Tara Brach - Change, Loss and Timeless Love (Part 2) (2020-10-28)

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

Change, Loss and Timeless Love (Part 2) (2020-10-28) - Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely intertwined with how we relate to change and loss. These two talks are an invitation to look honestly, and without judgment, at the ways, we resist facing our fears and grieving our losses. We then explore how to bring mindfulness and compassion to processing what we've resisted, and opening to the timeless love that is our true nature (given on the IMCW 2020 Fall 7-Day Virtual Retreat).

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. Today, what I'd like to do is explore how we relate to change and in particular how we relate to the insecurities, the anxieties, the fears of loss that come with change. And of course, some part of me wants to say, raise your hand if you can relate to any of this. But it's okay. I think we're all in it together.

I think we all get it, that there's a huge vulnerability, a huge fear that's activated in our society right now, more than usual. Our collective level of mistrust and trauma has really been ramped up through the multiple pandemics that we're experiencing. You know, just the loss of human contact or the diminishment or decrease for our social animal cells is really painful. And then with the spread of COVID and the worries and concerns, whether it's for ourselves or others, the financial insecurities, how many are really struggling

and often the most vulnerable. And so we have this shared societal-wide anxiety going on. And it's completely marvelled with feelings of hate and anger. So many of us are so scared about the leaning of our society towards more and more violence and oppression towards the most vulnerable. We're scared about the growing dis-ease, disease of our larger body, the earth. So there's a lot. And even if the backdrop weren't so dramatic right now, we're always facing insecurity in our personal lives. You know, that fear of loss, whether it has to do with our own bodies which inevitably get sick and go through all sorts of deteriorations, whether it has to do with our health or other peoples that we love.

Most of us have somebody we're worrying about or whether it has to do with the fears that will fail and lose love or acceptance. So we live daily with some degree of insecurity. And for most, it expresses us this habitual tension that something bad is going to happen, something around the corner that's bad is going to happen. And from the view of the separate self that has a lot of validity, you know, there's an image of the Grim Reaper on a psychiatrist's couch and the psychiatrist is looking at his watch, which psychiatrists do, you know, the 32-minute hour or something like that.

And the Grim Reaper is saying, sorry, Doc, but it's your time that's up. And I love that because this is the deal that change brings up a very primal fear for the separate self. Because deep down, we anticipate losing our bodies and minds and everything we care about. And of course, we avoid this sense of mortality of it's at all possible. and as you've probably noticed, when changes in the foreground, just the way it is right now, we get very insecure. So from the Buddhist teachings, this basic insecurity in a changing world is absolutely universal. It's the first noble truth that we all experience a fundamental groundlessness.

If we pay attention, we'll notice it. Everything's changing. There's nothing secure. And the Buddha's deep invitation is become aware of this. Become aware of that undercurrent that's always there of insecurity and become aware of how you react to it. Become aware of the insecurity and how you react to it. Because how we relate to vulnerability and insecurity will make the difference between

freedom and suffering. It really makes the difference how we are relating to insecurity. We'll make the difference between living inside this kind of imprisoned sense of separate self and inhabiting our true belonging. So we're going to look deeper. But as I speak, you might start scanning and just consider in your life where you do feel most insecure, where you get most deeply or regularly caught in some sense of something bad's about to happen. It might be with health or with a relationship or with work or with a loved one's life. Or maybe your way of being insecure is the fear about what might not happen that you really want to have happen in your life. And we'll practice.

We're going to practice with whatever is identified, as the deep level insecurity. Now, for many, like myself, insecurity circles around falling short. You know, if I fail, if I let you down in this talk, if you don't feel like you've got something, well, you won't love me anymore. You won't respect me. It's that we understand that one. That's one of the equations. our fears, our insecurities hitched to particulars. So for instance, for me, just to give you a sense of the kind of currents of fear that I'm aware of in my system in this kind of impermanent world, I'm feeling fear for my son

Narayan that is health will worsen. He has the same genetic condition I have, but it's a worse. version of it. And then today my son's dad, Alex, my ex-husband, just went through a life-threatening surgery. We didn't know whether he'd make it and they asked, as it turned out, they couldn't complete it because of cardiac instability. So that brings up, I can feel the fear in my system because I don't want my son to lose his dad. So daily fear. I feel daily fear. I feel daily fear around our society. It comes up every day where it often comes up in the shape of blame or anger, where I feel the most vulnerable or at the mercy of uncompassionate leadership.

