Tara Brach - Awakening Through Conflict

Episode Date: April 25, 2014

2014-04-23 - Awakening Through Conflict - As long as we are identified as separate selves, we will inevitably experience conflict with others. If we learn to release blame and deepen attention to our embodied experience, conflict can become a portal for more loving, alive relationships and awakening into the fullness of our being.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Good evening. As I was driving here tonight, I was following a car on the beltway, and the bumper sticker said, less barking, more wagging. And I thought that kind of fits a little bit of what I'm talking about tonight. I taught this last weekend up at Karpalo, and I'm also teaching. a relationship seminar online right now. And one of the most compelling questions that keeps coming up really is,

how do we work with conflict? And of course, conflict is, there's all the different levels, that conflict with our cells and conflict with each other and so on. But the particular questions were things like, how do I keep my heart open and keep compassionate when I'm with somebody that's continuously wounding me and hurting me? Or questions like, how do I communicate and express my feelings about a lack of intimacy when every time I try to bring it up, my partner walks away in some way, you know, doesn't want to talk about it.

So these questions come up, they reminded me of one of the cartoons I have of a man and women are arguing, and he's saying, well, the Dalai Lama didn't have to put up with your whining. So the best relationships are not without us. conflict. They're not conflict-free. In fact, it's completely natural that conflict arises. It's like saying there's stress or that we have tension in our life. Conflicts happen. And they arise when we have competing strategies to meet our basic needs. So it's not the needs that cause the conflict. It's that our strategies for meeting them conflict. And I'll come back to the that. But the basic question really is, in terms of the spiritual path, is how are we in

relationship with conflict? I mean, do we try to ignore it or avoid it or pretend it's not happening? Or do we get totally identified, engaged, and have to be right? And then, of course, there's the option that we'll be exploring tonight, which is when conflict arises, is that kind of a wake-up bell saying, okay, so here's a place where there's some dividedness within me and between others. This is an opportunity to wake up, to enlarge my sense of being. Conflict is always a sign of that we've separated and gotten really fixed in a rigid way inside a kind of limiting sense of self. So it's a flag, it's a wake-up. They describe it sometimes as manure for Bodie, you know, Bodie's awakening. And so we're going to look

at the different ways that the teachings, the practices that we can bring to conflict, and it'll be most useful if you begin to sense a place in your life where you know you get caught on some level. It doesn't have, in fact, I won't suggest that it be where there's trauma, but more where you just sense that there's tension and a kind of repeating pattern of it with somebody else. In a way, our response to conflict is an evolutionary marker. And I think in terms of our development in an evolutionary way, that if we're primarily identified with our survival brain, with the reptilian and the limbic system,

if we're primarily in fight-flight freeze, we're going to be caught in a very rigid, inflexible style of dealing with conflict. And if our identity is expanded and we're resting more in that wholeness where we have access to our frontal cortex, the more recently evolved part of our brain, which gives us access to mindfulness and compassion, the compassion networks, we're going to have more flexibility. We're going to have more resourcefulness. And as many of you know, I like the kind of framing of what we're learning is a shift from fight, flight frees from that identity that's in that reactivity to attend and befriend.

Attend and be friend. So conflict arises when we have unmet needs, we all have basic needs for love, for safety, we have basic needs for understanding, for gratification. And when our basic needs are unmet, we find strategies to take care of them. And sometimes our strategies are wholesome and healthy and in mindful awareness, but very often if there's a lot of wounding and the needs that we have are really core needs and they're very much, we've been you know, in some way abandoned or neglected or abused, we've been, you know, in some way abandoned or abused, really early wounding, our strategies, which were initially the best we could do, become really maladaptive. And they're the ones that create the most obvious conflict

with others. So what are they like? I mean, when I talk about these maladaptive strategies, I often, I think Rita Rutner has a number of them that she describes and she talks about her grandmother. She says, my grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands. Two of them were only napping. So our strategies really, we're trying to be safe, we're trying to feel connected, but often we'll develop a very defensive armor. Some of our strategies are constantly to justify ourselves, to rationalize. We have strategies where we pretend a lot. We pretend we're different than we are. You know, we have to put on a front. We do guilt tripping. Just naming ones we all know. There's some deceit. We have different control

strategies. One story is of a devoted wife spending her lifetime taking care of her husband. And now he's slipping in and out of coma for several months. She stays by his bedside every single day. When he comes to his senses, he motions for her to come near him. So as she sat by him, he said, you know what, you've been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you were by my side. When we lost the house, you gave me support.

