Tara Brach - Be All That You Are

Episode Date: September 15, 2010

2010-09-15 - Be All That You Are - We are conditioned to live in stories that obscure the vastness, goodness and mystery of what we are. This talk explores the ways we construct a limited self-identity and the pathways to realizing and living from a fullness of our Being. Please donate at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

I would like to start tonight's talk with a story, and the story's title is dinosaur, written by Bruce Holland Rogers. When he was very young, he waved his arms, snapped his massive jaws, and tromped around the house, so the dishes trembled in the china cabinet. Oh, for goodness sake, his mother said, you are not a dinosaur. You're a human being. Since he was not a dinosaur, he thought for a time he might be a pirate. Seriously, his father said to him after school one day,

what do you want to be? A fireman maybe, or a policeman or a soldier, some kind of hero? But in high school, they gave him tests and told him he was good with numbers. Perhaps he'd want to be a math teacher. That was respectable. Our tax accountant, he could make a lot of money doing that. It seemed a good idea to make money, what with falling in love and thinking about raising a family,

so he became a tax accountant, even though he sometimes regretted it because it made him feel, well, small. And he felt even smaller when he was no longer a tax accountant but a retired tax accountant. Still worse, a retired tax accountant who forgot things.

He forgot to take the garb to the curb, to take his pill, to turn his hearing aid on. Every day it seemed he forgot more things, important things like where his children lived in which of them were married, are divorced. Then one day, when he was out for a walk by the lake, he forgot what his mother had told him. He forgot that he was not a dinosaur.

He stood blinking his dinosaur eyes in the bright sunlight, feeling its familiar warmth on his dinosaur skin, watching dragonflies flitting among the horse tails at the water's edge. So I really love this story of forgetting our learned identity, that we become free when we step out of this notion of who we think we are or supposed to be, to really inhabit a kind of creativity. We all live with layers of who we've been told we are, who we should be or who we shouldn't be. You know, we're all living with that. And one way of understanding authentic healing, you know, true spiritual awakening, is that it's not anything we're attaining.

We're not achieving or attaining anything. That true awakening, true spiritual awakening, comes from letting go of the stories about who we think we are. letting go of the stories that that shape our sense of ourselves. And it's in the letting go of the stories that we tell ourselves. It's in that that silence and that openness that we come home to a direct realization of our nature. And then can really celebrate the waves, the different unique waves that arise in these bodies and minds. but the gateway, it's a letting go.

It's a not buying into these notions of who we are, what's wrong with us, what we need to be doing. As the Buddha put it, our suffering comes from not realizing who we are. That's the most simple and elegant description I know of the spiritual path, that our suffering comes from not realizing who we are. comes from a confining sense of identity. Now, as I'll talk about, that doesn't mean we're not supposed to have smaller identities than the vastness of the ocean of light or whatever it might be. But it's how we hold them or regard them, how much they end up keeping us from,

whether it's that dinosaur awareness such as blinking in the sun or the part of us that wants to create music or play or be spontaneous. It's just that question of what is really between me and being all that I am. And there's a wonderful story that I've always come back to. It's in the Bantu tradition. The tribesmen, and who knows about these stories, what really is the case. But in this one, at nighttime when they put their children to bed, the father will go around,

after the children are asleep, say, just whisper, be all that you are. Just be all that you are. When I heard that my son was still young and so I started doing it. He'd be asleep and I just whisper, be all that you are. And it's still, when I'm doing the loving kindness practice and I'm reflecting on him, I sense all that he is. I sense the aliveness and the heart and the clarity and, just the hooey and just that wish that he realized and inhabit that. So we get conditioned, each one of us, to experience ourselves in limiting ways. It's just part of being on the planet.

