Tara Brach - Bridging the Divide: Learning to Tend and Befriend

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Bridging the Divide: Learning to Tend and Befriend - One of the great sufferings facing us is the growing divide between humans with different views, different realities. This talk looks at several levels of divides—being at war with ourselves, creating separation in our personal relationships, and societal divides. We then reflect on how we can evolve consciousness from the trance of "Fight, Flight, Freeze" to the wholeness that arises with "Tend and Befriend."

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome, friends. Thanks so much for joining us. I heard a story about a church committee in the congregation that was ensnared in a bitter debate about the way some, one of their core religious rituals was supposed to be conducted, you know, who was supposed to perform it and how often and so on. And it was really dividing people into different camps that were becoming increasingly hostels, testing friendships.

So one person suggested that they seek the counsel of the oldest living member of the congregation. and it was agreed on and they sent out a couple to go speak with him. And so they started asking him questions. Well, they said, well, way back then, do they do it this way? And they described one compromise of how to do the ritual. He goes, no, not that way. And they said, well, what about this? And they gave an alternative.

He goes, no, no, not that way. And they kept going like this and finally distressed. They said, what are we supposed to do the entire, congregations arguing, everybody's accusing each other, there's really deep conflict and mistrust. Then the old man said, that's the way we did it. So we know that humans have been in conflict through the eons, really in the moments that we feel threatened and it doesn't matter whether it's physically endangered or our views are challenged, our egos challenged, we quickly regress into survival brain reactivity, which is fight, flight, or freeze

and it comes off as often as anger or hatred or defensiveness or paralysis. When we're dominated by fight, flight, freeze in a chronic way, when it's ongoing, we lose touch with our heart, with our full intelligence because we're really, we're really We're living from the most primitive part of our brain and we feel separate from others and these are the times we can really cause harm to ourselves and to others. There's a little story of a man driving home from work after a tough day and his wife calls him on cell phone. She's distraught because she had heard on the radio that someone's driving the wrong

way on the highway. and his response, heck Emma, there's hundreds of them doing that right now. The primary characteristic of fight-flight-frey-fries is we feel separate from the world and there's a sense of self and the universe is out there, are it's us and them, but we feel separate. it. And I often think of this suffering as severed belonging. That term really speaks to me because we're disconnected from our own wholeness and from the living web. And we can see it in daily life. You know, the more we're stressed out or anxious, the more we get disconnected from our own

body, from our caring, the more distant we feel from others. And the extreme of stressed out is traumatized and the very nature of trauma is that it severs the sense of connection that we might have. And today's world is pretty traumatized. You know, so we're seeing the suffering of trauma, of severed belonging really in epidemic levels of loneliness, anxiety, depression, really dividedness and hate. And for myself, I keep being surprised and really the words alarmed, registering, especially here in the United States, just the degree of polarization, how much hate and mistrust there is. The proportions feel beyond anything I've ever experienced in the past. And it's really the importance.

internet and social media just is driving us into increasingly siloed realities. Each side believing the other is deluded or ignorant or evil. And just fueling that sense of us then. So in my own life, probably the most compelling inquiry. The question I just keep asking is, what's going to bridge the divide? You know, what's going to bridge it? Because we have to bridge the divide if we want to survive as a species and really have our planet survive and be healthy.

And of course, on some level this inquiry about bridging the divide has been, you know, throughout the decades for me, you know, whether it's looking at our inner divide, the way we turn against ourselves, we go to war with ourselves, we get filled with judgment and blame and aversion, feelings of failure. So how to bridge that inner divide? And then, of course, how do we bridge the divide when we're distancing from those in our personal life? You know, when the kinds of expectations we're carrying or the judgments of the anger distances us when we each get controlling or defensive. And then there's the divides and these are the ones I've been kind of most referring

to and thinking about between people and groups of difference, you know, and what so often happens is the other, the other group seems less valuable, less human. than ourselves. So this is tonight's reflection looking at bridging divides and really how no matter what divide we're addressing, we have to keep reconnecting to the actual experience in our own body, heart, and mind. We have to keep bridging the inner divide. Maybe to go back a little bit on my own history, when I was in college, I was outwardly involved in a lot of social activism. I'd planned to go to law school and I was involved with community organizing and social justice, really healing societal divides along class lines, race lines.

