Tara Brach - Awakening Trust in a Fractured World, Part 2

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

In an age of polarization, conspiracy thinking, and deepening mistrust, how can we cultivate a trust that is wise and healing –for our own heart and the world? This talk explores the personal and collective forces that foster mistrust, and through reflection and applied practices, we'll explore how to nurture a trust in basic goodness and a felt sense of belonging, even in the most divided times.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome friends. Thank you for being here. I was talking to a friend recently about the state of the world and afterwards he sent me this cartoon and in it you've got a man in a doctor's office and the doctor's saying, here's your problem. It looks like you're paying attention to what's going on. For some reason it made me think of George Carlin. You might remember this. He writes that, you know, one of every three Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. And he says,

think of your two best friends. If they're okay, then it must be you. And it made me think, you know, it's way more than one out of three. And for those who are paying attention to the news, who are impacted by the news, this isn't mental illness. The fear, the distress, the anger, the heartbreak, these are all intelligent responses to our unraveling world. I mean, we are living in times that are increasingly dangerous. It's a shadowy era. So it's natural for each of us to wonder how can we hold this, how can we respond? And in a way, pretty much every reflection in talk I'm doing is about that.

Today is part two of talk called trusting basic goodness in a fractured world. Part one, please, if you want to listen to it, it's available on the podcast. And part of it I offered an evolutionary perspective on the current state of the world that many are familiar with, that when we're experiencing strong fear and separation, our survival brain can take over. And we get stuck in self-protection, we get stuck in anger, in hatred, in bad, othering, in aggression, in that sense of us, them. And when that happens, you know, when there's that limbic hijack, we have lost contact with our full capacities, with our full capacities for reason, for executive function, for mindfulness, for compassion, for empathy. And this

happens individually and collectively. And this is what really is characterizing this dark age or world is descending into a kind of trance or limbic hijack. And you wouldn't be here if you didn't intuit that this is not the end of the evolutionary story. If you had an experience personally waking up from that trance, we humans can do that. We have built in the mindfulness and the capacity for compassion and we can strengthen our ability to see what's going on, to calm ourselves down, and to expand in a way that holds others in our heart. We can touch into what I call basic goodness or that that you can be a way that.

sense of the awareness and love that really pervades life. So having said that, I want to name that focusing today on trusting goodness, well, it can be a really hard cell in this current climate. So what we'll do is we're going to take some moments to really look at the forces right now that are keeping us so entranced, so caught in the bad othering. And then we'll look at the inner trainings that can really evolve us right in these days that we're in right now. So for many, the intensity of feeling us-them, the bad othering, it's increasing you know, at an amazing pace right in a daily way. Like yesterday I got a text from my beloved

college roommate and she said, okay Tara, how are you keeping yourself calm, centered, and grounded and not hating in these times? I was on Zoom with another friend who said, you know, I know I should rise above this, meaning bad othering. But things are so horrible. I do. feel anger and blame. It's hard not to blame. And it is. I'm imagining many of you are feeling just how much this atmosphere is conducive and seeing it on all sides, the demonizing the scapegoating, and it's getting worse. I mean, here in the United States, the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, and unto itself a tragedy. it's become rocket fuel for hatred for more violence.

I mean, many, the words that are getting tossed around were at this terrible threshold, it's an inflection point, and it will may be leading to a dramatic increase in political violence and hatred. So, in the United States, and this is true in all authoritarian states, leaders look for any way to ramp up fear and to frame the opposition as evil. And it gives a rationale to destroy all those that are opposed. It's not just leadership. It's also the reason it's so intense right now.

Social media, the algorithms are designed to keep escalating anger and mistrust. And because that's what maximizes engagement. So, we are literally, by engaging in social media, taking a drug intended to keep us at war with each other. So, it feels really important to reflect together on this and to honestly sense how we are part of this field of bad othering in the United States. And I found this so interesting. surveys show that 11% of people believe political murder is acceptable, 11%. Yet the data also shows that Americans estimate that nearly a third of their political opponents support political murder.

