Tara Brach - Being to Being - Loving Beyond the Trance

Episode Date: May 25, 2013

2013-05-22 - Being to Being - Loving Beyond the Trance - We have strong conditioning to relate to each other from a sense of separateness--persona to persona. This talk looks at what traps us in egoic relating and how several simple yet powerful reflections can open us to pure, unconditioned loving.

Last week, I read this RELCA quote, which is very simply for one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks. So some of you are here for that talk. And as I mentioned, I want to keep on elaborating because it's very humbling, I think, to most of us, how much we want to love well. You know, we have this sense of this matters and how we know that our insecurities and the patterns that we play out

and our preoccupations get in the way. So we kind of know that. And I've shared a number of times that in being with the dying, one palliative caregiver described our biggest regret as not being true to ourselves. and that that's something that you don't have to be dying to feel,

that sense of not always living true to what most matters. And one of the things that most matters is being able to show up and bring presence and kindness and forgiveness and understanding in our relationships to others and to ourselves. And we know that there's a bit of a gap. So last class, and if you missed it, can get it, we have podcast for it. Described how in order to arrive in that lovingness in that

presence, we need to stop fixating our attention outward, specifically outward in blame, because blames one of those universals, we very quickly can go into judgment and in some way create separation with our judgment. And then the other way we fixate is sensing that to be whole, to be happy, I need you or I need you in a certain way. So it's either grasping on or pushing away and that instead of those we really need to be able to come into our own being and since we're underneath that there's a feeling of woundedness or fear and bring some healing attention there

because if we fixate outward, we can't actually bring the attention we need to find more freedom in our own heart. This week I want to take it a step further because that's not the end of the story. We need to not fixate outward, but we do need to learn how to shift our attention with each other and actually bring a deeper and clearer and wider attention to who is this being. We need to really sense who we're with.

And we tend to be in enough of a trance that we really don't notice the other person. in a close and in a live way. So that'll be the focus tonight, really. How do we be with each other? And I think of this in terms of making a shift from relating persona to persona, where we're in some way, I call it a space suit, where we're kind of in our egoic space suit

where we're defending and judging and controlling and in some way evaluating, you know, caught in the sense of differences of power or difference in need or who wants more of a relationship, the space suit self. So shifting from that to what I call being to being, where it doesn't mean the ego's gone away. There's still a personality, but there's a remembrance of that spirit, that awareness, that heart that's shining through. And if we can be with each other, and honor the differences and honor the naturalness of these egoic cells. But remember who's looking through the mask?

Who's really in there? Then the dance becomes very fluid and creative and beautiful between us. So how do we make this shift? And I sometimes have the image in my mind of ice cubes and that if you imagine ice cubes in water and if they bump into each other

they've kind of got hard edges and it's a kind of awkward ways of connecting but if there's a bit of the light of awareness the warmth of the sun shining on the water and there's a little more warmth the ice cubes start melting and then there's a kind of remembrance oh we're both made of water

you know we're both made of the same thing and there's a lot more of a co-mingling and a flow which goes to say that the more we're mindful, the more we're aware, we lose the edges that create distance. It's the image of also of waves that we still have forms, but we're remembering our ocean-ness. We're remembering really our source. So it's not easy because we have really strong conditioning

to have our buttons pushed and to very quickly recontract into the spacesuit, into the very solid ice-cubness, whatever shape we've taken. It happens really quickly. So it's a good deal of training. One woman described this phenomenon of, you know, in some way the possibility of sensing our belonging with each other, but how we contract.

And she was describing how periodically she'll have a very intense, connection with a man and it'll feel like an infatuation but it'll feel like she can really there's a being to being she can kind of sense a soulful connection and this is what she writes she says what sometimes comes along with the infatuation is the desire to keep the connection on this level I don't want complication I don't hardly want to speak I don't want to know them in that way which is the egoic way. I just want the simple, uncomplicated connection. And so I keep it in this ethereal level. I think that says a lot that we have an

intuition of this possibility of feeling who's here and relating to each other in a very open way. You know, the word namaste and the meaning is I see the sacred, I see the goodness, I see the divining, new. And in Asia that's the way people greet each other, say hello, say goodbye, honor who's there. Well, something in us would love to move through this world. And with everyone we meet in some way sense that mutual honoring. And we know as soon as we get close and really hang out, all the buttons that are pushable can be pushed. And then we go from that we go from that Namaste to that very defended or grasping or whatever it is, but it shifts.