Inwardly, I was struggling also with the divides of, you know, just being chronically judging myself, filled with a lot of aversion. Well, I started taking yoga and meditation classes to work on the inner life, you know. So those were on Tuesday nights. And often on the weekends I was attending, you know, meetings or rallies or different activist gatherings. And I started more and more noticing the difference energetically between the two. Like at the weekend gatherings, there was this sense of us them. There was an enemy out there and there was a lot of stridency and anger. And then on Tuesday night it was, you know, peace and love and unity. I mean, yoga has to do with unity. And I remember so well one spring night leaving that class and walking and smelling the

fragrance of the fruit blossoms and I stopped under a tree, apple tree, pear tree. and got quiet and realized that my body and mine were in the same place in the same moment and that there wasn't a divide. There was a sense of open-heartedness and it was very inclusive. And it was really from that that I had that compelling sense that I needed to wake up my own consciousness and heart of I was going to be really serving into helping our world and actually the sense that really we all do. We need to wake up consciousness if we want to have the world we believe in. So for me it meant a kind of 180 degree shift. There I was on my way to law school and instead

I moved into a spiritual community for 10 years in ashram and also worked on my doctorate in psychology, the inner work. So I share this, it's not in either or. We need practices that help us to heal the dividedness, that help us to awaken our hearts. And being on a spiritual path means living from a caring heart, being active in whatever way fits our particular temperament to help bring healing to our world. I often think in evolutionary terms, I find that really useful. And I find that to think of this awakening over the eons really means understanding the shift from

fight-flight-freeze, which is the survival brain's reactivity, to responding with tend and befriend, Tend and befriend, which is really the capacity of our integrated brain, our full awake heart. So we're going to be looking at that more closely. How do you make that shift from fight, flight, freeze to the mindfulness and compassion of tend and befriend? So first another little story of two young men. They're walking in a jungle and all of a sudden a tiger appears from a distance and tigers running towards them.

And so one of the guys takes out a pair of Nike's from his bag and starts to put them on. And the other guy with a surprise look at his face is, you know, you think you're going to run faster than the tiger with those? And his friend responds, I don't have to unrun it. I just have to run faster than you. It's not an ad for Nike's, but it's just this reminder of in the moments we're stressed, You know, when we get threatened, we reflexively go into fight-flight freeze and the focus is completely self-centered. It's on our survival, our well-being, it's a concern for numero

uno and the world becomes other. Or if we're talking about a group going into fight-flight-freeze, it's us, them. And a key feature of this separateness of fight-flight-freeze. is the other does not seem real. This is important. I really want to kind of sink into this some more because, well, you know what it's like when you're stressed or anxious. The world shrinks to just circling around our immediate concern. We're the center, we're kind of the protagonist and the drama, everything else is

backdrop. Everybody else is a kind of supporting cast out there. They're either, well, either they're a supporting cast or the opposition or else they're not important. But what's key here is that others are no longer subjectively real to us, living, feeling, beings. Because during fight, flight freeze, we can't imagine how they're experiencing life. We can't imagine what the reality is like. I'm talking about empathy here because the neural net in our brain that correlates with empathy. You know, it's this relational network in the brain, it's deactivated during fight-flight freeze. So consider that. Consider what that means, let's say, in relating to societal groups, that when we're in fight-flight-free's mentality, that other group,

let's say if humans becomes unreal others. They're less than human and we can violate them. I mean, I think of it so often that white Westerners could not have kidnapped humans from Africa and turned them into slaves if they felt like they were real others, if they felt they were subjective-feeling beings. African-Americans couldn't be continually violated to this day, the neck, the knee on the neck that couldn't happen if they were perceived as real subjectively feeling, caring, hurting themes. If we're living from Fight-Flight Freeze, from that severed belonging, we can hurt

the estranged parts of our own being and others and we do it. So, as you know, Fight-Flight-Fries, the survival brain activation is not our only option and it's not the end of our evolutionary story. And over time, humans also developed a higher-order adaptive capacity when stressed, some other way to deal with stress. And this is what I've been referring to as tend and befriend. It's really mindfulness and compassion. So there was a crucial stage in our species evolution about 10 or 20,000 years ago. And there was a brain spurt where we...

just became better at communicating, and tend to friend grew to be a capacity not only within our kin group but beyond. And this is really, really significant because being able to tend in the friend, being able to feel with, care about, collaborate with growing numbers of people really is what's responsible for our successes as a species. This is what's made possible, the amazing, you know, leaps and bounds in science and medicine and arts. Over the centuries, eliminating much extreme hunger, poverty, decreasing violence. So 10 to 15% of hunter-gatherer people died in conflicts, as opposed to 1% now of humans who died. and let's say the wars of the 20th century.

