Tara Brach - Belonging to Each Other – Part 2 of 3 (2019-10-16)

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

Belonging to Each Other – Part 2 of 3 (2019-10-16) - Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome my friends. I'd like to begin with a teaching story. It's one of my favorite little stories and in this one, a mom is preparing pancakes for her two sons, Kevin's five, Ryan's three, and the boys begin to argue over who gets to have the first pancake. So the mom feels like this is a great opportunity to teach them an ethical lesson, a moral lesson. So she says, well, if Jesus was here, he would say, let my brother have the first pancake.

I can wait. And so Kevin, the oldest, turns to his younger brother and says, Ryan, you can have the first chance of playing Jesus. So we are all in our own ways in a developmental process. and it moves from the habit of operating out of a sense of a self, a real preoccupation with selfness. We move through the world, kind of self-centered, how's this going to benefit me, how's this going to hurt me?

And out of that can come not only selfishness but aggression as we know. And then as we emerge, as we develop, there's more and more of a sense of we and really the navigation is what will serve. of the greatest good, our collective well-being. So what we're going to be doing in this class is continue from last week's class and it's actually turning into a three-week series, not a two-week series because it feels pretty alive and relevant right now and it's really on how do we deepen our sense of real connectedness of we in a world that as we know is pretty divided.

And the quote that I found so powerful that I'd like to share again from Mother Teresa is that if we have no peace, it's because we have forgotten that we belong together. So there's a lot of forgetting when we think of our world today, when we take in the suffering around us. This reflection that we're doing together these weeks feels profoundly urgent. for our world, that we very consciously widen our sense of who we are to include each other. That's the shift in consciousness we need from the I to the we. And it's also essential movement and opening this perceiving belonging in our spiritual freedom.

This is spiritual freedom to sense belonging. So we'll continue to explore it in a way we're taking the met to our loving-kindness practice, which as many of you know has widening circles where we start with our inner life and then we include those deer and then we include those we don't know us well and then onward, we're actually taking that one meditation and doing it over a number of weeks so we're dropping in more deeply. If you missed the last one you'll be completely fine with this class but I'm I do encourage you to listen because each of the pieces deepens it.

And last class we explored how do we truly feel belonging to our inner life? When we get divided in the world it's because at the core we're at odds with ourselves. We're not really at home in our own bodies. The emotions that arise we're at war with, we're not comfortable in our emotional body. we're not at home. So that is the beginning and the middle and the end. We have to keep coming back to belonging to the life that's right here and we need to widen it out.

Now in the last class we described the power of learning to pay attention because that's what reveals our belonging and how when we get stressed, And this is for most of us, especially when we have had no training in how to pay mindful attention, there is a default that goes on where we regress back to operating out of the most primitive parts of our brain. And when we do that, I typically call it a limbic hijack. Our ego is really being driven by a deep sense of, I'm separate, I need this from others, kind of grasping and an averse of, this is dangerous and often aggression.

So as we know when that's full blown in a societal level, when our society is, one friend calls it a PTSD society living out of its limbic brain, it's trouble. You know, it really is. It's that limbic energy that leads us to violating non-dominant populations, that leads us to tormenting billions of animals each day to feed us. And that leads us to burn trees and fossil fuels and basically forget our belonging to this earth, that this earth is our larger body. If we forget that, we'll destroy our earth, it's self-destruction.

So there's a default to the primitive brain that happens to some degree in all of us when we get stressed. and for some people because of their conditioning and they haven't trained at all a lot. The path to realizing belonging is a conscious training of attention, of mindfulness, how to be present and reconnect to what's here and compassion where we bring a kindness to that. And research has shown in so many ways that with even just a little bit of practice of coming back into the moment, it activates the higher centers of the brain.

It literally activates the parts of the brain, this neural net that has to do with relating and enables us to have access to empathy and to compassion. In other words, there's some sense of we, the brain's more integrated, we sense more of a belonging to our world, and our words and our actions are more. more geared to the greater good. So as I mentioned last week we looked at the ground level of activating mindfulness and compassion and bringing it to our inner life. And the key words that I want to remind you of were that when we start attending to our

inner life we find what's difficult and the attitude is this belongs that when there's jealousy, our fear, you know, our anger, hurt, that rather than fighting it, we reestablish belonging when on some level we send that message inward that this belongs. This is part of the ocean. These are waves and they're part of this larger sense of being. And in the moment that you can say this belongs to something difficult, there's a magical thing that happens, more space opens up. you are inhabiting a larger space of being.

