Tara Brach - Desire: A Current of Homecoming (2015-12-09)

Episode Date: December 12, 2015

Desire: A Current of Homecoming (2015-12-09) - Desire is intrinsic to our aliveness, yet when we have unmet needs, it can possess us. This talk explores how to relax open the grip of wanting and heal the suffering of addiction. You will learn how to bring mindfulness and compassion to the roots of desire, and be carried home to  open loving presence. “Recovery is also about spirit – about dealing with that ‘hole in the soul’ … so how does this hole get filled and become holy space?” Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really matters. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. So as many of you, there have been catalogs coming my way, giving guides for the holidays, and one of them, and I saw this some years back also, get a Zen sugar high and a dose of antioxidants with a solid, dark, chocolate Buddha from Neiman Marcus. So this is Buddhism in the West. You know, you might be familiar with Buddhism as described as the middle way or the middle

path. Some of you, it's also been described as the upper middle path. But the middle, it's an interesting set of words, the middle way, because it sounds bland, but it's actually quite the opposite of bland. The one very simple way of understanding the middle way is that it's neither grasping, you know, chasing after pursuing, but nor is there a disengagement or a dissociation. It's very engaged living but with hands wide open. So one of the cartoons I saw a few years ago that describes this perfectly is

I had a sleeping dog and it said, Zen dog, dreaming of medium. size bone, which of course doesn't in any way describe much of our contemporary society where there is so much billions of dollars spent to get our brains to want more and to spend more and to consume more and to produce more. And so the overconsumption of food and drugs and big homes and big cars and what it does to our earth. You know, and it's not even a question assumption that the economy is supposed to keep on growing. That's an assumption.

And yet in the history of the universe, nothing, no life form, nothing keeps on growing. It's not sustainable for our planet. So you see this, we don't have the medium-sized bone in our, in our, our psyche for the most part. And so it gets interesting to look at, you know, what is it that keeps us chasing and pursuing and grasping? And I sometimes think of it this way that if we look at our personal lives and we bring

to mind a moment in recent weeks or days or whatever when we felt really happy, you know, a moment when there was a real sense of well-being, a moment when we feel that we feel felt connected with another person, a friend, when we were in nature, when there was a sense of appreciation of something beautiful. In those moments, there's no overdoing. There's no, we're not like this. There's a sense of that open-handedness, that feeling of gratitude, appreciation, presence. Yet, when we're disconnected and discontent, we end up latching on. And one of the ways that I kind of understand this is to the degree that we have unmet needs because of our cultural conditioning, because of our families, the basic needs,

you know, for safety, for feeling connected, for love, for understanding. The tendency is if we don't have those basic needs met, then as a way to kind of take care of ourselves, we latch on to substitutes. And because the substitutes don't really work, we end up having to keep on latching and keep on grabbing and keep on having more. The typical or the most common metaphor is that we can't quench our thirst with salt water. But actually our substitutes work a little. They work enough so we keep getting, we keep being hooked but we keep having to go after them. So, one of the misunderstandings of Buddhism is that we're supposed to get rid of our desire. I mean, how many of you in some way have an idea of Buddhism as having this thing that desire

not good shouldn't have desires? Can I just see by hands? Yeah. I talk about it enough so that those that around me a lot might know that that's actually not the teaching. Although when I first got introduced to Buddhism, I was in high school and I was in a comparative religion class and we got all the different religions, you know, little bits on each of them.

And at the end of the course, I was really sure that Buddhism was the very last one I would be interested in. And it was just because of that. I mean, there I was in high school and I love my desires and I love pleasure and the idea that it seemed really grim and kind of punitive that we weren't supposed to enjoy life. But that's not the deal. And really the, one way to think of it, I like etymology on this one, is that desire, the word desire which has a Latin base means to long for. And there's also a connotation of longing for our

star that we're away from our star, the star being the very source of our life, the star being that light of awareness that in some way we're removed from our essence and that the real essence of desire is that longing to come home. And of course, home also includes feeling alive in our bodies, so we have desires for that which nurtures our bodies, feeling alive, feeling emotionally alive, feeling spiritually alive. So desire can have a very fundamentally wholesome context. and, as I mentioned, there's a reason that rather than the longing to realize our Buddha nature,

we end up getting fixated on the longing to have more of the chocolate Buddha, right? There's a reason. And again, as I mentioned, if the basic needs aren't satisfied for love, then we'll latch on to chocolate, and that's just a simplistic comparison, but I think you understand. So, the desire that the Buddha was warning against wasn't this basic longing to be fully alive, to be awake, to be free. It was the desire that ends up because of fear and deprivation latching.

