Tara Brach - Beyond the Prison of Beliefs

Episode Date: April 4, 2012

2012-04-04 - Beyond the Prison of Beliefs - Most of us have core fear beliefs that obscure our true nature and bind us in repeating patterns of painful emotions and behavior. This talk looks at the beliefs that limit us and the freedom that is possible when we investigate them with a kind, mindful awareness. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations make a difference!

Tonight I'd like to start with a story that I heard many years ago, and I just read a version of it that I really like, written by a Sufi teacher Andrea Shaw, and it's about a tinsmith who was unjustly imprisoned, and he made a miraculous escape. And years later, when he was asked how he was able to do this, he described that his wife, who's a weaver, weaved him a prayer rug, and he was a in the prayer rug was the design of the lock of his prison door. And so the way he got out was that he convinced the jailers to give him a little tool so he could make different trinkets that they would go and sell and make money on. And, of course, he used those tools to, in some way, help him to create a key based on the design and he was able to free himself. Okay?

So the message here is that if we understand the design of the lock, we then know how to design the key to our freedom. And this is very much to do with our spiritual path. The understanding being that each one of us in some way, to the degree we suffer, we're living. living in a distorted reality. And if we can begin to understand the shape of that distortion, what are the beliefs that we're buying into that are keeping us trapped? If we can understand the shape or the patterns of our own behaviors and emotions and beliefs, in that recognition we begin to free ourselves.

So maybe just to begin with the genesis of these beliefs that really, really, if we're not free, we're believing in some beliefs that are limiting us. And our core beliefs, and the core beliefs are the ones that really are set in from very early on and really are impacting us all the time. These core beliefs are based on our earliest and most potent fears. Our earliest and most potent fears. And the way our mind works is that we use the purpose. past to anticipate the future. So these survival brains are biased to latch on to

remember imprint the painful experiences. That's the way that's the way it happens. We encode the memories that are most painful. Hence that saying you hear often that our minds are Velcro for painful things and Teflon for the good stuff, you know. So an example. Very young child is trying to get her mother's attention in some way for what she drew or come play with me or I want to drink of water and the mother is unpredictable and sometimes because of her own stress she explodes in anger and so this this child grows up then with some imprinted or encoded memories that when I need something I get in trouble I'm too needy people aren't

going to want me or like me if I ask for things. I'll get punished. I'm not lovable. I can't count on anyone wanting to be with me. Now, depending on the degree of stress or trauma in our backgrounds, to that degree, we have these very deeply entrenched fear beliefs. But we all have some because we get born into a world where our parents have fears and confusion. And so it gets imprinted on us. So let's say with the more extreme cases, if someone has been sexually abused as a young person, then there's an imprint that any intimacy is going to be dangerous. That's one example. So even though these beliefs are rude in the past, they feel very true and real right now.

There's an entire patterning of thoughts and feelings that are continuously filled. reality to again reaffirm the beliefs that were lodged in at a really early age. So then here we are as an adult and let's say your partner is preoccupied and when you bring up something she doesn't respond, she doesn't pay attention right then and then that old, old belief of I don't matter. I'm invisible. I'm not important. I'm not important. And then that same reaction then of being apologetic or maybe instead you get passive, aggressive and withdraw, or maybe instead you get aggressive and angry. It's from a very early experience of I don't matter. So I'm bringing this up because it's sometimes hard to admit how much our world today is based on very young kind of experiences of fear.

that have become an elaborate system of the way we navigate. And I like one of my favorite metaphors is that, you know, early on life is, we find life is difficult, and we don a space suit to be able to help us navigate. And every one of us has this kind of ego-based space suit. To some degree, we all have to protect ourselves from danger and get what we need to get. And so that's natural, but the more fear, the more elaborate the space suit, the more casing and solidity and aggression or withdrawal that we have.