When my health started failing, you were still by my side. You know what? What dear, she asked gently, I think you bring me bad luck. So our primary strategy that ends up creating conflict is blame. And that's the one I'm going to be spending the most time on. Because whenever we feel an unmet need, whenever there's a sense of fear, anger, hurt, there's a part of us that feels that discomfort and has to figure out who's the cause or what's the cause. It's one of our most primary survival strategies to identify that.

the cause. And it's sometimes you and it's sometimes me and it's usually both on different levels. And so as we'll explore, blaming it's very deeply conditioned in our psyche and it gives an initial sense of control. We feel we've got a little control at least we know who's the problem. And it's a very, it's a false refuge because it creates more division and more insecurity and more mistrust and more behaviors that create distance. So the process of awakening through conflict, in other words, discovering a larger sense of our being, moving from the egoic self that's driven by our more primitive strategies,

to resting and more of a wholeness that really can regard with attending and befriending, that process, requires really deep attention to what's going on inside our bodies. The only way to wake up is by underneath these strategies are really strong emotions that need to be felt. And they're stuck. And as long as we're replaying patterns, if you're replaying patterns in your life

that are conflict that cause conflict, cause distance, if you're replaying them, that means there's a stuck emotion, underneath that hasn't been processed and digested. Emotions need to move. They need to be included in the whole system. So the beginning of this process of waking up through conflict has to do with commitment and intention. In other words, we won't pay attention unless something in us is committed to doing it

doing it because it's hard and it's uncomfortable. And I think of it as an evolutionary intention. And many of you've heard that inquiry, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? You can substitute, do you want to be right or do you want to be free? But our early, more primitive systems definitely want to be right and definitely want to be in control. And yet the more awakened part of us realizes that there's no freedom in that. Realizes that what we really want is to be resting in a sense of love and connection and truth. Doesn't need to hold on so tight to the position, okay?

So the beginning, as the Buddha said, that our entire life unfolds on the tip of intention. The beginning of awakening through conflict and not keeping on playing the old patterns is very consciously being committed to this kind of presence when conflict comes up where we're not holding on to being right, we're not holding on to blame. Okay, that's step one, having that intention. And then the second, because intention energize attention, is what in Buddhism is called bare attention. So let's say you're in a conflict with somebody

and there's blame flying around and we're in our tight, rigid position. Bear attention means this willingness to notice what's happening inside us and take away and strip it of all the interpretations and ideas and resentment and blame and just say what's happening is a feeling of heat, of swelling, of pressure, of tightness, there's fear, there's hurt. In other words, discovering what's going on in here, bear attention

means that we let go of the filters of our thoughts and contact exactly what's here. If we can, then we can begin to process what's here and express ourselves and communicate to others in a way that's not packaged in blame. And the main reason that when we communicate with others that it keeps the cycle of conflict is because our communication on some level, whether it's overt or energetically, says you're bad and you're wrong.

And then they get defensive and they do their strategy and then we feel worse and we throw out more blame. We have to cut through it. There's an understanding here that even when another person appears as the trigger of our misery, even when they really seem like they're the ones that are triggering it, the source of our painful emotions is inside us.

The source is we have a long history of where that was seated, a long history of feeling our needs weren't mad and playing out patterns so that we're ready to be triggered. And we could keep on getting rid of. of the present day triggers, it would not heal the emotion that's in us. It needs direct attention. Does that make sense? So the key movement of our attention, and I'm going to give you a kind of story as an example, when we're in conflict, is this, and it's deliberate and it takes courage, is moving from our story or narrative of blame into our own bodies. And we either do it when we're there with a person or we take a time out.