And with that grasping, in the moment of pursuing, we're not fully here. In the moment of pursuing, we actually can't experience. experience love. In the moment of pursuing, we can't experience the wisdom that comes from full presence with what's right here. In the moment of pursuing, we can't actually have true creativity. So, one of the phrases I like is that wanting is the kind of grasping wanting is for the next moment to contain what this moment does not. Meaning, this moment's not okay. Meaning we can't really inhabit this moment. So tonight, and in this class, I'm going to be talking about the power of desire to possess us,

how it ends up possessing us, getting contracted, becoming really identified in a way that our sense of who we are becomes a wanting self. Our sense of our own being is really characterized by wanting. And how we can relate wisely to desire in a way that actually lets desire, be, carry us back home into our fullness. Okay? Again, I want to honor that desire is a part of existing. We wouldn't exist without desire.

It's just essential to existence. It's the urge to manifest to take form. And in a way you can think of it that not only are you alive because of desire, you stay alive because of desire, because of desire and it's the attraction of desires, the glue that holds together atoms and galaxies. You know, it's really that which brings together life. So it's essential and when desire is thwarted, as we know our conditioning is to grasp and then it contracts into chronic wanting, anything from wanting to addiction itself but it shapes our whole experience

of life when it gets contracted. I thought it was really interesting. I found this in the newspaper a while back. Male fruit flies, when they're deprived of sex, may turn to alcohol as a source of pleasure. And that's the whole point here. When there's a deprivation of need, we latch on to something. They did the experiment.

They had two groupings, two food options, plain food mash, and the same mash laced with alcohol. And the sexually satisfied males had no use for the alcohol-laced feed, but the deprived ones overwhelmingly selected the boozy bruised, drinking four times as much as their sexually satisfied brethren. I love the way they write these things, you know? It's so good.

Anyway, there's when you're not sexually satisfied, something happens in the brain, you get less of a substance called neuropeptide F, and the rejected males had to seek the pleasure of alcohol to these low levels of neuropeptide F drove the rejected, males to seek the pleasure of alcohol. So, I'm not sure what I'm trying to really communicate with that. So the sign of substitute gratification is that rather than really directly looking for

opening to understanding or to love, we can sense that we're hitching our happiness to certain externals, whether it's going for approval, our sex, our, to more than we need food. One illustration, a man was walking along a California beach deep in prayer, and all of a sudden he realized what he really wanted. He said, Lord, please, grant me one wish. Suddenly the sky clouded above his head in a booming voice. The Lord said, because you've tried to be faithful in all ways,

I'll grant you one wish. And so here's what the wish was. Please, Lord, build a bridge to Hawaii so I can drive over any time I need to see the beautiful sights and alleviate the stress in my life. This is called a substitute or false refuge. But anyway, the Lord said, okay, but you know, nah, I don't think so.

Your request is too materialistic. Think of the logistics of that kind of undertaking. It's hard for me to justify such an intervention just to satisfy your worldly desires. Take a little more time and come up with a deeper wish. Man thought about it a long time. Finally, he said, Lord, I wish that I could understand women. and know how I can make a woman truly happy.

And after a few moments, God said, you want two lanes on that? Or four lanes in that? So this is often described as if only mind, when we have a substitute gratification. And if only mind, the way it takes shape is,

if only I could have that bridge to Hawaii, or if only I could have this particular partner, if only I could get into that training program, then I'd be happy. then things would be okay. And research has shown over and over again that we are regularly wrong in our prediction of what's going to make us happy, if only mine is always off.

Some of the research has been, the relationship between our wants and happiness has studied lottery winners. And in one such study, lottery winners are no happier than non-lottery winners over time. there's an initial spike, but then you go back to your typical happiness level. It really doesn't work. Similarly, we overestimate how things we don't want are going to affect us.

And in this study, paraplegance usually become as content as people who can walk. Again, we have a kind of biochemistry for happiness, and we think, if only mind makes us think certain things are going to work or hurt us, but they don't. So, it becomes really important to catch on to when we're organizing our life around if only mind. And by the way, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have particular desires and focuses on external wants because they give us some level of enjoyment and that's quite fine. But to organize around them, to think we have to have bring suffering.