So now we're going to continue to widen the circles of belonging to others and we last class explored bringing our care to dear ones. In this class we're going to look tonight at how do we bring our care to dear ones when we are distanced or in conflict? In other words, how do we rediscover belonging when there's some sense of separateness? And most everybody I know, most everybody has somebody in their circles that they care about, but they're stuck in some sort of reactive distance, our separation. And what I've seen in our lives is that often that is the place of the greatest suffering.

It's the thing that most nags us. It's a thing most regularly is upsetting. When we feel angry or defended or hurt or disconnected from others and even more insidious, when it's not real intense but there's this kind of ongoing resentment, it's very toxic. A valuable reflection and you might check this out, we'll just do it very briefly right now, if you want to close your eyes, is to sense yourself at the end of life looking back. We often take this vantage point in meditations because it's revealing. So imagine you're at the end of your life looking back and you might bring to mind several

of the people in your closer in circle, friends or family that you care about and just sense, Well, what matters to you about how you were relating to them? Were you relating in a way that feels resonant? Looking back, were you living true to your heart? Maybe as you scan there's somebody that really pops up as someone that if you knew you were going to die in the next day or two you'd really wish that in some way you'd gotten unstuck and reconnected. There's a saying that if we knew we were going to die in the next couple of days we'd all

be on our cell phones calling so many people and in some awkward or not awkward way telling them that we love them. Sense for you how this might be true. And you can continue to consider that. We'll keep going because as you know I will invite you to choose somebody and work with somebody as we reflect together. So I'd like to start in exploring how do we begin to bridge separation with a key understanding that we've explored here together before and it's just helped me so enormously it's the one

I keep coming back to and that is that when I'm in conflict with somebody, when we're in conflict with each other, what's really happening is a conflict of unmet needs. That's what's going on, that we and the other person ever, unmet needs for feeling safe, for feeling cared for, or for feeling appreciated, or for feeling seen. There's many different possible unmet needs. So there's different degrees of charge when we have unmet needs. I mean that's why some conflicts are really deep and some aren't.

There's all those levels, some level could be wounds of very early abandonment or violation. But then there could be other levels of more immediate. it blocks to our satisfaction. I received this many years ago, and in a way I'm going to ask you for forgiveness in advance, but this is called possibly the best chicken joke ever. A chicken and egg are lying in bed. The chicken is leaning against the headboard, smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on its face. The egg, on the other hand, is looking pissed off and resentful, grabs the sheets, rolls over

and says, well, I guess we finally answered that question. Oh, come on, you guys, please. It's good. You know it's good. A little bit of a sleeper, but I've only shared this, I think, once before. And I remember being nervous about it then, and I was nervous about it this time, too. So I need you with me on it. Okay, so there's different degrees of charge.

You can range from charge from a deep, deep life wound to a temporary lack of skin. getting satisfaction, there's also many types of reactivity that comes up as we know. That sometimes instead of acting out somebody's just bruised with resentment, it's very corrosive. Other people, and you know, it's picked up energetically. For some people completely cut off contact and withdraw, some lash out and blame. And some are more quietly, there's much much in what might be called the passive-aggressive realm. In one situation a young boy announced proudly, I'm going to marry grandma. And the father said, gently, son, you can't do that. Children don't marry grandparents. And the boy said,

why not? You married my mom, so I'm going to marry yours. So getting back, that happens. Often unmet needs are fueled by social norms that we want to meet and we can't. So we can't meet a certain norm and then somebody triggers us by making that clear to us. You know, because we're told so often that to be happy you have to be this kind of person and have this kind of intelligence and this kind of personality and this kind of looks or body. And I really liked the way Dave Barry came out. at this, he said, he describes being puning all his life, which is very painful for a male. He said, I totally missed the boat to Puberty Island. I was this little hairless dweeb with a voice

in the Pinocchio range. One day, my mom, bless her heart, had a talk with me. She told me that girls were not interested only in looks, that the qualities that really mattered were brains and a sense of humor. That little talk was long ago, but it taught me an invaluable life lesson I've never forgotten. Moms lie when they have to. So, he's described the suffering of not meeting machismo standards for males, which

I speak of lightly and yet it's a real suffering and then it can be triggered off in relationship. Whatever the level of charge or the type of reactivity are the cause, the pain of those unmet needs when we feel them triggered by another is what leads to reactivity. And as I mentioned, I'd like you to start considering looking more deeply into where you might feel distanced, might be in some level of a reactive spiral so that you can try on this

lens of unmet needs. You don't have to start now because we're going to do a meditation on that. But if we can do this in our personal relationships where we feel distant, we are starting to evolve the consciousness that is absolutely essential for groups that are in conflict, for groups of people that are locked in, until there's this capacity to see beyond the conflict to where does it hurt? How are you suffering? What is it in you that's caught feeling pain?