Often you have to take a time out. In fact, I was reading about one research study, a real interesting study, and I don't have the person's name right now, but I'll post it if I can, where couples were asked to talk about their most difficult issues. And they were plugged into physiologically, they're plugged into some sort of machine that was, was kind of measuring their agitation levels and so on, and whether their limbic systems were really going.

And so when they got to a really high level of agitation, the researcher said, oh, my machine's not working. Would you just take a break? We just need to take a break, and then we'll come back. And they had us sit quietly for 15 minutes. They came back, and they said, it's fixed now. Of course, that wasn't true. So they put the equipment back on.

and then resumed talking about the issue and their arousal level had gone down and they were able to come to some resolutions when we get triggered we're getting hijacked by our Olympic system we're caught in fight-flight freeze and anything we communicate from that place is going to have all of our strategies plus blame if we pause and we start bringing our attention inward and start either processing right on the spot or take a time out, takes about 15 minutes to absorb the, metabolize the adrenaline that gets stirred up anyway, then we can start accessing our frontal cortex. We can start accessing our

compassion networks and we can start accessing mindfulness. So this all still makes sense? Okay. So the process of deepening attention is going from the mental narrative into the body and basically it's what we train in here that we start to naming, our noting what's there, the sensations, the feelings, and we allow it to be there. I hope that's very familiar, recognizing and allowing, recognizing and allowing. And the allowing, by the way, is a deep permission for whatever is there, no matter what it is to be there. We're not giving permission for us to act out and strangle somebody, we're giving permission to feel the burn of anger, to feel the swelling of anger. Recognize

and allowing even deeper, sensing what's the need there? What's the unmet need? What am I really wanting? So there's a deep inner attention. That creates connection with ourselves. We cannot be in communication with others and coming from a whole place if we haven't connected fully with ourselves. If you're moving through life and feeling disconnected from other people, it's because you're not connected with yourself. It's always you're not connected. It's always the case. So in order to resolve conflict, first we have to connect wholly with what's in here. And then we can begin to speak and the skill, the core skill in speaking, is to speak our truth, you know, what we are discovering in here, what we're feeling, what we're wanting

without any blame. That's the skill. The skill, if we want to close the loop, is to be able to speak that and also to be able to listen to the other person's truth that's coming without blame. If either person hasn't mastered that and there's the different ways that blame wiggles in, there'll be a little bit of defensiveness and that'll have to be processed too. Okay, I'm gonna share my story now. So what happens often as as many of you know that have been with me for a while is that when I have something I get kind of fired up on that I want to explore here with you, something comes up in my life that's not easy that has to do with that theme.

So I've been at war all week. So what came up, after I came back from Krapalo teaching, I had some time with Jonathan and my husband, and we were talking about what's coming up in 2015. And I've had this idea of something I've been wanting to teach with him, do it co-teach. Real exciting. It had a kind of juicy theme and format,

and I thought it would be great to offer, and also good for our relationship to be, you know, looking into that and teaching it. Ever since I brought it up, he's been lukewarm on this. And I keep bringing it up, and he'd kind of change the subject or say, yeah, we should talk about that more sometime, but totally non-committal. So, and then this time, a couple of days ago,

when I brought it up, he goes, well, you know, I'd have to let go of some other things I want to do in 2015. So I can feel myself like, I knew I was going to be talking about this, but when you start getting heated up and angry, it's like everything fades away so I'm building up you know I can feel his resistance and avoidance and so I begin to argue in my I can be very argumentative on kind of why it's such a good thing for us to do and of course

he has to give up something anything you do you're giving up something else you know I kind of like put that one down and you know but then of course it became really obvious what was going on that I was I was playing out my strategy which is being aggressive and argumentive and controlling and all that stuff. And so we did our pause. And because we had a collision of strategies. My strategy was aggressive, his strategy was resisting and avoidant.