One writer said it's like putting your ladder up against a wall and climbing up and realize you put it up against the wrong wall. It wasn't really what you wanted. I like the way spiritual teacher Sri Narasar Gadata no longer alive, but this is what he wrote about desire. He says, desire is devotion or longing to the real, to truth, to the infinite, to the eternal heart of being. And therefore it's not desire that's wrong, but only its narrowness and its smallness.

Does that make sense to you? That it's when our desires become kind of rigid and small and narrow, I have to have this rather than that longing really for the full aliveness and presence and love that's possible. So let's look at the pathway to wake up around narrowed, wanting and open to really the power of a more pure desire to carry us home. And the first step is to become mindful of wanting mind, of if only mind, and particularly of the suffering of it. Because a lot of people say, yeah, I get caught in craving this and that, but don't spend the time to really turn the light of awareness and say, what's this really like?

anything you really pay attention to. If you really bring awareness to what's going on, just that presence itself widened you, opens you. You have more choice. Some of you've heard of Ajan Chaa as a Thai forest monastic, no longer alive, wonderful teacher. And he'd have you know, gatherings with tons of monks around and they'd be moving around and sometimes doing walking meditation or sitting practice. And when he'd see somebody looking really upset, he'd go up to them and he'd say, it must be very attached. And that was it.

Because when we're upset, when we're suffering, it's because in some way we're hooked. There's that stickiness. So it gets strong when we really have that attachment and you can feel it in your body. We're going to investigate this. I'm going to have you each come up. and you might start thinking of it now. Some place you know you're attached.

Need to get familiar. How is the body when you're attached? It's usually tight. There's tension. The thoughts get narrow. We get very fixated. One of my favorite little stories is of a woman who's sitting at a park bench

and a guy gets off a bus and sits down next to her and she goes, so, what are you here for? And goes, oh, I just got out of prison. And she got curious. She says, oh, what are you in there for? He said, well, I murdered my wife. And she goes, oh, so you're single, you know. I know it's bad.

I heard a groan. But you got the idea. I mean, they say in India when a pickpocket sees a saint, that pickpocket sees a saint's pocket. But that's the idea is that we miss out. Our attention is narrowed. when we're in wanting minds. That's the way the mind is.

Now not only that, when we're wanting, it's usually accompanied by a version because the stronger the wants, the more of the fear of not getting what we want. So there's a version there too. And that's, you know, whether we're wanting a certain person to pay attention to us, then there's a real feeling of pain or hurt when they don't,

or wanting a certain amount of money to come through in a certain way, or stock to go up, whatever it is. there's a lot of aversion when things don't go our way. When we're wanting to be chosen for something and we're not, with wanting comes pain. There's also aversion towards others with wanting because, especially when it involves others and they don't cooperate with the way we want them to,

then we get angry. Okay, another example. And I think I brought it with me. I'm going to put this one here because people have, I've shared this before and people have wanted to see it. This is a cartoon. It's got a poodle, a very elegant poodle and a kind of shabby-looking hound dog in bed and she's the poodles of she and she's kind of has her finger up saying, bad sex, bad, bad sex. I'm going to leave that one out. My examples tonight aren't great, I know. But how many of us know?

that when we're fixated on wanting our partner, our child, our parent, our friend to act a certain way or behave a certain way or treat us a certain way and they don't, what happens? Causes separation and anger. And then the deepest way, wanting mind turns on ourselves because we want ourselves to be different. Wanting mind wants us to be different than we are. So wanting mind wants us to produce more, to lose the 10 pounds, to have a different personality, to act better in situations that we end up acting out in.

And the more perfectionistic wanting mind is, the more suffering. And this is the final pain of wanting mind. We usually, along with wanting mind, have shame. The more we want something, the more we want that person's attention, or the more we want the third helping of such and such, the more we feel ashamed. ashamed of ourselves because we feel out of control.

I can speak directly from that that when I was in my late teens I had a period of binge eating and I was very secretive about it because I was so ashamed of it. But that sense of that craving and that being out of control, it was probably one of the deepest shames I've ever known, so much so that I can sense how it seared my my experience of being so that even now I get, you know, when I'm having, you know, a little more ice cream or something, I have a favorite chocolate, velvet, soy delicious ice cream. You know, I'm very aware of when I'm having a second amount, if we have it out on the table, and we have desserts, we'll just throw all our cartons of ice cream out, you know, that I'm very self-conscious.

