Tara Brach - Beyond the Interpreted World

Episode Date: February 20, 2013

2013-02-20 - Beyond the Interpreted World - Hildegard of Bingen writes, "An interpreted world is not a Home." This talk explores the suffering that arises from believing in an interpreted reality, and the love, aliveness and freedom that becomes accessible as we challenge beliefs and awaken into living presence. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

I'd like to begin tonight by sharing a study that I ran across, I think in New York Times, and the title is, why, can some kids handle pressure while others fall apart? And then it says, scientists think bouts of panic in stressful situations can be traced to genetics, but don't freak out biology is not necessarily destiny. And it's a really fascinating study about how, all of us have a certain genetic combo that determines whether we are what's called worriers, which mean that we have a lot of cognitive clarity a lot of the time, but come a stressful situation, we freeze and we really perform poorly in those instances.

And others are warriors that might not have the same clarity when there's no stress, but when there is stress, everything falls aside and they're, you know, right on it. And a lot of us are somewhere in a spectrum. But the point of the study is that how we respond to stress really has a very clear genetic determination, which means it's not our fault. It really is not our fault. And yet, kids, how many kids have tests in school be one of the main formative experiences that creates low self-esteem. I mean, it's one of the great tragedies in not understanding how we respond to a, you know, competitive educational system, and it's beyond education.

It's like we all experience stressful situations and how we respond is driven by genetics. So that's one piece that it says. But the other piece is that there are ways of relating to the stress that can turn someone who's a worrier into someone that's actually able to handle it. So it's kind of two messages, which is, it's genetically determined and how you relate to it can shift your neurobiology around. Okay? Now, the reason I got really interested is because I see that, I see that.

You see so much of the suffering that we have come down to two basic beliefs. And one is what's happening is bad, it's wrong. In other words, the stress that's happening is a bad thing, and I'm wrong in the way I'm dealing with things. And if we're moving through life with some combo of these two beliefs that things are wrong and I'm wrong, we're going to suffer. and maybe just pause right here and ask you to take a moment and sense anywhere in your life where you know you're getting a bit caught or stuck. And if you've got somewhere where there's a lot of suffering, just take a moment to close your eyes and sense that situation.

It might be in relationship with someone. It might be at work, it might be something to do with your health, it might be to do it an addiction, and ask yourself, when I'm in the thick of this, what am I believing? What am I believing about life and what am I believing about myself? What am I believing about others? If we really investigate, if there's suffering, it means we're believing something's wrong. and it's usually with me or with you or with life. But we often don't, when we're stuck, we often don't pause and really investigate

because we are rigged when we're stuck to actually do anything we can to get away from the unpleasant feelings. We try to fix it or we try to figure it out or we obsess or we numb or we do other things. And we also carry around a lot of rationalizations for how come things are the way they are and how come we're relating as we're relating. Cartoon has two sheep and very deep conversation. And one's saying, sure, I follow the herd, not out of brainless obedience, mind you, but out of a deep and abiding respect for the concept of community.

So we have our ideas. But the reality is, if we're stuck, we're believing something that's not true. We're holding on to some partial truth. We're believing something that isn't true, no matter how true it feels. And a story I sometimes go to because it's so powerful is of an older man who's a smoker. He's a lifetime smoker, now he's hospitalized with emphysema. And after a series of small strokes, his daughter is trying to convince him to give up smoking,

but he refuses. Not only that, he says, buy me some more cigarettes. And he said, look, I'm a smoker this lifetime. That's how it is. But several days later, he had another stroke, and apparently it did in a part of one of the memory centers in his brain. And without concern, the next day he woke up and he stopped smoking. It wasn't because he decided to.

He woke up one morning and he forgot that he was a smoker. to the extent that we're identified with our story about who we are, we're hooked on all the thoughts and behaviors and feelings that go around that story. So beliefs aren't just an idea in our mind. They're very rooted in feelings in our body and they feel true. If it was really easy to go, oh, this is just a belief, I'm thinking I'm a smoker, you know, I'm going to let go of that now. It would be great, but it's not like that.