That's three times as many as are true. So you see what's happening. I mean, each side has a distorted belief in the badness and the immorality, of the other side that then makes them feel that the other side's more dangerous than they are, but that perception ring just revs up the actual level of danger. The extreme expression of the trance of bad othering we might consider as conspiracy, most I suspect are familiar with the existence of QAnon, which isn't on the front pages right now so much,

but it continues in quite a strong way. And the main belief is that a secret cabal of elites often framed as Satan worshipping pedophiles that they control the world. And they're made up of really Democratic Party and liberal elites. That's their human base. And a heroic insider, for many it's Donald Trump, is working behind the scenes to expose and defeat them and leading the chosen ones to a coming great awakening. So I'm only saying this because what's interesting is that a national survey in 2024

said that approximately 20% of Americans believe this, 20%. And it's not just in this country, in the UK, 25%. in Europe, around Europe, more generally, 32% have some version of this conspiracy theory. So I want to slow down and say, what's that like to take in that one in five people here in the United States will say this is what they believe? And what's important here is that conspiracy theories can only thrive. They become really sticky when people feel deeply threatened, alienated, devalued, frightened. It takes suffering, you know, and then people need something to blame for that suffering.

So this was the environment in parts of Europe between the World Wars. The fascism leading up to World War II thrived on conspiracy thinking. In Germany, targeting Jews as the secret corrupting force, national decline. So conspiracy theory, it all has to do with an evil other, has existed through history. In 14th century during the black death when it swept Europe, it was witches and Jews to blame. And if we go back further in early Rome when disaster struck, rumors spread that Christians were secretly conspiring to undermine the empire and they were accused of these secret rituals that include cannibal

and incest and pletting the empire's destruction. So I'm sharing all this because if we look closely, this is through history and it's just a part of the way the human psyche works, that we need to target and find what can we blame. I mean, there's an old joke that a conspiracy theorist dies and goes to heaven. and when he arrives, God says, welcome, you can ask me one question, anything you want. So the man says, I need to know, who really shot JFK? And God says, Lee Harvey Oswald shot him and he acted alone. And the man pauses and he says, wow, this goes even higher than I thought.

So, of course, some conspiracies are real. but the point is this, that when there's a pervasive sense of evil others, this toxic distrust becomes the grounds for violating others. And it's important to name that sometimes the dehumanized other might not be seen as bad, just as not mattering. Indifference in the suffering of the most vulnerable is what's going on. It's like there's this sense of dissociation. We're dehumanizing because we're just sensing, they're just not important and thus allowing

the violation to go on. Elie Wiesel says the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. because we've made others unreal. Hannah Arndt says, evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it. So as we scan and look at ourselves honestly and we look at others honestly, it's painful but important to see how when we're in this reactive limbic trance, others can become bad or others cannot matter but either way

the trance is what enables this growing tide of violence and we're witnessing it and it's natural that as we witness it many are feeling there's nothing we can do I mean these are forces we've seen through history they're hugely powerful and it's out of control

and it may be true that this tide of hatred and distrust and violence won't be turned anytime soon. I mean, we may be headed towards a civil war. I mean, I'm speaking with you today, right here in these times, feeling it with you. It's true. We don't know if, when, how things can be turned around. But we do have a choice on how we can respond, what we can do.

and we can go against the tide. We don't have to stay in that trance. We can deepen our dedication to waking up to living from our full capacity for presence and love. And just to remind you that when we talk about love, we're not talking about a naive love or a passivity, living from love in its full, dimensionality. You'll remember that strong back, that love means that we have the courage

because we care so much about life to speak truth and to fight against injustice and to resist depression. That's what it means. We love life, so we do that. And love also has that soft front that's profoundly forgiving heart that can see the vulnerability in all beings. This tender that sees the good in all beings. As Father Gregory Boyle put it, no exceptions. We all belong. So this that I'm talking about is the path of awakening beings, the Bodhisattva path, and it's not an abstract ideal. Think of the civil rights movement, which I do often because it gives a model and an inspiration. Think of people marching peacefully, arms linked, facing dogs and fire hoses and belly clubs and hatred, and facing that

with dignity, with courage, with this unwavering spirit and love, that's strong back and soft front. It was carried by a vision, a trust in what's possible. And that's what we need. We don't need to have any certainty about what's going to happen just to trust. This is possible. I mean, think of Nelson Mandela, 27 years in prison, and then he didn't seek retribution. He champion truth and reconciliation, you know, rather than us versus them. He spoke about Ubuntu, this deep African teaching that says, I am because we are. I am because we are, this intrinsic belonging.