I think that's interesting because, yeah, there's a huge amount of violence today, but compared to way, way back, not so much. So sometimes our survival brains, fight, flight, freeze reaction is totally necessary. You know, when we need a fast reaction for an immediate threat. So think of, you know, you're driving, the adrenaline rush that has you swerve when you get cut off. I mean, that's fight, flight, freeze. Or if you're on open waters and there's a sudden storm and lightning, it's like the energy you need to go and motor yourself to wherever you can have some safety, fight, flight, freeze.

Or you see an elderly person or a vulnerable person being attacked or robbed or child runs into a street. there are many times we need fight-flight freeze. We need our survival brain to kick in quickly. And even when it's not necessary, let's say we're in an argument, it doesn't always lock in so we can find our way back to some balance and perspective, even compassion. But here's the thing. When our survival brain reactivity becomes a habitual reaction,

towards ourselves or in our personal relationships and to other groups in society, that's when they're suffering because it's developmental arrest. We humans have another capacity, tend and befriend. And when it doesn't evolve and we don't live from it, we're in an arrested development and it perpetuates the suffering of bad othering, of unreal othering. both in our inner life, there's an unreal other inside that's bad and with others. So as we know, and this is where the news usually focuses, our world is replete with the non-adaptive energies of fight-flight freeze, the survival brain.

One chief of staffs put it this way, that were a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. Okay, so our inquiry, you know, how do we evolve ourselves so we can bridge the divides created by this the maladaptive fight-flight freeze, the bad othering? And the first step is just to realize a very common delusion when we're in fight-flight freeze. It's a trance. And our delusion is this, that we think everything is, we think, everything they'll be okay if we can just beat the other side or get rid of them or make them change or make them go away or agree with us. You know, we might fixate on a person we consider a bad

player, you know, in terms of our society and delude ourselves that, well, if they're gone, but it's never about a bad player, nor is it about an identity. a un-fiable group of people. It's the energy of greed, hatred, and delusion. It's the unprocessed fears. And when we're trying to get rid of a bad other, when we're demeaning an other, when we're considering others as evil or ignorant, we're actually operating from the same unprocessed fears. We're just fueling it. Alexandra Solzhenitsyn says, if the only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people, some were insidiously committing evil deeds and were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being and who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart. It's a powerful quote. The dividing line, the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. These energies are in all of us. These are the same energies the Buddha talked about to keep us trapped in that separateness, not knowing who we really are. These are universal energies. When we're blaming a bad actor, we're really upset about a universal energy that's taken hold that takes hold throughout our society. And I will note that we also turn our hatred on ourselves. We want to get rid of inner parts that we think are bad. But the point is this, what's causing suffering

is primal fears that live in all of us. And unless we know how to process those fears, unless we know how to tend and befriend, be mindful and compassionate, they take over and they cut off the sense of belonging and heart that allows us to be whole. They imprison us in a trance of separation. And we see the looping of reactivity, of aggression, defense. And really, the more that we've experienced individual or collective trauma, the more we've been conditioned by violent caste systems, racial caste systems. And it doesn't matter whether we're positioned dominant or non-dominant, we get lost in this trance of severed belonging. So I'd like to maybe spend the remainder of our time reflecting on how we shift out of trance, how we shift out of fight, flight, freeze to tend and

befriend. And I'd like to emphasize three learnings that have been really at the center for me. and the first is really that any time there's fight, flight, freeze, reactivity, any time that I or someone else is acting in an angry, harmful, negative way, it's a sign of inner vulnerability. There's insecurity, there's pain. There's something asking for attention. So that's the first one. that whenever there's something I think is bad, it's really vulnerability asking for attention,

in some way needing attention. And the second learning is that when I'm reacting to somebody else, I'm reacting to their reactivity, to the way that their vulnerability is playing out, the way their fear is playing out. So if I'm feeling angry, which is part of my own fight-flight-freeze, it's because someone else is done, let's say, acted judgmentally out of their fight-flight-free's reaction. It's just survival brains triggering each other's. That's the second one. And that the third is that if I want to tend and befriend, I have to start by tending and befriending. my own reactivity. I cannot jump to somebody else because I'm not inhabiting an integrated brain that can see clearly the other person. So by way of personal example is when I'm taking in the