So it does get complicated and it does get messy. And I described in the last class this tendency to keep repeating our spacesuit patterns that come from insecurity and unmet needs and that the core wound, the core wound that's under all of our ways of being edgy or reactive, is that sense that I am unlovable as I am. That's the core wound. And everyone comes into this life feeling some sense of separateness. But depending on our upbringing and our culture and our genes and a lot of other factors,

there's different degrees of this kind of core sense of I'm really not okay. I'm not lovable as I am. And to the degree that's there, we get very identified with our space suit because it's not safe. It's not safe just to relax and be natural and be spontaneous. We have to present a self to the world. So we have our strategies. And I speak about this a lot because if we can see and really recognize our strategies for defending, our strategies for proving, our strategies for keeping distance. If we can see them,

we can begin to make that choice not to play out that patterning. So what are they? We know. Some of us try to win other people by being very accommodating and having people depend on us for different things and others are trying to prove themselves through achievements and looking good. And then for many of us we want to be right. If we're right then we'll get the respect we need. Have you noticed how we really like people that agree with us and we really get ice-cubey when they don't? Have you noticed that? I like this little girl was talking to her teacher about whales. The teacher said, it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very

large mammal, its throat was very small. The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human. It was physically impossible. The little girl said, when I get to heaven, I will ask Jonah. The teacher asked, what if Jonah went to hell? little girl replied, then you ask them. So when we play out our strategies, we leave ourselves. It doesn't, the light strategies, when we're going into the heavier ones, the judging, the defending, we leave ourselves because what we're doing is we're trying to control things because deep down we don't think we're okay. And when we're controlling, the other is an unreal

other. The other becomes an object that we either want to distance from or we want to pull into us. Are there not important so we just want to avoid and neglect? Now one description of this old man in Phoenix calls his son in New York and says, I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing. 45 years of misery is enough. Pop, what are you talking about the son screams. We can't stand the side of each other any longer. The old man says we're sick and tired of each other and I'm sick of talking

about this as you call up your sister in Chicago and tell her, hangs up the phone. Calls Phoenix immediately and screams at the old man, you're not getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing. Do you hear me and she hangs up? The old

man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. Okay, he says, they're coming for Thanksgiving. And they're paying their own way. So again, with this core wound, which I think of, and the term from John Willwood is the unlovable, you know, that this sense of this core not okay as I am,

then we have to control things because it's dangerous. And the core wound is really, reinforced by a very narrowed culture that sets standards for how we're supposed to look and how we're supposed to behave and how successful we're supposed to be and what our bodies are supposed to be like and even spirituality you're supposed to act a certain way and look a certain...there's all these standards. And so we end up measuring ourselves and comparing ourselves all the time. There's a constant monitoring going on in our mind, how am I doing now?

And it's based on a lot of different standards. And most of the time there's a gap between our idea of how we should be and how we are. And that creates ice-cubness, defensiveness. Now this is much, much more difficult and painful in our culture if we happen to be a minority, if we happen to be in some way not the class that's most respected or the race or if our sexual orientation or our gender expression is not in the what's considered normal or respected realm, the not okay as I am is profoundly exacerbated. So much so that if we're in the majority, we're usually blind to how deep the effect of the messages from the culture to a lock in that

sense of not okay. Read you something that touched me. Am I gorgeous, my child asked, drawing the word out like pulled taffy? Yes, I say you are. The pink and teal dress is probably made of highly flammable material, some chemist's approximation of tulle and satin. Pudgy fingers decorated with pink polish, traced the sequins on the bodice.