We will not begin the dialogues that lead to reconciliation. So let's look at what's actually happening when we get caught in blame. And keep again in the background a sense of when you're feeling blame and see how much this resonates. What we don't realize is that we're in a trance whenever we're blaming someone. Okay, I'm explaining what I mean by that because I know that's kind of a... a big statement. Any time you're blaming someone else, your mind is getting narrowed and fixated. Okay? It's just the lens of the brain, you get narrowed and you get fixated and

you're focusing on what's wrong with them and they become as you do that unreal. You're not seeing a dimensional being anymore, you're just seeing the slant of them that has the bad stuff that you don't like. So again they're no longer a whole being with insecure. and losses and the capacity for wonder and a sensitivity to this and they're just the bad other that has those particular qualities. So identity has shifted, they're shrunken as to who they are and when you're blaming your identity shrinks. You're no longer have an open awareness that is a full quality of beingness, you have become a

victim, a defended self, an aggressive self, a righteous self. So it's a trance because we lose sight of both who we are and who the other is. We forget our shared human vulnerability and we forget our shared goodness. Let me ask you at this moment to again close your eyes and reflect. Let's start checking in on this and see what seems true for you. So bringing to mind someone where there is some degree of distance and this does not have to be traumatic antagonism. This is in fact that won't work during a reflection like this where there's just some conflict

or tension or distance. If it helps you to think of a situation that exemplifies what triggers you, let yourself do that and then notice how you're viewing them. who they are in your mind, what image comes to mind, what you're paying attention to about them, what you're noticing about them, what's your lens like as you think of that person? Have they become a two-dimensional, unreal other, the kind of antagonist in the story or drama of your life? Just notice that. And in the conflict, who are you?

When there's distance or blame, what's the sense of your own self when you're feeling blame? Sense what happens to your heart? Sense the openness or the narrowing of the aperture of the mind. Sense the contraction, the contracted or shrunken sense of who you are. The more you become aware of trance of how in the reactivity of blame there is a shrinking of who you are in the other, the more you will have a choice to wake up out of that. The more you'll be able to start seeing unmet needs, your own and the others and begin to move towards bridging and coming back to belonging.

Now feel free if you'd like to, you can sit with your eyes closed. you prefer, you can open your eyes again. One of my friends described when she was young something her mother would do with her and her brothers and sisters. Whenever one of them would say something judgmental or mean-spirited about anybody, the mother would have them all pause and she'd say, okay, let's come up with three reasons why that person might have acted that way. And then they have to collectively come up.

So let's say somebody, oh, so-and-so didn't even say thank you for a birthday present, a birthday party. Okay, three explanations they'd come up with. Well, one would be they just weren't feeling well, or another was, well, they were upset because some people didn't come to their party, or well, they're embarrassed with all that attention. It didn't matter, but their minds became a debt. at not locking into blame, at sensing, well, what might have been the unmet need. And I thought that was one most brilliant parenting moves I've ever heard. I think that was great training.

So the reality is when people act in rude ways, or insensitive ways, are mean-spirited ways, they are not feeling happy and peaceful inside in those moments. No matter how we want to blame them, we know that inside there's some torque. If you have a person you love to hate and you imagine their face right now and you imagine what brings up the sense of aversion and then imagine their face you will see in that face it's expressing an internal state that is not very pleasant. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?

So here's the thing. If we lock into blame and reactivity, we are in an aggressive or defensive stance and we can't get our needs met certainly by the other person. That person is not going to meet our needs when we're in blaming state, right? We can't meet our own needs because we're so busy blaming outwardly we can't attend into our inner life. And in a very deep way, we are stuck in a trance where we're forgetting our true nature. We're forgetting the spirit and heart that's really our essence. So it's a kind of lose, lose, lose to stay in blame. So let's talk about when we are stuck, how we start

making our way back to authentic connection and we'll end our time together with a meditation called Rain on Blame, which can be very helpful. So the first thing we need to do when we're caught blaming, I call it the U-turn, because we basically are taking our attention which is fixated out there and we're turning it back towards the life that's here. And no matter how much we understand or learn about the U-turn,

