Tara Brach - Awakening through Conscious Relationship

Episode Date: June 20, 2014

Communicating our vulnerability and learning to listen - seeking to understand another’s experience - are the keys to discovering the truth of our connectedness. This talk explores the challenges and gifts of dedicating ourselves to becoming more real, present and open in our relationships.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. In Buddhism as well as most spiritual paths, most faiths, there is a centrality to teachings on how we are with each other. There's really a message that it matters, it's part of whatever we consider to be progress or meaningful on the path. And in Buddhism, Sangha, which is spiritual community, is considered one of the three key gateways to freedom. It's considered one of the refuges. The idea being that the field of relationship, really, when we're conscious, is the place for profound awakening and freedom.

Yet what we'll notice, if we really look closely on many paths, and I can certainly see this in Buddhism, It's very easy to subscribe to the notion that it's important ethically and for many reasons to be good with each other. But the real important moments of spirituality come, you know, when we're alone in the cave. I mean, when you think of the pictures that depict the Buddha, you don't see him socializing, you know, at moments of enlightenment. You see the, you know, he's alone under the tree or in a cave. So there's a subtle kind of hierarchy we sometimes get that real spirituality happens in this kind of inward process. And one of my favorite little cartoons that came out in Tricicle magazine was a Buddhist

Personals. And it said, tall, dark, handsome Buddhist looking for himself. So the reality is, relationship matters profoundly on all levels of body, mind, and spirit, and we're pack animals. I mean, even us introverts, we're pack animals, okay? And that really developmentally we need understanding and love. What happens in our attachment relationships, those early relationships, totally impacts the neural connections that happen in our brain. And what you see in research is that the

the more a rat pup is licked by its mom, you know, the more neural synapses get developed. So it's like, it's right there really key. And so early relationships prime our brains for learning, how well we learn, how we communicate, the kind of experience we have emotionally in our capacity for intimacy. And if you go towards the end of life, you'll see all the research pointing to the more well-developed our social networks are, the more happiness and longevity. So relationships matter in all those ways and what's behind all that. If you kind of go under what's behind that happiness and longevity,

how come relationships really can make a difference, if we take any moment that we're with each other and really feeling a sense of harmony our connection or love what we'll find is that the self-fixation

has dissolved that in those moments we're no longer operating with a kind of centeredness on moi where there's a feeling of separate being kind of moving around

in our bubble that's dissolved and we're a part of we belong to There's an enlarged sense of belonging. And this is really key to the whole evolutionary unfolding that we, by nature, and it's part of the design, we incarnate and we get very involved with a sense of a separate self.

The egoic self in that identity becomes very firm, and we have the frontal cortex of our brain has neural networks that allow us to see that self-centeredness and actually wake up out of it. We actually have this capacity for self-reflexive awareness. We have this capacity for mindfulness and this networking for compassion where we can see the pain of getting too caught up in selfness and actually begin to deepen our attention to the field and discover belonging.

That's our evolutionary. potential. And so I love this description that Swami Satchananda gives when he's asked, what's the difference between illness and wellness. And he kind of puts the words on a board and he circles the eye of illness and the we of wellness. That it's part of our healing. to open from a sense of selfness to a sense of belonging. And that doesn't mean the ego gets, you know, dissolves away and we are without an ego. There's still a way to navigate and sense what's needed

for this particular body mind. But behind that, and what gives us a sense of peace and well-being, is really trusting that we're part of the whole, trusting this web that we belong to. There was a very interesting experiment that many of you might remember or know about with this creation of a biosphere in Arizona. It was in the early 1990s, and the attempt was to create this enclosed area where they could begin to experiment and see how different life systems interacted within the enclosure. And it was for the purpose of space colonization. And for a number of reasons, the experiment failed.