And some of us have a tighter prison of our conditioning than others, but we all get conditioned. And I like the way John O'Donohue puts it. He says, what happened to our wildness? you know to the wildness of God is the way he describes it you know how do we become so civilized over-civilized animals so of course Mullah Nazerdine

some of you've heard of he's that Sufi Wiseman and Fool he's one of the stories one of the very well-known stories is he goes into a bank that he doesn't usually frequent and and wants to withdraw money and the teller says well can you identify yourself sir So Molinau's Rudin pulls out a big mirror from his cloak and looks into it really studiously and then exclaims, yep, that's me all right. So we receive messages, each one of us, from our culture and then through the medium of our culture, our families. And the messages we internalize that tell us, you know, that either you're an important person, a special person, an unimportant person, better than, worse than.

but we have our set of messages. And in some way, they all create an experience of what, and I kind of like this word, disgrace, which means if grace is really inhabiting the fullness and the flow of what we are, disgraces, in some way we get pulled away from that. And for many of us to the point that there's a sense of shame, there's some deep sense that something's wrong. But most people I know have some of that, some of that sense of disgrace of being apart from the sacredness, the aliveness, the wholeheartedness,

that really can be who we are. So tonight, what I'd like to explore is how it is that we end up constructing and buying into something smaller, how we end up believing that we're less than we are, and really the pathways back to grace. to really inhabiting, realizing and inhabiting the beauty and the goodness that's here. And the metaphor that I find most useful sometimes in describing this process of getting identified, which by the way is really the kind of the core mechanism that's described in the wisdom traditions, especially Buddhism, you'll see it a lot, that our suffering comes from a limited sense of identity. And I use the metaphor of a space suit a lot.

Those of you that have been here are familiar with it, whereby we enter into this environment, this earth, this life. We are of the earth, but we take form. And because it's a challenging environment, it's part of our conditioning to try to seek ways to enlarge ourselves or hold on to things or protect ourselves or defend ourselves. And others, we take on a spacesuit. And our spacesuits have some basic common qualities.

All of us, all of our spacesuits know how to hold on when we want to try to get something that's pleasurable, and they all know how to push away when it seems dangerous or unpleasant. We share that. And then there's all sorts of characteristics that are a little more unique for us. But we're all, in some way, we've taken on a space suit. suit to navigate. And the problem or the suffering is not because there's this wanting, fearing mechanism of a space suit, a space suits that strategizes. That's not the problem. Our suffering

comes because we think we're the space suit. We think we're the wanting self or the needy self or the manipulative self or the falling short self. We think we're the space suit. And we forget who is looking through the mask. You know, we forget right now, who is it that's looking out through these eyes, that awareness, that's listening, that silence, that presence, that tenderness, we forget. Space suits are awkward. So if we're identified with the space suit, there's disgrace. We're going to feel that awkwardness. There's going to be a sense of self-centeredness and a sense of reactivity and it's not going to feel that great. And if we're going to be a sense of self-centeredness, and And if we think that's who we are, disgrace.

We're out of the flow. Okay, so there's different domains that shape the space suit. And the most fundamental is what you might call the existential domain. And that's where there's some perception of separation that we all, our brains are wired to feel. That's not the end of the evolutionary story. We also have a capacity to pay attention and wake up from sense of separation. But we all have that in us. And out of that sense of separation, there's a sense of what's out there and what's in here

and what we need to do to take care of ourselves. That's the existential level. We all come into this space suit self with a sense of, there's some basic needs for safety, for feeling a sense of safety and security and that we're going to get fed, and that we're going to have sexual interactions, and we're going to have connections with others that are on a heart level. and that we're going to in some way feel a sense of our creativity. When it gets obstructed, we're all wired to have happiness,

I mean have fear or anger. When we get what we want, happiness. And so there's basic wiring for different emotions. But then again, what happens? When they're strong, they shape our sense of who we are. When things are going our way, we're the satisfied or happier contented self. and when things aren't, we're the depressed or disgruntled or oppressed or beleaguered self.

Our caretakers are the primary mirrors that let us know in a very direct way who we are and give us an evaluation of how we're doing. And for most of us, how we relate to ourselves is deeply shaped by how those that took care of us related to us. If they thought we were enough, and mostly they would feel that if they felt enough, it's not that we were wrong. Their insecurity would think that something was missing in us. If there's a sense of you're good enough, then there's trust and belonging, and there's not as much identification with the spacesuit. If there's a message of something's missing, you need to be different, need to be better to make it in this world, then there's disgrace, there's shame,