news or talking about the news, it's easy to get activated. I see it almost daily unless I'm taking a news break, which is always healthy. So what I find is that it energetically, it fuels the survival brain, us, them experience, that there's a bad other, there's an enemy out there, having a fight-flight, freeze reaction to an individual or a group in the way they're expressing greed or aggression or dishonesty or whatever. So I keep finding. that if I don't pause and in some way interrupt that kind of locking into bad other, I'll then move through subsequent hours and there'll be like a background of aggravation or irritation or tightness or cynicism or unfriendliness.

In other words, I'm disconnected, I'm in a trance because it's very powerful to have that schema of us, them. It is a trance. So increasingly what I've been doing is I notice, okay, I'm making an enemy a bad other, and I'll pause and I'll let the full feelings emerge. Let's say I'm considering somebody who seems a bad actor or who represents a group whose beliefs and actions I really consider harmful. I'll pause and I'll feel distaste. and aversion and dislike in my body. And I'll continue to tend and refriend that experience and what will show up usually is powerlessness and fear, the fear that there's just going to be more harm towards those

who are vulnerable towards the earth. And if I keep on tending, befriending, mindfulness, compassion, I'll find under that that there's grief, sorrow, and caring. It's just caring. So this is a kind of inner attending and befriending that, you know, gets under my own reactivity to where my vulnerability is. And what I found is that the more I know how to do that, the more quickly when someone else is acting out of their survival brain and fight-flight freeze, I can see past it, I can see that there's something asking for attention. You know, I often think about the wisdom of a civil rights icon, Ruby Sales, African-American woman, wise woman, who describes

a turning point in her activism when she could start to ask the question, where does it hurt? And she asked that question not just to those in her immediate circles or who she fell close to, but she asked that question about those who were affiliated with groups most entrenched in white supremacy. Where does it hurt? Recognizing that if they have these views and this hatred, they're hurting. It just feels like such a powerful example of our evolutionary. potential of our awakening heart to move from the habit of hating people back to tending and befriending. I saw this, felt this very much in a story some of you might remember, written by Terry

Dobson, who's an Haikido student living in Japan. I recently shared it in our compassion challenge because it's again such a powerful reminder. In Aikido, Aikido is devoted to peace. It's the art of reconciliation, really. It's a coming together, not a dividing apart. And one of the basic principles is that whoever has the mind to fight has broken their connection with the universe. So this sets out right from the start that if we're caught in fight-flight-free, there's a disconnection. We're in some sort of a trance. So Terry describes himself, you know, this is a story of him when he's young, he's fit. And, you know, although he knew about the philosophy, he still had an urge to be a hero to prove

himself to save those in trouble, to destroy the guilty, you know, that kind of thing. And it got tested one afternoon. He was on a train and a big, drunk, dirty man in laborers' clothing, boarded and just started yelling. He was violent. He was cursing. He was swinging his feet. fists around, he knocked a young woman with a baby into the laps of an elderly couple. So

Terry figured this was his chance and he felt what he described as tough and holy and he was going to put an end to this guy's violence. So he stood up, clearly going to step in. Okay, so the drunk man sees him and now he focuses his yelling at Terry. You know, you're going to get a lesson. Terry gives him a look of disgust to egg him on, the guy's about to rush at him. You can see the limbic reactivity here, the fight-flake freeze on both of them, all of a sudden, an elderly man in a kimono calls out, hey, and then he beckons the drunk man to come over to him. And at first, the drunk was belligerent. He said, why the hell should I talk to you? The old man just beamed, no fear, no resentment. His eyes were sparkling with interest.