And I feel we have a racist caste system that's oppressive and violent in a daily way. And it brings up fear or anger or blame. And even when, and again I'm just giving a sense of me and the shape of how my insecure securities express, even when nothing's going on to trigger fear, there's no particulars. When I'm quiet, like if I start pausing right now, I can feel a habitual kind of organismic clench right here. And it has some primal sense about the fragility of life that something can happen. And I wonder if you can too. I wonder if you pause and that's an awareness in you of just some, even when there's no particular worry that there's some tightness that's kind of defending against something bad happening. Just something to check.

So you each have in your own life the places where, you know, according to the stories and beliefs and feelings, your insecurities focus. Many know that background clench. For some, it's experienced as dread. Some of you may notice that in the early hours of the day, before you get oriented and back into kind of a habitual mindset, there's this dread that leaks through. The point is that most of us have this background hum of anxiety, that something around the corner is going to go wrong. And it's really the primal mood of the separate self. If there is a sense of separateness, the survival brain gives out messages about what can go wrong. It has a negativity bias and it gives out messages all the

time. And from the separate self-view, the negativity bias is really valid, that something is going to go wrong and does go wrong from the separate self's view. You know, we do have loss. We do have death. And so what happens is when we're living in the separate self, there's an ongoing effort to control and protect ourselves. I like the way one Tibetan teacher put it, he said, we've become a bundle of tense muscles protecting our existence. Okay, so this is the Buddhist first truth that this changing universe we're in, including this changing body mind, these in permanent forms create an intrinsic kind of vulnerability, that that just happens. And the second noble truth is there is this reaction that this unpleasant and secure experience is bad.

And then a chain reaction trying to protect ourselves. So it comes out of the survival brain and it creates suffering. And that's not the end of our evolutionary story. I mean, the Buddha also taught that freedom is possible. We can get out of that chain of reactivity where we get locked in the identity of a scared, separate self trying to protect its existence. We can get out of that. We can wake up out of that.

And basically the teachings are that we can learn a different way of relating to insecurity. So whatever you're identifying as this is the insecurity, there is a fresh way of relating that actually can reveal the love and the luminosity of awareness that's really who you are. So I'm skipping ahead of myself, that's where we're going. Okay, so what I'd like to do is share a story with you that really shines a light on the pathway that can move us from being reactive and insecure to relating in a way that's liberating. And this is a story from the Inuit people and every time I reread it, it's like any great teaching. It just sings in deeper. I love it. And this is a rendition that I found in women

who run with the walls by Clarissa Estes. So some of you may be familiar with it and can kind of feel into it along with me in a familiar way. So I'm going to read to you. This is called Skeleton Woman. Sit back and listen to a story. She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembers what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. And there the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes.

As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents. One day a fisherman came fishing. He had drifted far away from his home place, didn't know that the local fisherman stayed away saying this inlet was haunted. The fisherman's hook drifted and it went through the water and caught of all places in the bones of Skellis and Woman's Rip Cage. The fisherman thought, oh, now I've got a really big one. Now I have a big one. In his mind, he was thinking of how many people. people, this great fish would feed, how he might be free from the chore of hunting, and he struggled with the great weight on the end of the hook, and the sea was stirred into a thrashing frashing froth. The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth. "'Ah!' cried the man, and his heart fill into his knees. "'Ah, he screamed and knocked her off the prow with his oar "'and began paddling like a demon towards the shoreline.

"'No matter which way he zigged his kayak, she stayed right behind. "'Ah, he wailed and he ran aground. "'She ran right after him. "'Over the rocks he ran, she followed. "'Over the frozen tundra he ran, over all of it. "'Through out all she kept. right up. Finally, the man reached his snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel and on hands and knees scrabbled his way into the interior, panting and sobbing. He lay there. Safe at last. Oh, so safe.