there's a sense of fear. And then what happens is we take those messages and we own them. They become our own perceptions. Some of you might remember this little story, woman walks by a pet store and there's a parrot out front in a cage. And the parrot, as she walks by, goes, ah, o'k, you're ugly and you're stupid. And so the woman goes, the woman goes, you're ugly. And so the goes, that's strange. Oh, well. He must have just heard that. Next day, she's on her way to work, walks in front of the same parrot, and again, o'clock, you're ugly and you're stupid. And then she starts getting annoyed and decides if it happens again, she's going to talk to the pet store owner. Sure enough, next day, oh, o'clock, you're ugly and you're stupid. She goes into the pet store,

and she's really, really upset. And the guy is so apologetic. He says, I promise I will take that parrot. I will train them. It will not happen again. Next day, she's hesitant, but she walks the same, same pathway, walks in front of the parrot, and he goes, hawk, o'k, you know. So we don't need the messages beyond a certain point, do we? Right? I mean, we walk around and we tell ourselves what's missing, what's wrong. Okay, so we have a self-story, most of us. And for this woman, let's say, It's built around unmet needs. To the degree we have unmet needs, we're very identified with our spacesuit self.

For this woman, the unmet need would be to be likable, to be worthwhile. And as long as there's a trigger that can put us back into feeling those unmet needs, we're going to get identified with a small self. And there are triggers all over the place, right? We all know that. So our identity solidifies. We become caught in these stories, these limiting stories about who we are.

Every time there's a trigger that sets off reactivity and there's an unmet need there. Every time we have an unmet need to feel safe or liked or okay or respected and it gets triggered, we're identified with a small self-story. Does that make sense? every time we're triggered we contract and we're identified

we're little we're small and I have sometimes people say well I don't really feel like I have a limiting story you know there's a lot of stories but they don't really limit me and all it takes is for someone

to insult that person or for the stock market to go down in the areas that they don't want it to or for them to make a mistake at work are in a very deep way to get that diagnosis something to happen to your child, and we shrink.

We go into reaction, and our whole sense of who we are gets organized around the reaction. My example for myself, I usually, I track a lot, because I remember many years ago going to a retreat and having one of the questions

that was asked was, do you trust that you're an awakening Buddha? I remember thinking to myself, yeah, sure. sometimes, you know, and the other times. So I began this inquiry of who am I taking myself to be right now? And I found that sometimes I was taking myself to be the, you know, the striving meditator. And other times I was taking myself to be, you know, this was at a retreat, a failure. And at times I was taking myself to be the insecure one that wanted the attention of the teacher when I went into the interview, wanted to impress. And I started realizing that most moments, there were, was some reactivity that I was organized around, some unmet need, some story about who I was.

So as with many people, one of my areas of getting, where I get reactive is when things get busy and there's a lot of demands and stressors. And then the unmet need is wanting to feel like, you know, I'm not going to fail. The longing is to be successful, to be appreciated. And then when I get really busy, I'm afraid I'm going to fall short. And things are speeding up this fall. And just recently, I over-scheduled. And in order to get things under control and have the space I needed to get a chapter written, I had to cancel a date I had with a friend.

And I realized after sending the email saying, we need to cancel, that I felt shrunk. And it was guilt. I'm letting somebody down. And so that the self I was taking myself to be was the self that disappoints people. It was really helpful just to see that because in the moment of seeing, oh, guilt. Okay, disappointing.

Then I wasn't as identified with that space suit self-story. Does that make sense? This is the power of mindfulness when you can notice it. So let me invite you to reflect for a moment. Let's just see what story or identity you've been in. Let the attention go inward.

Just sense this as a pause. Feel yourself right here with some interest you can investigate. And you might sense in this last week an occasion where you got triggered into some emotional reactivity. That might have been in a relationship. a partner or child you might have been at work something around money maybe maybe around your own health

just to begin to investigate the sense of self small self identity when you're triggered just go back to that occasion you might sense well what was I believing about myself then just as I was believing in this situation for me

that I was letting somebody down and maybe they wouldn't like me so much what were you believing about yourself what were the feelings going on was it fear or anger discouragement if there's a strong reaction in you you might sense an unmet need

maybe to feel liked or understood or safe and see if you can sense into what was your sense of yourself What's it like when you're reacting? What's your experience of who you are? Do you like yourself? For most people, there's some sense of being caught in a small self, not liking that self. That there's little space, that there's judgment.