And the suffering is that we begin to more and more identify as that space suit, as the covering, as the covering, as the defenses, as the one that's craving, as the one that's craving, as the one that's going to be rejected as the one that's not enough. And we forget who we are. You know, the Buddha said our suffering all comes down to ignorance. And what he means by ignorance is ignoring that we're in the moments we're living in that contracted reality. We are ignoring. We're not aware of the one who's looking through right now, that armor, that mask. The one who's looking right now, one who's listening, that awakeness, that tenderness, that space of presence. We're forgetting who we are. So that's the suffering of living in that prison. So what I'd like to explore tonight is how we can come to recognize our own particular version of the prison. We all

have our own kind of version of a space suit, and there's some common denominators that are in us all. And then we have our own particular outfits that we're wearing and identified with. And if we can become familiar with, oh, okay, when I'm stuck or suffering, this is what I'm believing. This is the pattern that's coming out of it. That very awareness allows us to rest in something bigger and not be so identified and have to play it out. I was talking with a very dear friend tonight about neuroplasticity, which is that these brains, these neuronal patterns that keep us playing the same space suit self over and over, they're changeable. We can train ourselves to pay attention with mindfulness and with kindness in a way that wakes us up out of our patterning. We don't have to

keep running the same routines. So to me that's the hope. That's the promise. That's the promise. of this path is that we can come home to the truth of who we are. We don't have to stay in that prison. And the path is to pay attention to that prayer rug we're all sitting on, which is our daily life. Where do we get stuck? Because the pattern of our core beliefs and our reactivities all right in our daily life, if we're willing to pause and look. I mean, you do not have to go to a three-month retreat to dig deep, or you do not have to go, I mean, for many, the retreats and the therapy and everything's really unbelievably valuable. And every day, for each of us, there's wanting and fearing that kind of contracts us. And if we pay attention to that,

we'll find the patterning. And we'll also find the space of presence that frees us. So this is from Gandhi, some of you will remember this. Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your character. And your character becomes your destiny.

This is describing this, this karma of as long as we're living in the same patterning of thoughts and beliefs, what happens? They're going to trigger us into the same reactivity. And then they actually create the very thing we're afraid of. So what happens when there's a strong belief going on in our mind? When there's a strong belief that something's wrong with me or distrust or whatever. Well, what we know is that whatever is going on in the mind, the body's like a replicating machine. It's absolutely in our tissue.

Our beliefs create a biochemistry in our body. What we're thinking affects our body. I mean most of you are familiar with placebo right the placebo effect that if you believe or think that you're taking some good medicine or that something good's happening to your body your body actually respond and get better this is absolutely proven it all started I think it was World War I when they ran out of medicine and and doctors started finding that if they gave substitutes that really weren't medicine that the soldiers started to getting better. So placebo. Well, there's also nocebo. And nocebo means that if you believe something that's painful or difficult, your body will register that. So one interesting experiment, they had people that were highly reactive to poison ivy and rubbed on their arm a leaf that they thought was

poison ivy, but was absolutely harmless. Every one of them got a rash. Nocebo. Okay, so back to beliefs, back to these patterns of thoughts we have about whether it's the most deep level. So whether we're, you know, when we're listening deeply to the beliefs and really sensing them that are going on, we can also listen into our bodies and find the body's living the belief in a certain way. So the interesting thing for me is that even when we catch, oh my gosh, I'm really believing, you know, something's wrong with me or I'm always going to be rejected or I'm always going to fail. For some reason

we hold very, very tight to them. We're not that willing to loosen the grip. And that's very, it's an interesting thing. You know, why we hold so tight to these beliefs. And one of the explanations in cognitive science

is really that we just are very intolerant of uncertainty. We would rather be certain about something, have stable ground, underneath us even if it's really bad news and just seems that's what it feels more safe we'd rather assume rejection than not be sure you know we'd rather assume we're a victim than not be sure what is really making us feel so bad it's it's got to be that person over there some of you might remember the story of a magician who was really good at all his tricks when he he'd

performed for people on boats, on cruise ships. But he had this parrot that would always try to ruin his act. You know, he said, the cards up his sleeve or the rabbit's under his hat or, you know, that kind of thing. So one day it happened that the ship sank. And the parrot and the magician found themselves together in a life raft. And for a number of days, the parrot just sat there silently and stared at the magician. And finally, on the fourth day, he said, okay.