And in fact, and I treat myself once a week, and the once a week that I treat myself is Monday, nights because that's night that Jonathan's off teaching. And that's, I mean, what's the big deal? I'm having a treat, but, you know, so I'm just, I'm, I'm being disclosing and this is one I haven't shared before because just the wanting has so much shame wrapped around it that it's part of beginning to observe and get familiar with the suffering of grasping, to be able to observe that we don't like ourselves when we're grasping. In fact, our identity gets very, very small.

So I'd like to invite a reflection, I'd like to invite you all to take a moment to close your eyes and we'll just check in and use these moments of a pause to really invite yourself right here. Be aware of your breath, be aware of the sensations of your body and from... quality or state of presence, just scan and sense for yourself what's a place in your life where you have kind of a compelling feeling of wanting? You might think of it as if only mind, if only I had more financial security. If only I got that raise or had just this amount more available to me. Or if only I had something more different in terms of relationship,

or if only things were different in a certain way at work, more I achieved something more, got more recognition, or if only my body was different, or if only my health was different, Where is there some grasping for you? When you land on something, something that you know matters to you, that you want it to go a certain way, really matters. Exaggerate it so that you can begin to examine it right now. Like really get inside it and sense how much you're wanting it and what it feels like to not get it or how you might feel if you don't get what you want.

So for some of you to feel more like, you know, the excitement. and the anticipation of getting for some it may have more of the fear of not getting, but just find out. And you might exaggerate it by letting your body actually take the position or posture of wanting. So play with it a little. Don't worry if you close your eyes, no one will see you. Exaggerate it. What's it like when your body is wanting?

When your emotions want and your body registers that? Are your fists more cleansed? or you leaning forward a little? And sense the thoughts that move with wanting. When you're really wanting something, what's your mind like? And if there's wanting but not getting and it involves another, what's that like? How does that create separation or painful feelings in you?

And how do you feel about yourself when you're in wanting mind? Do you like yourself? Are you ashamed of yourself? What's your sense of your own being when there's wanting? See if you can notice all this, witness all this, and yet not judge the process. Just be interested right now. Witness. And you might consider that if when this wanting arises next, if you could just slow down a little,

perhaps pause and say, okay, wanting mine or grasping. And just pause for a bit. You could just notice your body, the thoughts, without adding on another layer of judgment, that you might find you have some more choice in how to proceed. There's a power to simply recognizing. This is the essence of mindfulness, recognizing and just allowing what you're noticing to be as it is without interfering. But each time you recognize and allow wanting mind, mind from that witnessing place. Each time you're actually deconditioning the pathway of grasping.

Each time you're mindful of grasping, you start undoing that pathway. Now opening your eyes if you'd like. An interesting story for you when the jails in St. Louis were really overfilled some years back, a circuit court judge began giving sentences to offenders on probation that required taking meditation courses. And one man was convicted for stealing and he talked about his experience in the meditation courses. He said, I've discovered that there can be a space between the urge to steal and my actions. This is giving me freedom. I can choose not to. This is changing my life. So this is the first step in waking up out of the grasping so we have more freedom. It's sometimes described in neuroscience as the magic quarter-second when you can, recent research

a few years ago, if you can catch a thing before it triggers an emotional reaction, if you can catch the thought, okay, I want something and just say, okay, wanting, it doesn't necessarily proliferate. Now, often we see things but the force of the wanting and the craving is way, way more than just the power of our mindful presence. In which case, now we're going to come to the next level of how to begin to wake up out of that grasping, in which case we need to deepen attention. And this is when we've, when our basic needs have not been met and We have fixated on substitutes for many, many years and it's deeply grooved, deeply grooved pathways.

So how do we begin to undo those? That's the next step that we're going to look at. And one of the inspirations for me in terms of how this has been framed is William Moyers, who went to a MIT conference and spoke to a room full of scientists and addiction researchers and so on, about what their findings had been recently. But here's how he addressed them. He said, I have an illness with origins in the brain, alcoholism. But I also suffer with the other component of this illness.

I was born with what I like to call a hole in my soul, a pain that came from the reality that I just wasn't good enough, that I wasn't deserving enough, that you weren't paying attention to me all the time, and that meant that maybe you didn't like me enough. Okay, so the room is completely quiet at this point. He said, for us addicts, recovery is more than just taking a pill or maybe getting a shot. Recovery is also about the spirit, about dealing with that hole in the soul.