I mean, Mandela showed us that even after lifetimes of injustice, a nation could imagine and move towards wider circles of belonging. So let's look at how we can bring this directly into our lives. And as I said, it begins by with interest and care looking to see how we are entrance ourselves. For some it helps to envision the Golden Buddha. We know that this beautiful statue of a Golden Buddha was in coverings for centuries to protect it through difficult times. And in similar ways, we move through this world with coverings, with our defenses, with our aggression, with our bad othering, or with our dissociation and indifference.

These are coverings. And so it's honest and wise to acknowledge we get caught in the coverings, in the bad othering, in the indifference and we forget. I mean we forget the gold, we forget the awareness, the heart, the shared belonging. So what we do is we start observing it and we notice that when the coverings get activated, It happens when others in some way feel different or dangerous and not just when they're threatening our physical self. I mean, it's our egoic self a lot of the time that gets threatened, our sense of rightness.

And sometimes it doesn't take that much. I sometimes think about that story of a little girl talking to her teacher about whales and at one point in the teacher remarked that it was physically impossible for a whale to to swallow an entire human being because even though it's a large mammal, it has a very small throat. And the little girl insisted that, yeah, but the whale swallowed Jonah. And the teacher got irritated and reiterated that a whale can't swallow a human. It's physically impossible. So the little girl said, well, when I get to heaven, I'll ask Jonah. And the teacher said, well, what if Jonah went to hell? And the little girl replied, then you ask him.

So, when we're in it, when we're in bad othering, it is a trance. And if we look closely, we'll find out that in those moments there are certain beliefs and thoughts that are going through very narrow, us them kind of thoughts, our biochemistry shifts, our body gets tight, we're identified with the coverings. So our starting place is to slow down when we're caught and actually get familiar with that small reactive self, you know, the thoughts, the feelings in our heart and our body, and then to try to sense as we pause, okay, so what would it mean to wake up right now? What would it mean to widen my circle of belonging, to include others?

On the Bodhisattah path, there are two core practices that support us in waking up from the trance of bad othering. And the first is to see past another's coverings to the human vulnerability that's underneath. I mean, what is the fear or the hurt that is behind having the coverings be actually? activated. This is the grounds of compassion. And then the other practice is to learn to see the basic goodness, the light of awareness, light of spirit, sometimes called the gold that's intrinsic to all beings. When we can see vulnerability, the heart naturally softens. There's a shift in our biochemistry, those divisive thoughts start quieting and we actually have the perceptiveness and the spaciousness to see goodness. So they go together. So just to

dive in a little more to seeing vulnerability when we've been caught in bad othering, I often talk about Ruby Sales. She's a civil rights icon and very wise woman. She described how her entire approach to social activism shifted. When she, she's a civil rights icon, she's a civil rights icon, She learned to ask, and this is often inwardly asked, where does it hurt? She'd be seeing somebody or seeing a group of, for her many times with white supremacists, and if she could slow down and look more deeply and say, where does it hurt? She was able to then respond to the situation from a much more spacious and wise heart. Oprah, you know, when this has helped a lot of people by guiding them when they see someone

who's suffering just ask the question, what happened to you? What happened to you? And we know it. We know it that those who were bullied, they're going to be inclined to bullying themselves. Individually and collectively when there's been violation, when there's been poverty, when there's been violence, when there's been shaming, when there's been domination, when people grow up feeling unsafe, when their needs aren't met for being seen, for being loved, it can lead to violating others.

John Paul Lederick has been a real inspiration for me in his teachings about peacemaking. And he says that the only path to peace is to forge relations. with those of difference. And he calls this moral imagination, which is the capacity to imagine being in relationship with the enemy or with those who disagree. And so these bodhisatt practices are ways that we do that, the way that we can start imagining being in relationship with those who are different.

Because when we see perpetrators, when we see enemies, and we see those who we feel are threatening, who feel like other, who feel unreal, what would happen if we really asked where does it hurt? So it becomes life-changing when we begin to imagine relating with others of difference, seeing their vulnerability, seeing their goodness. it enlarges us in profound ways. And here's the thing. Here's why this, we're talking about this today, why it matters so much. Democracy depends on our ability to talk to each other across difference. Authoritarianism takes hold when we stay trapped in the trance of bad othering,

or when we stay numb by indifference. What our world most needs right now is just this. waking up from the reactivity, more and more of us who can bridge some divides, who can widen the circle of belonging, who can learn to stay in relationship across distance. I mean, Desmond Tutu puts it this way. He says, if you want peace, you don't talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies. So I'll share two stories that illustrate this movement from bad othering to widening, to a widened sense of belonging. The first is Asulamon Khatib.