Yes, safe. Thank the gods. Raven, yes. Thank Raven, yes. All bountiful saidness, safe at last. imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp there she it lay in a tumble on a snow floor one heel over shoulder one knee inside her rib cage one foot over her elbow he could not say later what it was perhaps the firelight softened her features but a feeling of some kindness came into his breathing and slowly he reached out his grimy hands and using words and using words softly like mother to child, began to untangle her from the fishing line. Oh, non-n-na-na, first he untangled the toes and the ankles. Oh, nah-na-na-an-on he worked into the night until dressing her in furs to keep her warm, skeleton woman's bones were all in the order a human should be. A man became drowsy, slid under his sleeping skins, and soon was dreaming. And sometimes as humans sleep, you know, a tear escapes from the dreamer's eyes.

We never know what sort of dream causes this, but we know it's either a dream of sadness or longing. And this is what happened to the man. The skeleton woman saw the tear glisten in the firelight and she became suddenly so thirsty. She tinkled and clanked and crawled over to the sleeping man and put her mouth to his tear. The single tear was like a river and she drank and drank and drank until her many years long thirst was slacked. And while lying beside him, she reached inside the sleeping man and took out his heart

the mighty drum and she sat up and banged on both sides of it. Bum bum bum. As she drummed, she began to sing out flesh, flesh, flesh, flesh. And the more she sang, the more her body filled out with flesh. and when she was all done, she also sang the sleeping man's clothes off and slept into his bed with him, skin against skin. She returned the great drum, his heart to his body, and that is how they awakened, wrapped one around the other, tangled from their night in another way now, a good and lasting way. The people who cannot remember how she came to her first ill fortune say she and the fishermen went away and were consistently well-fed by the creature she had known in her life underwater. The people say that it was true and that is all they know. To realize enduring love, we must embrace skeleton woman.

Do you understand? Does that resonate? So, skeleton woman represents the instinctual life, death, life, nature of our beings. It's the ever-changing, mysterious forces of creation, the arising dissolving, that really shape this temporary existence. And again, this is the same insecurity the Buddha calls the first noble truth, this insecure changing ever-fluid life that we can't control, we can't secure. So again, to realize timeless love, real freedom. We need to embrace this radical impermanence, skeleton woman.

We need to embrace the vulnerability. That's the way it appears. The vulnerability of this changing life. And when we don't, when we don't embrace vulnerability, relationships fail and fail in the sense that they're not alive with intimacy. and our spiritual life is dimmed. So if instead of embracing we are pushing away insecurity, rawness, grief, we're also blocking love, joy, and being fully awake.

So there's a book I want to recommend that is in this domain by Francis Willer, and it's wonderful. It's called The Wild Edge of Sorrow. And in it, he describes the importance of becoming an apprentice to sorrow, this deep soul work that we're all involved with in our own way, whether it's through opening to the fear or to the grief, we're becoming an apprentice to this vulnerable place that really is a portal for freedom. So I really love that phrase, you know, becoming an apprentice to sorrow, learning from the grief and the fear that comes, that circles around loss, learning from it.

So we led ourselves fully grieved so we can fully love. And yet now we're back to where the challenge is. Like the fishermen, our deepest condition, and this is our, the conditioning of our nervous system is to avoid facing the reality of change and loss, to avoid coming intimately to that vulnerability. So we resist and we create tangles. And that's why I love the story because we just create tangles. Like the fishermen trying to get away, we run away and we each have our ways of running away and we're going to be looking at that next. Really the inquiry is do you know how you're running from skeleton woman? And I think it's such a powerful

inquiry just to look at it in broadways and to look right into our day in a few of the groups today, people were describing just in a very hands-on way noticing the way we get distracted and pulled away. It's really getting pulled away from presence, which is presence with this vulnerability. So there are many flags for how we go about running away or protecting our existence and I'll name some of them, but they fit into the basic realm of grasping, aggressing, aggressing, fleeing, freezing. There's a mem, some of you know,

that when women get anxious are insecure, they go shopping, and when men get anxious or insecure, they start wars. And it's terrible stereotyping, and yet we get the message that there are ways that we just habitually

move from our anxiety. So one of them is clinging. And these are all the kind of compulsive, addictive, of behaviors and we know when we're in them, when we're overconsuming, when we're just taking in too much sugar, let's say, or overworking or our unhealthy use of drugs or maybe it's the clinging on to other people's approval or clinging on to possessions. And you can see it when you're on retreat, the tugs to read something extra or to eat something extra, to take

another shower or to talk to somebody who's around or just do something, you know, the doing, the addiction to doing, you know, these are ways of moving away from the quietness and the space that actually will let us know about that more core level of vulnerability and mystery. So in a similar way, we can see how we run from Skeleton Woman with aggression. Okay? He beat her off the prow of the kayak and what we do is we try to control the people in our lives in different ways. We get caught up in anger or bullying or violating or dominating or abusing those of the intense

ways. But more subtle, we judge. You know, our judgments, if we really investigate, And I find this so interesting. I spent years where one of my kind of practices was reign on blame because I could find if I really paused when I was blaming, I could track back to a very kind of core sense of vulnerability. So we act out of that and we get aggressive.