And as you know, when you're aggressive and somebody's resisting, you get more aggressive and they get more resisting. So you can kind of see that one very easily. So I say, okay, what's happening inside me? You know, we're both kind of quiet a bit and I'm feeling. feeling the heat and pressure and swell and burn of anger, kind of wanting to explode, and I'm agreeing to feel what's there. And then as I agreed more, I could feel underneath at a hurting place.

And, you know, when I started really listening into the hurting place, it's, he's not prioritizing being with me. You know, he doesn't want to be with me. And then I feel very, very familiar and old. And that's always a good question is, what does this remind you of? Always. and not to get analytic, by the way. This is not a mental investigation.

It's just sensing the depth of the patterning and how it's not to do with this person. Okay? So I had a busy father, and I wasn't always the first thing on the list. So then just feeling in a very simple way, wanting to be cared about, wanting to be prioritized and breathed with it.

And then when I communicated to him, I was able to name, and it was really about my... my experience, it was not about him being a schmuck that was making bad decisions and hurting my feelings. And he listened well. I could feel that he was caring. And of course, everything loosened in my strategy of being aggressive no longer was needed. And then he could name what he felt, how he was feeling tight and feeling like, here we go again, I'm going to be accommodating, but not tracking my own wants in something. And a feeling of I'm going to lose.

myself. I'm going to lose myself. And for him the familiarity of having a mother that was intrusive that if he hadn't really gotten protected himself would have kind of taken over in certain ways. I'm sharing with you with this because it's such a typical kind of example. I don't feel like oh this was such a special thing that happened. You know, he could share it when I really got it, the intrusive mother and him really wanted to feel he was tracking his own wants. Of course I wanted to give him space. So what happened is as we both listened and held space for the other because neither of us was feeling defensive, both of us felt that sense of we were becoming together a larger space of awareness.

There was kind of this field of caring and attentiveness. And then the patterns that we were watching, we weren't so identified with them. This is the freedom that happens when conflicts, become a portal for us when we make use of them. The idea is not that we, it's bad to have it happen. It's more, can we recognize and deepen our attention? And I want to honor that and acknowledge more, confess more, that had I not been preparing a talk on conflict,

the lag time in me recognizing, oh, look what's going on, would have been much longer. Really, really. So we all have our strategies from our history and the one of the pursuer and the avoiders, like one of the most standard ones. I love this from Adrian Rich. She says, an honorable human relationship that is one in which two people have the right to use the word love is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation and we can't deepen the truths unless we unpack the blame. Okay? Oh I thought I'd share this to you. There's a cartoon of Henry the Eighth and he's with one of his wives and they're working with a mediator. The mediator is saying you say off with her head but what I hear is I feel neglected. I can imagine that mediator didn't last long. Okay.

Again, conflict is an expression that are of emotional stuckness, that we're trying to get needs met and it's not working. And it's also egoic stuckness, that we're stuck in a pattern and living in an identity that's confined. So offering attention is part of our evolutionary unfolding. It's just moving from that egoic state to a more enlarged space of awareness. Now, that's the simple nutshell summary. Now I'm going to spend the rest of the time with the challenges

to what I just put out, because there's a lot of challenges. And I want to clarify that not blaming does not mean that we put aside discriminating wisdom. It doesn't mean that we don't recognize where there could be harmed to us and protect ourselves. It just means that we're not buying into the aversive blame of your bad, it's your fault. Challenge number one, biggest one of them all, is, but it seems as if the other person, are I, really am wrong, really am bad.

It really is my fault, or it really is your fault. It really seems that way. So what do we do when it really, really seems that way? And I can say that in the first stretch of that conversation with Jonathan, from my view, he was wrong. That was just the mindset. What happens when we're living inside that? And I want to say that we've had tens of thousands of years of conditioning, part of the whole tribal mentality, and we spent a thousand times as long in tribes as we have, not in tribes.