They're deeply rooted, but they're very workable. And again, this is the gift of what scientists call neuroplasticity, that if we train our attention, we can literally loosen the grip of beliefs that have absolutely shaped a lifetime of suffering. That's the possibility. So I want to read you, Heldegaard, of Bingon, who's one of the great Christian mystics, we cannot live in a world that is not

our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light. An interpreted world. is not home. When I read that, I found that languaging really powerful. An interpreted world is not home. To me it means a world filtered through beliefs. Beliefs that are shaped by our culture, shaped by others, internalized by us, and we don't get born with the beliefs. Beliefs about what's right or wrong, good and bad. If we're moving through our own, we're moving through our day and our experience is filtered through beliefs that say this is wrong, this is bad,

this shouldn't be happening, I shouldn't act like this, you shouldn't act like that, then we're going to contract and be living in a place that is not our fullness, it's not home. So I love it for a mystic, I mean because the idea of an interpreted world for Heldegaard It meant, you know, that there's not intermediaries that are going to say, here's how the kingdom of God works and here's where you fit in. What she's saying is the terror, because it's absolutely a dying to our whole idea of a small self, is to say, a direct experience that I'm going to trust what I directly contact. This is the way of a mystic.

And in the Buddhist tradition, the term Aheaval, Ahipasiko and the Buddha said, you know, okay, I'm giving you all this Dharma, but don't take my word for it. In fact, if you try to take my word for it, it won't work. Ahipasiko means come and see for yourself. Step outside the interpreted world, including what you call your own interpretations. Step outside the beliefs that keep you small, they keep you away from realizing the love and the awareness that you're home. Step outside of those beliefs. A. Hi Pascico, come see for yourself.

So Heldegaard then points the way back, how do you do that? And how do we live true to ourselves, our real cells? And she says, really, take back your own listening. Listen to what's really here in the moment. I think of that as challenging the beliefs. inquiring and saying, what's really real? And then listening, listening deeply. She says, take back our own listening.

And then use her own voice. Then from that presence, express authentically what we are. Don't hold it back. And then, of course, see your own light. Recognize the formless, the sacred that's living through each of us. So tonight we're going to kind of deepen an inquiry into what does it really mean to awaken beyond the interpreted world, beyond this conceptual world.

And so just to look a little more closely at, you know, with the lens of Buddhist psychology, all thoughts and beliefs are made of sound bites and images going on in the brain. And they are at most a... representation of reality. They're not it. They're just like a movie is not what the movie's about. I mean in the real world, this movie in our mind, these little flickering sound bits and comments and images are not reality. Sometimes there are useful representation and they guide us and they help us know how to navigate. And often they turn into a story that keeps us

from home. Okay, so that's piece number one. And the given is that these thought forms will keep on percolating, you know, that this is, I usually say it that just like the body secretes enzymes. These, you know, we just keep on having these thought forms. And they're not only a given, they're probably the most central, strong tool in our evolutionary survival kit. So they matter a lot. to us. They provokes survival. Next piece, okay, so they're a given, they're for survival. The next piece is they have a negative bias, which I think you've heard a lot probably by now. That we know that over the tens of thousands of years it was way more to our advantage to remember

danger. So we tracked it when there were sounds and fear associated with a slither or associated with a certain crunch around us or whatever of wildcat paws, that got recorded in the traces in our memory, not the moments of savoring the warm sun lying on a rock and just sunbathing. It just wasn't like that. So savor was not to our evolutionary advantage. So depending on our genetics and culture and personal history, still we have this negative bias that is completely affects our day-to-day filtering of experience. A linguistics professor was lecturing his class one day. In English, he said, two negatives make a positive.

