Tara Brach - Cultivating Loving Kindness – Seeing the Goodness

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Cultivating Loving Kindness – Seeing the Goodness - The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the pathway of purposefully awakening this transformational capacity of cherishing all life.  

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. It's good to be with you. So our reflection today is on purposely cultivating loving kindness. And in composing, I was remembering what was probably my first introduction and I happened to be in, in a yoga class. I was 19 years old. And the yoga teacher said, put your right arm over your left and hug yourself. And we did that. And then she said, and put your left arm over your right and hug your evil twin. Well, so we all thought that was pretty comical. And also, as it turns out, it was quite valuable to embrace ourselves in those ways. Many of you are familiar.

with the poly word metta. And metta's very central in Buddhist teachings. It means loving kindness. It means friendliness, benevolence. One with metta has unconditional goodwill towards all. And so metas is this heart energy of warmth and openness and brightness that really awakens as we realize our belonging to each other and to all of life. So I really love the origin story really of when the Buddha first taught Meta to the monks that were with them. And they had been out in the forest meditating and they had encountered these tree spirits. And these tree spirits had been offended by the presence of the monks. They felt kind of invaded. And so they tried to scare them off and were successful. They had the,

they scared them off with these frightening sights and shrieks and terrible smells and so on. So the monks went back to the Buddha, you know, very, very frightened and said, please send us to some other forests. We don't want to go back there. And he refused. He said, no, this is really important that you go back, but here's your protection. And that's when he taught them the loving kindness practice, the meta practice. And so they went back with their instructions to really bring a spirit of friendliness, to see the goodness of all the life forms around them and to offer loving care. And as the story goes, the acting out of these tree spirits is seized and in that field of friendliness. And all this reverence and care was being generated by the monks and the tree spirits were so moved that it actually brought to them the sense of wanting to protect the monks, create a safe space for the monks, for their peace of mind and well-being. So that was when the first loving kindness practice was taught

And what it really does is it shows the power when we're caught in feeling separate, when we're frightened, the power of intentionally looking towards and affirming our loving connection with our world, doing that on purpose. I was corresponding with the poet Daniel Lindinsky. He's the one who translated a lot of the hafizis that many of us read. the poetry from Hafiz. And he sent me a, he not Hafiz, he's been long gone, but Daniel sent me a verse that he had spontaneously come up with. And it reads this way. He says, did Buddha really say that barriers dissolve the more you can kiss them? Probably not, but that he could have. So the Buddha gave a list of benefits that come from cultivating loving kindness.

And I'll just read a few. You'll sleep easily. Actually, that should seal the deal on its own. You'll wake easily. You'll have pleasant dreams. People will love you. The Devas, which are the gods or the angels, and the animals will love you. The Devas will protect you.

external dangers such as poisons, weapons, and fire will not harm you. Your face will be radiant. So Western science adds a lot more to what some of the classical text described as the benefits more from a kind of, here's what studies show kind of point of view, because it's loving kindness has been the subject of a real growing number of studies. So what Western Science says is it increases positive emotions and decreases negative, increases feelings of social connection, decreases migraines, chronic pain, PTSD, activates empathy, increases compassion, increases gray matter volume.

Slow's biological aging makes you a more helpful person, decreases your bias toward others, curb self-criticism, and it's effective even in small doses. So this is a sales pitch, a well-intentioned sales pitch, for us to intentionally cultivate loving kindness. And we'll just pause for a moment, maybe to get a taste. You want to take a moment to let your attention go inward. If it helps to close your eyes, please do. take some full breaths and bring to mind a being you love.

Ideally where there's a kind of uncomplicated love, child, dog, member of your family, friend, and whoever you choose, bring them close in so you can visualize, see them, imagine looking into their eyes, in your mind's eye, just hear the words, I love you. You might add the being's name, I love you. And sense your love being received, that they're actually touched by your love, and that that being in their own way communicates the same back to you. Imagine that. And just allow yourself in this simple way, just to feel the purity of loving, how it brings you home to really the essence of who you are, the basic goodness of who you are. And if your eyes are

closed, find to open them. So while we all have the capacity for loving, as we know, it's easily blocked. If we just look at daily life, we can sense that. And the good news is that scientists and contemplatives agree that we can actually activate and nourish love. We can really bring it into its fullness if we practice, if there's a purposeful practice. And most people think of the loving kindness practice they hear about and they think of it as reciting, repeating sets of well-wishing to ourselves and others and widening circles. And that's certainly a traditional form. But it's helpful to know that meta practice is any way of directing attention that opens your heart. And it could be through imagery, through touch, through asking questions, inquiry to your