The tribal cohesion was built on creating an other that was wrong or bad. That's the way it worked. The other was different, was a threat, was bad. And so when we feel insecure, unloved, or unsafe, we're rigged to focus on the perceived cause and make it bad. That person's the danger. They're bad. And we fix it.

We scan for difference, even difference in view. Like, Jonathan had a different view. He wasn't prioritizing the same thing I was prioritizing. Bad. I've said many times that that phrase, the world is divided into those who think they're right. And that's the whole phrase, you know. So we have very, very deep rigging,

and it happens more quickly than we're even aware of to turn others into an unreal other and in some way have a less than and better than and sometimes a real... I mean, it's what keeps wars going. I was sent this just a couple of days ago. Man writes, I was walking across the bridge one day and I saw a man standing on the edge about to jump off,

so I ran over and said, stop, don't do it. Why shouldn't I? He said, I said, well, there's so much to live for. He said, like what? And I said, well, are you religious or an atheist? He said, religious. I said, me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist? He said Christian. I said, me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant? He said Protestant. I said, me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist? He said, Baptists. I said, wow, me too. Are you the Baptist Church of God or the Baptist Church of God? He said, reform. Me too. Are you the Baptist Church of God? Reformation of God? Me too. Are you the original Baptist Church of God? Or you reformed Baptist Church of God? Reformation of 1879? a reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915. He said, Reform Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915. I said, die, heretic scum, and I pushed him off.

Oh, I thought that was great. It's so true. Even in the group that is most, you know, the group that we identify with, when there's differences, all of a sudden there's this huge divide. It's painfully true. So the first critical discipline for us that is evolving us from the tribal conditioning of self other and bad other is really having our antennas up for it.

And the word should or shouldn't is one of the best words to keep an eye out for. Any time we're in the mode of blame and that limbic system grip, we're not going to be able to process the inner experience that needs attention and healing. It just keeps us from processing. So people will ask, well, what about really horrific crimes? You know, don't you then make somebody wrong or isn't that really bad? And it's no different. Whatever you're experiencing from that horrific crime, you can't process it unless you put down the idea of right and wrong.

The phrase I draw on a lot, which came from a movie, came from a description in the movie of an African tribe, the coup, in Matobu. And they say that if someone's murdered, they have this drowning man ritual. The family goes to the edge of the river and the killer is taken out in a boat and bound up so he can't swim and then dropped into deep waters. And then the family has to make a decision. And they can either let them drown or they can swim out and save them. They have to swim out and save them. And the coup believed that if the family let the person drown, in other words, if they seek revenge, they'll have justice,

but they'll never heal from the wound of loss. On the other hand, if they save them, and that's the case, they admit that life isn't always just. They save them. And if they accept the reality of the loss, that very act can begin to heal their sorrow. And here's how they describe it. They say, vengeance is a lazy form of grief. If we really took that in, vengeance,

meaning any time that in some way we're trying to get back at, we're putting somebody down, we're blaming, we're resenting, in some way it's a cover for, It's keeping us from the place that's really needing attention. It's easier than paying attention, but it prevents us from connecting with ourselves and then being able to connect with others. So the primary challenge really is one of our kind of addiction to blame

and the seduction of blame, and the primary teaching is that in the moments that we can wake up out of that and see it and let go some, we become empowered to heal. There's a little story of a man who's visiting a spiritual master, and he says, My life is like shattered glass. My soul is tainted with evil. Is there any hope for me?

Yes, said the master. There is something whereby each broken thing is bound again, and every stain made clean. What the man asks. forgiveness was the response. Whom do I forgive? Everyone, life, God, your neighbor, especially yourself. Well, how is that done?

By this very understanding that no one is to blame, said the master, no one. No one is to blame. It's a very powerful mantra. No one is to blame. It's no one's fault. Okay, the next challenge that people run into, when they're in conflict and they want to resolve it. And that is the challenge of not being able to really feel what's going on in our bodies.