I give up. What'd you do with the ship? So we really want to know, we want to have it figured out, which of course once we want to have it figured out, our mind's tight, it's full, we're not open to what might be really the truth. And the reality is everybody's trying to survive and we need a map and the way we want to know who we are in the scheme of things. How do we find out? our sense of who we are

is deeply shaped, molded, imprinted, by how our parents perceived us, the kind of mirroring they gave us. You're this kind of person. We internalize it. We want to find out what the world's about, how the world's going to act.

So we look towards religions and teachers and so on to say, oh, it's like this. We want that kind of security or certainty. And it's interesting, we are more secure, we'd be more secure with a certain belief, just having it, even if it makes us chronically insecure. We want to know the way it is.

I sometimes remember this story, the greatly beloved Rabbi Schechter is on his deathbed and all those people are surrounding him, awaiting his final words, this will tell us, you know. And in a faltering voice, he utters, life is a fountain. And so busily the people circling around And they pass the word out to the crowds

And the word goes down a long line of people in the hall And it's passed to people lining the stairwells To the people thronging outside And at the very edge of the crowd A little boy was told the rabbi's words And he said, well, what does that mean? People didn't know So they passed the question back up the crowd

So of course it goes through the crowds up the stairs of the building and along the hallway to those circling around the rabbi right to his closest assistant. And he whispers the question into the rabbi's ear. The response, so maybe it's not a fountain. We just don't know, you know, and it's so hard to just to live with that. In another one of those rabbi stories in Russia, an old rabbi every day 30 years, he goes from, he goes from the synagogue to the town square and one day while he's walking and a cossack policeman stops him and says hey rabbi what's you doing where are you going and the rabbi says well i don't know and the policeman gets really infuriate of course you know every day for 30 years you've been

going from here to the town square and he hauls him off to jail at which point the rabbi says see you don't know you know so you might know that the in zendent tradition in many of the Buddhist traditions is don't know mine this willingness to live with uncertainty is really honored and it's honored because we don't consolidate around a sense of this is who I am this is who you are this is what's happening there's this this openness and fluidity so what happens when we enter a path of mindfulness is that we can begin to challenge that certainty we have that keeps us small. We're so sure that something's wrong with me or something's wrong

with you or that it's never going to be any different than this or whatever we're sure about. The beauty of this path of awakening is that it invites us to challenge that certainty. But it takes some courage. It takes some courage. So maybe if you're few examples for you of you know I was thinking of you know people I've worked with in recent months and and that kind of challenging and one friend turned 50 he's always had an artistic bent so he decided to take some classes in drawing and the easels were close together and he immediately became self-conscious at the idea of drawing and having other people look but the

teacher gave this beautiful invitation she said this this first it's a freebie it's like just do it as if you know you're going to be able to toss it aside but just enjoy you know putting whatever spontaneously comes from your body onto this onto this paper just see what happens you know well this guy was miserable i mean he was incredibly tense and his mind kept evaluating computing and looking at what he was drawing and saying yuck you know this is not aesthetic at all and so we explored it some And when he was in that really, you know, asked him when you're in that tight, miserable place, can't enjoy, what are you believing? And his belief was that whatever I do will be evaluated and found lacking.

Whatever I do will not be enough, will be in some way wrong. So which means I can't ever enjoy doing just for the sake of creative doing. It's always going to have that monitoring of, is this enough? Is this enough? How many of us grew up with that belief that everything I do is, you know, going to be compared to either my own standard or somebody else's? How many of us? That's one. Another meditation student, a woman who worked for a nonprofit,

found that she was increasingly critical of how this organization worked. she found herself at odds with the director at odds with her colleagues very specific idea of how people should behave and communicate in the rules of the organization and so on so she was on this crusade to fix it and really alienated a lot of people and so when she came to me to talk it was you know I'm angry I'm resentful and I've alienated a lot of people when I got her in touch with okay so what's underneath that you know she felt hurt that she was distanced from everybody but underneath everything was this belief that something's always wrong and I have to fix it. Something's always wrong with me, I have to fix it. Something's always wrong with others. I can't be safe or okay if I don't fix things. If you know the aneogram, this is a type one. You can just ignore me if you're not familiar with the aneogram.