whatever we practice gets stronger, So if you really practice the U-turn, like when you notice you're just stuck in blame, you really start learning to go like this, you are at the portal for freedom. It's a really powerful move. So we make the U-turn, we start attending to our unmet needs, and that's the beginning of opening out of the trance so we can have some of the flexibility to begin to establish connection with another. So let me give you an example of reign on blame and I'll do it with a personal story

because I work this one a lot. This is one of my practices, is to not stay in blame. This is an example from my marriage with Jonathan early days, one of our early marriage patterns, which was I was really attached to our scheduled meditations and check-ins and kind of really wanted to make sure we took our time to, because that translated to intimacy for me. So I was very attached to them and I judge him whenever I felt like he wasn't prioritizing them the same way I was. And not only would I judge him, but I would bring it up in a judgmental way, that he was

falling short somehow, that he was unspiritual and intimacy avoidant. So, of course, he'd get... withdrawn and angry and that was a signal when I was getting aggressive and he's feeling withdrawn that we go, oh, okay, reactivity, blame, let's take our time out. And that's basically like saying let's take a U-turn or a self-compassion break, okay? And I really recommend that to any time you have a very alive relationship with a friend or a partner or whatever to have a pre-agreement that you have a very, you know, that you're when triggering happens you're going to take a self-compassion break so that you have a chance

to make a U-turn and do a little self-presencing so you have more resources to bring to relating with the other. So then I would, I'll speak to my side of the process, I would be having that break and I would do the rain process with myself and I'd move from focusing on, you know, he's being bad or on spiritual or intimacy avoidant back to okay, what's really good? going on here underneath all that judgment. And what I typically find is a layering as we do with rain. I recognize and allow that there was anger but then as I began to investigate and by the way

if you're not familiar with rain I'm going to go walk it through with you but the acronym rain is recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. these activate mindfulness and compassion. So I would recognize and allow, okay, angry, angry and look under the judgment and investigate. And when I start to investigate underneath the anger there'd be hurt. I was just feeling hurt and the anger was kind of defending me from that. And there was a kind of unmet need in there for feeling special and lovable and cared about.

It felt very old and very young kind of personistic. there, very familiar feelings. And so when I get in touch with them with that squeeze of feeling unlovable or not cared about and the unmet needs were to feel loved and cared about, then I'd bring the self-compassion, which is in some way to say it's okay sweetheart or I'm here or I'm not leaving it, it's bringing a kind presence to what's there. And after the four steps of rain, there's what I call after the rain, which is just like a real rain after rain falls, that's when the blossoming

happens. You have to pause after rain and then feel what's happening and what I'd feel after that nurturing is just more space, more tenderness, less stuck in that old identity of a victimized self or a wronged self. So there'd be a shift in identity which really is the sign of awakening from trance. I wasn't any longer a victimized self. He wasn't a bad other. There was just more space. So then what would happen is we'd get together and talk and he would have done his own unraveling too and we'd each name what we were feeling and the unmet needs and because we had been with it we were very much able to be open to and empathetic towards the other, it's sometimes called roll reversing, that we could actually sense the others'

experience and be inside it. Now, since then we've done this so often, you know, whenever there's a stuck place, you know, doing our U-turn and working with it and coming back together, that we have a joke that the first one who can roll reverse wins, which means the first one that kind of gets more open and an empathetic is leading the way. It's a kind of friendly spiritual competition here. So, in that coming together for both of us, the key piece I want to name is that there's a sense, a shift in identity, because we went from bad otherings back to a sense of we,

of a heart space that was shared. And this is the gift of doing rain on blame. which is that we get unstuck, we get to come back to more wholeness. Now I want to name the challenge which is the core feelings are very, very persistent. Whatever our core unmet needs are, feeling unlovable, feeling unworthy, feeling not seen, that stuff doesn't go away from one round of rain. It really becomes part of our meditation that when it comes up we know how to pay it attention and unlayer it and feel it in our body and offer compassion.