I love this. A giant pair of bubblegum pink wings flap slowly. Little feet dance and sparkly red slip, red slippers. I'm just like a real princess. Yes, I say, you are. Thick blonde hair, blue eyes, rosy cheeks, flawless skin. This child is the American epitome of beauty. This child, my son. He's four years old and prefers to wear dresses. Maybe it's a phase, maybe not. Even as I wonder how I produce such an angelic-looking creature, I wish you put on some pants and go back to playing with toy tractors,

not because it matters to me, it doesn't, but because I'm already hearing in my head the name-calling he'll face in kindergarten. Many adults already seem a bit disturbed by the dresses. Strangers utter awkward apologies when they realize he's not female. This culture wants little boys to dream only of baseball trucks and trains. This culture has no room for little boys who want to be gorgeous. He picks up a parasol, a neighbor gave him, and opens it jauntily over his shoulder. Am I beautiful, he asks? I sweep him into my arms and plant a kiss on his cheek. Always. It's a powerful story for me because it's so

much what I wish this culture would respond to, that openness and acceptance. and honoring of the different expressions of our being and it's so much not what is. So whatever we're bringing in that doesn't match the standard and to whatever degree we end up feeling something's wrong and we have to compensate for it, we get identified with that space suit. We lose sight. We lose sight of beingness. We lose sight of beingness.

living in that person to person and I'm identified with our insecurities and our unmade needs and our shame. So it's a trance. It's the word that helps me the most, that we're in a trance because we're, our whole sense of who we are is around this persona that's not okay. And it might be that we're around a persona that's very grandiose and it's still a trance because whether we're inflated or deflated, we're disconnected from that awareness and tenderness

and basic intelligence that's really spirit shining through. We're disconnected from beingness. So the forgetting takes a number of forms. And I'd like to go through the ways that we forget that beingness and then explore how we can reconnect. One way that we forget that's pretty used, pretty universal is that most of us are rarely connected to a sense of basic goodness. There's rarely a sense of really being at home in the aliveness and awareness and heart that's

here. So there's this not trusting basic goodness and more assuming we're not okay but really wishing we could feel good about ourselves, really wanting to feel good about ourselves. Sylvia Borstein tells a beautiful story about a guy named Phil, Buddhist practitioner in New York, he describes being mugged at gunpoint, and he had worked on this loving-kindness practice for years. So one evening on a small street in Soho, a very dishevelled man with a kind of scraggly beard and dirty blonde hair costed Phil and he demanded money. So Phil gave over $600 he carried in his wallet. The mugger shook his gun and demanded more. Stalling for time,

Phil handed him his credit cards and the whole wallet. Looking dazed and high on some drug, the mugger said, I'm going to shoot you. Phil responded, no wait, here's my watch. It's an expensive one. Disoriented, the mugger took the watch and waved the gun and said, again, I'm going to shoot you. Somehow, Phil managed to look at him with loving kindness and said,

you don't have to shoot me. You did really good. Look, you got nearly $700. You got credit cards and an expensive watch. You don't have to shoot me. You did good. The mugger, confused, lowered the gun slowly. I did good, he half asked.

You did really good. Go and tell your friends you did good. Dazed, the mugger wandered off, saying softly to himself, I did good. I did good. We have a yearning to sense that we're doing well, that we're okay. And we forget it.

We forget the goodness. The second thing we forget is that most everyone we meet, including ourselves, is in some way trying to cover over vulnerability, okay? That it's not safe enough to show that we have needs or fears or embarrassment. So instead of, we cover the vulnerability, just try to present what we think will most be our ticket to being accepted, respected, and loved. That's a second forgetting. The third forgetting is that when,

we or others act in unappealing ways, it's because we're hurting. It's really easy to forget it. We just go into the reaction of not liking and forget that there's always pain when somebody acts in a way that caused harm. That's the third forgetting on dimension. And then just to say that in all those forgettings the common denominator is, disconnected from beingness. We're in our persona. Now, the good news is, and this is Buddhism, it's neuroscience,

while we have huge conditioning to forget and to feel that separations, it feels very strong, our neuropathways are responsive to new experience. New experience creates new neuropathways. We can deepen our attention and rewire our brain. So the very strategies we keep doing that keep us locked into that trance into smallness, into separation, if we deepen attention we can rewire them. And one of the ways that we can do that, we can affect ourselves, we can also then help others rewire their brains. And one of the ways that happens is through mirroring. That each of us, every one of us here, if we can be present, has a capacity of being a mirror for others that can help

them to trust their goodness. And I think of that as the biggest gift that we can offer. If you can be with someone and in some way have your words, your mood, your touch, remind them of their okayness. What a gift. One teacher I talked to told me a story. He worked with six-year-olds. And, you know, they'd space out a lot and not listen. And when he was much younger, his reaction was to get pretty impatient and critical and raise his voice. And of course, the more of that happened, the more the kids would act out. And he had a lot of self-doubt, you know, about, you know, how to really be with them. But, you know, because he was frustrated and wanted to control things.

