Tara Brach - Be Who You Are (Retreat Talk)

Episode Date: May 2, 2012

2012-05-02 - (Retreat Talk) Be Who You Are - By bringing a surrendering presence to mental, emotional and physical domains, we undo the trance of separation and discover our true nature. This talk explores the practices that cultivate the non-resisting space of presence, and the flavors of our essential being that are revealed: open awareness, love and a vibrant flow of awareness. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations make a difference!

20 some years ago at my first retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, on one of the first days of that retreat, we were given a metaphor for spiritual practice for coming into the present moment and in a way for coming to retreat. And it went like this, that it's like jumping off a plane with a parachute and then realizing that you actually don't have a parachute,

that there's nothing really controlling. and then that there's no ground to hit. You know, things keep unfolding. And then finally that there's no one that jumped. So I've learned not to start retreats with that one, but... One of the simple understandings of Enlightenment or freedom is really waking up from this self-story. And it doesn't mean that the sense of the ego-suffer,

is gone. I mean, we can still relate to our Polynesian, Danish, American heritage and all the other attributes, whatever, but that there's a remembrance of wholeness, of beingness, that we're not living inside a story of a separate self. And if you investigate your moments here, you know, when you felt almost happy or peaceful or open-hearted, you'll notice that those were not moments when your mind was circling around concerns about self when you weren't judging or comparing or sensing how to get more comfortable. Instead, there was probably a pure experiencing of, you know, breath or sound or sadness or beauty, but it wasn't self-centered.

So some months ago I think I shared with, and many of you might have heard this, I read an article by a palliative caregiver who had been with many, many people dying and said that the primary regret of those that were dying was that they didn't have the courage to live a life truly. to themselves, that instead they lived according to the expectations of others are their own internalized expectations and shoulds. But they didn't live a life true to themselves. And some of the elements of it were, you know, that I was too busy or I didn't spend enough time with loved ones. But the essence, not true to myself. And I think that it's a,

it's a valuable inquiry, almost in any moment. You know, in this moment, am I living true to who I am? And when we start asking that, we might sense in any moment, you know, what's stopping me? That too is a good question. I think when we start looking in that way, what we find again and again is, you could say, on an emotional level, what's stopping us? is there's some fear or some doubt, and there's some clench. There's some clench that's just stopping us from inhabiting who we are.

So what happens when there's a clench, when there's fear, when there's doubt, is that we end up living from the story of who we are, from our shoulds and expectations and anticipations of what's going wrong, rather from that experience of beingness is one word, of love, of presence, of aliveness. In other words, we live from a smaller part of ourselves in those moments. Some years back, I heard some story of Bantu tribesmen

who the ritual would be that the children would be lying in bed at night, and the nighttime ritual is to go to each child and offer the prayer, may you be who you are, and may you be who you are, And may you be who you are. Be who you are. Be who you are. So, of course, when I heard that, that became my ritual with my son, Narayan. He'd be sleeping,

and I'd look at him. And it was, you know, not so hard when a child's sleeping. You know, the innocence is there. You know, may you be who you are? And then, you know, in contrast to during the day when I was trying to have him be who I wanted him to be, it was, I felt good. But what a beautiful blessing. Be who. who you are and have it who you really are, live from that. So our practice here, this meditation practice with all its different skillful means, is basically a process of paying attention that dissolves that clench of self, the stories, the clench of fear, the clench of doubt. It dissolves it so that we can reconnect with that wholeness, with that loving awareness.

That's basically our practice. And tonight, as you can, as you might be able to feel, this talk is really part two. And Eric opened so beautifully last night this whole inquiry into awareness as an antidote to selfing. So it just, I very much wanted to continue it because it feels so at the center of what matters to us. and I could feel the energy in the room, that it mattered. It matters to us. And maybe to start by saying, and many of you've heard this, is that selfing is a verb, you know, that it's an activity.