It didn't give a whole lot of good data. The main reason it failed was that in this closed environment, they couldn't grow trees. And the reason they couldn't grow trees was because there weren't the winds that were needed for the heartwood of the tree to develop and get strong. Now, that is pretty cool in terms of giving us some understanding of what allows for true development and evolution. We need to be involved with the winds of the relational field. The heartwood, this pith or essence of what we are can't

unfold. We cannot discover freedom of our hearts unless we're engaged in the winds of relationship, unless we really open to who each other is and open our hearts and express ourselves. in a very real way. We can't wake up. So this is Rumi. He says, Stay together, friends. Don't scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made of being awake. Stay together, friends, don't scatter and sleep. Our friendship is made of being awake. So what I'd like to explore together in this class is really what nourishes the heartwood. How, when we're in community, when we're experiencing these waves of who each other are, how we can really be intentional in opening to those ways. How can we really cultivate that heartwood that in the Buddhist tradition is described as empty and radiant?

It's that heart that's empty of a self-centeredness and therefore completely radiant and inclusive and awake. So the challenge of opening to the winds of relationship is that they can be really intense and really unpleasant. And we know this. We know that, you know, in our culture, society, which has all of so much dis-ease and how it gets passed into the incubator of our individual families, we know that there are a lot of deficits in the process of bonding. It's inevitable that parents bring their addictions and their insecurity and their depression, their unmet needs into the parenting process. It just happens. And so children are not seen or embraced to the degree that would make for what's called

good attachment bonding. There's not enough. It's insufficient. And that leads to poor cognitive development and attention, deficit disorders, but many other things, that their emotions like their parents, again, depression, anxiety. When there's really a lack of bonding, it can lead to death. There's been tons and tons of research now on primates, non-human primates, to show the effect of lack of good bonding. So the reason I bring this up is that these early deficits in bonding then play out.

Where the wounds are, it plays out in every relationship. So when we talk about, okay, let's engage the winds of the relational field, we're talking about touching into those wounds. And we don't want to, or at least a part of us doesn't want to. I always am kind of drawn to Einstein's very, had a very compelling question. He said the biggest question humanity faces is, is this, Is that? What are we really need? What are we crying out for? Is this universe a friendly place? I mean, when we're crying out, it's in some way that something's wrong, right? Is it a friendly place?

And to the degree we've had a lot of wounding early on, there's a big amount of distrust. So it's hard to open to the winds. I sometimes think of our ego when it's navigating as, you know, part of its job if the winds feel like too much, should we feel like we're in a face rejection or in some way face a sense of being criticized or deficient. We close off and we have ways, we have strategies to not really be in authentic relationship with each other. And each one of us, if we look, has our repertoire of how we try to protect ourselves so we don't have to feel the pains of early wounding, the pains of feeling insecure. This is Rita Rudner. She says,

I love to shop after a bad relationship. I don't know. I buy a new outfit and it makes me feel better. It just does. Sometimes if I see a really great outfit, I'll break up with someone on purpose.

But one of the ways that we protect us is we get addicted to substitutes. So we're not feeling the possibility maybe of getting the love that we need really directly. So many of us, Food's a big one. And then we have many ways of manipulating other people,

controlling other people with our judgment or our pretense or whatever it is to get them to cooperate with us so we don't feel vulnerable. So the wounds create a distrust, and then we have these different protective mechanisms. One story is of an old man in Phoenix who calls his son in New York and says, I hate to ruin your day

but your mother and I are getting a divorce. 45 years of misery, it's too much. And he goes, Pop, what are you talking about? And then the father says, we can't stand the sight of each other any longer. We're sick and tired of each other. I'm sick of talking about this.

You call your sister in Chicago, and then he hangs up the phone. Okay, so the son calls his sister, and he says what's happening, and she says, like heck, they're getting a divorce, I'll take care of it. She calls up the father. It screams at him.

You're not getting a divorce. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back and we'll both be there tomorrow and tell then, don't you do a thing? You hear me and click, she hangs up. So the old man hangs up his phone, he turns to his wife. Okay, he says, they're coming for Thanksgiving and they're paying their own way.