I was recently on a Zoom call with him. He's a Palestinian man and I consider a new friend. His story, he grew up near Jerusalem and as a child witnessed huge. amount of violence. By age 13 he was involved with the PLO Fatah and he injured two Israeli soldiers. He was arrested, spent 15 years in Israeli jails, described the brutality and routinely stripped naked, beaten tear gas sprayed into prison cells. It was switched into another prison at one point. But in prison, he taught him himself Hebrew and English, and during that time he read extensively from Martin Luther King

and from Gandhi, so he started educating himself about the enemy by reading really the history of the Jewish people. And he watched Schindler's List and he said that was life-changing. Because through all of that kind of educating himself, what he saw was trauma behind the narrative of both sides. And when he was released, he dedicated himself to peace and reconciliation work, really calling for non-violent resistance. One thing after he was, some years, seven years after he was out of prison, he had been forming and part of a number of groups partnering between Israelis and Palestinians. And in 2004, a group of them, Eight former fighters from both sides went to Antarctica and the objective was to find common

ground and it was very, you know, them against the elements and they forged very deep bonds with each other. He became co-founder of combatants for peace, which is this partnership of Israelis and Palestinians that are dedicated to nonviolence and to ending Israeli military occupation. He talks about not so easy to partner. You know, there's a real imbalance of power. You know, his family is still living under military rule. And he's working with Israeli ex-combatants, you know, a military that killed family, friends, and he has to keep seeing the human behind the uniform.

And his heart is utterly dedicated to forgiving and holding that vision for the future. I attended a Memorial Day ceremony online that was held by Combatants for Peace. It was their 20th. This was last April. They do it each year. And you hear Israelis and Palestinians talking about losing a son or a daughter or brother, childhood friend, and they're grieving together. And I couldn't watch it without just grieving with them.

and also feeling this gratitude, we can't wake up out of bad othering unless we connect with the deep vulnerability that lives inside all of us. I mean, that's what Suleiman's encouraging for his work. He was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize both in 2017 and 2018. And this is the bodhisattva path, seeing our shared vulnerability, our purpose. potential for love, calling it forward. The second story is another co-founder of combatants for peace, and this is in Israeli Chen alone, and I may be pronouncing names wrong, and I'm sorry for that.

So he served as an officer in the Israeli army manning checkpoints in the West Bank. And he describes one day a taxi pulled up and was packed with Palestinian children. They were sick and feverish and on their way. to a hospital. And the driver pleaded he was desperate to get them through. But the permits weren't in proper order and so Chen refused them, didn't give them passage. The children would not go to the hospital. And then his phone rang and it was his wife with a message about one of his children. And in that moment something cracked open. He was no longer an officer enforcing rules he was a father and in front of him were other people's children who were

suffering, clearly suffering. And he said that changed him. It shattered the mental wall that kept them as other. It planted the seed that would lead him to co-found combatants for peace. And again, this is the bodhisattva path to wake up past the indifference, past the other the bad othering, and see the vulnerability and sense our potential to wake up together. So I'm sharing these stories because the key teaching is if we want to widen our circles of compassion, we have to pay attention to those we don't pay close attention to. We have to be in relationship. And it's important to note here that if we're living with raw trauma It's not wise or even possible often to engage with those who we identify as the cause.

It's premature. The work, if we're in the heat of trauma, is to find safe spaces to calm our nervous system, spaces of healing with trusted others, where we do that inner work of presence and self-compassion, where we can gain resilience and strength. And here's something to keep remembering that even if we don't have trauma, I mentioned my friend on the Zoom early on who was saying how hard it was to stop bad othering. Trying to wake up from the trance is really, really difficult because the anger and the blame are strong, strong energies and they're supposed to be. You know, one of my friends,