own heart, through journaling. What I'd like to focus on in this reflection that we'll be doing together, this talk, is what's really the ground of the practice. and it has to do with learning to see intrinsic goodness in all beings, that that's like the ground level dedication, you know, that kind of prayer. May I see the goodness in all beings? And that perception of goodness undoes the blocks to loving. It's what we're really doing is undoing the negativity bias

that keeps us locked in judgment and it's its armoured, our heart. So seeing the goodness. That's what Thomas Martin described, seeing the secret beauty in all beings. And it opens us up to that, that field of appreciation and friendliness and love. So as mentioned, it takes intentionality. It has to matter to you because it requires some focus and some practice. Because otherwise, if we don't, that conditioning of our mind and our survival brain and our fears keeps us armored. So we'll pause again. We'll pause again, friends. And let's just feel in our own ways, our intention. And the approach to that is this, if you let your attention go inward again and feel yourself right here,

feel your breathing body. And this is a review of the current state of loving in your life, very short review, with the intention of not judging, just noticing. And start with how will loving emerges as you relate to your own being. Since how you're regarding yourself now, recently, what's been your attitude or the quality of openness, tolerance, forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness, compassion to your own being, and you might sense if there's something between you and relating with care to your own being. Just notice. And then bringing to mind an important person in your immediate circle. So somebody that really matters to you, that you are in contact with fairly

regularly, and let yourself bring that person to mind and just sense a degree of closeness or of distance, how much open-heartedness there is, and what might be between you and feeling open-hearted. So again, without judgment, you might bring to mind another person in your life, someone who matters where there's some distance, where you're aware of those distance. There may be some judgment or blame or misunderstanding, but take some moments to notice what's between you and relating with real open-heartedness, with tenderness and care towards that person. And then that powerful inquiry, if you're at the end of your life, looking back at your relationship with each, with your own being, with these others, what most matters.

Maybe reminding yourself of what it's like, the moments when there is that flow of loving, kindness of care, of friendliness. Letting this help you connect with your aspiration. What is that deep heart's intention, heart's longing, sensing that intention to see that secret beauty, to remember the goodness, to come into a loving connectedness? So sensing what matters to you and sense the goodness in you that that aspiration comes from.

that's an expression of your goodness. Hmm. Okay. So we'll keep going here. So as we know, in daily life, it's often not our habit to attune to goodness in ourselves and others, perhaps most with ourselves.

We just, that's not where our attention goes. I was reading a story recently shared by Anna Lamatt, wonderful writer. And she described a little girl who was asked what her father, who was a minister did. And so this is the little girl's response that every Sunday he stands in front of everyone and tells them that they are beautiful and God loves them exactly the way they are. And they really don't have to worry because they all have each other. But then by Tuesday they forget this.

So on Sunday he goes back to their church and tells them, that they're beautiful and God loves them just the way they are and they don't have to worry because they all have each other. So just a sense, what is it that stops us from seeing that basic goodness, trusting that basic goodness in ourselves, holding ourselves with kindness? Why so many moments that we're at odds in judging ourselves and others? Or we're feeling in some way like we're falling short where the negativity bias takes over. So for many of you that are with me a lot, you know I find real valuable the image of the Golden Buddha in understanding how we get trapped in feeling deficient and turn on ourselves.

Just as a reminder, this huge statue from Southeast Asia, it had been covered for centuries in plaster and clay. And then in the 1950s, when cracks appeared, the monks discovered that it was actually a solid gold interior. And the historians realized that it had been covered over to help it survive difficult times to protect it from being stolen and desecrated. And that is so powerful because when you think of it, that's what our survival brains do. They cover us over. We have coverings to protect us. as we move through difficult families, difficult societies.