Well, I can't connect with what's going on inside me. I don't feel my body. And I know that I've, because I've worked with so many people that, you know, I'll say, okay, take a moment and start scanning down your body. And it's like from here down, there's not a whole lot of sensation. to be felt. So the more wounding we've had emotionally, the more our strategy has been to exit from our body so we don't have to live with that intolerable pain. It's a really natural and pretty pervasive

strategy, especially when there's been trauma. So the way back in is gentle, the way back in is patient and slow. The way back in is with the support of a therapist's, and a therapist's, perhaps. There's a few tricks that help. One of them is to move and feel yourself moving. So just use walking practice or stretching, moving your hands, moving your feet around, rubbing your hands just to get in the body some. Another way is to breathe and feel yourself breathing and gradually that can help you to get inside your body. And then the body scan that I lead most every meditation I try to start with the body skin because it's what works for me. That it really helps if I take my time to really establish awareness inside the body.

Even if you can't feel much inside the body, the directing of attention to the body will gradually, gradually the body will open up to that attention. Do it when you feel most safe and relaxed. And if there's been trauma, the starting point is just to sense your feet on the floor, sense the weight of your body where you're sitting and feel gravity in the earth. Just groundedness is the beginning of opening up inside the body. That's one challenge but another is I can kind of feel my body, I can feel sensations, but I can't really feel emotions and I really don't know what emotions are here.

Because remember part of connecting is say, okay there's anger or there's fear or there's hurt and being able to communicate it. Well, a lot of people can't because they grew up and there was very little mirroring from parents that acknowledged or supported that this particular emotion was there. And often the emotions were made wrong. Oh, you shouldn't feel hurt about that or you shouldn't feel so angry. You know, in other words, they're denied or neglected. So then we learn we're not supposed to have these emotions and we push them under. We have no access to our real self. Somebody sent me to me this last year, at a dinner party, two couples are there and one wife is talking about

her evolving relationship with her husband, how they've worked things out. She says, Jack and I have learned to accept each other's idiosyncrasies, like my passion for cashew brittle, and his going out every night and not coming home until dawn. So there's the denial. And so again, how do we get in touch? It's a bit of a training, and it starts with feeling sensations. and really asking those sensations, you know, what is it that you're experiencing? What do you want? What do you fear? What's going on?

Like speaking and communicating to our body, bypassing the mind. It helps to have the primary emotions that we can be aware of. And there's arguments about which emotions are really primary. I find mad, sad, scared, glad, and aroused wanting, are kind of basic ones. and to just practice naming them as well as we can, to sense what's called the felt sense,

which is a sense experiencing the sensations and emotions as a felt sense in the body, paying attention to where it is, inviting it to be as big as it is, helps discover the emotion. And one other trick, and this could be a whole talk unto itself, how do you name emotions,

is sense that your whole face, you're inviting your face to express whatever mood or emotions in your body. Invite your, so make it, let it be as big as it is and feel it in your face and then come back into your body again. If you want to identify emotions, you'll learn to. In other words, if you're paying attention, you'll gradually learn to. Another challenge, I don't know what I want or need. As part of this is saying, well, what is it you really want?

What do you need? What's the unmet need? And again, we've lost touch for the same thing. same reasons as with emotions. Our wants weren't paid attention to. So it helps to remember you're allowed to want whatever you want. Whatever want is there, give it permission to be there. That's a really good trick. When you give permission for something to be there, it frees it to express itself more. Another challenge, there's too much trauma. I can't connect inwardly and I can't release the blame. So this is the big one, right? This is probably the biggest one that comes up.

And when there's strong trauma, we're not able to release the blame. We're not even supposed to sometimes. Sometimes blame is supposed to have a certain amount of time that it's in our system so that we can kind of find our way to settle in and we can also protect ourselves. Ultimately, blame will stop us from healing. But that doesn't mean we get rid of it right away. And if there's trauma, that's not the place to pay attention. When there's trauma, we have to develop our sense of safety, develop our resources.