He started meditating and started sensing this possibility of presence, you know, that I read the Victor Frankel teaching that between the stimulus and the response there is a space and in that space is your power and your freedom. In that space is your power and your freedom if you can pause. So he would pause. When the child was acting out, he would pause himself and then he maybe just sit next to them. He described how he would in that pause kind of sit down and sit next to them, they'd be acting out doing whatever they're doing but finally he'd get eye contact and look them in the eye and say, Oh, there you are. Oh, there you are. And they would start cooperating more because

he was seeing who was there. But he had to wait and he had to have that kind of presence that invited them to settle a bit. Oh, there you are. I really like that. So if we want to relate being to being, we want to be able to both come from being ourself and how help to bring that out in others. The ground levels we have to connect with our own presence, which is really the practice we do here. We have to have some way of pausing, coming back into our bodies, coming into our hearts, knowing we're here versus tumbling forward in our reactivity. You know, so quickly something goes on, the stimulus and we're so quickly having our thoughts

and saying out loud whatever our thoughts are and having those feelings and impulsively just, we don't pause. So the first step, moving away from the persona to persona, moving into this being to being flow, having the ice cubes melt a little is to melt a little ourselves, to pause.

I think of the Dalai Lama in terms of the way he moves through his interpersonal realm. He's renowned for this capacity to have others feel felt by him, feel seen, feel honored. And I was at a teacher's meeting with him probably about 10 years ago.

And I had the good fortune of being close in at the meeting and then having some contact where we had a chance to kind of bow and so on. And what people said is true, that in those moments, he's really there. He pauses. The Dalai Lama pauses. It's very cool. And I've heard so many reports from Secret Service that trail him.

He'd go to a hotel, and he'd ask everybody that had in some way helped him, whether it was people in the kitchen or those that clean the rooms or whatever, and he'd thank everybody. a real valuing of every being. So he sees being. I have a great picture once that I saw in one newspaper of him hugging Jesse Helms. It was a beautiful.

It was just great. It was great. So here's a story about him, and this was in the Art of Happiness. He was being interviewed by a psychologist, and he was asked if he had any experiences of guilt or remorse. That's an interesting question to ask the doctor. Dalai Lama. Here's his response. He says, many. And then he told of a time when an elderly monk had asked him about doing some yoga exercises that were designed for young people. And so the Dalai Lama recommended to him that he not do them because he was too old for

them. And he found that that the man committed suicide so he could be reborn in a younger body. Then the question was, how did you get beyond the pain of those feet? feelings. Long pause. And he said, I didn't. It didn't go away. It's still there. I just don't allow it to drag me away or pull me down. It's still there though. So this to me is a really important teaching that his capacity for compassion comes out of a willingness to feel the vulnerability and not get rid of it. Does that make sense? Staying with vulnerability. It doesn't mean being identified and locking into this I'm a terrible person, but it means opening to the realness of that pain.

So our starting place is always intention. If each one of us, if each of us leaves just tonight with a little more intention to come into our own beingness and to have more understanding and love, flower from that. That's the energy that is in the beginning. Pema Chodren says this. She says, we don't set out to save the world. We set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts and reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts. Can you imagine a world where we paused enough to sense,

well how is my action really affecting you? Wow. So then there's some trainings that help us do this. And really the rest of tonight will be how we can train our attention with each other. So when we're with each other, we actually are living from being this more and able to bring that out more in each other.