And so we have these coverings, these ways of defending ourselves and aggressing our attachments or addictions to help us get through. They're ego control strategies to navigate difficulty. That's our coverings. And our suffering arises because we think we're the coverings and we forget the gold. You know, we identify with the ego coverings. feeling separate and deficient, and we forget we're the gold, and then when we look at others,

we see their coverings, we forget the gold in them. So one of the ways to, I find this just, it's got an alchemy to it, just to sense it, to imagine the spiritual path is to more and more realize the coverings are coverings, be forgiving, be compassionate, and realize the who we are, is that light and warmth and purity of the gold of that basic goodness. The starting place, we start with right where we are, where we start sensing, oh, so I'm feeling stuck and there's some block between me and trusting my own goodness or looking at others and feeling that sense of appreciation and love. There's something between me and that.

and just a sense that we get caught in our egoic coverings. So a personal sharing a few months ago, I was in a conversation with a very dear friend. I've known her over 30 years, and we scheduled it during a demanding stretch, and after the call, I realized that throughout, I'd in some way been looking for ways to make it shorter or ended, and I had been sidestepping her overture,

for us to have a visit. You know, I'd been pretty defended and not really attuned to her, what I love about her. Instead, she became clumped with a demanding world out there, someone who wanted more for me, kind of a threat to my protected space of time. And I deepened attention when I realized that and sensed, okay, so these are the coverings that get in the way. part of the coverings are my ego's worthwhileness project where I'm trying to get things done and when I'm busy trying to get things done others become some sort of a threat to that or part of my ego's fear that's part of the coverings that I'm going to let someone down and then that actually prevents me from relaxing and just seeing who's there

And then, of course, part of the ego's covering is the self-judgment that I'm letting people down and I need to be better. And that self-judgment makes it worse. So the point is that these were the layering that were blocking me from just simply taking in her goodness, which I so love, you know, her bright, heart and creativity, her humor. So it was a habit. bit of self-protection, the coverings. So, first of all, to say, if we want to shift, if we want to start waking ourselves up from the coverings and become part of that field of loving the gold, the first step is to just forgive the coverings, you know, to be really compassionate in it and to realize that under them was just this attempt.

of our being to find a way through difficulty. It's not badly intended. So I was kind to myself about it and the next call was last week that I had with her and I was far more intentional. I was actually practicing loving-kindness practice. I was still aware of the ego coverings, you know, where I was protective, where she had some wanting. But they didn't. have power. It was almost like the coverings were more transparent. And what was shining through was I was really able to enjoy her goodness and feel our loving and laugh together. If we're on to ourselves, if we see our patterns, they'll still play out. They do. So we have to forgive them and hold them with compassion. But if we're onto them and we hold them with compassion

and we forgive them, then that awareness makes it so that they don't have so much hold over us. We can attend more to the goodness inside ourselves and each other. So to help us reflect on this, because what I really am hoping is that you'll in your own life kind of look at your different relationships and go, oh, okay, so where are the habits, and my coverings, my defenses, my fears and so on, how are they blocking a flow of loving that is so precious? So keeping that in mind, we'll look at three primary ways that our coverings end up blocking us. And the three ways have to do with judging, fearing, and a kind of grasping type of wanting. So, starting with the first, the most pervasive signal that we're living from our coverings.

We have gotten identified there. We're not opening to the gold is judgment. Most of you've heard of the great humorous Jules Fifer. He says, I grew up to have my father's looks, my father's speech patterns, my father's posture, my father's opinions, and my mother's contempt for my father's. father. Yeah. So in those moments that we're judging ourselves, we contract, we're looking through a narrow aperture at others. And while we might see them as better, you know, better than us in some way, we're not seeing basic goodness, the kind of goodness that awakens loving. Moments of self-judgment

our contractions. There's armoring. We can't really let in basic goodness. So self-judging blocks our capacity for deep attention. And of course, a lot of our judging is the way we focus on others' faults. And here, I might invite you to consider not people that you have huge aversion to, not that kind of judging, but the people that you care about and you continue judging. Because in a way, and this is so sad, we can go through days and decades with judgments like kind of low-key annoyances, low-key resentments towards people who are dear to us, who matter to us, and not realize how much it perils. prevents the real blooming of love, the love that's possible, the love that comes from really the

gold. So those are the ones to look at because they're a major sign. It's the judging is a major sign that we're in our coverings and we're not seeing the gold. And you might pause here and reflect for a moment. Bring to mind someone you care about where there is a kind of chronic, low-key judgment and hone in, you know, like pick a person and hone in on maybe a moment when you're really caught in judging them. Remind yourself of what goes through your mind, how they're falling short, how they're not meeting an expectation. Let yourself go into that, what it's like when you're judging that person. And you might even feel your face from the inside out when you're judging. Feel the body, your heart. Just notice what happens. Get a sense of

your experience of yourself when you're living inside that kind of judgmental ego covering. Notice if you like yourself. Notice what you're forgetting about who you are and about what matters. When we're in the coverings, we're forgetting the larger truth of who we are. our love, we're forgetting our love. You might turn your attention to the person. And when you're judging, just notice what is it you're not seeing about them? What are you forgetting or missing? Are you remembering that they long to feel loving and be loved to live fully?