Sometimes it feels speeded up, that there's little compassion for oneself or others. These are the signs of identification with a small self, that the world has shrunk. It's narrow. Perhaps the biggest flag of small self identification, that you're living in a story of a small self, is that the self is not okay. The beginning of freedom from this prison of small self identity is to start getting familiar with it. Okay, so this is the story and feeling of small self. You can continue to explore a bit as we go,

but I'll just share with you. Recently, we have a once a month, and you're all invited to it, a once a month, what we call satsung, or it's a time where we meditate and then explore questions about what's going on. And a couple of people shared about reactive moments in their life. And it was very revealed,

feeling on two fronts. One is that when we get reactive, yes, this is what happens. We contract. There's almost like collapsing into oneself and very little self-compassion and very little choice in how to be in the world. Okay? We get small. But the other piece that was very interesting is that there's a judgment about the small self that it shouldn't be that way and that because of all the meditating we've done, we shouldn't end up becoming identified with a small self. Does that make sense? And I want to say that I have encountered this so frequently, especially with more long-term meditators, that some of the deepest distress, the people that have been on the path for a long time encounter, is that they're going along just fine, and all of a sudden

some of the triggers that they hadn't encountered for a while, let them know that, oh, those tangles are still in there. And then there's that contracting and then that kind of humiliating thing of getting really, really reactive or really angry or really lacking any compassion. And then there's this deep doubt, a deep doubt. What, what, I thought I was meditating to wake up out of this small self. How did I get trapped in this? And I want to name this out loud, because this isn't just for people that have been meditating a long time. For most of us here, we've been intentionally trying to be awake and heal and grow for a long time, for most people. And it can be so discouraging when we get reactive

and stuck in that identity again. And I just want to say that one of the small self-stories is that that we shouldn't be caught in the small self. And this is important to know that if you can catch that, if you can catch that not only are you feeling reactive, but you're judging yourself for reacting because it means not progressing on the spiritual path. If you can see that, then you won't add that what we call the second arrow of blame. This is a big one to notice. And I've seen it for myself over and over again, that how could it be this week, that as well as I, and it's been over 30 years of meditating, and here I am and I get busy and I try to adjust my schedule and all a sudden I'm in this small-minded, guilty place. How could that happen? Does it mean that the

path doesn't work? No, it just means we get triggered and we contract. It happens. Now, I've been talking a lot about the small self-story that has some shame or some sense of not good enough. I want to talk about another kind of identity we get caught in. And it's more subtle, but it still has us leave grace, and that is we get identified with the traits that have brought us goodies. If we're athletic, we're identified with that. If we're intellectually sharp, it's that one. If we happen to have the blessings of physical attractiveness, it's that one.

if we're funny, if we're, you know, have kind of a powerful personality. This is Garrison Keeler. He says, the highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose. So that's an identity, you know, I'm funny. So people ask me a lot, well, isn't it a good thing to develop a sense of a positive identity with these traits? and, you know, I'm funny, I'm responsible, I'm helpful, I'm honest. And just to say, of course, honoring our strengths is good, of course. But it's, again, it's a part of a space suit, and is that who we are?

And what happens in the moments when, if we're identified with being attractive, the humiliation of aging really sets in? Or what happens if we're athletic and we get injured in a very serious way? or if we're really a wordsmith, and my mother talks about this a lot, because she was amazing with words, and now her memory's going. What happens if our identity is hitched to what we call our strengths? It's not very reliable, is it? So just to say that it's a helpful thing to enjoy these traits,

but they too are a small self-identity that can keep us narrowed. And I know for myself that when I spent many years as a therapist and one of my, a part of the identity that I was attached to was being a helpful or a healing type person. And then what would happen was sometimes people didn't do so well that I worked with and all of a sudden I wasn't such a helpful healing type person. Or what would happen is I would come into my own need for attention or help. And that didn't match my identity. I wanted to be the healer, not the one that needed healing. Do you see what I'm saying? It's narrow. But on that same note of being a helpful healing person, I want to read you just yesterday. I get a lot of emails. This is one that came in. Thank you

once more. Your book helped me a lot to cope with pain. Some days ago, when I had terrible renal colics due to a kidney stone, it helped me. Once I... I expel it, the stone, I will name it after you. So you can see where it leads, you're getting too identified. It's stones named after you. I love that email. So this is to say that holding it lightly, holding it lightly when the space suit self has got something appealing

and when it's not so appealing. This is Suzuki Roshi, who wrote Zen Mind Beginners, mind, wonderful teacher. He said one morning, this is somebody, one of his students said, one morning when we were all sitting Zazen, Suzuki Roshi gave a brief and promptu talk in which he said, each one of you is perfect the way you are. And you can use a little improvement. So let's reflect for a moment. This is another element of this identity that we take on. So again, we're investigating for each of us where we get identified.