It's an activity that goes on a lot of the time when in some way the identity gets hitched to a thought, a feeling, an emotion, a body sensation. And rather than it just being a phenomena that's appearing, coming, going. It becomes mine, controlled by me, reflective of something to do with me. It's us. I like to, when we start looking at this process of selfing, say that it's meant to be that way, in the sense that it's a natural evolutionary part of how existence exists. I mean, it's another way of saying existence. Existence adheres, and its senses.

itself as a self. I'd like to read you just a few words from a Zen biologist David Darling. He says, even the earliest single-celled creatures had established barriers, definite, sustainable boundaries between themselves and the outer world, thus the foundations for dualism, the belief in the separation of self and the rest of the world were laid. This existential sense of separation is the theme song of our amazingly diverse and mysterious world. So it's part of our biology, it's part of our evolutionary process

to perceive separation, and it's also part of our inheritance, what we have within us, to become aware of that and wake up out of a confining identity. So for humans, this sense of separation, as we explored last night, gets profoundly exacerbated. And there's different layers.

For some of us, this exacerbated. That sense of separateness is very biological. Our genetic lineage makes it so we're more inclined to feel the anxiety that comes with separation. We're just programmed that way. And for many of us, our early history, Our personal history also was part of what made it stronger. Different kinds of wounds and traumas in early years. Our more recent years, you know, just trauma to the system.

Trauma actually, when we're traumatized, rather than staying a sense of the whole brain, as I described the other night, that cerebral cortex, the frontal lobes, there's like a flip, and we get locked into the limbic system. We get locked into fight, flight, freeze. mentality. That's what trauma does. And then as Eric showed how potent it is, how our society imprints us with beliefs, with evaluations, and how, especially for some groups, some marginalized groups, what happens is that the sense of separation becomes so deep that the emotions that go with it, the shame, the unworthiness, the fear, huge, huge. So what I'd like to

do as kind of part two is go deeper together and we'll do some reflections and how these practices of awareness dissolve that clenched fist of identifying. How they do that. And the image I often turn to is that awareness really is like the sun. It has both the light or leucidity that sees clearly and the warmth, the warmth in space it dissolves and softens. And if the selfing, that clenched fist is like an ice cube, like water has consolidated to ice, it's that light and warmth that allows it to melt and rejoin the currents of a life. So we'll look at it three domains of dissolving the selfing. We'll look at the domain of how we do it in the mind with stories and thoughts which perpetuate our sense of self, how we do it at the level

of heart, the heart chakra, how the heart chakra opens, how we can dissolve the selfing that keeps us defended. And then at the belly or Don Tian, which is related to a sense of personal will, controlling. This is the most fundamental primal place where we are defending our existence. Okay, we'll do it in those three levels. Let's see how we do. So we start with the mental world, this reality that keeps us somewhat imprisoned. Short story for you. When he was very young, he waved his arms, snapped his massive jaws and tromped around the house. house so that 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 like to be a math teacher. That was respectable or a 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 garbage 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 and which of them were married or 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 we are fed stories about who we are or should be.

And it's done by our families, by our society. So the first place of our attention, you know, in most meditation training, is to start recognizing these stories because if we're running the story, then we're experiencing the feelings that go with them in our bodies and then we get caught. So we look at the level of conceptual mind first and just to see how it obscures the truth, the wholeness of who we are. And I think of it as home movies that we're mostly going around with home movies running in our minds. And one of the ways recently I kind of constructed it as I walked through the woods a lot was imagining that like us, every tree was sensing a self inside it and that things were happening to it.

Like it had a better shape than some of the other trees, but it was a little scrawnyer. But there were a lot more birds that were nesting in it this year. But last year the weather was bad and it lost its leaves early. So each one's running this whole movie about its tree self. And we could stand and look at the woods and sense, well, you know, those are just movies in the mind of a tree. But inside the tree, it seems like it's real. And so it is with us. I mean, if you imagine somebody sitting in here, a few rows over having a movie going on in their mind about going home and facing some difficult conflict at work and speaking their mind and they're feeling

anxious. And they're living in that movie. And as you think about it, you you know that they're inside a movie, but for that person in those moments, it feels very real. It's what Sokney-rimbache says, real but not true. And I find that very, very helpful when I'm considering these home movies, that the thoughts are real, they're happening, the feelings that go with them are real, but they're not true. It's not reality itself. Real but not true. So we only suffer.