So I think next class we're going to be talking about how to work with conflict when there's a lot of trauma mixed in it. And also how to work with conflict when the trauma is based on things to do with the society, institutionalized racism or the effects of war. So I'm purposely emphasizing this time how we can be empowered in our one-on-one relationships when there isn't trauma. I want to make that clear. This is not like a universal teaching for everything. Okay?

Here's another challenge. I can process emotions and I can communicate what's going on without blame, but my partner can't. Okay? Really, really common. Because, you know, our development's understanding. even. It's not like everybody has the same level of emotional intelligence or everybody's as good a communicator, everybody's is in touch with themselves. It's imbalanced in many relationships. So does that mean it's doom that we can't close the loop with our partner

because we're the ones that are connected but they're not? The good news is this stuff is really contagious. There really is that if you are committed to evolving, to waking up through conflict in your life. It's nice to have a partner that can match your willingness and interest and capacity. You might not, you can still just keep on waking up. And the more you're connected with yourself and not identified in that blaming ego, the more you'll create a field of safety and understanding that invites that other person to touch into themselves.

Does that make sense? So that's the motivation. A story that really struck me from a number of years ago that some of you might remember, or one man discovered this with, he had a very emotionally abusive father. His father was a high-powered executive, and his son, this man, was more sensitive, more toward, went towards the arts and writing. So his father was very judgmental and berating, controlling, and often absent. And even when this man grew up as an adult and had kids, when they got together, his father still had some edge of disapproving like you're not a real man and you didn't really make it. In some way, there was a kind of a put-down.

And it made him feel a sense of incompetency and failure. So even when he'd visit and be with the grandchildren, and there was this kind of testy distance between them. Well, his father had a heart attack and was slowed down a lot, and he had to drop his tennis, force him, and he was increasingly isolated. And this man was very unsympathetic and had a lot of blame and anger, like he created his life. He deserves what he's got.

His sister kept saying, can't you be more forgiving? Can't you drop the blame? Look at the poor guy. But his basic stance was he'll never know how much suffering he's caused me. he doesn't deserve to be forgiven. And so when he came to a retreat with us, I often do a forgiveness practice where I'll ask, you know, people, well, if you put aside the blaming thoughts,

this is a really important inquiry, if you put aside the blame, if you stop making the other person wrong, what would you have to feel that's actually difficult to feel? Okay? If you stop blaming, stop making that other person, wrong, what would you have to feel? And for him, what he had to feel was layers of hurt. You know, I wasn't strong enough or special enough for him to respect me. And underneath that,

the grief that he'd never have a father that really loved him, which is the grief a lot of people have. So he connected with that. He spent time with that. He felt it. He held it with compassion. In fact, during the retreat, he had his hand on his heart a lot, you know, because we were doing that a lot. And back home, because he was connected himself, he started regarding his father through new eyes. He could see how he was a bootstrap kind of guy who was lonely in his own life

and admired strength because he was afraid for his son that he wasn't going to be strong enough. So his fear was almost like he was judging him because he wanted him to change and be a stronger person and then be okay in life. So it was his fear for his son. He could see that. And so there was a marked shift in their time, kind of things loosened together, the things loosened up, there was more joking and playfulness.

His father had a second heart attack. And while he was recovering, this man kept him company a lot, he was reading newspapers to him and, you know, just spending time together. And at one point he started reading a newspaper to him and his father put us hands in a stop. And then he said, then the father, then the father, said to this man, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. There was a real long silence and then some tears and then he heard the words he never thought he'd hear. You probably don't know how much I love you. And he told me later that he really believed that because he forgave his father that it made it safe enough for his father to feel his heart.