And in this inquiry, like you to sense somebody who's a friend, maybe not the closest person in the world, but pick somebody who's a friend that you might have been with in recent weeks, spend some time with. And if you can't think of somebody, maybe you're the kind of person

that's so busy you don't hang out, just somebody that you spent some time with at work, anywhere. And the first question is, what is it about yourself, something true about yourself, that you most don't want them to see? So what is it about yourself? You really don't want others to see? Where's a sense of disgrace, of shame, of this is something that I really don't want others to know about me? And then in a similar way with this person and in general, what is it that you most really do want people to see? see about you that's true. What do you want people to know or see or understand or get about you?

And can you in this moment let both qualities be there, that which you judge as you don't want anyone to know about maybe, and that which you feel good about? And just find out what happens when you just say, okay, just let it be here, that these are all waves in this ocean of mine, not own them so much. So opening your eyes when you'd like, anything we get attached to, the people see us one way or not see us, actually keeps us small, keeps us unrelaxed, keeps our identity fueled. And in some way, it's disgrace. It keeps us from really the fullness. And Wendell Berry is one of my favorite poets, talks a lot about facing the parts of our own psyche and recognizing how much shame is there and how to respond to that.

And I just want to read a little bit of a poem he wrote that says, do not be ashamed. He says, you will be walking some night. It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape and that you are guilty. You misread the complex instructions. You are not a member. You lost your card or never had one. Though you have done nothing shameful, they will want you to be ashamed. He's talking about the parts of our psyche that don't really think we're okay.

Though you've done nothing shameful, they will want you to be ashamed. There is no power against them. It is only candor that is aloof from them, only an inward clarity, unashamed that they cannot reach. Be ready When their light has picked you out And their questions are asked Say to them I am not ashamed

A sure horizon will come around you The heron will begin his evening flight From the hilltop When their light is picked you out And their questions are asked Say to them I am not ashamed A sure horizon will come around you

The heron will begin his evening flight from the hilltop. So again, this is a poem about how there's parts of our own psyche and parts of the culture that want to make us wrong in some way. You're not fitting the standard. You're not enough. That's the most classic one. If we can be awake when those messengers appear and say, I am not ashamed. And not just the words, but in our heart of hearts, trust the grace. that we belong to, then there's freedom. So I want to explore how that's possible. How is it possible that we can forget the stories that keep us small,

really let go of them, so that there truly is not shame. There's not disgrace. Ram Dass puts it this way. He says, you spend the first half of your life becoming somebody. Now you can work on becoming nobody. For when you become nobody, there's not tension, no pressure. pretense no one is trying to be anyone or anything, the natural state of the mind shines through unobstructed,

and the natural state of mind is pure love. So how do we let go of these somebody stories, or hold them lightly. We have to still navigate through this earth plane, but hold them lightly so we can remember the nobody and have that light and love shine through. That's the inquiry. And the last portion of this talk will really be on these two wings that free us from the stories, that help us forget the stories.

And it's the wing of really seeing what's happening, the wing of mindfulness, and the wing of heart of love. That if we can start noticing with kindness what's happening, the stories dissolve. We forget the stories. And I'll give you one point. primary example of one woman working this way to bring alive the two wings for you tonight. And this is a woman who had many failed relationships. And what we find is that when we're living in a small self story, in other words, I am the spacesuit self that is the unworthy one, we then have behaviors that keep on creating

repeated patterns in our life. In other words, we bring into reality the very thing we're afraid of. So for her failed relationship, she was in the grip of believing I'm unlovable. That was her story. Okay. I'm not enough. And then she would cover herself that vulnerability with a sense of competency and efficiency and self-sufficiency. I don't need anybody. I'm not needy because so deeply she felt needy. The story, the background story, her father left her and her mom when she was very young and she was standing there watching when he said, stormed out of the house without looking at her, without even saying goodbye, and he died several years later. Her conclusion, I drove him away. My want, my knee drove him away. It was my fault. So her identity was, in a deep way, I'm too needy, and I'm unlovable, and everybody, if they get to know me, will reject me. And then, of course, the behaviors that came out of that pushed people way, right? So we worked together at a retreat and the way it presented was a sense of fear.