When we're suffering, it's because we're believing something that's not true. We're believing in some self that's smaller than the truth of what we are. We're living in a virtual reality, a home movie that's not true. So you might ask then, well, what about Dharma teachings? Are those their concepts? Are they true? And I remember reading one of my favorite parts of one Dharma by Joseph Goldstein is the very beginning, where he describes a kind of crisis he had.

He was very, very influenced by Burmese teachers, the Taravada tradition, and became very, very influenced by Tibetan teachers. And their descriptions of awareness did not mesh. and it really was hard for him and his realization that came out of that which was really really helpful was that all views no matter how seemingly profound

are just views they're just skillful means there's still fingers pointing to the moon still so there are three ways that these home movies and that our thinking process really sustains the trance.

I just mentioned them briefly. I could do a whole talk on this and kind of wasn't sure whether I'd go in this direction, but they're useful to keep in mind, which is that when we're thinking, it evokes a map of time. That most of our thinking

puts us in this world where we're leaving this and on our way to that. And being on our way keeps us from hereness, keeps us from now. So there's this sense of, you know, living into our future, kind of leaning into a future. A woman writes, I recently picked, actually this is a man writing, this one,

I recently picked a new primary care doctor. After two visits, an exhaustive lab test, he said I was doing fairly well for my age. I just turned 60-something. Well, I was a little concerned about that comment, so I couldn't resist asking him, do you think I'll live to 80? He asked, do you smoke tobacco or drink wine, beer, or hard liquor? Oh, no, I replied. I'm not doing drugs either. Then he asked, do you eat ribby steaks and barbecued ribs? I said, not much. My former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy. Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling? No, I don't, I said. He asked, do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have lots of sex? Nope, I said. He looked at me and said,

then why do you even give a damn, you know, leaning ahead. I remember I was reading somewhere about these children that all got photographed, you know, and they had this group photo, and the teacher was saying, why don't you, you know, she was trying to convince them to buy it. It would be great, you're a grown-up, and you can say, there, look at Michael, he's become, you know, a teacher, and look at Margaret. Now she's a lawyer, little voice from the back of the room. And there's teacher.

She's dead. So there's this, we roll forward in our mind. So that's one thing. It keeps us in a map of time. And I'm being playful, but watch. Watch when you're thinking how it, you are all of a sudden living in some sense of this kind of linear thing of where you were and where you're going. It's very interesting.

The second thing, sometimes more subtle, but really powerful, is that our thoughts keep us in a sense of space where we have the mind. that our mind is in our body, and we're in here, and the world's out there. That's the way the brain and thoughts compute. Whereas you might consider that when you're really quiet and deepening attention, that everything you're experiencing is happening in awareness.

It's not that the mind is in the body, the body, these sensations are in awareness. And rather than something being out there, it's all here. Anything that you experience is here. So nowness and hereness get papered over by the thinking process. As so the third thing I'll mention, which is the most basic, which is that whenever we're in thoughts, there's a self here, and everyone else is other.

Thoughts construe self and other. and when there's a self and an other out there, we're living in an idea about that other. We're living in our concepts. Julia Childs. She says, I go to McDonald's and Burger King on occasion. They're pretty good. They're clean.

And you know what you're getting. I don't know why anyone would think I always dine on hummingbird's tongues or something. So just for a moment, a reflection. if you will, just to close your eyes and consider someone that you know pretty well. Just bring a person to mind and just take a few moments to reflect on that person. It might be that you see what they look like

or you consider things that you know they like or where you've seen them last. Whatever comes to mind about this person. Now take a moment to bring your attention inside your own being and just sense your subjective experience right now, whatever you're aware of, the experience in your body, in your heart, what it's like to live in this body,

feel these emotions, and just sense for a moment that this person you were just reflecting on is more like this, this subjectivity, this realness, than any passing notion, image, thought you might have.

about him or her. Anam Thubton says, can we see that there is a mental world that we've created somewhere in our consciousness? It is a mind-created world that we have been living in forever. The world we must transcend is the world that mind has constructed.

This world generates experience that's real but not true. So we look at then how our practices help us to wake up out of thinking, out of believing the thoughts. And the challenge is that we have, as soon as we start getting quiet, as you know, we have this default network in the brain that says, oops, let's think about the future, let's think about the past, you know.