Okay. The first of the trainings, and these are really heart trainings. The first of them is this training to see past the mask and recognize the vulnerability that every one of us is living with, that every one of us is living with. Our preoccupation, usually when we're with each other,

we're in some way rehearsing what we're going to say next or caught on what our agenda is. And so we rarely look and just ask that question, and what does this person need? What's going on inside you? What's it like for you right now? Very, very powerful. I remember a story I heard years ago I've shared at some point here of a guy in the Army

who was actually taking a course for managing anger but had a very strong element of mindfulness of training in it and so he was practicing. meant, you know, mindfulness-based stress reduction. And he went to a supermarket and he was very busy and he loaded up his cart and got into the lane. In front of him was a woman who only had two items in her cart, but she was in his lane. She wasn't in the express lane. So he started fuming like what she, and she had a child and she handed the child to the clerk that was there and they were owing and eyeing over the child and meanwhile this guy is just like steam coming out of his ears, I'm a busy man, I have things to do, I can't believe this is,

you know, you know, then some little wake up, okay, pause, that's always a start, pause, okay, what's going on? Start to check out inside him, what's going on? And he could sense how he's, you know, under the anger was this fear that there's not enough time, I mean, how many of us know that sense, and that his life would fall apart if he didn't get stuff done. We know that one, right? So he started being present with that and calming down some. When he opened his eyes, he noticed that the little girl was really cute. So when it was his term, they left. He said to the clerk, he said, oh, that little girl was adorable.

And she said, oh, thank you. Actually, that's my daughter. My husband was killed in Afghanistan last year, and that was my mom, and she brings my child over so we can visit twice a day, have a little time. together. So I share that not because every one of us is always struggling with that greater loss, but we all are struggling with loss. Every one of us is in a body that's changing and aging and get sick and we lose those we love. And this is an uncertain world. So to move through this world

and be with each other and have that sensitivity to pause and really wonder, what's it like for this person right now? It's part of creating a more compassionate and a more peaceful world. Let's just take a moment in practice, okay? I've been talking a lot. Give you a chance to check in. This practice is simple. You just in some way come into sitting still and closing your eyes or lines.

and closing your eyes however you are. And let this be a pause. So this is a chance to pause and just feel your intention in this pause to in some way wake up the heart, cultivate a more sensitive heart, just feel your own sincerity

and perhaps feel your breath and relax with the in-breath and relax with the out breath. And we'll just explore this training in a very simple way, bringing to mind someone you were with recently who's under the weather, that was, somebody who's having a hard time. It could be in the last day or week, but somebody you know who's having some struggle.

And the invitation is to let this person come to mind and bring them right here so you can sense close, close in this person, you might see his or her face, might see what it is that visually lets you know this person's having a hard time, whether they look distraught or sad or fearful. And you might sense underneath the appearance, well, what's life like for this person? And it's okay if there's some of the storyline, what you know this person's going through. through. But see if you can sense from the inside out, how is this person feeling? See if you can sense from the inside out, what's this person's view of the world right now?

Is this person feeling that core sense of I'm not okay as I am? Is this person caught in a fear of failure? Just taking some time, you're really offering a gift of your presence to sense more close in. What's it like to live inside this person's heart and mind? Can you sense what this person most needs to feel that would be helpful, to believe or trust, that would be helpful? Can you imagine what words or actions you would offer if you were right with that person that might affect their heart in a good way? Sensing for now just that you care and you can offer your wish, your blessings, whatever

wish you have for that person? and you're ready to open your eyes. It's that simple and that difficult to actually take a couple of minutes. I think we did about two minutes and yet take the time to bring ourselves more close into the reality. There's some sort of a saying that to be kind we have to swerve regularly from our path, you know, meaning we have to keep on, we have this idea of getting things done and where we're on our way to and we have to be willing to pause and actually be with who's

here. So this is the first of the trainings, is to pause and ask that question, you know, what's it like for this person? The correlate is a willingness to express our own vulnerability to others. Okay? It's not easy. But if we can, we invite the same from others and then there's this field of kindness that starts emerging. I remember at my wedding, one of the vows that Jonathan and I both loved and we both shared was a RELCA line or quote, it says, I want to unfold, let no place in me hold itself closed. For where I am closed I am false.