She was feeling a lot of fear about her future and about relationships. And we began the practice of Rain, which is a practice of these two wings that really express presence. And for those that aren't familiar very briefly, Rain, this mindfulness practice starts with R. Just recognize what's going on? And then A, allow it. So with the fear, just recognize it and allow it. Just let it be there. And that's how we started. And then as she began to the eye, the eye is investigate, what's really going on? Where do I feel it? What does it need? And she found that as she was present and let the fear be there, recognizing and allowing, underneath the fear was a deep grief about loss. I'll never have intimacy. I've lost intimacy. It won't be there for me. Recognize, allow, investigate, be with that grief, and bring an intimate attention. The eye of rain is a double eye. It can't just be investigated. It has to also be with intimacy. And it was at that point, and I often have people do this, that she put her hand on her heart and was just present with the grief.

and the more deeply present she was with the grief, the more she shifted from the, I am the rejectable person to, oh, okay, compassionate awareness. In other words, the identification started dissolving. That is the power of presence, by the way. Presence lets you forget the stories or not believe them so much.

And it lets you inhabit who you are that's bigger than the stories. It's a return to grace. So for her, this was the first step, recognizing and allowing the fear, opening and investigating, finding grief was there, bringing an intimate attention,

and dissolving that story some of being this bad, rejectable person, some. But again, this is a long process. I want to tell you the next step of the process. When we are identified, in a small self-story, everybody we see around us,

we see the same kind of spacesuit selves. If we're identified with a spacesuit self, that's what we see. Does that make sense? So for her, others were people that were angry or rejecting type people. And her father was a rejecting person. He rejected her.

So we began to do a process because now that she was less identified with her story, we began to let her investigate again with mindfulness. Well, really, who was her father? You know, outside her story of him. And so she went back to that time when he left, that kind of fateful moment. And the inquiry was really what was happening in his body

and in his hardened mind? What did he need? And what she got was that he was afraid, that he was trapped in a dead-end marriage, he was losing his life and his only way to find aliveness is he had to escape he just had to escape and then i said okay so he's so he's seeing his daughter there what's happening and he says i can't go to her i love her too much i would not be able to leave i die i have to get out so it's at that moment that she could cry for her father for his pain for her pain for her mother's pain

but what was really important in that moment was she saw past his mask he was no longer a two-dimensional space suit character he was a real human so as the as it went the inquiry was really so where did that unlovable story come from then and for this woman she knew it was from her mind it was what she had projected is it true well not really so then if it's not true who are you? If you're not the self that's rejectable, who are you? She didn't know. All she knew

was there was a sense of space and freedom and tenderness. In the months to come, there's also a lot more spontaneity. She didn't have to protect herself in the same way with appearing to be so self-sufficient. She could take more chances.

The more we're in a spacesuit self, the more we have to keep up the spacesuit cover-up, Right? Pretending. Okay, a poem for you. This is Mark Nepo. He says, We waste so much energy

trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world

but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being soft and unrepeatable. So I'm talking tonight really about how we wake up out of stories that have kept us from love, that have kept us from being creative, that have kept us from really that grace, that flow of our aliveness. And I've mentioned two wings, and one wing is really the wing of seeing what's happening, recognizing it. And the other wing is kindness. And I wanted to spend a little more time with the

second wing, because I found for myself that every time I get re-hooked in a smaller sense of self, every time I get busy and then get irritable and then get down on myself for being uptight, which is kind of the routine I get into, if I can remember to pause, and just put my hand on my heart and say, forgiven, forgiven. Or if I can pause and sense, oh, okay, having a hard time, may I relax, just a gentleness. Do you know what I mean?