And of course, as we've been exploring in the last 24 hours with law guiding us, so much that aggression gets turned on ourselves. Judgment, self-judgment is that aggression. We get perfectionistic in how we eat or exercise or meditate or work. Again, we're running from Skeleton Woman when we approach this retreat with a lot of sheds. We're running if we completely space out on the retreat. There's an art. So here's the final word on nutrition and health if you're a perfectionist trying to dial it in and dial it in.

Some of you might remember this essay that the Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans. Now the French eat a lot of fat and they also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans. The Japanese drink very little red wine and they suffer fewer heart attacks than the Brits of the Yanks. And the Italians drink huge amounts of red wine and they also suffer fewer heart attacks. The Germans drink a lot of beer and they suffer fewer heart attacks in the British. And it goes on and on and on. The conclusion, eat or drink what you want. It's speaking English that kills you.

I love it. I love it. We are trying so hard to get it right, aren't we? I mean, don't you try hard to get it right? And that trying hard to get it right is another way of running away. It really is. I think Jonathan brought up in the first night the way we try to go at meditation and we become prisoned by our idea about it, how it should be. So there's grasping, there's the aggression and the controlling.

And we also run from Skeleton Woman in Real Flight, where we number. ourselves and you're probably well aware of the ways you numb yourself. Many of us can do it or distract ourselves with the online just getting lost in the termite holes. I'm so sick of rabbit holes trying out different creatures, but you know, we do it with sleep and so on. There's one story I heard on Spanish television about this gentleman who knocks on his son's door. Jamie, he says, wake up. And Jamie says, I don't want to get up, Papa. And the father shouts, get up, you have to go to school. Jamie says, I don't want to go to school.

Why not ask his father? Three reasons, says Jamie. First, because it's so dull. Second, the kids tease me. And third, I hate school. And the father says, well, I'm going to give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it's your duty.

Second, because you're 45 years old. And third, because you're the headmaster. So we do it. We just lose ourselves. in sleep, we lose ourselves, we numb ourselves, we're trying to get away from really reality. Okay, so we all have our ways and you may be kind of identifying yours and they are to keep us from this kind of primal insecurity, this changing river of experience. And for many of you here, and I've been seeing it, feeling it, hearing it, you're very consciously on the

the path of embracing skeleton woman, of in some way saying yes to reality. And it becomes even more ongoing and deeper, the more quickly you catch the subtle ways that you're moving away from skeleton woman, the subtle ways that you're pulling away. And we get more refined in our attention. And it's important to know that the more scared we are, the faster, and longer we run, that's quite natural. And so I just thought we'd pause here and check in a little. Just invite you to bring your attention inside and let's ground this a little so that you can just scan your own life. And you might begin by asking yourself, well, what really is the

way that skeleton woman is appearing in my life right now? How is vulnerability or insecurity appearing? Is it happening in a relationship? Is it happening in some deep way that you're relating to your own work or creativity or contributions? That you feel something's missing, that you're not going to be who you want to be? Is it happening around your health? Or maybe you're really frightened for someone else's health? Or maybe you're already facing loss, a real sense of loss around another person.

person or yourself, just to notice where is this impermanent changing life impacting you in a way that you can feel the insecurity? Where do you get anxious? And then take some more moments to scan your life and be the non-judging witness here to notice how are you running from skeleton woman, here at retreat, daily life. Just be curious, gentle. Is there some grasping? Do you go for comforts through substances, food, maybe through obsessive thinking? Do you react with aggression? Blaming, judging, turning it on yourself? How much flight is there where you're in some way numbing or distracting? Misuse of the the internet, of screens, looking into screens. In regard again, without judgment, in fact,

to the degree that you can observe this without judgment, you'll have more freedom to pause and embrace reality. You can keep as you, as we explore together, you can keep checking this out and I'd like to invite you if you'd like to to just write a few words to me in chat just on what you're noticing about where skeleton woman is in your life. You don't even have to write about how you're running away. Just where a skeleton woman in your life? Where do your fears circle around, your anxiety, I feel vulnerable about, and let's just whatever comes up for you right now. Now, in our story, so we're going to now look at how we shift and we instead of running away, how we can become more intimate with and embrace, okay?