I want to stay clear in your sight. So it was this commitment just to be real and honest about what was there and I thought it was a great idea and I had this very, sounded just so beautiful. You know, I'm not going to pretend, I'm not going to cover over, I'm just going to express the real stuff that's here and feel accepted in that shared, you know, it was a great idea and it became really, really hard very, very soon because one year after we got married I started getting sicker and I started losing my capacity to do all the fun things that we like doing together. And I had gotten him a wetsuit for, I think, for my first gift to him so we could

boogie board together and I couldn't be in the ocean and swim. So that happened and I found that I was getting increasingly insecure in the relationship because I wasn't the woman that he first met and I wasn't going to be fun. I was a person who was getting more and more immobile and it was, I think it was the first time I probably said this out loud to a group but it was... really, really, it really set off like, is this okay? Is this going to be okay in our relationship? And so it built up and I knew I had to name it and I did and he was very good at creating a space for that and very tender in his response and it enabled him to talk about some doubts

he had and what some of the ways he was doing his work and so on but the upshot is by naming something real, it brings out another, it makes it safe for another person to. And then there's a field of shared compassion that we live from that is beingness. Like we landed up in more beingness because of it. This is the way Mark Nippo says it. 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, and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time. When we hesitate in being direct,

we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness, which, if not put down, diminishes our chances for joy. It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world, but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold, the car handle feels wet, and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being soft and unrepeatable.

So, contacting our own vulnerability, being able to express it and being committed to look and see the others. Next part. The next training, this is the other side that's equally important, is what we do with Namaste, which means we look at another person and we see that who's really looking back is that sacred, that spirit, that awareness, God, whatever language we want, but it's something we deeply have reverence for. It's pure.

How do we do that? How do we see past the persona and really get the awareness and love that's there, that innate quality? I'll share a story and we're going to practice this one too. This is a story I've always loved. It was told by Sister Helen Rosa and a nun and she was teaching at a school in Minnesota And she says, all 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million.

Very neat an appearance, but had that happy to be a live attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful. Mark talked incessantly. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him. Thank you for correcting me, sister.

One morning, my patience was growing thin, and Mark talked once too often, and then I made a novice teacher's mistake. I looked at Mark and said, if you say one more word, I'm going to tape your mouth shut. It wasn't ten seconds later when Chuck blurted out Mark's talking again. I walked to my desk very deliberately opened my draw and took out a roll of masking tape.

Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark's desk, tore off two pieces of tape, and made a big X with them over his mouth. I then returned to the front of the room. room. As I glanced at Mark to see how he's doing, he winked at me. That did it. I started laughing. The class cheered as I walked back to Mark's desk, remove the tape and shrug my shoulders. His first words were, thank you for correcting me, sister. At the end of the year, I was asked to teach junior high math. The years flew by, and before I knew it,

Mark was in my classroom again. Since he had to listen carefully to my instructions in the new math, He didn't talk as much as ninth grade in ninth grade as he had in third. One Friday things didn't feel right. We were working hard on a new concept, and I sensed that the students were frowning, frustrated with themselves, edgy with one another. I had to stop this crankiness before it got out of hand. So I asked them to list the names of the other students in the room

on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed me their papers.

Charlie smiled. Mark said, thank you for teaching me, sister, have a good weekend. That's Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone had said about that individual. On Monday, I gave each student his or hers, her list, and before long the entire class was smiling.

Really? I heard, whispered. I never knew that meant anything to anyone. I didn't know others like me so much. No one ever mentioned these papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose.

The students were happy with themselves again and one another. That group of students moved on. Several years later, after I returned from vacation, my parents met me at the airport, driving me home. I knew something was off. My father finally said it. Mark was killed in Vietnam.

The funerals tomorrow and his parents would like it if you could attend. To this day, I can still point to the exact spot on I-494 when dad told me about Mark. The church was packed with Mark's friends. All I could think it was Mark, I would give all the masking tape in the world if only you would talk to me. After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates headed to Chuck's farmhouse for lunch. Mark's mother and father were there obviously waiting for me. We want to show you something, as father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. They found this on Mark when he was killed.

We thought you might recognize it. Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that obviously have been taped, folded, and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the paper, papers were the ones on which I'd listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him. Thank you so much for doing that, Mark's mother said. As you can see, Mark treasured it.