So in Buddhist terms, that whole in the soul is when we're disconnected from our star. When, and again those are metaphors, but when we're disconnected from, the light, the aliveness, the awareness that's really who we are. There's a sense of vacancy of something missing and then there's that grasping. So the question is how do we reconnect? And the basic principle is this when it comes to wanting mind. This is what the Buddha was talking about is as long as we're grasping after something out there, we can't heal that disconnect.

So the key practice, and I sometimes describe it as a U-turn, is that notice where you're fixated, I want that money, I want that person to pay attention, I want that 10 pounds, whatever it is, it's still out there, and you turn around to begin to bring attention to the wanting itself. This is the, I'm not going to say anything more tonight that's more than that really. We're going to, I'm going to give you some examples. But if you henceforth have some way of navigating where you notice, oh, okay, this is wanting mind and it's fixated here and the freedom comes from withdrawing the fixation out there and coming back to be attentive and presence with the actual wanting, then you

have an incredibly powerful tool. for freedom. Okay, so let's look at how this happens. I'm going to give you two examples. And one is, it's always about unmet needs, but one is not so much having the needs of a full kind of, an addictive kind of quality. It's not at that very deep level of feeling. With addiction, usually there's a sense of deep anxiety and a sense of that hole in the soul. is one that you absolutely have to soothe and very, very immediately, and it often involves substance. Not always, but that often does. In this case, this is this U-turn, and I also call it tracing back desire. I like that term too. So this is a story, one man who came to a retreat

some years ago, and he was very, very pained about being single, and he had just broken up a relationship that he had really invested his hopes and this was going to be the one. And once it broke up, he was devastated because there was no way he would ever find that one again. And it was his last chance for love. Okay, so. And I say that kind of lightly, but it was anguish for him. And so he's feeling how much he was hoping to win her back and make it work. And so we explored this U-turn.

I said, okay, so the energy's fixated on her and how she is the one that's going to give you what you want. And so let's just explore going back to the wanting itself. So we trace it back and I said, okay, so what does that wanting feeling feel like? Now in the mindfulness practice we go from recognizing and allowing, okay, there's wanting mind to really investigating. This is also you can, those familiar with rain can hear rain in this. Investigating gently with kindness, what's going on?

He said, okay, there's an urgency. So what does it feel like? A squeezing, it feels like pressure, it feels like heat. Okay, what's the belief? I want to feel, I have to feel special. I won't feel special unless I can have what I want. I won't feel like I matter. I won't feel important.

It's almost like I won't exist. keep going. Okay, so it's a feeling the wanting is for connection. I want to feel joined. Well, what would that feel like? It would feel bright, warm, and vast. And so I said, just let go and be that. Just go into that. Feel it as if it's right here. And so he just said, yeah, it's, there's no edges, it's warm, it's radiant, it's alive. So this is what he was wanting. He was tracing back right to the source of the wanting, which was loving, radiant presence right there. Now, he said, this is what I'm wanting, it's right here, and during the day his mind would

go right back into wanting her. Even though he had experienced by tracing back actually having what he wanted right here, which is really natural in how it goes. We have had millions of rounds of feeling an urge and fixating it on an object out there. So it's really natural. But the more he practiced, the more he was able to say, I am trusting more that what I am seeking is always and already here. It's just a habit to go like that.

And that's what he moved forward with. And he is now married, but that's not a way. the moral of the story. The moral of the story is by making the U-turn and tracing back, he became more at home with what was already there. So he was coming from a more whole place when he then explored how other people could help him connect with that. The point isn't that we shouldn't seek and enjoy the people and the tastes and the visuals and so on that enliven us. It's just that if we know that it's always in a ready here,

we can enjoy them, but let the joy land and then fly on. We don't grasp. And the grasping's where the suffering is. So to me, this is a beautiful example of finding how the light shines through that hole in the soul. And he could only discover it by withdrawing his fixation, on something outside and tracing back the desire.