I remember that I saw this show on TV. It was a magic show. It was primetime TV. It was the best magic tricks from all around the world. And in the middle, this is following, you know, swords going through sexy women and releasing 50 birds from empty hands and all that stuff. This pair of sequined men came out, real fast talking, glib. They said, we're going to teach you how to vanish.

We're going to teach you how to disappear into thin air. Are you ready? And then they did all this rigamarole hoopla. And then they got very quiet. And they said, don't think about the future. don't think about the past don't think about anything vosh you vanished

that was it this was primetime TV then the next show then the next trick came on and that that was somebody chewing a thousand pieces of gum at one reconstruct the self right there

you know so we're not actually telling ourselves not to think but we're learning to notice thoughts, and I think of it often like if you're flying in an airplane and you're inside a cloud, if you know you're inside the cloud, then you can continue to fly to sense the space that's around it. So you get outside it. You're not trying to get rid of the thought cloud. You're just not lost inside it. So there's, you know, many strategies for waking up out of thoughts.

And the main practice we do here, as most of you know, is to notice and just to kind of relax the grip, just to reopen this to what the senses are noticing right here. Not trying to get rid of it, we just reopen. It can still the flavor and sense of it can be there, but we're trying to reconnect to the larger immediate reality that's here. And over and over again, we do this kind of noticing, waking up out of. I'd like to just mention a few other ways that we wake up out of thoughts,

because as we become accustomed to that space that includes thoughts but it's not lost in them, we weaken the identification with self. Now, Choggyam Trunkpa pulled out a huge white poster, piece of poster paper at one point, and put a little V on it, and he asked, well, what's this? And most people said it was a bird. and finally he said no it's the sky with a bird flying through it

this shift is critical this is why I wanted to at least get a taste of that meditation earlier that our beingness is space open form coming and going

but if we fixate just on form if we fixate just on thought We lose sight of wholeness. So one of the best metaphors I know for thinking is that it's like we're at a movie theater. Our thoughts keep fixating on the screen. We just keep fixating on the story. We fixate on the thoughts. That's what minds do.

And one of the ways to wake up in a profound way to see what's happening is to turn the attention backward towards the projector. instead of looking at the thought turn the attention back from whence it came the source to the projector but you're not really just turning back to the projector you're turning back to the very mind of who created the thought

who wrote that movie who composed it and what's that mind but space wakeful space turning from what you're fixating on to the awake space that it emerged from There are a few questions we can ask ourselves that are real useful

that can help us to just to do that. And one of them, Eric alluded to the other day, where you just start, the thought comes, you say, well, where did that come from? Where did it go to? And then we start sensing outside the cloud, the space, to step back from the cloud and sense the space you're in. So just take a few moments just to get a little taste.

We'll practice with thoughts. The power of working with thoughts is that we gradually start sensing the gap between the thoughts. And that's what I'd like to invite you to look for, to notice as you sit and pay attention thoughts, and then notice once you've noticed them and let go a bit, can you sense the gap between the thoughts? You might notice the thought and then notice the silence that was listening to that thought

and then just be that. One teacher, Pungiji, says to be awake to thinking, just simply ask, am I dreaming right now? Is there a veil? And then step behind the cloud. Rest in that gap between thoughts, sensing if you can intuit as you step

behind the cloud the openness that's already here am I dreaming to relax back and sense that gap and let go and be the space what happens when the mind

awakens from the stories of self sometimes the mind is described as a lotus that opens and becomes awake, lucid space. It's an indivisible world, a glimpse of oneness, silence,

stillness. You can open your eyes if you'd like. So this is the first of the domains, is stepping out of the mental constructs and sensing the awakness and space

our nature, when we're not caught in stories. And what happens is that as we get the knack of reciting in the gap, as we get more familiar with who we are outside the stories, our natural intelligence wakes up. There's a natural curiosity. There are thoughts, but they're creative. They're coming from a source that's beyond the ego self. Does that make sense? That we quiet the ego stories. There's a an intelligence that arises through that space

that comes from beyond in a way. That's what it means to live true to ourself when we quiet those thoughts. We live from a deeper place. Now we look at what does it mean to awaken at the level of the heart. If the mind