Perfectionist. Okay, one more example, okay? Just because I was really reflecting on. these explorations. This next example, a woman who was newly retired had been a therapist, and really her sense of herself was pretty organized around being a helper. Okay. And so when she retired, it actually set off a bit of a crisis. And not only that, she had some bouts of sickness and some chronic fatigue, so she needed help and went into a real sense of no value. I'm not valuable. She tried things. She joined a committee

at her church but felt like the new person this committee had been around for a long time she was the new person and she felt almost like she was in the way and uh she tried volunteering at grandson's monosuri school and felt like an outsider so there's a lot of loneliness and pain kind of caught in that sense of not belonging what are you believing you know this is the question when we're stuck what are we believing there's a belief in there's a belief that's causing suffering. With her, I won't be loved unless I'm needed,

unless I'm needed, unless I have some value, unless I offer something. How many of us have that one, that we have to do something to deserve love, that when we're with somebody, unless in some way we are something more, we contribute more, we meet and need,

we can't just be love for who we are. So the common denominator of all these is this fear that something's wrong very deep fear something's wrong with me or you I can't trust me or you so you might

just reflect now we're gonna we'll do just a very we're not going to go do a deep process with it right this moment but just just to scan a little bit and identify for yourself you're going to be now sitting on the prayer rug

and in your life there's a pattern you're sitting on that you're experiencing that you have an opportunity to look at. So pause and just feel yourself sitting here. You might sense any place in your life where you get stuck in some way, where you have a strong, unpleasant, emotional reaction. It could be a reaction of feeling angry or hurt,

fearful, restless, and patient, and just let yourself go into that situation and feel it. What if there's other people involved, sense what's going on, if it has to do with your own habits, your own life, work, how your life is going, fears about the future, fears about relationship. Just sense it and start to ask yourself, so when I'm caught in this, what is it I'm believing? and see if you can do it without getting intellectual,

just see if you can almost feel the place in you that's upset, the grief for the fear or the anger, and ask that place in you, in your body. What are you believing? What's the angry part believing, or the fearful part, about you, about your life? Is that fearful or angry part believing I'll never feel close to anyone?

I don't deserve love. No one will understand me. I won't manifest my potential. I'll fail in some way. What's that part believing? And for now, just to let that be with mindfulness. I'm going to invite you to come back to this. So if you feel like, well, I didn't find a belief

or if you feel like it got very mental, you can let go of it because we're going to use the body as the entry over and over again. But I'd like to just bring in Byron Katie, who's done wonderful work with beliefs. She says that reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.

Reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it. If we're suffering, we're telling a story, we're living inside a story that's not truth. I sometimes think of it, and you can open your eyes if you'd like, that we're living inside this movie that stars the self. It's kind of our own little home movie that's always running.

You know, you sometimes think of it like it just always entertains to me. If I look at it and I see these woods that I live near, and imagine that we're like woods and we're each individual trees, imagine if each tree in the woods was running a story about its life and how it was relating to the other trees and how it was relating to the other trees, And it was imprinted when it was a sapling, of course, with the weather and the particular position it was in the woods. And so it's always running about, like, how is my shape compared to other shapes? And, you know, and that's just going on in every tree.

It's got its own self-centered story. It's spinning in. And here we are, and we look around, and here's all of us. And we spend our days inside a story starring self. And it's amazing. And we really get, we really believe that we're really inside that story. And it's very much shaped by our strongest wants and fears. And if we haven't met them with a wise investigation,

they actually are very confining. Sri Narasar Gadata, one of the great non-dual teachers from India. He says, illusion exists because it is not investigated. That's all. So we're in this movie of self, and we just have to investigate it. That's all. It's very natural that it develops. I mean, every being has a sense of perception of separation,

and we're very complex beings with this whole storyline about our separate self. It's natural. And we have this awareness that's living through us, that's more intrinsic than the spacesuit we put on, and the awareness can begin to investigate the space suit, can check out this movie, sense what we're living inside, and wake up from it, wake up from the dream.