Are you forgetting their aspiration? and what matters to their heart. So this is the first area of how the ego coverings contract us and prevent us from seeing a larger truth and prevent us from feeling the fullness of loving. And the second area is fear. And it's interesting to sense when you're with someone, just to ask yourself, is there something you're afraid of?

You know, I let a number of workshops just focusing on fear. And one of the exercises we do is we get into small groups and we have people either share with each other directly or write down on pieces of paper, you know, what am I most afraid of? And what always emerges as a major fear for most people is the fear of other people's judgments. I'm afraid I'll be judged by that person. We're a social species, you know, so we're dependent on nurturing relationships. So it's a deep fear that we won't be liked. We won't be respected.

We'll be judged. We're also afraid that people will actively hurt us, that they'll speak badly about us, they'll abuse us, they'll injure us. Again, from Jules Fiver, there's a cartoon in a woman and a man, And the woman's saying, but I love you. And the man's saying, don't you threaten me. You can see it. Fear.

So whatever the level, egoic fear, the fear in our coverings narrows the aperture. We can't see the gold within ourselves or another. And you might again explore by just reflecting for a moment. maybe bring to mind someone you respect and like but you fear their judgment. You fear that they are in some way judging you. So imagine that. Imagine a person. Imagine being with them and sense the experience of what it's like to be afraid of their judgment.

And again, sensing when you're afraid of their judgment, just feel it. Feel your face from the inside. what it's like when you're afraid of another's judgment, your body, and your heart. So get the experience of the ego fear that has taken over to some degree. But being in that covering and sense how limiting it is, how you're cut off from the fullness of your own being, but also sense what is it that you're perceiving about that person? are you able to see their basic goodness when you're afraid of their judgment? Just notice how much it limits the view.

So we're exploring how judgment and how fear really blocks our capacity to see goodness. And the third is when we want something, when we have an agenda with someone. We want their attention, their approval, their money, their time. It's impossible to see the goal, to see the goal, to see the wholeness of a being when we're fixated on wanting something from them, including wanting to be closer or grasping around. I want to be closer to you. I want you to share more with me. Story I've always loved of a man who invites his mother over to dinner and during the meal, John's mother notices how beautiful John's roommate is and she's long suspected a relationship

between John and his roommate and this makes her even more curious. And so watching the to interact over the evening, she's wondering if they've held back from her something. And reading his mother's thoughts, John says, you know, I know what you might be thinking, but I assure you that Carrie and I are just roommates. Well, about a week later, Carrie comes to John and says, you know, ever since your mother came here for dinner, I've been unable to find that beautiful silver soup ladle. You don't think she did something with it, do you? And he says, I doubt it, but I'll email her. So he writes this email. He says, Dear Mother, I'm not saying you did or did not do anything with the soup ladle,

but it's odd that it disappeared after dinner. Do you know anything about this? Later, he received an email back from his mother, and it read, Dear a son, I'm not saying that you do sleep with Carrie, and I'm not saying that you don't. But the fact remains that if she was sleeping in her own bed, she would have found the soup ladle by now. This has been titled, Don't Lie to Your Mother. So this is really about agendas when we have an agenda with each other. And it's most clear with those who are closest. When we want close people to cooperate with our agenda, behave in a way

that helps us feel more loved or more important, or that assuages our fears, including our fears for them, our agenda interrupts seeing goodness, opening our hearts. So again, a personal story here, where it was really important for me to see my agenda with my son when he was in his early teens. I became painfully aware of how many of our conversations and our interactions. In some way, I had this background agenda, something I was wanting him to do more of or wanting him to do less of, some way I wanted him to be really the person I thought he should be. So I had this agenda, you know, I wanted him to be responsible, responsive, hardworking, be different so I can relax that your life is working out okay. I think that's kind of what it came to. And when I realized how in all those moments when I had that agenda of be a certain way, be different, I wasn't taking him in just directly appreciating his aliveness and his goodness.

