real expression of our evolving and waking up,

that we are sincere because we've taken. we're wasted and touched the goodness that can come through ourselves and each other. And we're dedicating ourselves to that. And dedicating ourselves to that means not that we let ourselves be taken advantage of. That's not the message. Of course we're intelligent and we take care of ourselves. But it means that we shine a light on where the greed and the hatred's playing itself out. And as we shine that light we bring as much presence and kindness

to it as possible so we can live from a larger space of being. I was mentioning how as we say yes to ourselves we naturally start saying yes to others and we actually begin to help others say yes to themselves and that's one of the gifts, this is the last thing I'd like to name in this talk, that that's one of the gifts on the spiritual path that we can offer is that we can not only say yes to the life and us, but we can help others see their own goodness and say yes to their beings too. I love the story, Anthony Demello, who's a Jesuit, a writer and a teacher priest, and he describes how when he was younger he really wanted to change himself.

He had all sorts of bad habits and all sorts of personality quirks that he didn't like me. He said, my friends didn't like it either. They all wanted me to change too. So, but then one of his very, very dear friend, I mean he was trying and trying and he just couldn't. He was just caught in his stuff. One of his very, very good friends finally said to him, you don't have to change. I love you just the way you are.

And then he changed. And it's really understandable that, you know, he was fixated on what was wrong and that kept on fueling the same pattern. And as soon as somebody reminded him of his essential goodness, he could start shining the light on what was wrong but it wasn't, didn't translate to you're a bad person, it just stopped. Wes Angelozzi says, go and love someone exactly as they are and then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves. Isn't that beautiful?

You might imagine as you leave tonight and those of you listening to the podcast, what would be like if that was your intention to really catch the know in yourself and offer just recognizing and tenderness and with others reflect and mirror the goodness so they can start saying yes to themselves so they can become the greatest truest version of themselves so we'll close as we opened if it will just take a a few moments to come home into the present. There's a very radical and simple practice you can do which is just to sit here and pause and notice what's going on and with whatever you notice the light and warmth of awareness

can hold and bathe and permeate this whole around. rising, changing flow of life. You might wonder how deep, how profoundly deep that yes can go. And to feel our shared prayer that this awareness right here can wake up to itself, to the love and light that's here and radiate outward, that all beings everywhere might hold their life with this quality of presence and kindness hold each other with this quality of presence and kindness, that we may wake up out of that sense of separateness,

aggression, defense, and discover our belonging that we might together bring healing and peace to our earth. I must stay and thank you for your attention. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.