when we quiet those stories experiences space and lucidity, at the level of the heart, what happens? We know what happens when we're closed, when the fist is tight. That is when the emotions are strong, it feels like it's happening to me and it's because of me. And there's kind of a victim or a perpetrator, the closed fist. So we're taking it personally. The awakening, the practices that we've been doing here,

and we've been spending most of our time giving the different strategies for bringing clarity, bringing kindness, bringing forgiveness, bringing compassion to that fist at the heart. That's what we've been doing, to that covering, that defendedness. And so what we find is that we identify very quickly with what we feel. It is revolutionary to have strong feelings

and not be identified with them. And that's really radical. So I'd like to share a, a story of one man's process of untangling from the closed fist at the heart. And I thought of it actually last night as Eric was speaking how, you know, the more we feel separate, the more powerful the emotions are and the tighter and more solidified the self. And he was describing how much that happens with marginalized groups in our society. And so it made me think of a fact that.

friend of mine, a great guy from college, he was African-American. He was friends with, I would say there were some mixing of the social groups, but fundamentally, as I look back, it was segregated. Back then, it seemed like we're all friends, but he was always behind a camera. And I want to tell you a little bit about a story. We lost touch for 15 years or so. And he got a in touch with me, because he heard about the meditation stuff down here. He's from New England meditating. He had married a Caucasian woman, and her mother vehemently disapproved of the marriage. They were kind of this upper-crest, New England family, and in her mind, they were too different. I mean, she didn't say it, but they were too different. They were different classes,

different races. And she thought they were both in for suffering. And he, he, he, he said, and he, They would visit, he and his wife would visit, and the mother would be rude. She would ignore him, and she thought she was doing them a good deed in some way. He became, of course, increasingly withdrawn and internally angry and hurt, and it brought up the story he told himself is, okay, so in her mind, I'm just this black man who's not good enough for her daughter. But for him, it was this very old wound of being invisible, being not okay, being not worthy, something really bad or wrong.

So his wife said, you know what, we don't have to subject you to this anymore. And she really was willing to not visit and be part of the family unless something changed, which was good. But he was very much, he had done this bodhisattva prayer, which is quite beautiful, which has basically says, may whatever's arising, in my life serve to free this heart and mind. Whatever the circumstances may this free me. So here were his circumstances and they were pretty heavy. So at home, he, you know, he shared what was going on with the friends of his that could relate and that was helpful. But his own

practice, his inner practice, is what I want to share with you about, where he really got in touch with that wound, that place of not deserving. He was sure that his wife's mother was going to create a wedge that was going to ruin their marriage. So he was really, really afraid. And it went into the whole storyline as anything that's good, I'll lose. You know, I just won't get to keep it. I'm not deserving.

And it took him right back to his childhood and to very deep losses in the United States. neglect in his childhood so much so that's when he started taking pictures with a camera very young because it was much safer behind a camera. It was a way to engage that was safe and it was his way to connect with the world. So he got in touch with those childhood feelings and so his practice was just what we've been exploring here. That he felt the depth of fear and not okayness and he practiced the Tonglin where he would just breathe in and he'd completely contact it.

And the trick with Tonglin and the trick with any way of releasing the fist is you have to completely without resistance feel the pain of the fist, feel the suffering. So he would breathe into that fist, which is right in his heart, and he'd breathe out and as he'd breathe out, he sensed that there was space that was holding it and breathe in, feel, it was crushing for him because it was fear and shame, breathe out and sense that there was some space, some love,

some compassion holding it. So he went, he stayed with it and for weeks and weeks and weeks, this is what he did. And until he started realizing that he was, as he was feeling that space, he was feeling it outside of him, he was also feeling like right in the very interior, of that fist there was space. It's just like we imagine that there's outer space, but we forget that as much as there's outer space, even within an atom, if you look at the distance

between the elements of an atom, there's as much space within us as there is outside us. He began to feel that inner space too as tenderness. He began to feel the very essence of his heart as tender, that that pain was floating in tenderness.