his heart. So I was living in my coverings in that contracted state. And as mentioned, parents and children, this is really common. And to see it gives us some choices about deepening our intention to be a mirror of goodness. So there are many expressions of wanting, of having an agenda. And even when the agenda is not fixated on the other person, let's say it's the energy of a driven wanting, an addiction or an agenda of achieving in our lives in a certain way, it can still blind us. It puts us in that contracted state that blinds us to who's right here. I could feel this poignantly in one woman's description of this time she spent with her father when he was dying. He had been a kind of larger-than-life figure in her world. He was well-known. He

was a highly respected architect, and he had designed many famous buildings and centers and so on. So he was praised and known, and they had had a kind of distant relationship during her life because he was very work-focused, and she felt like a distraction. And that was the experience she had. And it cost her a lot of pain. She had to do a lot of inner work with that. But now at the end of their life, he wasn't so ambitious and focused outward like that. They were spending a lot of time together. So she describes at one point in their talking, asking him what of his accomplishments he felt most proud of? And there was a long pause. And then with tears and his eyes, he looked at her and he said, you, of course, he loved her. You know, that was the gold in him, but he had been caught for decades in a kind of grasping that kept him from taking her in or mirroring her goodness back and opening that flow of loving that would have

been so healing at the time. So we'll pause again, maybe a bit of a reflection. for you of someone you care about and you have an agenda with. Someone you care about and you have an agenda, you want them to give you attention or approval, a reassurance, give you time, give you money. In some way you want them to cooperate. So take a moment to bring someone to mind and sense what it's like when that agenda is activated and as you sense yourself in wanting mode, as we've done to feel your face from the inside and your body and your heart,

sense the impact on your sense of your own being, your own homelessness, and sense how when you're wanting something from somebody else, how it impacts your capacity to really see who they are in those moments, to see their aspiration to love, to live fully, measure ready, take a few full breaths. So what we've done is we've reviewed the key ways that we contract and are unable to see the larger truth, the goodness, within ourselves and within others. And sadly, it can go on for decades. I remember Ram Dass sharing how for most of his adult life, he and his father were always at each other,

we're always judging each other, trying to change each other. And then he said, towards the end of his life, they both dropped that. And then he said, we became friends. So we don't have to wait decades or to the end of life. to start training to see the goodness, to remember the goodness, our own, others, and really live from that. We can be intentional. There's a story, a doctor described an early morning appointment with an elderly gentleman, and he was in a real rush. He'd come in, I think, at 8.30, and it was in rush because he had an appointment at 9. And so she was taking care of him and asked if he was going to another doctor's appointment. And he said, no, he needed to go to the nursing home and eat

breakfast with his wife. So she inquired after his wife's health. And he told her that she had been there for a while and she was a victim of Alzheimer's disease. And then as they continued talking, the doctor asked, well, will she be upset if you're a little bit late? And he replied that she no longer knew who he was. that she had not recognized him for five years now. And so again, yes, doctor was surprised. You still go there every morning, even though she doesn't know who you are.

And he smiled and patted her hand and said, she doesn't know me, but I still know who she is. And that's the preciousness of it, the secret beauty. So we're going to practice together seeing goodness. But before we do, I want to take a moment, moment to say that the value of seeing goodness extends beyond personal relationships. And that's

been what I've been focusing on. It extends to our wider society, really shifting. How do we perceive groups of people that we don't know, groups of people we might stereotype? You know, how do we get off of the covering and really open to something more true? Because it becomes a crucial part of evolving consciousness. so that we can heal the divisions in our world, this capacity to see basic goodness. I was listening very recently to a wonderful interview on being with Krista Tippett, and she was interviewing Traybion Shorters, and he's a visionary, a brilliant thinker, and he coined a term asset framing, and its opposite to understand it,

is really deficit framing, the negativity bias. which is the way most of the world perceives. So he describes how often we consider a group of people of difference, whether it's socioeconomic, race, or religion, we focus on what's wrong. We do this deficit framing. And here's what's so compelling about it. He says that even when we think we're being helpful,

when we're focusing on the struggles that vulnerable people have, And he used as an example, the terms we might use of at-risk children are the school-to-prison pipeline. He said, we might be well-meaning, but this is deficit framing because it fixates right away on the problematic societal coverings. It locks the other and that group of others in our mind in a kind of less-than position. So it reaffirms separation. and it blocks that real respect and cherishing of basic goodness.