in our story, the fisherman recognized skeleton woman, you know, and when she was, you know, on his net, and he races away. He basically races away and races and races. And then he dives into his snowhouse. And by the warmth of the fire, something shifts. She's still there, but he stops reacting. He's not trying to get away any longer. And this is the beginning of something different. Now, I want to mark this point because when you are running away from skeleton women, especially if you're running away and there's a feeling of trauma, like you feel your life is threatened, you feel like your well-being is threatened in such a core way that it feels overwhelming, like too much to handle.

In those moments, it's actually not skillful to try to pause and embrace skeleton woman. in those moments, you first need to find some refuge. You need a snowhouse. You need some resourcing and you have been guided by each of the teachers so far. In some way, some references to resourcing where there is some way that you begin to feel safer, some way that you settle, you slow down, you basically calm down the sympathetic nervous system, because turning and embracing skeleton women could actually increase trauma. So sometimes if it's really strong, the first step is to dive into your snowhouse. And that takes some practice and some training.

For some of you, the training is to learn to look around the room you're in and the space you're in or feel the clothing that you're wearing or hold an object that lets you know I'm right here. And for others, it might be to lie on the earth. or it might be the hug of a loved one or it might be that you're learning how to breathe in a certain way that calms you. Some of you are learning to bring to mind someone that you love, someone that you trust, and just energetically feel their presence. Some of you are learning to bring to mind a spiritual figure and feel embraced, held in the heart of that spiritual figure. One of the ways that I sometimes dive into a snowhouse is that when I'm feeling

a really, really strong grip of fear and it's not, I can't, I'm not big enough to bring kindness to it. I'll actually sense that I'm handing it over to the beloved. And it's not like I'm getting rid of it or throwing it away. If there's a gesture, it's kind of like this, where I'm feeling the fear and I'm feeling it and I'm letting it be held by something larger. And when I do that, when there's a kind of handing over, it frees me to become larger, to inhabit more of a wholeness so there's space. That's one of the ways I find myself diving into a snowhouse. So we practice that.

That's before we do rain. We sometimes need to do some calming and settling. Does that make sense? this quieting, settling, yeah, thank you. Okay, so then when we have calm down enough, and that doesn't mean calm down as in feel good, we still can feel like a strong clenching and grip of anger or fear or whatever it is, that's when we can begin recognizing with rain, just naming it. And there's a power to naming it.

And the shaman say that when you name a fear, it no longer controls you. So just to name it, and I whisper it out loud sometimes, it really helps. Sometimes you just ask, well, what wants attention? And there's like a lot of things. So then say, well, what wants attention most right now? You might name all the things. You might say, okay, there's fear here and there's anger here and guilt and what's the thing that most wants attention in this moment?

And usually you'll find something to recognize, at least to start you off. you know with the A of rain, we pause again and just let what's here be, let it belong. And that's really what it is. It's like acknowledging reality. It's here. If you fight it, you're running away more from skeleton woman and you get tighter. So let it be here, even just for a little. And then we investigate and nurture and I thought I'd just to give you an example of the investigating

and nurturing, how it can work with this, with skeleton woman. What came to mind was a man I worked with years ago. He was in his 40s then and he was a therapist at a retreat. And he was a hardworking person, very dutiful, a perfectionist, lots and lots of self-judgment comparing himself to other professionals and other people on the retreat. And he was very, very anxious. and he was getting a lot of anxiety in his life even more in the last year or two, this kind of general dread of what's around the corner. So he came to retreat. And at the retreat he just found his mind was circling with thoughts and he felt really disconnected.