So I think of it, our strategies, and we all have strategies to try to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable with each other. We're scared of each other, because there's a big risk which is getting rejected, are feeling suffocated, but not having it work out. There are two main strategies we have that I think of as that fuel this trance,

to keep us as this separate self that feels kind of threatened but separate and is trying to manage things. And one of the habits is we withhold our truth. We don't really express what's really true for us, and it's amazing how much we love. lie and we're not aware of it. I mean, there's been all these studies about how many lies per minute we'll say with a stranger, someone that we're not even, we don't even care that much how they, much they accept us, but still we are in the habit of presenting ourselves

and presenting in a way that we think will most get the acceptance and love we want. And we're not even aware often of the gap between what we're presenting and the realness, the authenticity. We forget. So that's one way. We don't express what's really there, including our fears and our shame and our jealousy and our anger. And sadly what that means is that we also don't express our love. So we hold back.

That's one strategy. The second strategy is that we block out or don't take in where others are at. so self-focused, we don't really look to see who's there and we don't really seek to understand. So these are the strategies. They keep us in that bubble, in that trance of separateness where we're not really, like the windows and doors of our heart aren't open for the winds to move through, okay? We're in that biosphere, so our heartwood is not nourished. So the good news is more and more science is showing, neuroscience is showing the basic quote or line is that neurons that fire together, wire together, these are habits. We've trained ourselves

to not speak truth or to block out others, but we can untrain ourselves. This is neuroplasticity. There are practices that actually can bring us into the habit of saying what's real, are true, that can actually train us to deepen our attention. Are we listening? There's a message for someone. So what I'd like to do is explore these practices. You know, we, in the West, there's more and more attention to meditations that teach us how to sit on the cushion and pay attention inwardly. But there's not that much training, our practice and how to be awake with each other, how to open to the winds. So this, you know, we don't have that much time to go very deep into each of these practices,

but I'll mention a few areas that you can begin to experiment more and more with if you'd like. And the first is truth-telling. And this is leaning more and more in the direction of, and it begins with self-awareness, of really contacting and recognizing, what am I really feeling right now? What's really going on? Really recognizing it. And in order for truth-telling to serve,

in order for it to be really an opening to the winds where we're expressing ourselves authentically, there has to be a sincere intention. I've seen many, many people under the guise of truth-telling blame people and use truth-telling as a control mechanism. You know, giving somebody a piece of their mind isn't always a gift, right?

So it takes a real honesty with ourselves. Is our intention really to nourish heartwood, to nourish connection, to deepen understanding? Not every feeling that comes up is worth naming out, loud. Do you know what I mean? Feelings, I mean, they're like weather systems. They come and go and we don't need to report out every weather system. So there's a real wisdom and discrimination when we're in relationship with somebody and if there's a pattern of weather systems that we see repeating itself so

we find we're living in a kind of chronic insecurity, our jealousy, our irritation, our hurt, that we find if we have that sincere intention, I want to do that. name this to bring more connection, that if it's out of that, we can begin to name the truth with others. This is how Adrian Rich puts it. 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 truth they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. So if we're living with this pattern of weather systems that involve the dance with another person, we're not really bringing consciousness to these winds of relationship until

we begin to name them from a place of real sincere intention. One woman who's a very good friend of mine emailed a few weeks ago this and I'll share it with you. She says, I came out to my son yesterday evening. The struggles we have endured over the year since I chose to be free from fear and abuse had informed my decision to postpone this conversation. After a sleepless night and a busy workday we met, had pizza with this therapist, and then I came out. I had a range of expectations. My worst fear was rage and rejection. My best case scenario was toleration. Instead, he smiled, kissed and hugged me, and told me I didn't raise him. to be a homophobe. He was excited and I was dumbstruck. Not sharing this truth with him has

been like a boulder on my back. After his embrace I now realize it wasn't a boulder, it was a planet. I feel free and still dumbstruck, so I'm going to do what Vem lesbians have done throughout history going for a Moni Petty, manicure pedicure. Now, truth-telling is not always well received. Sometimes it's It's amazing. I've heard many, many stories of secrets that were kept for a painfully long time and then the regret of not having just set it out sooner because there's so much freedom in it. But the freedom doesn't come because it's always well received. There's one story of a woman who goes to see a psychic and says, well, I don't have enough intimacy with my husband. He won't talk about his vulnerability.