He continued, he said, but in some languages, for instance, Russian, two negatives still remain a negative. However, he pointed out, there's no language wherein two positives make a negative. A voice from the back piped up, yeah, right. So back to Buddhist psychology, we don't experience these representations as representations. They're primarily fear-based, or they lean towards fear-based, and we think they're reality. So that's what our nervous system is moving through, day by day. We're filtering in our world in a way that has our body, have this ongoing, churning sense of restlessness when it's,

It's not a big deal, unease, anxiety, fear, terror. So that's what goes on. And then what happens for each of us in our own ways is that there's a looping that goes on whereby we have these fear-based beliefs and they take an experience and then we feel you know the result of it emotionally, either anger or depression or depression or whatever it is, and then that feeling has us act in certain ways that then confirms the belief. So when I described that looping of we have a belief and then it creates behaviors which then confirm the belief, does that resonate for you?

Okay, so we know that one. We know how it goes that if we believe in others going to reject us, that insecurity has us behave in ways that push others away, right? or if we believe that others are out for themselves, that they're defensive or selfish, then we're going to act ways our behaviors are actually going to provoke that very experience. So we loop in a kind of trance whereby we have these beliefs, and as it said, the beliefs create the thoughts, the thoughts create the emotions, emotions generate the behaviors, the behaviors end up creating our destiny,

is the way Gandhi put it. If we didn't have those fear-based beliefs, an emotion might get triggered off naturally. You might get fear come up because you're told an upcoming job performance you had to prepare for. And the natural length of a fear comes and goes is 1.5 minutes, according to some neuroscientists. What keeps it going, how come most of us do not just have it as a problem? 1.5 minutes, you know, so that we have an ongoing play of thoughts that come from these beliefs that just keep fueling it and fueling it and fueling it. So it becomes a mood. Basically what we're doing is we're adding on to an experience the interpretation of, uh-oh, this is a bad

situation and even a deeper uh-oh, I'm going to fail. So that those beliefs, that interpretation, this is bad, I'm going to fail, is the linchpin that holds our trance together. Does that make sense? That that's behind the lines. Now what happens is that we get identified with the self that's having a bad experience and is failing. That's the core mechanism that Buddhist psychology describes as what keeps us hooked. We get identified. That's me. That's the experience. So we're identified with what often is described as an unreal self.

We have a story in our mind about a self that's falling short, that's victimized, or that's oppressing others, or whatever it is. We have a narrowed sense of identity with an unreal self. And, of course, when there's an unreal self, there's also an unreal other, right? Okay, so let me anchor this a little for you. The story that came up that I thought I'd share with you of a man I worked with some who had taken MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction,

so he was beginning to practice to work with his anxiety and depression and so on. He was a professor at college. His wife initiated a very painful divorce process. She had found intimacy elsewhere, his tendency to be depressed and unavailable in some way, supposedly the cause. And the belief that he was living with was, eventually people will always leave me. I'll always be abandoned, and it's because I'm not worthy. People don't want to be close to me.

They won't really like me if they are. So that was his interpreted worldview and his unreal self he was identified with. And then, of course, he had all the behaviors built around that, which was he very much relied on a very good intellect and, you know, performed really well in terms of his work, a lot of kudos for that, competitive athlete, although he was very out of touch with his body and, of course, out of touch with his feelings. So he was pretty unconnected internally and pretty solidified in that unreal self. But the divorce cracked him open, and I'm going to return to how we work together with his interpretations in a bit. But the divorce did crack him open, and that gave him an opportunity to deepen his attention, to kind of start contacting what the unlived life you've been running from. So before I kind of go over the process of deconstructing that interpreted reality,

how we come home again. I just want to say that in the same way that we have narrowed sense of who we are, it's exactly the same with the world. If we're subscribing to a story of what's wrong with me, then the world is out there

and we're filtering in the same kind of way. There's going to be a lack of trust. Others are going to be, what I do think, the term is so good, unreal others. They're kind of two-dimensional characters. And the more stressed we are, the more there's a self in here and others are kind of out there and they're either somebody we want something from, an object that we're trying to get something from, or somebody that we want to kind of push away and don't want to be near, or else if they're