And he'd go to groups, small groups and people would be having ahaz and having tears and holding their heart and he just, nothing was going on. So he felt like he was wasting his time, he wasn't benefiting. And we talked and he brought the R of Rain to that, to this kind of anxious, frustrated feeling and he allowed it to be there and just let it be. And then the investigating, and by the way, investigating is when we're untangling the bones, right? This is when we've already gotten in the snow house and we've already recognized the skeleton

woman's there and we're allowing her to be there. Now we're going to begin investigate. this is when you untangle the bones. And remember, he kind of was chanting, he had a kind of a kindness and the interest in getting it right, getting the bones in place. So we started investigating and I asked him this question that a very wise sage asked in one story I read, well, what are you unwilling to feel? When you're feeling that anxiety, what are you unwilling to feel? And he went under it was really a full-blown sense of failure, just failure, like completely failure and fear that went with that.

And so again, he had to allow that to be there and continue to untangle and asked him, well, is it familiar? And right away, and it doesn't always happen this way, and you don't have to go digging, but for him it was a very young, anxious place. It was this young boy, he could see his mother angry and he and the fear is basically telling him, be good or you're going to be left alone. Be good or you're going to be punished. So you'll be punished or neglected.

And I said, and how long have you been living with that, that feeling like if you're not good, something really bad is going to happen? He says, as long as I can remember since then. That, you know, if I'm not good, if I fail, if anything goes wrong, It's this grip, this anxious grip that I'm unloved. And that's when he had an upwelling of real grief. His mother had died five years ago from when we met, and he had not grieved her at all. And in his grieving with rain, that when he just opened to the grief, he had this experience of realizing, he said,

I'll never have a mother who really loves me. I'll never have a mother who really sees me, feels me. And it was a deepest weeping that he said that he could remember. He was becoming an apprentice to sorrow. This was the beginning of that. And that softened him, it tenderized him, and I, you know, asked him to offer some nurturing to that part of himself that felt motherless, unseen. and he couldn't. He said, you know, I just can't even begin to do that. And then I, because remember, nurturing doesn't have to come from ourselves. It can come from beyond us. I said, you know, imagine the mother you long for. And he had some sense of more of a formless, a formless, light, divine mother. And the message from the divine mother to him was, you're not alone. I'm here. I'm not leaving. I care.

That was his practice, he just took that in. And after he took it in some, that's when he just rested in what I call after the rain. And I want to emphasize this with you all here as you're deepening your practice at retreat, that after you do the end of rain, don't just say, okay, did it, done. and rest in what's there. Notice the quality of presence. Notice what's arisen. Notice the shift from when you started, when you were the identified as the anxious self, to what's right here, the shift in identity. You might remember, as law described, the original version of rain ended in non-identification. And non-identification is not a step we can do. It's the fruit of rain.

But please don't miss the fruit. It means another pause when you're done to really open to and get familiar with, get familiar with the experience of not being identified of what's here. Because that experience of your being is more true than any story you've ever told yourself. This is where the freedom is. So when we face skeleton woman and we embrace with rain, the freedom comes in that presence, that tender presence, that really unfolds through the process. So for him through the retreat, many rounds of doing this.

And at the end, he told me that he felt like he was nurturing and he was holding himself and his mother, and his mother, the mother that didn't really know how to love him, he was holding her. and then that would widen, the heart space would widen, he really felt that he was the divine holding all. Really beautiful. And it's therapy practice I also want to share. It shifted because when we open, when we become an apprentice to sorrow and it takes a lot of courage because it's the last thing we want to feel is the grief.

We don't want to feel the loss. We don't want to accept it. but when we become an apprentice to sorrow and open to it, we become an openness that's infinitely tender and we have room for others. So let's practice a little here. I would like to pause and give you a taste of this to explore for yourself. You might want to shift how you're sitting. You've been sitting for a while.

So please feel free. So we're going to again bring to mind the vulnerability in our life. And one of the real traps that keeps us running from skeleton woman is that we think that skeleton woman is attacking us and that we're alone. And if we can remember and sense right from the start that right now you are with several hundred beings that are all opening to different ways that you are that Skelton Woman presents. I'm concerned about my ex-husband's addiction

and his relationship with our 13-year-old. Skeleton woman in my health, having survived lung cancer over 15 years in my relationship as that's gotten more difficult as we've had to stay for months together, vulnerable about being able to fulfill my responsibilities. I feel vulnerable about the changes in my body's going through in menopause,

family demands versus my long-distance partnership versus the importance of work that keeps me grounded. Somebody wrote, this retreat equals my snowhouse. Skeleton woman disturbed at the thought of children and adults returning to school buildings. I have a lot of fears regarding the well-being of my parents who are overseas, aging, and have health issues. I can't visit them because of the pandemic. fear of aloneness from death of a partner six years ago so overwhelmed. I feel not enough not able to trust myself to be there for my son as he really needs to thrive or to be there for myself to thrive and survive.