And so this psychic looks into Christopher Ball and she says, well, at the beginning of January 2015, men will start talking about their feelings. Within moments, women everywhere will be sorry. It doesn't always work out the way we think it might. And we know that, you know, the political candidate that discloses addiction or a writer confesses plagiarizing or partner admits infidelity. Who knows what's going to? to happen. I mean, a loss of an office or professional esteem goes crashing down or a divorce.

And maybe that's okay. Maybe there's something about letting people respond to reality, being true to ourselves. Maybe that's exactly what has to happen to really have intimacy and authenticity and relationships to let the winds really move in and out. My first experience that I remember where it became very intentional about speaking truth was when I was in an ashram. I lived in an ashram for 11 years. That's a spiritual community. And we had a women's group early on.

And this ashram had, you know, you dressed in whites. And, you know, there was a lot of, it was kind of like, you know, perfecting ourselves type of thing with the yoga and the meditation. And I was riddled by a sense of imperfect. and a bit of hypocrisy that, you know, we were trying to look good, but in some way I felt like, you know, there was a lot of peace and love, but underneath I felt I was being competitive, I felt judgmental of other people, selfish, like, you know, things I wanted for myself.

So I wasn't pure. And I remember going to this women's group, and people were, whatever they were sharing, it was not really edgy. And then all of a sudden I did my sharing, and I just did this huge confession about, about all the ways I felt, you know, really all my shadow side, basically. I think, you know, I don't remember what they said. I mean, I didn't get banished.

They didn't tell me I couldn't wear whites anymore. And, you know, I was like a loser. But I don't have no remembrance of what they said. All I know is that after that, there was less shame about imperfection. There was something about just saying it out loud that took the power away. But more than that, I just started being more real

with several people in the ashram and then feeling they were actually started being more real with me so we weren't trying so hard to look good. Felt important. I've seen over and over again in groups have people, whoever, when one person has the courage to be more real, it's like ice cubes melting. You know, like when ice cube starts melting

and it kind of encourages the others to soften the edges and we become more in the flow with each other. There's a magic that happens, whether it's the 12-step groups or in spiritual friends groups that we have here in Washington. We have about 30 groups. We just start naming what's true. And all of a sudden, we're not as identified

with all the things that we were making ourselves wrong for. It's not my pride or shame. It's just the pride or shame that humans have. Michael Mead's a renowned storyteller and teacher, and he tells about a healing ritual in Zambia that I just think is beautiful. And it goes like this, if a member of the tribe becomes ill, emotionally or physically, the belief is that an ancestor's tooth has lodged itself within the person as responsible for the sickness. Now because all members of the tribe are connected with each other, the suffering of one affects the others and all become involved in healing. The healing ritual is based on the understanding that the tooth will come out as the truth comes out. Okay? The tooth will come out as the truth comes out.

And while the sick person must reveal the rage or hatred or lust here she is experiencing, for the full truth to be revealed, each person in the tribe must express his or her own buried hurts and fears, anger and disappointment. So Michael May describes it this way. The release happens only when everything comes out in the midst of dancing and singing and drumming. The whole village gets cleansed by the release of the tooth through the release of these difficult truths. So this is the first area of practice, that there's a certain wise a sermon on where we play our edge. There's many places it's not appropriate to speak our truths where it's not safe. It's not going to help.

And there are many places that if we each said, okay, I'm going to be a little more real here, we'd actually open the heart space or feel that we can experience with others. Maybe just to close your eyes for a moment. Take a moment to reflect on this. Take a few breaths. Let that help to collect your attention right here. You might scan your life and sense a relationship where you'd like to strengthen connection. that heart would.