Okay, so how we do it? The entry to waking up, the entry for our investigation is wherever we get stuck. You know, the prisoners in his prison, we have our own little prisons the way you know you're in prison. Disatisfaction, it can be very vague, restlessness, anxious, this kind of, you can sense not at home. That's the place to pay attention. or maybe your life is in a more major crisis or challenge. You know, they describe crisis and opportunity. If things are unraveling,

if you're really in a big amount of grief, if you're really caught in fear, if you're really dealing with shame, that entry becomes a lot more obvious and there's a lot more potency in those moments if you're willing to pay attention. So the entry is where there's difficulty, where we're not at home. That's awareness is calling us back when there's that not at home feeling.

So we pay attention and what we pay attention to is this looping of thoughts and feelings. In other words, we notice the thoughts and we sense how they are in our body. And if we don't come into the body, we cannot dissolve the identification. that's keeping us trapped. So yes, we have to know the beliefs, but we have to sense how they live in the body. That's where the freeing up happens. So I'll give you an example of this

with working with a woman who came to me because she was very, very troubled about her marriage. She was getting increasingly insecure with her husband and felt really jealous of anybody he spent time with, especially if that person was female and off the charge of that was a female that was attractive and was very jealous of any of his work, that he was very, you know, engaged with his work. And she was also mistrustful, like he'd give explanations for what he was doing and when, and she was so caught in that jealousy and fear and upset that she really, she would get very angry.

And so she went around angry at him and resentful. So that's what we worked with. That was the entry. And so I asked her the question I've been asking you, which is, you know, if you could just go inside that angry part, like really inside that angry part. What is that part believing? What's that part believing? For her, the angry part was believing that he doesn't really want to be close with me.

He doesn't want to be with me. and in a deeper way, no one really wants to be close to me or with me. Why would they? You know, there's a sense of something's wrong with me and he doesn't want to be close to me and nobody wants to be close to me. And so I'm not that lovable. I'm not someone that people want to be close to. So this was the belief and I asked her, well, is that true? And she said, maybe it's how it feels. So I asked her how it lived in her body. What does your body feel like. And this is a question I'll be asking you. When you're believing what you're believing, that I'm separate, that I'll never be happy because I'll never feel close to anybody. How does that

feel in your body? And for her, it was this incredibly weighty, sinking feeling, this aching hole. She felt helpless. And she felt like it was dragging her down. It was like this achy, kind of empty weight in her that was pulling down. and then I just invite her to be with that and when she really got you know oh this really hurts this is suffering this is what I'm living with a lot of the time underneath the anger I'm living with this weight this ache this pain her presence became kind towards herself and the way I almost always the gesture I always use as this some people actually

find that if they can in those moments go like this, everything deepens in a really powerful way. Because in the moment that we recognize we're suffering from this belief, like get it physically, there's a natural response of tenderness. In that moment, we've seen the design and we're beginning to step out. We're becoming bigger than the prison. In that moment of recognition and kindness, seeing the belief, feeling that kindness. So she was shifting out of the spaces. She was no longer identified as the unlovable self that nobody wants to be kind to. She in her presence had opened to that place of kindness and awareness. That was more who she was. Again, I asked, is it true? Is it true that nobody wants to be close to you? And

And she was very clear that it wasn't. Because the you that she was living in was a much bigger sense of who she was. Do you see how important that shift is from identifying with the space suit to coming back to presence? In the moments we're inhabiting presence, that awareness, that mindfulness, that kindness,

the who we are has shifted. It starts dissolving the belief. I asked her a couple of things. more questions. I said, what would it be like to move forward in your life without this belief? Like, if you no longer believe that, what would it be like? And at her continents changed, because she said it would be hopeful. That was her word. That was all. Just be hopeful. Because I'm no longer believing something's impossible. I asked her, who would you be if you didn't have that belief? Who would you be? Because remember, these beliefs are so early