We are going to practice this together in just a few minutes. I want to give you one more example because tracing back the way I just described isn't as simple when the desire is a kind of grasping in an addictive way. And we could spend the next year exploring addictions and different, all the different practices and what helps us to loosen the grip, including absolutely essentially the support of others. We absolutely need each other. But right now I'm just talking about a meditative strategy that can help us to release the grip

some. And again, as I mentioned, it's when there's really core needs that weren't met that we fixated on a substitute often before we were. we even spoke. Okay, so it's pre-verbal and as many of you know, food addiction is really, really challenging because we attach to food at such an early age that it's really hard to unwind it. And like anything it's absolutely can be deconditioned. So this example is a woman I worked with again some years ago, 26 years old and she came

and saying, everything I try to do, I fail at, and I hate myself. And my biggest shame is drinking. She smoked marijuana, ate too much food, but drinking was the worst. She said, I've gone to but I should go back. A couple of friends keep trying me to get to stop using, but I just can't get myself to. I'm just want to keep drinking. So we did a process of, okay, drinking, fixated on that. and when I started to do the U-turn with her.

I said, okay, when you have that, I have to have feeling. What's going on inside you? So we went from recognizing and allowing. Okay, this is what's going on, have to have. Now, let's investigate it, the U-turn. She said, my heart starts pounding, my stomach's in knots, I'm short of breath, it's all that matters is getting that relief. There's this clutch in the chest.

So we continued to investigate and I said if you could describe that part that's compelling you what it's like, you know, what does it look like, how does it feel like? She described it as a black piercing evil eye in the middle of it. There was this dark shadowy shape inside her that was compelling her.

You have to have this, it's the only way. And then I asked her, you know, what does that part want? it wants me to drink what will that do it wants me to feel relief otherwise it's too much again this is tracking back

what does it want it wants relief and if you could have relief what would it give you what would the deepest need be that you'd feel if you could have relief from that pain she said then it can feel

lovable it can feel loved So I asked her, can you offer that love right now? And she says, no, I can't, I don't have any. That's that hole in the soul. And I said, well, who loves you in a way that does feel good? And she was able to name her mom and a few friends. And so we spent some time where she just had her hand on her heart and I said, okay, just feel your mom and your friend's love coming in through that hand on your heart and

kind of feeding that evil eye creature. And so she was able to do that and then she described, I said, what's that wanting creature like now and she said, well the shape is shrunken and its black eye is sad, there's glistening tears, it needs more, so she gave more, more loving, and then she said, okay, I can breathe now. now, there's more relief. And we kept going this way, offering love to that part of her until finally she said, I asked her what's the sense of who you are now and she said, I feel like I am a loving spirit.

So I had her rest in that. With rain you investigate, investigate what's needed, what's needed. I often now recently recognize and allow, investigate and then the antivrain is nervous. nourish, just the way she was nourishing, and then after you've nourished, then you rest no longer identified. So she rests in that. This became her practice. Many, many rounds, hundreds of rounds, thousands of rounds, of feeling that compulsion, sometimes she would act out. Other times she'd be able to pause long enough to sense that part of her that was compelling her and feeling the feelings, tracing it back, nourishing with love until that evil eye became that

kind of sad, glistening with tears kind of experience. She also went to AA. She had more capacity to really be with others. She became a sponsor. She said, I understand spirits. I understand how people are driven to spirits. And when we last met, she described that instead of an evil eye, she felt she had a gleaming spirit eye in her heart.

That was the change. Now, I took the time on this story on purpose. You might not feel like when you're meditating, you can even remember how do you go through all those steps. But what you can remember is this, and it's really, really straightforward, is that when the craving or the wanting arises, pause and become mindful. This is wanting.

Notice what it's like. Notice what it's like and begin to track back. What is it really, what am I really wanting? What am I really wanting? What would that be like? And if that place in you needs some nourishment, just offer some kindness. And in that process of presence and kindness, you will start to start with you will start to filling the hole in the soul. You will start sensing the light that shines through.

One woman wrote a poem, this is a woman from our community in Washington, Ellen Tyne, and I'd like to read it to you. Because I think it has everything to do with this U-turn and tracing back and sensing behind the grasping that purity. She writes, Come home now, my dear. Come home and rest. Yes, yes, sweet one, I've seen your brave questing into the future, your tireless forays into the past, but hush now. You can stop your restless searching,

for love is right here. Fall into its sweet heaviness, like the honey-drunk bee surrenders under the weight of its sun, dust of pollen, into the deep cup of the rose, rose, let go. Be buoyed in the flow of the warm, wave, salt, home you never truly left. Be still. Be at peace. Just rest now. Love is here. Can you sense the kindness of the invitation that when we're struggling with craving, wanting, grasping, that the response is not to shame ourselves or judge ourselves, but to invite ourselves back, to invite ourselves to come home to make that

you turn because everything we're wanting can only be found right here. This is in the Buddhist tradition described as the blessing of non-clinging, that when we're not chasing after, when we're arriving right here, there's that open-handedness that really allows the light and radiance of the universe to shine through us. It's right here. Everything we want. This is true, by the way, this teaching in spiritual practice in a big way that one of the big misunderstandings is somehow we have to try harder when we meditate.