Just to take a moment to feel your intention. That this is a place you'd like to bring more consciousness to the winds of relating. And you might sense what within your own emotional experience in this relationship is a little difficult to accept perhaps or to feel. Is there some vulnerability that's hard for you to touch? What's unsaid?

Just to bring your own wise heart to the inquiry, would expressing serve to deepen understanding and connection? Can you express in a way that has no blame, just purely seeking connection, understanding? When you'd like to open your eyes. So this is one domain and we can play it out both in our closer-up relationships, but also with those that we don't know so well, just sensing, what does it mean to be a little more real right now? now. Second domain is really the winds in reverse. Can we receive where another person is? Can

we open our attention to really take in another, to really wonder about who is this person, to listen deeply, to listen behind the words, and to see deeply behind the mask? That's the second area. And just to name that there's really a kind of increasing attentional deficit in our culture, and we know it. With the speed and the kind of stimulation of the senses, the loudness, we're constantly barraged. It said that our attention span,

the average attention spans only about 22 seconds. I think that's long. I mean, if you can hold your attention for 22 seconds, but commercials are shorter than ever. So can we hold our attention with another person and not get pulled around by what we're planning to say? about where we think we need to be next and what we have to get done.

Can we look and see who's there? One story of a businesswoman going to a conference at work and she's outside and she goes into the building, comes upstairs and says, let's folks there in our meeting know that she just saw a clown outside. And one man asked, was it a real clown or just a person dressed up as a clown?

So the main reason that it's hard to pay attention to each other is that we carry a certain amount of ongoing anxiety about our own self, about how we're appearing, about what we need to communicate, about what we need in general, and so that we're self-focused, and the more stress we are,

the more we're focused on ourselves and unable to take in others as anything more than an outside object. And I call this, that others become unreal others, the more stressed we are. And by that I mean, have an idea or a projection of who they are. It's very two-dimensional and it has no freshness of saying, right this moment, what's true for you? There's not a curiosity. We're rarely

curious about others, especially when we're stressed. So this is true, particularly when we're triggered, but even if we're not triggered, we don't really listen well or pay attention well. And yet there is some motivation because, I mean, for each of you just sense the last time that somebody really listened to you or that you felt somebody got you, somebody saw you. And if you have that in mind, if you can think of a time, you realize that these are the moments that stand out in our life. When we really, when all of a sudden something really opens up, there's really a flow. We really really get, oh, okay, we're part of something. These are when the winds flow. And I love the image

of listening and just sensing that each person has this kind of fountain of their being and it's all from the same pure source. It's all awareness. It's loving awareness at the source. And if we haven't been listened to, that fountain kind of gets clogged with debris. So what that person will communicate isn't as straightforward from the source. They're getting all the kind static interruptions, kind of a little muddier waters, but if we really listen, if you really create a space of listening, first you'll send the person's kind of habitual muddy waters which might be a nervousness or bragging or whatever it is that their strategies are. But if you hang in and keep listening, something in their being will sense that and

becomes safe enough for the more pure, authentic waters of their being to be expressed. This is another metaphor rather than saying consciousness of the winds, which is really creating a space for beings to unfold themselves and others can do that for us. So we're listening to each other and not just to what another person is saying but what they're trying to communicate and not even just that but really we're listening to who that person is. So this is the next skill. The first training really was how to get in touch with ourselves and communicate it really. And the second is how do we quiet enough and hold a space for other people so that they

get to come from a deeper, pure, more real place and we get to receive that, which is beautiful, which is a gift. Some of the ways that work, if you want to practice that kind of listening, one thing is to anchor in your body. As soon as you're with somebody to feel your body, like scan through your body, feel your hands, feel your chest, feel your

belly, soften, feel your feet on the ground. I remember years ago somebody said if you really want to make sure you're contacting and taking in another, look to see what color their eyes are. It could be looked to see something else,

but you're looking to see. You're interested to take in information about who that person is. You can ask questions to yourself, what does this person need? Who is this person? What are they trying to communicate? So we practice. We practice with those we know and we begin to practice with those we don't know by deepening our attention to people we just run into because if we don't, if we don't have a curiosity, we'll see the mask that we habitually see and just be in reaction. We'll be in a trance. I want to share with you tonight a story that is probably, was one of the ones that woke me up from a certain kind of trance.