that they actually imprint our whole sense of who we are. Who would you be? And she just, I don't know. Let's practice a little bit. Let's just try it out. So again, the invitation is to sit on that prayer rug to just come home right into presence right here and know that what you're sitting on, this moment,

this part of your life right now, contains all the information you need to unravel, to undo, to step out of prison. Exactly your life right now. For some there may be a very deep kind of emotional pain and for others more the subtle kind of thing of dissatisfaction or restlessness or I'm not there yet. But to the degree that there's a sense of not at home,

that's the place for attention. So go to whatever in your life right now. now has a strong emotional stuck feeling and see if you can visually bring the situation right to you so you can see what's going on when you're most caught if there's another person see that person the expression on their face since the worst part of this for you what's most upsetting or difficult and again just that investigation oh when i'm caught in this if there's fear ask the fear, what are you believing? If there's grief, what are you believing?

If there's anger. If you identify a belief, then just sense, how is it to live with this in my body? You might even exaggerate it for this moment. I'll never be close with anyone. I'll never have the life I want. I'm going to fail. I'm not valuable to others.

Whatever it is. I need to be different. Just feel how that is in your body. What's it like to believe that? How has it affected your life and how does your body experience that your heart? How has it kept you different distance from others? How has it kept you distant from yourself? How has it kept you from trusting your true nature?

And as you pay attention to your body, you might put your hands on your heart or your cheek. one hand on the heart, one hand on the belly. Very beautiful way just to bring a deep presence. And just sense this offering of kind presence to the place that's imprisoned or stuck. Just that simple. Offering kind presence. Notice what happens.

Just ask, is that belief really true? Are you certain? What would your life be like if you weren't believing that? Who would you be if you weren't believing that? Just allow yourself to rest in that compassionate presence, but just here and aware. As you listen to these words from the poet Kaviri, The Old Truth made you run a thousand miles inside an arid desert, desperate for an oasis. The old truth made you run a thousand miles inside an arid desert, desperate for an oasis.

Sit and close your eyes. Inhale the breeze of kindness. Exhale the toxic judgments, dehydrating you like a prune. Sit and close your eyes. Inhale the breeze of kindness. Exhale the toxic judgments dehydrating you like a prune. Feel the pain of old patterns trapped in tense muscles. It's okay to cry to taste the salt of possibility.

It's okay to cry to taste the salt of possibility. Just be. Just breathe. Let waves break against the silence, returning you to a new and deeper truth. Just be. Just breathe. Let waves break against the silence.

returning you to a new and deeper truth. Opening your eyes. Last few minutes, I'd like to just name that I've been inviting you to explore this space suit that we get identified with. And there's different layers of it. And some layers are more the egoic layers, and we start dissolving them and sensing,

okay, I'm not that defensive ego. but they're very deep, deep layers of feeling in the most kind of profound way, something we all share, which is I'm separate, and this life I love I'll lose. That's like the deepest layer of what we're believing. And it's very natural. It's part of the development of any being is to sense this separate self and the inevitability of loss and to feel pain. So one of the deepest places that when we're sitting on the prayer, we go is to the grief, the sense of loss. And the inquiry of, well, what do we find there? What do we find there? If there's full presence with grief,

full presence with loss, the light of our awareness reveals something that's timeless and changeless, a love that can't die. It reveals a mystery. that we can't conceptualize if we're really, really present with that very basic level of feeling separate

and sensing loss, we can't conceptualize it's very mysterious. So I want to read a story that some of you might remember that it kind of expresses this mystery, I think, and it's written by,

it's called the Heart's Code, written by Paul Pearson. And it begins, oh my God, David, no, cried Glenda, when she saw the bright lights headed straight for their car. As a squeal of the tire struggling to grip the road

became one with her own shriek of helpless terror, she knew she had lost her husband forever. Moments before the car came crashing through their windshield, the couple had argued over something silly and had been sitting in resentful silence. They had had these little scuffles before, but unlike all their previous skirmishes, this time, there would be no opportunity