Just a little bit of a message of kindness or gentleness inwardly. That has more power to start dissolving the story that I've been living in than any single gesture I could make. just a moment of offering kindness inwardly. Now, what is it that's so powerful about that? The stories we live in are fundamentally organized around a sense of something's wrong with me. They're a rejection of this person. That's the primary story we're in, that something's wrong.

Either something's wrong with me or something's wrong with you. That's what keeps us small. And in a moment of remembering, oh, kindness, just a little message. And for me, just the words, forgiven, forgiven. It's not like I've done something wrong that needs to be forgiven. I'm just forgiving. I'm letting go of any notion of blame in that moment. Does more to dissolve the story, to help me forget the old limiting story,

than anything else I could explore. So we begin to train, if we want to wake up out of these stories, in this paying attention and noticing when we're trapped and offering kindness. And not only that, we train with each other because it's not like we're a small self that's trying to wake itself up. I mean, awareness is waking up.

And we can help each other every time we remind each other of the goodness that we see there. Every time in some way we become a mirror for another person of, oh, I see who's behind the mask and I love that. That helps that person come home to grace. Mother Teresa was once a story I heard.

She told a room full of lepers once how loved by God they were and a gift to the rest of us. She said, you're a loved by God and you're a gift to the rest of us. And interrupting her, an old leper raised his hand and she called on him and he said, said, could you repeat that again? It did me good. So would you mind just saying it again? I love that story. I mean, it says the truth so simply. It really means the world to us when in some way, and this is the meaning of blessing, by the way, if somebody can see you and see past the spacesuit

to that light and love that's looking out, to that beingness, and remind you, there are offering you a blessing. They're opening the gateway for you to return to grace. Because grace is simply in the Buddhist tradition meaning at home in realizing who we are. We're back in the flow of grace. So it's a beautiful way of doing a loving kindness practice to see somebody that you can recognize, okay, this person's stuck in a story that they're not trusting themselves. They're feeling disappointed in themselves. They're feeling angry at another because they feel betrayed. And then your meta, your loving kindness, is in some way to remind that person, okay, so those are the waves of reactivity, but I see who you are.

I see that in you which truly is devoted to waking up. And that is your beauty and your goodness. I see that in you which has humor and life and creativity and goodness. You help that person come home. So you might consider the next day or two who you know that's caught in a way that you can just because you see them in some way you can say something you can have your gesture of kindness help to wake them up out of stories.

So tonight is the way of closing. We've been really talking about leaving grace and returning to grace to remembering who we are and trusting who's behind this veil, this mask. so that each of us can discover whether for someone it's a dinosaur blinking in the bright sunlight or the wildness of God that's in us, that adventurer, the one that really wants to be spontaneous or to paint or to play, or to make love with abandon, or to be in nature more. Is there a story that's getting in the way from you living your life really true to who you are?

Is there? That's the inquiry. So let's reflect together as a closing. This is an opportunity, and you might really sense your sincerity in waking up, and just to look at where recently you have felt caught in something smaller than who you are, where some situation has brought up a reactivity

that had you back in a story of a not-okay self, self that you didn't really like. And the beginning is to just bring a mindful presence that recognizes, okay, this is what's happening. Reactivity, identified with something smaller than the wholeness of my being, just caught. And you might experiment, as I've been talking about it, bringing your hand to your heart or for some people touching your cheek, and sensing as you bring mindfulness, to the sense of small self that you can offer care.

It might be simply the words forgiven, forgiven, or it may be some prayer to yourself, may I trust who I really am? Like the Bantu prayer, may I be all that I am? May I trust the goodness that's here? So that you're not dismissing the waves of confusion or reactivity. You're not saying,

that's not me. But you're remembering this oceanness, this tender heart. You're remembering the one who wants to know truth and who wants to love without holding back. As you offer mindfulness and kindness, just notice what your sense of your own being is. Who are you when you're being present? Who are you when there's just simply an offering of a kind attention, a forgiving attention? Who's behind the mask? Who's caring? Who's awake? When our attention's very present and open and non-conceptual, when we forget all the stories,

there's an emptiness of self that's just filled with aliveness and love and awakeness. vast awakeness tender awakeness Srinar Sarkadata says love tells me I'm everything

wisdom tells me I'm nothing and between the two my life flows may we have the blessing to be who we are and to give our lives

to helping each other remember and return to the flow of grace Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com,

our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.