And I share it now and then. Some of you might remember it because it's been so powerful to me. This is a Unitarian minister that wrote this, and she writes about being at Christmas holidays and her husband and her and their two children were driving. down the coast of California and they're driving to Los Angeles actually and they had a stop at King City which is just a small metropolis six gas stations three diners so they go into a diner and this is kind of what happened she first says what am I doing in this place because it's just like everybody's very quiet and their own little reveries and her reverie was interrupted when her son's Eric squealed

with glee hi there two words he thought were one Hi there. He pounded his fat baby hands, whack, whack on the metal high chair tray. His face was alive with excitement. Eyes wide, gums bared and a toothless grin. He wriggled and chirped and giggled, and now I'm going to read what she says. She says, I saw the source of his merriment and my eyes could not take it in all at once. A tattered rag of a coat, obviously bought by someone else eons ago, dirty, greasy worn, zipper at half-mast over a spindly body, toes that poke out of wood-bee shoes, gums as bare of Eric's, hair uncombed, unwashed,

whiskers too short to be called a beard, but way, way beyond a shadow. And I know so varicose, it looked like a map of New York. I was too far away to smell him, but I knew he smelled. His hands were waving in the air. Hi there, baby. Hi there, big boy. I see you buster. My husband and I exchanged the look those across between

what do we do and poor devil. Eric continued to laugh and answer, Hi there. Every call was echoed. I noticed waitresses' eyebrows shoot to their foreheads, and several people sitting near us out loud. This old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby. I shoved a cracker at air.

He pulverized it on the tray. I whispered, why me, under my breath. Our meal came and the nuisance continued. Now the old bum was shouting from across the room. Do you know patty cake? Adda boy, you know peekaboo? Hey, look, he knows peekaboo. Nobody thought it was cute.

the guy was probably a drunk and definite disturbance. I was embarrassed. My husband Dennis was humiliated. Even our six-year-old said, why is that old man talking so loud? We ate in silence, except Eric, who was running through his repertoire for the admiring applause of a skid row bum.

Finally, I had enough. I turned the high chair. Eric screamed and clamored around to face his old buddy. Now I was really mad. Dennis went to pay the check and implored me to get Eric and meet me in the parking lot. I trundled Eric out of the high chair and looked toward the exit. The man sat poised and waiting his chair directly between me and the door.

Lord just let me out of here before he speaks to me or Eric. I headed toward the door. It soon became apparent that both the Lord and Eric had other plans. As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back walking to sidestep him in any air he might be breathing. As I did so, Eric all the while, with his eyes riveted, to his best friend, leaned far over in my arm, reaching with both arms in a baby's pick-me-up position. In a split second of balancing my baby and turning to counter his weight, I came

eye to eye with the old man. Eric was lunging for him, arms spread wide. The bum's eyes both asked and implored, would you let me hold your baby? There was no need for me to answer since Eric propelled himself from my arms to the man's. Suddenly, a very old man and a very young baby were involved in a love relationship. Eric laid his tiny head upon the man's ragged shoulder. The man's eyes closed and I saw tears hovered beneath his lashes. His aged hands full of grime and pain and hard labor, gently, so gently, cradled my baby's bottom and stroked his back.

I stood awestruck. The old man rocked and cradled Eric in his arms for a moment and then his eyes open and set squarely on mine. He said in a firm, commanding voice, you take care of this baby somehow I managed I will from a throat that contained a stone he pried Eric from his chest

unwillingly longingly as though he was in pain I held my arms open to receive my baby and again the gentleman addressed me God bless you ma'am you've given me my Christmas gift I said nothing more than a muttered thanks with Eric back in my arms I ran for the car

Dennis wondered why I was crying and holding Eric so tightly on why I was saying, my God and my God forgive me. So this path of waking up our heart is one of deepening attention. We spend huge swaths of time in a trance that really shuts out the winds, the realness of other people.