neutral, we ignore them. But that's the play. When somebody's an unreal other, we can't sense who they, they're humanness and they become kind of an object to control or ignore. And as illustration, a story, some of you might remember at one university, a Catholic priest and a Baptist preacher and rabbi were all chaplains in the same very large university. And they were friends, but they were also rather competitive

in their own way to see who has the true path. And they decided, they set up a competition for themselves, which was whoever really has the true path, the way, would be able to convert a bear. Okay, so one thing led to another. They decided to do an experiment. They all would go out into the woods, find a bear, preach to it, an attempt to convert it. Okay, so they did this. They dispersed. Seven days later, they all came together to discuss their experiences. Here goes.

Father Flannery, who had his arm in a sling, was on crutches when first. Well, he said, I went into the woods to find me a bear. bear and when I found him I began to read to him the catechism. Well that bear wanted nothing to do with me and began to slap me around. So I quickly grabbed my holy water, sprinkled him and holy Mary, Mother of God, he became gentle as a lamb. The bishop's coming out next week to give him first communion and confirmation. Reverend Billy Bob spoke next. He was in a wheelchair and had one arm in both legs and casts. In his best fire in brimstone oratory, he claimed, well, brothers, you know we don't sprinkle. I went out and I found me a bear and then I went read to my bear from God's

holy word but that bear wanted nothing to do with me so I took hold of him we began to wrestle we wrestled down one hill and up another and down another till we came to a creek so I quickly dunked him and baptized his hairy soul and just like he said he became gentle as a lamb we spent the rest of the day praising Jesus hallelujah the priest and the reverend both looked down at the rabbi who was lying in a hospital bed. He was in a body cast and traction with IVs and monitors running in and out of him. He was in really bad shape. The rabbi looked up and said, well, looking back on it, circumcision might not have been the best way to start. So we're talking about unreal others here. And even though the bear's a fun example,

when we live in our idea of who the other is, in other words, how things should be, we're not really paying attention. And we go around with ideas about each other. We don't often check in and really find out who's there. So a lot of moments, it's an unreal other, and when there's an unreal other, it's very easy to dehumanize.

And that's where we really see in our society, in our world, and through history, the huge amount of violence and injustice. Because especially when we don't know people, they truly become a story. And it's very hard for our body and our heart to get these beings are real. Instead, we have a category for them. And the category is often a collective agreement of a word that's demeaning, that makes the other sound less human. We have ideas in our minds that are beliefs about what is superior and inferior in terms of religion. We have racial beliefs that put people down, gender, sexual orientation,

and all sorts of other ones. I was thinking about the body shape and how many of us have in our mind what should be and how much violence and cruelty to ourselves and to others come from our ideas about body shape. I was thinking about this and then I read again New York Times this time it's the magazine. Some of you might have seen this, you know, knowing about the the epidemic of obesity, there was an effort in the food industry to work with the food industry to create products that wouldn't addict people to that perfect balance of sugar and fat that keeps the brain thinking it has to have more of that thing. What's happened over the decades is

that the food industry has used science to discover how to addict people to food that creates obesity. So they tried to have these meetings, high-level meetings, and this is a few years ago, and this article in the New York Times shows how not only were the leaders of the food industry not willing to go along, they just considered it like, look, this is our way of making profit. I mean, it's just like the cigarettes. You know, it's like addicting people to nicotine's my way of making profits, so they were unwilling. And it's a pretty, it's an interesting article. But I bring it up because what would make one put their time and energy into something that is creating so much suffering in the world?

Why would somebody build weapons? Why would somebody go to war? Unless, and this is the bottom line, there's an interpreted world where the other's not real, and there's fear which leads to a need to consume more, have power over or destroy. So what I'm saying is living in an interpreted world that's fear-based keeps on fueling war, war against ourselves

and war against others. This is Kurt Vonnegut. And in his novel, there's a man that's watching television. And he's watching a movie from World War II. You know all those endless black and white movies from World War II. But someone put the reel on backwards. So he's there and he's sitting, and this is how it looks to him.