So he says instead, and this is asset framing, what about leading with, let's say, students who have dreams of something more, of graduating, of doing well? What about starting by recognizing the goal, the goodness, and then examining the conditioning, the coverings, the conditions? get in the way. And that's radical. So he calls it a love doctrine because it's so transformational when you start seeing with these eyes, when you start training first to go right directly to seeing the gold, starting with spirit, starting with the goodness of others. Their human aspirations

and then looking at the different ways conditioning blocks. First seeing the gold and then the coverings. And when you start filtering this way, it really changes the world. And the heart knows it. Your heart feels more aligned with truth. You know, Trayvian illustrates this realization by a workshop that he does, he at least did once, but I think he probably does it regularly, where he asked people to turn to their neighbor and just think about, just look at their neighbor, possibly a stranger or someone they know and just think about as much as they could, what is wrong with this person? That's the assignment.

You're sitting there looking at somebody. You're looking at each other and you're both reflecting on what is wrong with this person. And you can sense the power in that because as he describes you, it lets people know at a gut level. It's wrong to do that. It feels bad when you have to do that. and when someone can see you doing it. In your spirit, you know, fixating on what's wrong,

that's not the way to do it. So this is the training in our personal lives and in our larger society, whether we call it asset framing or seeing the goodness, the loving kindness practice, meta, or leading by relating to and looking towards the goodness, what beings aspire to, who they really are. And as we do that, we're actually serving the evolution of consciousness, a shift from living from the coverings to living from the gold, living from love.

So if you want to train in this, you can explore it in informal practice, which means as you move through the day, set your intention right at the beginning of the day to see goodness. and then if you want to really turn it from a state into a trait, the way you do it is in the moment that you are seeing goodness. Let's say you're with somebody and you're just picking up their essential kindness or brightness or aliveness. Take 15 seconds. That's maybe three long, deep breaths, and soak it in. Just get familiar with the experience of appreciating. neuroscience has shown this is what allows that experience to stick to be installed in the

ungunges mind and it helps undo the negativity bias, this conditioning to what is wrong. So it becomes more readily available to just say, oh, what do I love here? What's good? What's beautiful? So that's informal practice. And then as a formal practice, and we'll explore this, start where it's easiest. In other words, start with a being who's easy to love and then widen the circles. It's not going to work if you try to see the basic goodness in someone who's just cheated on you in some way or injured a loved one or who you feels responsible for great global suffering.

Start where it's easiest and comes naturally. Okay, friends, let's practice together. This isn't a long practice. and you can extend it on your own. But take these few moments to arrive again. And in this pause, feel the breath and feel your body. And you might visualize and sense a smile spreading through your heart. So you can feel the breath as you breathe in and out of the heart.

And sense your intention, whatever your words are in some way that attention, to cultivate loving kindness, to learn to see the goodness. And you might begin by bringing to mind a benefactor. That's someone who's shown you great kindness, who's helped you in some way, inspired you. It could be someone you know really well or someone you don't know so well, but where there really already is some appreciation and take some moments to see their goodness, to see the spirit, the heart, the loving that lives through them, just sense their aspiration for awakening. And as you do, you might, using the person's name, say thank you or bow,

and feel directly the sense of appreciation that arises, the loving, the warmth, the openness. Breathe and feel that filling you. then you might bring to mind someone who's dear to you, someone who you do get caught up with judgments. But this time have the intention to see the goal, see the goodness. You might remind yourself of what they're like when they're loving, happy, vibrant, when they're feeling loved, when they're feeling well-being, and just sense what you love about them. And again, as you do, you might say their name and say thank you or bow namaste and let in the experience that kind of

purity of just appreciation and love you might bring to mind now a group of people who are people that are different from you perhaps vulnerable those you feel concerned for but some distance from and as we talked about with asset frank seeing the goodness, you might imagine an individual from this group, and sense what their aspiration might be, how like you they really want to live fully, to have a meaningful life, to feel connected, to feel loving, and loved, and seeing their goodness. Again, that kind of bow, namaste, letting in your appreciation, feeling at value. then you might open your attention wide for whatever life form appears in your awareness,

human, non-human, sensing in each that same aliveness that's living through you, that same basic awareness, that same love of living, young or old, beings of different races, different places on the planet, trees, bears, birds, the same aliveness that's living through you animating each. Same basic sentience, love of being alive, and the preciousness of belonging, that field of loving. Srinar Sargadatta says when you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is, and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. Sensing the gold, the goodness within all beings everywhere,

your heart is wide as the world, including all, from the metasuta, even as a mother protects with her life, her child, her only child. So with a boundless heart, may we cherish all, living beings, radiating kindness over the entire world. Thank you, friends, for your attention and presence, love and blessings to each. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.