That we're going after a state, we're going after, you know, serenity, we're going after peace, or going after enlightenment, when the paradox is it's only in the moments of truly surrendering, of relaxing back, of opening our hands, that we can find that what we were longing for was always and already right here. But there's some sense we have to go after something. It's like that cartoon with the monks right here in Washington and, you know, in the mall, and you've got a monk with a microphone saying, what do we want? Mindfulness, when do we want it? Now, you know.

So it's not like that. Okay, so let's close with a little meditation on this. You'll have an opportunity in this closing meditation to explore this moving from the grasping, pursuing of desires and wanting and craving, this tracing back coming home. And as you settle to know that we explore this for the freedom of our own hearts. And we also explore this for the freedom of our world, the healing of our world. Because as each of us begins to let go of chasing after and pursuing and overconsuming, it begins to ripple out.

And it's really what's needed for the, really, the sustaining and survival of our planet. So we arrive again right in this moment, feeling the breath, feeling our body breathing. And as we did earlier to take some moments to sense one place that you would like to have more freedom around, one place where it feels like you're hooked in some way, you're attached to things being a certain way, that something's not enough, something's missing. It might be in a relationship where you're wanting more approval or attention, a situation where you want to be the best, something you want to win at. It might be where you feel very hooked on a substance where you're drawn to the pleasure,

soothing from food, drugs, drink. It might be something to do with your appearance. and when you've chosen, let yourself go into a situation that is an example of where you get hooked to remind yourself. And this is where it takes some imagining into. Remind yourself what it's like when you're really wanting things to be a certain way. And with rain, we say we recognize and we allow it to be so right now. You're just letting it be.

It's okay. This is the natural human conditioning. We all have it to get hitched to substitutes, to want in a kind of grasping way. But let yourself go into it and feel how much you want it and how much you don't want to not get what you want. And exaggerate it as we did before. You can play with this a little. Just let yourself get into the posture of wanting and your facial expression of wanting and where you feel it most in your body. And if you notice that along with this wanting there's what's sometimes called the second

arrow where you're judging yourself for the wanting, where you feel aversive to yourself for it, then notice that too. This is investigating. You're sensing how it all is. And let yourself feel into your body the actual direct energy of wanting. Where do you feel it most in your body? What's the sensations feel like? If you could trace back some in sense, what are you really wanting?

Or if you could get what you think you're wanting, what would that really give you? What would you get to experience then? And what would that be like? Investigate, trace it back. What is it you're really most wanting here? What's the experience you're wanting? For some, this is the time, if you sense that what you're most wanting or needing is a feeling of loving and it helps you. You might put your hand on your heart and just offer that loving,

offer that what you're most wanting inward. And if it helps to have help, imagine loved ones, a deity, a spiritual figure, your dog, imagine loving energy pouring in. Sense the wanting and sense getting what you want. Going right to the essence of wanting to where the love is. You've investigated, you're nourishing with love, the eye of rain is investigate, the end can be considered nourishing with love. And just let go now and just rest in the experience that what you want is right here, this loving presence right here. Isn't it true that what you really, really want is always and already here?

Let go. Be buoyed by the flow of the warm wave. salt home you never truly left, be still, be at peace. Just rest now. Love is here. As you continue in these final moments to sit, you may notice but I still feel desire or I still feel aversion. And continue to bring a presence to that because this is not a quick fix or a one-shot. It's a shift in our way of being with ourselves so that rather than fixating on something out there, we're bringing our heart and our attention to the very experience of the longing. And over time that longing will carry you to belonging.

Over time, longing will carry you to belonging. close in a simple way just to feel your wish for your own being, your own heart right now. Perhaps the wish for freedom, for healing, for awakening. Just offer that loving kindness prayer to yourself, may I be free, may I heal, may I awaken and letting that open-hearted care include now all beings, all of life, and the earth, our mother, all beings everywhere. Feeling our collective prayer that we awaken and cherish the life that's here, that we wake up from the energies of grasping and fear and aversion

and bring our hearts and awareness to the healing of this planet to healing life. Namaste. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.