American planes full of holes and wounded men and corpses take off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards and sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for the wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew back.

over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their Bombay doors, exerted miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers by magic into bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again and made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from their racks and shipped back to the United States where factories were operating day and night,

dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground and hide them cleverly so they would never hurt anybody ever again. When we're living in a fear-based world, it keeps tumbling forward. It keeps tumbling forward and the momentum doesn't stop

because the beliefs keep fueling it that we have to fight or we have to flee, we have to defend, we have to consume, we have to earn more. And yet there's something for me so touching in that, in that rolling it backward that reminds us of what matters to us and that we can step out of our idea of the world and feel with our hearts what's possible? What's possible? So the evolutionary inquiry, and I think it's the most live inquiry in the world, is how,

in the face of stress that inevitably arises, do we shift from the fight-flight that we see is fueled and goes into war to tend and befriend. How do we shift from a kind of rigging where we just are fueled with these beliefs, these interpretations that keep us at war? How do we shift from that? How do we pause and deconstruct that, roll it backwards, come back home to what we described before is that real contact, what's true, what matters. So let's explore now how the practices here that we every week and that so many of you doing in so many different ways, these practices of presence can enable us to wake up out of an interpreted reality. And I would like to come back to

this man I was describing earlier, the college professor who was cracked open by this divorce, and he's living in the fear beliefs of, I'm unworthy, I'll always be abandoned, although he wasn't really in touch with them. I mean, he wouldn't have walked through the world and said, oh yeah, I'm feeling unworthy, but he was living in a very mental world, very avoiding of intimacy, and more into kind of competing and going fast. So here he is cracked open and we began to use rain, the process of applied mindfulness, to look at how he was constructing his reality. And I ask a series of questions when people are very caught in certain beliefs that I find Byron Katie's work really, really inspiring in terms of unpacking beliefs.

And so those of you that haven't checked out her work, I'd like to recommend it. The first question, what are you believing? So here he is cracked open. Again, what are you believing? Okay, so the belief is I will always be left. I am not worthy. The next question is really, is this true?

And this is where we start listening more deeply. Is that belief truth? Okay? It's a belief, it's words, it's images, it's sound, rights, it's got feelings to it, but is it truth? And this is, again, this is where we start taking back our own listening, and we really need to listen fresh. If it's a habitual, oh, is this truth? Yeah, it's true. That doesn't count. Is it truth? And then we say, okay, I'm really going to listen. For him, what he came up with was, well, it appears to be, and that's been my track record, and I don't know.

There's a power to asking that question, is this truth? Because first of all, it reminds us that it's a belief. There's a little bit of space around it with just the question. Does that make sense? Just asking, is this truth? Many people, when I ask that question, it goes, yeah, it feels that way and that's okay. Just the question opens up a little space. And I ask, well, what's it like to believe it?

And this is where we start listening into what is really happening in my body and my heart when I'm believing that I'm always going to be abandoned or that I'm unworthy. And so with rain, if you just put it in the rain kind of terminology, you're recognizing and allowing that there's this suffering. I'm caught and I'm going to say, okay, I'm just going to let it be here right now, I'm allowing it. And then there's this investigating. What am I believing? Is it true? How does it feel in my body? It has to be felt in the body for the belief to start loosening its grip. So let me say that again. If you have a strong belief about something, it's creating suffering, you have to feel how you

experience it in your body for there to begin to be a little loosening in the identification. So for him, again, there was that listening, what's it like in my body, what's it like in my body, fear, hollowness, shakiness, terror, lonely. How's that in your body? Kind of like a hole, empty. Okay? So, what's it like to believe in the body? And then I asked him, so how has this affected your life to believe this?

And let's look honestly. And that's kind of widening the lens of mindfulness. And you know, because he could see, he'd always had a need for connection but he buried it and just put it elsewhere into academia and achieving and staying occupied. And that basically he never took the chance. That was what he said, how it affected his life. He never took the chance to let anybody get close. Never took the chance.