So that's the shift in identity. He went from, I am a wounded person fearing the loss of something I love, to this space of tenderness that was with the pain. And that's when he began to look at his mother-in-law through different eyes. And that's when he began to see that she was a fearful woman. She was afraid and she was trying to control. And she became less an unreal other. He became, he stopped being an unreal other to himself. She became less of an unreal other and more of a being. Okay, so he went to Thanksgiving, and he told me how he was going to do it. He was bringing his camera. So he, you know, if he needed to step behind the cloud, so to speak, he could. And

he took photos, and he inconspicuously took pictures. of her parents. Next visit, Christmas, rolling forward in time. Her mother was still pretty extreme in the distancing. And for Christmas, they did an exchange,

and she gave him socks, the wrong size, and chocolates. He was very into not chocolates, health foods or whatever. He gave her some framed pictures.

One of them had captured a moment of affection with her husband when she kind of collapsed back into his lap on the couch. And the other where she was cradling her new granddaughter. And you who have been outside with the babies out there, no, there's an innocence that it wakes up. When you're with a newborn,

because a newborn you can feel that sentience and that purity, and it brings out your own. He captured that. He framed it. He gave it. So when she opened up those, pictures, she burst out sobbing. Because he had seen her in a good way. She hadn't even been liking herself, but he had seen her in a good way. Just to say the truth of the stories that

thawing happened, but it took several years. But the door was open. There was some light coming through. So I share this because he had that fist of woundedness, of feeling separate, and he brought that light of attention, attention, and that warmth of compassion, it unfolded. And this is the inquiry into what really unfolds this lotus of the heart. What really unfolds it. And it's this contacting, contacting directly, and then feeling space. So we'll just take a moment, if you will, to just check in, because we're just going from chakra to chakra now.

We'll just sense our hearts right now. however they are. You might sense as you let your attention come to your heart in this pause if there's anything that wants attention, if there's any feeling in the heart or chest area of vulnerability or tightness, any sense of that fist of defendedness, of judgment, of tightness. And you might just let the breath support you

just to breathe in with a willingness even for these few moments just to contact without resistance the beginning of unselfing is just to touch what's here

and then with the out breath the sense if you can touch some space around or within if for you the intentional offering of kindness the touch on the heart feels natural.

That helps, that warmth helps to melt the ice cube. It helps to connect with space. Just breathing in, contacting what's here, breathing out, sensing the tenderness and openness of space

that this life really is floating in. It's said as the lotus of the heart opens, we experience the vastness, and the emptiness of our radiant heart. As we become more and more familiar with this empty radiance,

we can live our lives from that. Just as when the mind quiets and we sense the space between the thoughts, there's a natural intelligence that opens. When the heart space is discovered, the natural expression is love. So we've explored this unselfing, this opening of the fist, opening of the lotus of the mind, stepping behind the cloud of thoughts and sensing the gap, the space, the creativity and intelligence

which can shine through. We sense with the heart that when that fist opens, we begin to discover a tenderness that expresses as love. So what happens at the billy? What happens at this level of what sometimes described as willfulness, of control. This will be our last little exploration. One of the ways I understand it is that the grasping at the navel, this fist that we often encounter, is the most existential sense of ourself. It's the root sense of self.

It's like having, it's this fist that's grasping around and that all the other levels are built on. It's the core fear. And we're resisting aliveness as it is. This is that place that is always trying to control because there's something inherently threatening about being separate. You know, it coming into forms a shock.

Sometimes a real traumatic shock because we're moving from this unlimited potential and all of a sudden, birthing, you know. Somebody's pulling at you, pulling you out of a protected womb. There you are floating, and all of a sudden you're in this bright room and loud voices. Not everybody got pulled, and it was in a hospital, but it's not always so sensitive. And then there's other experiences in hospitable environments through our lives, so more trauma, more clenching. So the fists in the guts basically yelling, no, no, no, to life, to death, it's really tight.