And he asked the labor, you know, he said, what are you drinking? and just started talking to him and told him how every evening he would sit in his garden with his wife drinking sake, looking at their persimmon tree, and the drunk was kind of bewildered, and he said, well, I like sake too. Then the old man said, and I'm sure you have a wonderful wife too. No, replied the laborer to this strangely friendly man. He had a softer, sullen voice now. my wife, she died last year. And suddenly the change drunk hung his head with heavy sorrow and then gently swaying with the motion of the train, this big, burly man who was so threatening just moments ago began to sob. He said, I don't got no wife, I don't got no home anymore,

I lost my job. I have no money, nowhere to go. I'm so ashamed of myself. Big tears were rolling down his cheeks. Spasm of pure despair, rippled. through his body. My, my, the elderly man said, with heartfelt care, that's a very difficult predicament. Indeed, sit down here and tell me about it. Terry turned his head for one last look before he left. The train was very crowded now. The laborer was sprawled like a sack on the seat. His head in the old man's lap. The old man was looking down at him with smiling compassion, his hand stroking the filthy, matted head of this confused soul. So Terry describes leaving the train dazed because what he had wanted to do with muscles

and meanness had been accomplished with a few kind words. When we're inside the trance, we forget that there's options. You know, we're like Terry, we're totally lost in judging and reacting and react. acting to an unreal other or cut off from that perspective of the wise, caring elder. So in this story, Terry represents the part of us that gets trapped in that trance, in aggression and defense, in judgment, in self-other, in us, them. It's me reacting to the news. And the laborer is the unreal other we're judging, the bad actor, the inferior group, or the part of our being we don't like. It's, you know, we're judging and there's vulnerability underneath.

They're suffering. And the elder is our awakening heart mind. It's that in us which can attend and be friend. It's Ruby Sales when she's saying, where does it hurt? And that's what brings full integration and healing and connectedness. Whatever. we practice, we'll get stronger. So if we keep on living out our survival brain habits of judgment, resentment, blame, othering, it just strengthens the circuitry of the limbic system. It locks us in. But if instead we have as a basic part of our practice attending and befriending, where we kind of call on that inner elder, our awakening heart. I sometimes think of it as our future self or that which we're evolving. When we learn to pause and deep in

attention to vulnerability to what's happening inside us, to where it's hurting, there's a shift. And we open up out of the survival brain trance and re-inhabit more wholeness. Now, it's most difficult when we feel that the group of others are causing harm. You know, it's very hard to imagine engaging from that attending and befriending from that compassion when we sense others are threatening. And so it's important to know that our first job, you know, we take all measures to protect from harm. In other words, if somebody's threatening, you create boundaries, you protect yourself as best as you can, you speak truth, you fight injustice, you condemn white supremacy, you act and to know that if you lock into fight, flight, freeze yourself,

hating others, unreal othering, you're perpetuating the very violence that you're working against. Because even though hates natural and it is, it's a It's asking for attention. It's not the place to stay. It's a developmental arrest if we stay there. We in our world need to keep evolving. So again, the steps are we start with an inner tending and befriending. Whenever we're reacting, don't try to change our reaction to somebody else. Go under it, you know, with mindfulness, with compassion. You can use rain. It weaves it beautifully to get in touch with our own vulnerability.

And then that helps us to have the more integrated brain, the more away card, so we can then see others more clearly. This is really the message of so many the spiritual leaders we all hold as kind of common, the common names of Nelson Mandela or Gandhi or Martin Luther King. And it's the Buddhist text that say, hatred never seizes by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law. Now, I didn't watch the Academy Awards, but I did read a speech that was given by Tyler Perry, who was an African-American filmmaker.

He received a humanitarian award. And during the talk, he shared wisdom he had learned from his mother, and he encouraged everyone listening to refuse hate and to meet in the middle. And during his speech he said this. He said, in this time with all the internet and social media and algorithms that want us to think in a certain way, the 24 hours news cycle, it's my hope that we teach our kids refuse hate. Don't hate anybody. I refuse to hate someone because they're Mexican or because they're a black, black or white or LGBTQ. I refuse to hate someone because they're a police officer or because they're Asian. I would hope we would refuse to hate. And I want to take this humanitarian

award and dedicated to anyone who wants to stand in the middle because that's where healing, where conversation, where change happens. It happens in the middle. Anyone who wants to meet me in the middle to refuse hate and blanket judgment, this one is for you too. It's a really beautiful phrase, meeting in the middle. It arises out of this core aspiration not to push anyone out of our hearts. It's that aspiration to keep widening the circles of care and find our common humanity and create a peaceful world. We have to meet in the middle if we're going to plant seeds of respect and understanding and connection. And the pathway there, what lets us come into the middle, what lets us have the conversations

and start to hold hands with those of difference is tend and befriend. This basic practice of bringing mindfulness and compassion inwardly and then to others. We practice when we're on our own meditating, we practice when we're on the spot. And just to say, naturally, there are many who aren't able to meet in the middle, especially those who have been traumatized, who are on the very extremes of our divided world, those who are most wounded or rigid. And then it's a matter of processing that trauma, that fear. And yet, this can be our intention for all of us.