And then I asked again, so what's that like in your body to feel that? You keep coming back to your body. Lonely, hopeless, I'll always be alone, afraid. Then I asked, well, what is that fearful, lonely place need? So this is again, we're just inquiring and listening. And his response was, for me not to abandon it. For me not to abandon it. So again, I want to...

say what we're looking at. He had an interpreted world. I'm not worthy. I'm always going to be abandoned. What we're doing here is saying, okay, what's it like to believe this? And really investigating and listening, finds this place that says, don't abandon me to him. Now, I want to share with you another woman who wrote beautifully about her process, who had been caught in for many years self-aversion and for many years self-aversion and food addiction and all the interpreted reality that comes around that. Here's what she wrote. She said, help me hear you, little one who speaks the truth, for there are a thousand ego

voices that claim to speak for you. When we believe a belief, we're believing one of those ego voices. So we have to keep listening deeper and deeper. So for this man, the request is, don't abandon me. and that's where his heart really started softening. He could sense that his fear and his mistrust in the world was he would always be abandoned, but he had abandoned himself. He had left his own body, he had left his heart,

he had left that young one that felt abandoned. He had participated. So that's when he was able to say, I want to be here. I don't know if I can, but I want to be here with you. And that's all it takes, by the way. We can't always promise to ourselves that we're going to show up, but we can have the intention. So this is the movement that really is from the head where there's interpretation to the heart.

For that woman that I described who was caught an addiction, the response in her of what's needed is, remain in me. This is from the scriptures. This woman's beautiful, mystical Christian herself. remain in me. Underneath our beliefs is a longing. We need to get to that. For him it's don't abandon me. For her it's remain in me. Stay here, stay here, stay here, stay here. Which I think of, it could be instructions for lifetimes, just remain. And you might sense for yourself if you just close your eyes for a moment and you sense that you can

pause and you sense that you can arrive in this pause and touch the life that's actually here. Feel the aliveness, sensations, listen to sounds. The pathway of awakening from our interpreted world is to come home to this, this immediate presence. Remain in me. Stay here. And if there's that courage and willingness we can find in that presence the light and the love that will free us from any fear-based belief. The last questions that I asked her, what would life be like, or asked him, I'm sorry, I'm back to the guy who was feeling unworthy, who was going to be abandoned. What would life be like if you did not believe that?

that if you didn't believe anymore that you were unworthy, if you didn't believe that you'd be abandoned. You might ask yourself if you know of a belief that really holds you, what would life be like without it? For him it was a body tingling and alive, he just felt full of life. Possibility. Possibility. And then the final question, who would you be without this belief? Unbounded, belonging. I want to say as I share the this story that this was not a one shot where we went through this inquiry and this deep listening and he found the longing beneath the belief and he felt that wholeness. This was not a one shot, many, many rounds. And for the next few years, he, up and as far as I know

he's been living alone, he's gotten involved with a few more friends, had some unsuccessful online encounters. And he took up swing dancing. These are things I know about him. But What I do know is he's not depressed. And he says it's because he feels possibility. And to me, that hope, it kind of brings us back to Kurt Vonnegut's story, it doesn't have to be the way the interpreted world always turns out. The interpreted world keeps us separate. When we start sensing what's beyond our beliefs, the possibility of connection and that journey

of intimacy, it becomes possible. So, okay, it's been a few years and he hasn't manifested, it's not a happily ever after story, but he has hope. How beautiful. So the pathway that I'm describing here tonight is to awaken from the interpretive world by saying what's underneath it. Can we contact the life right here?

And thus far I've been describing illustrations of inner work. But what I want to end the evening with is to say that if we don't also practice this presence together, if we don't collectively challenge our interpreted world, if we don't collectively hold a space of kindness and awareness for that, one of the deepest beliefs doesn't get unfolded, which is I'm separate, I'm on my own, I'm walking the path alone, that I'm doing this work alone. There's a story I like to share now and then

that Araya Mountain Dreamer writes about a workshop she taught. And she says at the end of a very long day, a small, thin woman in an oversized park introduced herself as Isabel. Can I do this meditation on my own? She asked. Yes, sure you can. Many people find it easier to establish a practice with the help of a group. You know, it's hard to keep up the discipline on your own.