It's many rounds. But the good news is it's an amazing portal that if you decide that you're not going to just go to sleep in trance when blaming's there. If you decide to use blame, let it be a flag to deepen attention, there's a profound freeing and discovery of who you really are that's possible. That's what motivated me. Some years ago I made a kind of commitment to myself that whenever I caught myself on some level judging and putting somebody else down and often it's very, very subtle,

but there's some sense of putting down, and sometimes it's not subtle, you know, and just there. But whenever I caught it that I was going to pause and not the leave my thoughts but do the U-turn and unravel it because it makes us so small when we walk around in blame. So I guess the message really is whatever we practice gets stronger and if we practice judgment and blame a lot where we strengthen that kind of tight identity of a victimized self. And the more times you practice awakening from the transomized self.

trance of blame, the more you get familiar with who you are beyond that small self-story. Now let me name a few of the concerns that I run into when people explore this and that they tell me about. And one is that if I stop blaming, then I'll keep getting hurt. And some of you may have thought about that. You know, if I don't keep being aggressive or defensive, I'm just going to be stepped all over. And you might remember the story I tell us very, very frequently of dog who's being aggressive because its leg was in a trap. Well, there's no question that when we have unmet needs, when people have unmet needs,

when their leg is in a trap, they can act in ways that definitely cause harm. People can be dangerous. So here's the thing. you can let go of blaming the dog or blaming the person that's being hurtful and still take good care of yourself, still create boundaries. And that's a life wisdom that we have to learn to do, that our hearts don't hold on to rage and anger and feeling victimized, that our hearts are open and wise and yet we call our boundaries as we need to.

We can find out when we do that that anger and blame is actually disempowering. There's no capacity to heal in an inward way. So I want to name another question that people bring up which is, but wait a minute, do I have to squash my anger? I mean, isn't anger a healthy part of us? It absolutely is. In fact, every single emotion that we are wired to feel has an intelligence. Every emotion has an intelligence. They all belong and we need to listen to

their message. In order to be healthy and whole we need to include our emotions and listen. And intelligence is like that. It lets you know there's a block to your well-being. There's something in some way threatening. There's some unmet needs and that you need to take care. So honor your anger when it arises, find its message. But anger, Anger doesn't serve if it gets locked into place, if the anger button gets jammed. Does that make sense? It's natural and necessary because it energizes us to take care. It motivates us.

But as my very dear friend and teacher and author Ruth King writes, anger is initiatory, it's not transformative. is initiatory, it's not transformative. And sadly, for so many of us, and this is why I wanted to start with that end-of-life reflection, anger or even more lower-key blame locks in. And when it locks in, it's actually easier to stay in the blame or the anger than open to the vulnerability in the process that actually brings connection. So we see that we see stay in it. I want to share a story that touched me about this and this was written by a teacher who teaches classes to adults and he gave this assignment. He said, go tell someone you love,

that you love them, but has to be someone you've never said this to or not for a long time. So it might be a person where there's some distance. So he gave that assignment and a week later and some people got very annoyed with it because it felt really tough and one of the people that got annoyed said he got annoyed but then something happened. He said as I began driving home my conscience started talking to me and it was telling me I knew exactly who I needed to say I love you to. Five years ago my father and I had a vicious disagreement and never really really.

really resolved that we avoided seeing each other a lot and we were together. It was just polite distance. Well, by the time I got home I convinced myself I was going to tell my father I loved him. So the next morning I called my dad to see if I could come over after work. When he answered the phone I said can I come over after work I have something to tell you and my dad responded with the grumpy, now what? I assured him it wouldn't take long so he agreed. At 5.30 I was there at my parents' house, praying that Dad would answer the door. I was afraid of mom answered I'd chicken out and tell her instead. But as luck would have it, Dad did answer the door.

I didn't waste any time. I took one step in the door and said, Dad, I just came over to tell you that I love you. It was as if a transformation came over my dad before my eyes, his face soft and the wrinkle seem to disappear and he began to cry. He reached out and hugged me and said, I love you too, son, but I've never been able to say it. Two days after that visit my dad who had hard problems but didn't tell me he had an attack and ended up in the hospital unconscious. I don't know if he'll make it. So my message to all of you in this class is don't wait. Just don't wait. You know, whatever our habit is, whatever we practice really does get stronger, the grooves

get deeper. And it takes a really deep reflection and commitment to practice something different. No matter how right you think you are when you're in conflict, no matter how right, it's still a trance that keeps you in a disempowered. identity as a separate victimized self. It makes you small and of course it makes the other person small too. So the invitation here is to deepen our attention in our own lives, each of us, that if each of us right now who's here and who's listening leaned in that direction to wake up

out of that trance to look towards unmet needs, we'd be creating ripples that really can affect consciousness, that open us to a heart space that really can affect consciousness in our world. So I'd like to explore our meditation now, we're going to do a rain on blame meditation before we close. Take a moment to invite yourself into presence and let your senses be awake. letting go where you can in your body, any tightness or tension, opening to sensations and aliveness inside you. So we begin the practice of bringing rain to blame

by identifying someone you care about and with whom you experience some distance in conflict or tension, not full-blown antagonism. and to help you get in touch you might bring to mind a particular incident. Remembering the visuals of whatever was going on, the space you were in, look on the person's face, words exchanged, perhaps the tone. Notice what comes up now. This is the time to make that you turn and bring your attention from the other to your own inner life.