to apologize and reconfirm their love. Three years after the accident, Glenda sat with me in a dimly, lit hospital chapel. At her request, I had arranged a meeting between her and the young man whose life had been saved by the gift of her husband's heart. The heart recipient and his mother were almost a half hour late for the meeting, and I was ready to suggest to Glenda that we leave. The issues of recipients meeting donor families is a very sensitive one. I thought the man might have changed his mind, but as I stood and took Glenda's hand, she said quietly, no, we have to

wait. He's here in the hospital. I felt him arrive about third. minutes ago. I felt my husband's presence. Please, wait with me. Glenda's a practicing family physician. She's well-versed in bioscience and as I do, admires the rigor and healthy skepticism of modern science. Now, however, the power of something that transcends what science calls common sense was tugging her at her heart. David's heart is here, she added. I can't believe I'm saying that to you, but I feel it. His recipient is here in this hospital. At that moment, the door opened and the young man and his mother walked hurriedly down the center aisle of the chapel. Sorry, we relate to the young man with a heavy Spanish accent.

We got here half hour ago, but we couldn't find the chapel. After introductions, the awkward attempts at humor about a heart-to-heart meeting between the young wife and her husband's heart, the usually shy Glenda blurted out. This embarrasses me as much as it must embarrass you, but can I put a hand on your chest and feel his, I mean your heart? The young man looked at me and then his mother and put his hand to his chest and finally nodded his head.

As Glenda reached forward, he unbuttoned his shirt, took her hand, and gently placed it against his naked chest. What happened next transcends our current view of the brain, body, heart, and mind. Glenda's hand began to tremble and tears rolled down her cheek. She closed her eyes and whispered,

I love you, David. Everything is copacetic. She removed her hand, hug the young man to her chest, and all of us wiped tears from our eyes. Glendon, the young man sat down and celebrated against the stained glass window of the chapel, held hands in silence. Speaking in her heavy Spanish accent, the young man's mother told me, my son uses that word copacetic all the time now. He never used it before he got his new heart, but after a surgery, it was the first thing he said to me when we could talk. I didn't know what it meant.

He said everything was copacetic. It's not a word I know in Spanish. finish. Glenda overheard us, her eyes wide, and she turned toward us and said, that word was our signal that everything's okay. Every time we argued and made up, we both say everything is copacetic. Our discussion about a magic word that seemed to reveal the code of the heart within him stimulated the young man to share story after story of the changes he experienced following his transplant. Described by his mother as a former vegetarian and very health conscious, he said he now crazed meat and fatty foods. A former lover of heavy metal music, he now loves 50s rock and roll.

He poured current dreams of bright lights coming straight for him. Glenda responded to almost matter-of-factly that her husband loved me had played in a Motown rock and roll band while in medical school and that she too dreams of the lights of that fateful night. It's such a mystery. We so much want to make sense of who we are and what happens and what happens to other people. I remember when my husband, Jonathan, when his mother died,

she said, where did she go? We want to know. And yet there's this mystery that's beyond our conception, but we can begin to inhabit it, inhabit that space of presence that knows what's here that's timeless. It's accessible. This is Sogio Rimbushai.

He says, if everything changes, then what is really true? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Is there something in fact we can depend on that does survive what we call death? When we begin to bring presence to these changing forms, when we begin to bring presence to this home movie that we're running, we start waking up out of this identity of self that's small or limited, that's deficient, that's failing. And we also stop identifying with the sense of self-other where we lose each other. And we begin to discover what's called the deathless, this radiant awareness

that's always here and this love that can't die. If we take grief and go right into the grief and our feelings and our thoughts and stay really, really present, we discover that loving awareness and realize it's our home. So let's just close together in a very simple way. Again, sitting on this prayer rug, just sitting and sensing this changing life, sensing the aliveness in your body right now, sensing this breath, the inflow and outflow. Sense whatever mood is in your heart right now.

So you're aware of this life that's always changing, this precious expression of aliveness. And you're also aware in the background of that inner silence, that stillness, that's simply present. That which knows being the presence, It frees us to cherish this changing life with a fearless heart. Close with the words of Rumi.

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