Well, what will it give me? What will I get if I do this every day? Her tone took on a whining quality and felt my irritation rise as she continued. How fast will it work? Will I feel difference after a week? How will I know it's working? This is exactly the kind of thing I detested.

The quest for a quick fix. The desire for guaranteed outcomes. The simple answer. Do this and you'll get that. My sons were waiting for me and I wanted to go home. I took a deep breath, looked directly it is, and set my knapsack down on the floor. I tried to slow down my words thinking that maybe if I spoke slower I would feel more patient. Well, I said meditation is more a process than a goal-oriented

activity. It can help you become aware of what's going on within and around you, and this can help reduce stress. My best advice is to try it and just be patient with yourself. I picked up my bag and started to butt in my coat. I really did have to leave, and I wanted to get out while I was feeling virtuous for not snapping her head off. But as I started to move away, Isabel suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm with surprising strength. But what I want to know, she said, her voice rising in a crescendo that bordered on real panic, is will it help me find God? If I meditate, will I have an experience of something or someone out there listening? Something really with me? A wave of desperation swept out from her through me and I was surprised to find my eyes filling with tears. This woman

wasn't looking for an easy answer or a guaranteed formula because she was lazy. She didn't want a simple plan because she was unable or unwilling to think critically about what would work. She wanted something she knew would work and work quickly because she was hanging on by her fingernails. She wanted something that would work in a week because she was afraid that she simply wasn't going to make it through months or years. I put my hand gently over Isabelle's where it grip my arm. It's okay, Isabel. We all feel desperate at times, I said. Nobody does it by themselves. We all need help. Her hand relaxed a little beneath mine and she started to cry.

We talked for a while longer. There is no them. There's only us. When I left, I did not leave one of them. I say goodbye to one of us, a human being doing the best she can, searching for the home for which all our hearts long. So because we have this universal conditioning towards fear and towards beliefs that keep us small, we all have doubts and we're in it together. So much of the pain of separation comes from what happens in relationship and so much healing and freedom happens when we bring

our interpreted world and our fears into a relational field and look at that together. It's so powerful. I think as I speak, I like the language of co-listen. We need to co-listen to what's going on. Twelve-step groups. There's just so much power to seeing the collective tendency towards self-delusion and be able to name that with honesty, with humor, with clarity. you know, what's called Stinkin' Thinking, where we convince ourselves that, you know, we're going to be okay with just this one or whatever it is. But what happens, it's not so personal when we bring our interpreted realities in, and we start holding it more lightly, and a lot more light shines through it. We begin to have more choices. There's support.

And I see that so much in our community. We have the spiritual friends groups. We probably have 30-some groups that meet every other week. And in these groups, just the capacity to share, okay, I'm caught up in this, I'm caught up in these feelings and this belief and so on, and for there to be a shared container, it helps each of us to hold more lightly what's going on inside us to untangle the beliefs. For me, I find that I do a whole lot of processing on my own,

but if I don't bring what's going on into the relationship, field, there's still some part of me that's holding on often. And the biggest example is when I've made a mistake in some way, through my words, through my actions, through my lack of action, whatever it is, that's created suffering. And I can do a lot of processing and forgive and forgiven and see how come I was caught up. But it's the moments when I'm with others, the others that really are upset with me, not just, you know, if I talk to a large group and nobody's upset with me about everything, they just think, oh, isn't Tara great, she admits stuff, you know.