And we begin reign by recognizing whatever is most predominant inside you right now, whatever feelings or reactions could be anger, blame, judgment, and with whatever you're noticing, A is allow to let it be. Know that this belongs to, this is natural and it belongs. You're not adding any extra judgments about it, not trying to fix it, not ignoring it, just let it be there. This is what'll allow you to deepen attention now and the eye is investigate. You might notice what you're believing about yourself and the other person. It might be something like, well if they're acting that way they couldn't care about me or

they don't respect me or they don't understand me or I'm not safe with this person. You might notice if there's a belief there and you might notice what's the worst part of this for you, what's most disturbing or hurtful, what were you really hoping for with this person or wanting that didn't happen and most important, where do you feel the feelings right now in your body? The essence of investigate is to feel in your body where you feel the reaction, the hurt, the anger, the vulnerability. And you might let your face make the expression that expresses what you're feeling in your body

and experiment with this. It can be very helpful in getting in touch. You can even fake it or exaggerate it a little bit with your face and you might even let your posture shift slightly to express how you feel, like how that vulnerability or upset place feels. your hands go into fists or you hunch over some, just experiment a little. And as you do, go right to where you feel most agitated or vulnerable, maybe your throat, your chest, your belly, and sense what is the unmet need here?

What is it your most needing? Is it to feel cared about? to feel respected, important, maybe understood, appreciated, safe, sense the unmet need. Call on the most wise and loving part of your being and you might, if it helps shift your posture and your facial expression and really call on your own high self, that place that's right now witnessing and listening to the vulnerability. awareness that's here and see if you can offer to yourself from that high self to the vulnerability exactly what's needed you might put your hand on your heart as you do so.

Since with that part in you that's got unmet needs, most needs to hear and feel and see if you can offer some message to that part of you that might be comforting, nurturing. If you've never done this before, let the type of you. be tender so you can sense that you're offering that tenderness right through your touch to your own heart and if it helps to bring to mind someone that you know loves you and believes in you a spiritual figure you can imagine their energy moving through your hand right to the most vulnerable part of you offering understanding offering protection offering care and notice how

as you offer this self-compassion, notice the shift in your own sense of presence, what's changed? Perhaps that there's less of a sense of a victimized self and there's more presence, more heart. It's from this more awake heart space that you can begin now to look at the other person through wise eyes. Let an image of the other person be there as you imagined them earlier. You're seeing their face and their body posture and imagining their voice and see if you can recognize in them whatever is going on, just whatever you see, anger, upset, distance, shut down, whatever you notice. recognizing their reaction and allow it, let it just be there.

Give it some space and that can allow you to begin to investigate, to bring your empathic capacity, deepening your attention. What do you imagine they're feeling? How might they have a leg in a trap where they were hoping for something and not getting it? What might this person's unmet needs be? Did this person need to feel respected, loved, safe, appreciated? Imagine and sense their vulnerability, maybe as a young person, a vulnerable being and feel your care, feel your nurturing, your heart space including them.

And you might imagine this person feeling their needs met. How might they be or behave or be different if their needs are met? Just imagine that. How would they be if they felt really loved, understood and safe? As you sense that, you might sense their basic goodness, how the gold shines through when they're not caught in fear. Now take a moment. moment to sense who you are when you're free from blame.

Even just a glimmer of that heart space that can include yourself and others, the realization of true belonging. And you might imagine from this heart space ways you can respond when you next encounter this person with more choice. And we close with a short verse from the poet Mark Nippo. my soul tells me we were all broken from the same nameless heart and every living being, every living thing wakes with a piece of that original heart aching its way into blossom.

This is why we know each other below our strangeness. Why when we fall we lift each other or when in pain we hold each other. why when sudden with joy we dance together. Life is the many pieces of that great heart loving itself back together. Life is the many pieces of that great heart loving itself back together.

Namaste and thank you for your attention. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.