The vision of our potential is to more and more tend and befriend. to meet in the middle. So I started sharing about being in college and wanting to bring healing to the world but realized I had a ground with this. I had to learn these practices of tending and befriending. I had to heal that inner divide. So we'll close with some exploring of this. We'll close by looking at how we heal the divide, how we tend and be friends, starting with ourselves and then widening the circles a bit. So wherever you are, if you can come into stillness, and if you can in that stillness, let your attention go inward, just invite yourself to be right here, right now.

you might take a few full breaths as a way to help collect your attention, scanning your life, scanning what's been going on in the last days, and sense if there's any inner divide, any way that you're aware that you're in some, like at war with yourself, judging yourself, and forgiving toward yourself, noticing if there's ways that you've been acting that you are condemning, where you've created an inner bad other. And if there's a particular situation that evokes this sense, you might bring that to mind so that you're bringing into awareness the stance of making yourself bad, making yourself from, creating that bad other inwardly. And consciously call on your inner wisdom, your awake heart,

to come forward, like the wise old man, or what you might consider your inner Bodhisattva, your evolved future self, high self. But call that forward. And sense that you can look through those eyes and feel with that heart as you really ask, well, what's most asking for attention? What's the vulnerability that's buried here? So whatever you're judging about yourself, just sense under it. If you're judging yourself for anger, if you're judging yourself for ways of acting greedy, just sense under it. The fears, the hurt. the unmet needs, what needs tending and befriending? Take a moment to feel into your body and breathe with what's here.

And with whatever you're finding, just sense that you can offer some gesture of care, of kindness. It might be a touch to the heart, your hand on your heart, some words of compassion. And you might widen the field and sense somebody in your life, friend, family, colleague, where you're feeling some separation, perhaps feeling judgment towards them or judged by them. But there's some reactivity, perhaps you're in some way your survival brains are triggering each other. And again, let the situation that most brings us to your consciousness be there.

And as you did just before, to invite forward your own awakening heart-mind. And first, attend to your own reactivity, where you're feeling angry or hurt, judgmental, fearful. So there's that inquiry where does it hurt and then an attentiveness to your body, your throat, your chest, your belly, you might put your hand on your heart, tending and befriending, bringing mindfulness and kindfulness to whatever's here, whatever is inside you, whatever you needs attention and sense that you can open your eyes in a sense and look out at the other now with more wisdom, more perspective, more care. With that same question, where does it hurt?

Just like that old man said, tell me about it. That sounds difficult. Just imagine that you can really sense, well, where does it hurt for the other person? what might they be going through right now? Tending and befriending. Meeting in the middle. Deepening, understanding, and care. And finally, you might bring to mind our society and perhaps a group or members of a group

where there's difference from you, difference in views or values, ways of being, where you know that it brings up judgment, bad othering. And again, calling on that inner bodhisattva, that kind and wise witnessing, that presence that can see more deeply and just bringing the attention to your own reactivity, to feeling your own anger, judgment, whatever comes up. And really that question, where does it hurt, what's underneath it? the vulnerability? Is there fear, a sense of out of control? Is there sadness or grief for the harm? Is there caring? Tending and befriending what's right here inside you. Reconnecting with your

own heart and spirit, shifting from the fight-flight-free's reaction to this integrated awakeness that comes from tending and befriending. You might imagine that you can bring to mind the other that's different and ask that same question, where does it hurt? And just listen, be receptive, sense what this human, what energies in these humans might be difficult, what fears might be there, how others might feel unsafe. disconnected, hurting, devalued, misunderstood. Just letting your heart include that and respond in whatever way feels natural. And letting go of whatever you've been reflecting on, just take a few full breaths

and know that this is a life process of awakening our hearts, evolving our consciousness. and it can be a liberating one. It comes from the aspiration that we can learn to meet in the middle, that we can learn to reconnect and hold hands, starts with tending and befriending our own hearts and then opening as we can to include widening circles. So we close friends with our shared prayer that together we might, might bring more healing and peace and true belonging to our world.

Thank you. Thank you for being part of this. Thank you for your presence. Namaste and love to each. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.