Ruth King says, anger is initiatory. It's just not transformational. We need anger. We need to feel the energy, the intelligence that knows there's something out there that is dangerous. We need to respond. The problem is that if we respond from anger and blame, we don't. We don't end up planting the seeds of healing. Hatred never seizes by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law. So when the anger and blame are there, what do we do? We take that U-turn and honor and offer presence to them. There's, many of you are familiar with that line because I often quoted that vengeance is the layer. easy form of grief. When we're caught in the vengeance and when we're caught in the blaming,

there's something else going on. And if we offer the anger presence and we keep paying attention, we can find underneath it there's a fear that we may have been avoiding a powerlessness. and if we keep staying, and this takes courage and commitment, we will get down to the vulnerability in our own being underneath that vengeance, that bad othering. We'll get down to the grief and in the deepest way something we care about because when we're angry, when we're bad othering, when it's charged, there's something we really care about.

it takes a real conscious intent, a purposefulness, to wake up from this trance. For me, it's a daily practice, and I've shared that before. I feel very humble about it. Every day I read the news. Well, I don't read the news on Sundays. I take a day off because it feels important for my nervous system. But I read the news and yesterday I was reading about some of these terrifying raids, ice in Chicago, tasing a man in the face.

I read these things and oh my gosh, you know, my heart just clutches are the Israeli military that as I'm speaking tacking Gaza City, it's a wasteland. huge anger comes up. So I try to take time to sense what's under and I have to open to the layers and there's fear and there's powerlessness. I'll look at the pictures, the images that in front of me. Sometimes I look at them so I can find under the anger the grief because here's the thing. I want to get down to that tenderness. My grieving heart does not seek vengeance. It seeks an end to this suffering.

My grieving heart doesn't bat other. My grieving heart knows that humans are not the enemy. It's the universal forces of delusion, of fear, of aggression to take over. If I can grieve, I can then start imagining myself in relationship with widening circles of belonging. And I can act, and it's from care. So I want to pause here and give you a chance to explore these bodhisattva practices of imagining ourself in relationship with someone we might consider bad other, someone of difference, someone who feels like the enemy. I want to invite you as we do this not to choose somebody or

group that brings up trauma, not to choose the most noxious leader you can find. So let this be a pause and invite yourself into presence. You might close your eyes or lower your gaze if you're in a situation to do that, take a few full breaths, and then scanning our world, choose a group that in some way feels threatening politically, because religion, culture, a group that you might find yourself feeling a sense of us, them with, and then try to imagine and bring forward in your awareness an individual from this group. And it may be that you have someone in mind personally, art may be that you're imagining an individual from this group. Begin by first tending honestly to your own reaction.

Like what is charging the trance of bad othering for you? What is it that you're experiencing or perceiving? And allow the whatever is there to be there, the anger, the blame, the fear. And just notice when you're in, in this, when you're feeling that reaction of bad othering, how your mind is, how your body is, how your heart feels. So you're being a witness, you're noticing. There's real power to pausing and witnessing what's going on inside us. You might deepen the witnessing and the presence by putting a hand on your heart and feeling your breath. And just sense what's the hardest part

of this. You might sense what you're believing and most fearing. You might sense what makes this matter so much. What are you most afraid of? What are you most caring about? And keep offering a very gentle and steady presence to your own vulnerability, to what's in there. Take your time. under the anger, under the bad othering, there's something we care about. You might sense the world you're longing for and the sorrow at what is unfolding. Let the hand on the heart be a sense of witnessing with much care, what's here, and feel the wisdom of your heart. Humans are not the enemy. the suffering is from conditioning, from fear, from wounds, so that as you now bring that

imagining to the other moral imagination, looking deeply, what shaped them? Just imagine. Imagine their family or caregivers or social situation, how their society. affected them. Imagine them as a young child. Were their needs met for safety, for understanding, for love, for feeling valued? Just try to imagine into what suffering are they living with. Where does it hurt if you were living inside that skin with those ideas and behaviors? What would it be like to be them? And continue to imagine try to imagine what they long for, what matters to them, family, safety, security. What is it? What do they love? What are they like when they're truly peaceful, when they're happy?

Imagine that you're teaming up with them to help in some way, to help an elder in difficulty, let's say. imagine you are with them and at the same time being awed by natural beauty. Imagine you're learning something from them. Imagine seeing them expressing love to a child. Imagine grieving a loss together. Being in relationship with the other. You might sense how even this, what you're doing now, even the small act of imaginative seeing becomes an act of resistance to the forces that divide us.

Consider that. You are going against the tide as you imagine being in relationship. And if that imagining can lead us to engage, to talk more to those of difference, to work together, If that imagining can lead to engaging and acting from an undivided heart, it becomes what Martin Luther King called Soul Force. We are reweaving belonging. Please take a few full breaths and just honor your own process. It's a beautiful, powerful way to stretch our consciousness to wake ourselves up.