Mark's classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, I still have my list. I keep it in the top drawer of my desk at home. Chuck's wife said Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album. I have mine too, Marilyn said. It's in my diary. Then Vicky, another classmate reached right there into her pocketbook,

took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. I think we all saved our list. That's when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark, for all his friends who had never seen him again. I'm crying for also this power of goodness, of seeing the goodness to heal our hearts. We need to tell each other. We really need to be mirrors for each other.

Every one of us needs it. So the two basic trainings, and it takes pausing and it takes intentionality, are this willingness to see the vulnerability and this willingness to see the goodness, this, oh, there you are, really calling out that goodness, this namaste. And teacher Sri Narcadatta says, you know, just if you run into conflict, just say to yourself, I am God and you are God and that's it. Just that. So we see the spirit, the beingness that's shining through.

It takes dedication and if we commit to consciously relating to each other, just those around us. Like if each of us said, okay, we had in mind. certain people that we're just going to just tune in too more. The circles will widen. They will widen. The more and more will be nourishing a kind of collective sense of belonging. It's amazingly powerful. So it's this sense of seeing who's there, the beingness, that helps us to step out of our destructive consuming and care about the earth. We can sense all this life we really cherish. We don't want to overconsume, we don't want to, in these different ways that we do it, make toxic our larger body.

We sense belonging. Similarly, when we start widening the circle and sensing beingness, we don't want to violate other people. This is the path that actually takes us towards a more peaceful world, really sensing the spirit that shines through all of the world. beings. One woman who lives in Uganda sent me an email, she had gone to Rwanda for a weekend trip to the Genocide Memorial Center there. And she saw this plaque that was incredibly moving to her and this is what it said. It was written by Felicia Nautaguan. And it said, if you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me. If you you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me. These practices,

these trainings of the heart are the trainings that actually will enable us to bring more healing to the world. But the truth is, as Gandhi said, we have to be the change that we seek. And what that means for each of us is to really begin to wonder how our actions are affecting other people. We really begin to look and see who's there. So I'd like to close with that in that spirit by inviting you to do a little meditation that pushes these pieces together. Okay? So this will be our final little meditation. And just begin as you pause by sensing your own sincerity. that you care about loving without holding back, that's a longing. You care about living more from beingness.

Use your own language and sense your own words, but sense what matters about loving presence. And then from that place of sincerity, bring to mind someone who is close to you. Anyone who comes to mind, someone you would practice this with in a more regular way, inviting that person right here, and as you did before, take some moments to sense, as with every human, how this human experiences their vulnerability, where the insecurity is, or perhaps the self-doubt, the hurts, just to let yourself take in the truth of human vulnerability in this person. And to sense this person's goodness.

Take some moments to remind yourself of what you really value about this person, his or her humor, love for life, way of showing love, just a look in this person's eyes when they're feeling alive and happy. And sense your wish for this person. You might imagine that you're looking into this person's eyes as we kind of do with namaste, that bow, and in some way sensing, you know, I am God, you are God. You might substitute the word spirit or awareness or loving presence. But that sense of I am this beingness, you are that beingness, here we are. So you can sense that kind of ice cubes melting that you can really sense the water,

the consciousness, the heart that shines through. both of you. And then bring one more person to mind, one more person you'd like to explore this kind of being-to-being quality with. Beautiful exploration. And again, let that person be right here, sense them close in. What's life like for this person? Take a moment to sense the struggles or disappointments, the challenges. What is this person living with? You could just step inside and look through this person's eyes and this person's heart, what's it like? Just feel your tenderness for this person and sense the goodness of this person, the basic goodness, what you love about this person, what brings up a sense of appreciation, you

might sense how this person's eyes shine when he or she's enjoying beauty or happy or being playful. your wish for this person. You might even imagine whispering it to them. They can hear it. And again, if you could imagine both of you looking into each other's eyes, I am God and you are God, that same beingness, consciousness, light shining through each of you. And then just take some moments to feel the heart space that's here. When we're resting in being this, the heart space can be quite boundless, quite edgeless. Just sense anybody that's, you know, just sense anybody that appears right now in your consciousness. Any person you know that comes up as part of this

heart space, sensing that you can experience the beingness shining through anyone who appears. Mary Oliver writes, so every day, so every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. So every day, so every day, I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. Namaste and blessings. 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.