I'm concerned that my neck and back pain from a car accident will never go away. I fear the acceptance of my son's death so I run from reaction. just taking moments to let in the different ways that Skeleton Woman appears in our shared communal life and let yourself just feel how Skeleton Woman is in your life. This will be what we call a light rain just to give you a taste and then you can deepen it to recognize now where you're feeling insecurity loss, the wounds that are asking for attention, you might whisper a word that in some way names what you're experiencing, the way Skeleton Woman is expressing, the way that vulnerability is expressing, allow the space

to be right as it is, let this belong. Feel the whole group of us allowing right now. We're allowing all the different ways that this vulnerability comes up. And then deepen your attention to you, your own body and heart as you begin to untangle the bones a little, just sense the worst part of this for you. What's most scary? Most upsetting, most distressing. What's the fear? What are you believing? What are you believing is going to go wrong? And when you're believing something bad's going to happen, what does it feel like in your body right now? Just feel where the vulnerability most expresses and you might start accompanying or witnessing with light touch wherever you feel the presence of skeleton woman, your chest, your throat, your belly.

And I invite you to let your face express that vulnerability and your posture. I want to encourage you to experiment with that. It will help with the embodiment. You might find that your shoulders kind of slump forward and your chest. chest caves in a little, your head goes forward, or maybe your jaws are clenched or just whatever it is, let your face and posture express how your body is experiencing the vulnerability of skeleton woman. And so you can feel right into where the feelings are strongest and sense what's asking, what's most asking for attention here. What's the kind of nurturing that's really

wanted? Is it understanding, company, forgiveness, compassion, love? Just feel the intention towards nurturing and you might explore now sensing and calling on the most awake part of your heart, the most awake heart mind that's here. And from that place, just offering through your hand the kindest, deepest nurturing energy and care to the place of vulnerability. Just wash it with love. If it helps to have the support of a spiritual figure or your ancestors, a sense of the earth, let it come from that larger source. But let love wash in and wash through that vulnerability. And let it be your deep intention to let it in. It's quix. natural that rain unfold to different degrees in different rounds when we do it but just

to sense right now the quality of presence that's here, just kind of sense around you and through you, just the quality of the awareness, perhaps more space or tenderness. Just rest in that presence, notice the difference between the self that was kind of reacting to vulnerability, caught in vulnerability, and this more open, awake presence. Just notice. So that the presence that's unfolding is a more true expression of your nature, of your fundamental nature. This loving awareness is more the truth than any conditioning, any changing, coming, going,

experience. And you can keep your eyes closed or if you'd like open your eyes either way as we wind up here, that our greatest response to these times in our society and in our life is the choice, and it's a choice to turn towards and open to the vulnerability that comes with impermanence. with this living, dying world. And when we do, there's a great cherishing that arises, a great cherishing, and also a sense of finally coming home that we have found a refuge in the truth of who we are. These are the words of Rumi in a poem called A Garden Beyond Paradise. Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.

The forms change yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish. Every sweet word will fade. But do not be disheartened. The source they come from is eternal, growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you and this whole world is springing up from it. Why do you weep? The source is within you and this whole world is springing up from it.

The source is full, its waters are ever flowing. Do not grieve, drink your fill, do not think it'll ever run dry. This is the endless ocean. So if you haven't already, you might open your eyes and you might go to gallery view so you can see each other and see these living forms, these changing bodies, these different expressions of formless presence, and also sense that the light and the awareness and tenderness living through you is living through each body mind, the same source, the same love looking out through all eyes, that this is the refuge that allows us to hold and cherish this living, dying world. Take your time for the last few moments.

And if you notice vulnerability coming up, a kind of shrinking a little, real tenderness towards that, because it happens. This is just the way we're made. Maybe together we can go to the very heart of what it means to say namaste, to see the divine that's looking through all these eyes. And thank you, friends, for your beautiful presence and your beautiful attention. Many blessings. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list,

please visit tarabrock.com.