It's powerful, friends, to use my own. moral imagination, these bodhisattah trainings of seeing vulnerability and goodness, trainings that undo the armoring of the heart. So I invite you to keep exploring. I often think of a quote someone sent me that was at the Rwanda Memorial Center. And the quote said, if you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me. We know deep down that this is true, that if we know each other, if we're in touch inwardly, we'll cherish the life that's here. If we pay deep attention, we have that capacity to see essence and spirit. But it's important to name that in our society we don't have much training or practice in doing that. You know, the

I see the light in you. The light in me sees the light in you. That's not so much a part of our society and of course way less so now. So these last few minutes we'll explore this deep bodhisattva training of metta or loving kindness which is grounded in seeing the light in each other, bringing others to mind, those are easy to love, those who are more difficult, reflecting on goodness. Many of you are familiar with Martin Bueber who taught this eye thou, you know, to see thou and sense the soul connection, soul to soul in that word. It works for some people in a very powerful way. And one of one student, a young Latino man, he, who was attending medical school in New York, he had long stretches on the subway to get to classes.

So he made this his bodhisatt for practice where he would look at people on the subway and the more diverse are different from himself, the better. And he would just reflect on thou, thou, you know, sensing the light. So it was people old and young and different skin colors and socioeconomic and so on. And he'd kind of sit across the aisle and not have eye contact but try to sense an openness in his chest and energetically feel that soul to soul. One of his major challenges to himself was when somebody had a kind of expression or look that really made him feel a sense of dislike.

And one of those people was this older white woman who always dressed in a business suit and she had this very stern superior look and he saw her regularly and he would just bow, thou. Well, one day he got off the subway and he was walking and he felt a tap on his shoulder and it was her and she said, sorry for bothering you. This is strange to say but I'm always grateful when you're on the subway. It feels like I have a friend, somebody keeping company. And he was stunned because, of course, he had so misreaded, but he was also exhilarated. And you might know there's studies on this that we get this surprising, positive boost

when we have a smile or a warm contact with a stranger, the world becomes a warmer place, more trustworthy. We need to enlarge our sense of belonging. Brian Stevenson talks about the word proximity. We need more proximity, getting closer to each other, to those of difference, so we can see the vulnerability so we can remember the light. So we started today really with the darkness in the world that we don't know what will happen, but we can go against the tide.

We can, each of us and together, we can dedicate ourselves. to serving healing by remembering all of us humans, that same shared vulnerability and all beings everywhere, that intrinsic light, that goodness. So we'll close with a meditation, very brief meditation, if you will, just to again pause, feel your breath, sense if there's anywhere in your body that wants to let go a little bit, You might assume the half smile, that slight smile at the mouth. Feel the inside of the mouth smiling. And let that smile spread through the heart.

So you can feel the breath at the heart, smile at the heart. Not to cover over, but to really sense the space that's here. Bringing to mind someone who's easy to love, someone who's dear to you. and just take a moment to look at them and in some way say thou or namaste to see the light in their eyes to see the love that shines through them to feel what you love about them and just thou namaste feel that soul to soul you might sense your own being the love the love the light, the warmth, the awareness that's right here, and in some way bow to that. It's right here, inside, through and everywhere, this light of awareness. You might bring to mind someone

you know who's very different from you. Again, see the light of awareness shining through their eyes, imagine and sense what they love, who they are when they're happy, peaceful imagine it thou just let the word thou or namaste I see the light

seeing past the coverings bringing to mind someone you've considered a bad other and taking a few breaths if you feel the reactivity inside you putting your hand on your heart and breathing with it

again looking to see past the coverings if the word thou works thou, namaste, see the awareness that lives through them, what they most deeply would long for, what they're like when they're feeling loving and loved, and then widening and widening so that you can sense all the different life forms that your whole, the earth or mother in your heart and all beings in your heart, just bowing to the light, to the love that lives through all, I'll close with Thomas Merton.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts where neither sin or knowledge could reach, the core of reality, that person, each one is in the eyes of the divine. If only they could see themselves as they really are, if only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more need for war, for hatred, for greed, for cruelty. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. Thank you, friends.

Thank you for being here for your presence, for your good hearts. We're together in our prayers for our world. Blessings.