We live in a field where our emotions, it's an open loop, we affect each other. And when we're with somebody that's blaming, we tighten. I mean, anger makes us tighten. When we're with somebody that's open and caring, we become more open. It's very, very powerful what's possible, when we put down the blame and we connect with our own being. So I'd like to have the last piece of our time together give you a chance to just explore a little and know that this is a life practice, so you're getting a taste, and that if you leave

this class with a little more of a conscious commitment to letting conflict be an opportunity to wake up, a portal. There's a tremendous amount of freedom and opening that's possible. So if you need to adjust how you're sitting, move around, stretch for a moment and then come sitting comfortably and take a moment as you're pausing to begin to invite your attention right into your body. Feel yourself breathing, feel the sensations of your sitting posture. And you might let come to mind some situation where you feel that you get caught in a habitual way where there's a sense of separation, reactivity, conflict with another person. And as I often say, it's best not to choose something that taps into a deep sense of trauma.

This could be somebody at work, colleague where it's not so collegial, boss or employee. It could be a friend where you just keep hitting up against the same patterning or a sibling, parent, child, or partner. The situation where you get caught in conflict and that you have a curiosity and a care that you'd be more awake in this. You feel that kind of intention right now. So you bring the situation close in so that you sense a particular time setting where you get triggered and see the place you're in and notice whatever the look on the other person's face might be, what kind of things they're saying, what kind of things you're saying, and And just as in that research experiment, let the interaction go until you sense that you're

really charged up in some way. It may be that there's something that that other person is saying or a way they're behaving that most evokes in you the reaction, where you get locked in, where you feel stuck, where you feel stuck, where you don't have very many much flexibility. and how you're behaving. And just freeze it there. And you might sense when you're in that particular moment, you might even let your posture assume what it's like for you.

You might feel your face and let the expression on your face be what it might be. Exaggerate a little bit. You might sense just briefly what you're believing in those moments. I'm not respected, I'm not loved, I'm not going to get what I want. Notice how the blame is take shape and then go right into your body and feel where you feel most vulnerable. What's really asking for attention in your body? You check your throat, chest, your belly. Sense of sensations that are there.

Is it fiery? Is it big pressure, fiery, hot energy like anger? Is it the tight clench of fear? fear or that ache, hollow feeling with hurt, fresher, weighty heart. What's the feeling? What's the emotion? Feel the most vulnerable place in you and as if you could let that place tell you, what is it needing?

What's that place most needing or wanting? Is it need to be accepted, to be loved? to be loved, to be understood, if it helps you to put your hand on your heart so you really deepen the attention you're offering, I often put my hand very gently and just sense that this is the attending and befriending that you are really offering, it's from your highest self, your highest being, this attention, listening to the place that's most vulnerable, just connecting with the part of you that needs attention. and you may breathe with it and just let it be felt.

The hurt, the fear, just offering that space of compassion and let it unfold itself as it needs to. In sense if there's any other message or communication from the place in you that's most vulnerable, what does it want you to know? What happens to that vulnerability when you really hold it with a tenderness? Let that be your intention. And as you feel some connection with your inner life, you might sense that you could bring your attention to the other person.

And with curiosity and care, try to sense into them as you were sensing into yourself. How is this person hurting or afraid? What's behind those behaviors? What might this person be needing? They're just kind of waking up your empathy. And can you imagine with this person if you both just named the, from the vulnerability, what's been going on, just named it. I've just been feeling like I need more love, need more attention, need to be seen,

whatever it is, that each of you has a chance to say that. what it's true for you. It's not about the other person, it's about what's true for you, but you're each holding a heart space that lets the other have their feeling and their need be expressed. Can you imagine speaking truth

and listening together so that you become that shared heart space that has room for the different feelings that are moving through? But your identity is shifted. You're no longer caught in the separate egoic self, but you're resting in something larger and a togetherness that can then bring care and attention

to the needs that are here. Close with the poem Peace by Dorothy Hunt. Do you think peace requires an end to war or tigers eating only vegetables? Does peace require an absence from your boss, your spouse, yourself? Do you think peace will come some other place than here, some other time than now, and some other heart than yours? Peace is this moment without judgment, that is all.

This moment in the heart space where everything that is is welcome. Peace is this moment without thinking that it should be some other way, that you should feel some other thing, that your life should unfold according to your plans. Peace is this moment without judgment. This moment in the heart space where everything that is is welcome.

Namaste. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org. Thank you.