But I'm talking about one, you know, that's different. I get a lot free ride on that one. But I'm talking about, you know how it is when you really admit something to someone? I mean, it's like most of us would rather spend hours at the DMV or, you know, or go to the dentist or be in rush hour, then have to say, look, I really, really blew it and I know it really hurt you. It's hard. So now, when I make mistakes which happen all the time that really get to me, like, oh, that really, you know, and I'm working with one right now where something I should have responded to

and I just let it slide and it really mattered to respond to, when that happens, it's not until there's this vulnerability that is in the relational field and then I'm having to face the deep belief that if I'm imperfect or hurtful then I'm no longer going to be loved or respected, you know, that deep belief that's something that I'm going to lose love. But to have that belief in those feelings but bring it into the relational field anyway, loosens the grip of those beliefs and feelings. So the patterning is still there in me but the grip is loosened. I don't believe it as much, which is the difference between discomfort and suffering. So the invitation tonight, and we're going to end with a meditation now, is to begin

to notice where we're stuck and really ask, how am I interpreting this world right now? What am I believing? And bring that deep listening to that place. So we'll try that out. the last five minutes of our time together. And just to know that because this is such a brief exercise, when I do this with myself, I might spend a half an hour, that just this hopefully gives you a template and you can explore more on your own. In other words, don't judge how you do this. So letting the attention go inward and you might take a few

breaths just to collect and gather yourself right here. And again, just scan your life and sense if there's something going on that brings up a real strong emotional reaction. And I wouldn't pick something that feels like it has trauma mixed in because that's not going to be as accessible in a healthy way. So again this is a situation perhaps in a relationship or working with an addiction work. where in these circumstances you find yourself caught in a reaction, caught in an emotion that's painful, perhaps anger, hurt, fear. If there's nothing really strong, it may be just somewhere where you feel yourself

distanced from someone and you're sensing, you're contributing. You might begin by just recognizing allowing that this is a difficult situation so that you're acknowledging it and just creating space for it. Because that's what, that's the part, with rain recognizing and allowing the situation and the suffering in a more general way, opens us to that investigating and listening. Just letting yourself tune into the situation and really the place in you that's upset in the situation. And just ask yourself, well, what am I believing? What am I believing about life, about myself, about others?

What's the interpretation here? And if there's a few beliefs, just sense the one that's most charged. Are you believing that others don't relate to you well, that they don't like you or respect you, that you're not lovable? Are you believing you're unworthy, that you're failing in some way? and to ask yourself, is this belief the truth? Just to offer that inquiry there, is this the truth? Just let yourself listen in a fresh way.

Is this the truth? And then take some moments to investigate more deeply when you're believing whatever it is, what's it like? What does your body feel like? And you might exaggerate the belief and exaggerate the story around the belief some. just to help you contact, what's it like to live with this belief in your body? Does your heart feel like when you're believing this? Your belly, sensing how your body feels when you're believing this

and how it then affects your life? How does believing this affect relating with other people or affect your capacity to be creative or to enjoy or be spontaneous? Just for now, just to sense this, maybe put your... hand on your heart. So you're really offering listening very intentionally to what it's like and just sense the place in you that is most struggling with the place that believes and feels the pain of the belief, the most vulnerable place in you just sense, what

is it really need? What is the longing, the need, the want? Just listen, it may be that you, there's just a lot going on and there's not... it's not clear, or it may be that you listen in a fresh way and there's some real sense of voice that's really deep in you, that you can sense what's needed. Does this place need from you more presence, more attention, more understanding, more love, for you not to abandon it, for you to stay? For now the most important thing is just to be interested, to listen inwardly because that's the whole path, to listen with the intention towards kindness.

And you might notice even right now that if you just have that intention to regard with kindness what's living underneath that belief, just to regard with kindness, just notice what happens. You might ask yourself, what would my life be like without this belief? Just again, fresh, listen, sense. What would your life be like? You might get a glimmer of something, just like that film rolling backwards. What would it be like? What's possible?

And finally, who would you be if you didn't have that belief? Rumi says, I am water, I am the thorn that catches someone's clothing. There's nothing to believe. Only when I quit believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Day and night I guarded the pearl of my soul. Now, in this ocean of pearling currents, I've lost track of which was mine. Thank you for your attention.

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.