We all have our stereotypes and our ideas and we just don't pay attention. And I shared that story because every time I listen to it, it reminds me of how much I do that and yet how much I long to open to the winds, you know, to really take in beings. So that's the next practice. And I'm not going to get to too many more, but why don't we just take a moment to reflect together. Again, as we've been doing, take this as a pause to be right here in your body and your heart.

Pema Children writes, we don't set out to save the world. We set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts. So we're seeking to understand, to see and feel and hear another being. and you might scan again as you did earlier and perhaps bring to mind someone that you spend time with regularly, a person you might deepen your attention to consciously. You might imagine being with this person in some conversation. Imagine a place that's familiar that you might see this person.

and imagine that you can anchor yourself, like really let yourself be present in your body, that you have that intention to really listen to what a person's saying or what they really are trying to say, or really to who they are, that your intentions to listen, your intentions to see past the mask. Maybe you'd be asking the question, what does this person need? Imagine what it means to create a safe space. to let the fountain of this being flow unfold from an increasingly pure place. You might sense who you are when you're truly listening,

when you've created that heart space that can receive another, who are you in those moments? Perhaps you can taste a bit that empty, radiant heart space. The gift of communicating from more authenticity, sharing our vulnerability, sharing our vulnerability, opening a space for others, is it allows love to flow. It allows us to feel that shared heart space that really is the essence of our being.

It frees us in our days to actually express love more actively, and it frees us to receive love. You can open your eyes if you'd like. There's always that reflection, at the end of our life, looking back what will most matter. And I think for many, many people, if we sense what will stand out, it will be moments of connection. Moments were in some way we were letting someone know our love

or taking in love. And I think part of what is challenging for so many of us is that we know that our habit is to hold back. When we sense, well, when's the last time I really let someone know how much I love them? Often it's not so often happening in our lives, and yet we all need that reminder. It's one child put it this way. She said, you really shouldn't say I love you unless you mean it.

But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget and it's good for them to get reminded. And this is from the poet Hafeus. I could not lie anymore, so I started to call my dog God. I could not lie anymore, so I started to call my dog God. First he looked confused. Then he started smiling. Then he even danced.

I kept at it. Now he doesn't even bite. I am wondering if this might work on people. Okay, we'll just close. Let's close with a little bit of a heart practice. Come into quietness again. Just feel your breath. Feel your senses awake.

We've been exploring tonight this shift. shift in identity from being in that bubble, that enclosure of separate self, into that heart space where the winds can flow in a conscious way. See if there's some part of you that can relax just a little bit more right now. Noticing how when you relax in your body actually allows her to be a natural flow of energy, shoulders relaxed, hands soft, heart relaxed. Bringing to mind one person in your life who's dear, and taking some moments to feel this person close in right here. See the person's eyes? Sense how this person looks when he or she is lit up, happy, feeling loving towards you. Really allow yourself to sense

what you love about this being. Let this person's goodness really touch your heart in a visceral way so that you can mentally whisper in your own way the words of loving. I love you, I care about you, thank you for being in my life. But mentally whispered and sense as you do that the person can receive that and hear that and feel that and feel that heart space in a very visceral way and let it be as large it is as it is so that you can imagine this person's love. coming to you and just letting it bathe you. You can feel receiving, receiving, letting in, and then just opening that heart space infinitely

wide in all directions so that we can sense collectively the Sangha of all beings, that we practice perhaps with those closest to us, those we see regularly. But we're really talking about opening into a heart space that loves life, loves aliveness. So feeling now the shared heart space of all that are here, all who may be listening in some way, that it's really one heart space. Feeling our prayers for all being, that all beings might realize this heart space, this awakened, empty, radiant heart as the source. and live from that source, expressing, receiving, living in love.

This is the words of Rumi, the sky, where we live, is no place to lose your wings. So love, love, love. Namaste and blessings. 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 and Sight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.