And I found for myself that the more I wake up through my body and heart, actually the more aware I am of the tightness in my belly. It's almost like waking up is revealing those layers of armoring. And often I have the sense of, well, how do I get rid of this clutch? Like I want to soften it. And that's the ego's question because it wants to be more comfortable. So the most important realization that we can, have in working with this kind of tightness and defendedness in the belly really is that

there's nothing we can do other than stop controlling because it is an effort to control. Just full presence with the clutch. Just letting it be. Well, maybe that'll be our song tonight. We'll see. We'll see. A couple of nights ago, I shared a story. about a kind of a surrendering when I hit a kind of wall. And I think that for this, when we really hit this existential fear place, it comes in a very deep way down to a deliberate surrendering. And one of the times I experienced it most fully was at a Qigang retreat, where I went to this retreat.

It was a healing Qigang retreat. And I went there because I was really, at one of my sickest periods. And I kept running into this thing where I'd have thoughts about how it was getting worse and getting worse. And those thoughts would bring fear and grief and then more thoughts. And I was circling and circling. And I really committed myself to I want to wake up out of this cycle of thoughts. You know, I saw it. I was going to wake up out of it. And it was so relentless. It finally hit me. It was just like, I can't do this. I can't stop these thoughts. You know, I can't stop this cycle. So it was in that moment of letting in the truth,

letting in the truth that there was nothing I could do, that truth created space. It was like I was acknowledging reality. Oh, this self, this ego can't stop this cycle. And in that acknowledging reality, there was a kind of seizing of the the struggle. I just let the worth projections happen. I let the clutch in the gut be as big as it was possibly being big. And the doing self wasn't there any longer. It was the dissolving of the will, the dissolving of the doing self that actually allowed this aliveness to start flowing, unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I guess I'd never been trying so hard to make something happen and then just realized, give up. It wasn't a resignation. It was like a stop trying.

So there was this different force that started pouring through than this kind of staticy tension energy. It was this dynamic, lucid, loving flow of energy that just started moving through my body and I kept letting go and I entered the flow. I just felt like I was entering the flow. So I was it was like being moved by the totality of life itself. It's like I just became life. The power of opening this fish, this lotus at the navel, the navels got all this power and energy, but as long as it's being owned by a controlling self,

it's torqued. What happens when we untwark it? It's like the flow of the universe moves through us. So this is the last piece, which is really when the doing self dissolves. And this is part of our practice here is that we do a very slight light hand on effort so that we can stop efforting.

So that we can let, Rolka said, you know, just really to open to both the beauty and the terror, just open, open, open, and this life flows through. There's a saying in Zen, when the realization is deep, your whole being is dancing. The gift of this lotus here is aliveness. And we've explored tonight this open, and when the mind opens, when there's that awakeness and space in the mind, the gift is our natural intelligence and creativity.

When the heart opens and there's that contact with what's there with the aliveness, but that space, love. When the naval area, the Don Tien opens, and there's that full contact and space there, pure aliveness. So these are really the blessings of unselfing, of relaxing that grip, that clutch of self. And I'd like to maybe end just very briefly.

We'll just go through the three and just to taste and sense what it might be like for you with each one. So I began and I early on talked about that Bantu tribesman, be who you are. There's a story of self when we're contract and identified. We're covering over that space and light of our being. So our practice is really this presence that dissolves. That dissolves the story.

the identifications, and allows us to reconnect with that beingness. So you might right now just let your senses be wide open, letting the sounds wash through, sensing the vibrating or tingling in the body, sensing awakefulness in the mind. You might imagine just with the vast space around you that that vastness of sky fills the mind. Just imagine the lotus of the mind wide open. mind wide open, awake space, luminous. If a thought arises just to notice, and in that noticing there's a natural opening out of, stepping behind that cloud, sensing the luminous space that's here, always here, feeling the heart, letting the breath help you to contact the heart,

sensing the space that's inside and around the heart. That continuous space, imagining the lotus of the heart wide open, awake, space and tenderness, feeling the belly, breathing in perhaps to help you connect and contact whatever's there, breathing out and sensing the space around and within, just saying yes to the life that's here. Imagine this lotus of the Don Tian wide open, this beautiful, mysterious dance of life playing through the aliveness of the universe, just let everything happen. Close with Rumi. I am water.

I am the thorn that catches someone's clothing. There's nothing to believe. Only when I quit believing in myself that I come into this beauty. Day and night I guarded the pearl of my soul. Now, in this ocean of pearling currents, I have lost track of which was mine. 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.