Tara Brach - Desire and Addiction: Voices of Longing Calling You Home (2020-03-04)

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

Desire and Addiction: Voices of Longing Calling You Home (2020-03-04) - Desire is intrinsic to all living forms - the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. I'll begin with an email that I received just a few days ago. Mom was describing the busyness of getting her four-year-old daughter into a car and about to... She's buckling her in her car seat. notices that her nails are a bit long so she starts explaining to her daughter how when they get home at night time they're going to have to clip her nails and also going to have

to do some other things, take a bath and detangle her curls and this and that and her daughter says, okay mom but let's care about now. So bless our next generation, they know. And it's interesting of course for all of us if we invest in our next generation. our moments and just notice how often are we on our way to something else, wanting things to be different, wanting something more, having that sense that this moment, we want the next moment to contain what this moment does not. We're leaning forward.

And when this wanting is strong, which it sometimes is, it keeps us from presence and from freedom and when it's really strong, that's addiction. That's the addiction that really takes over our whole identity. We become the addicted person and destroys our health, relationships, our life. We can see this on a societal level sometimes even more clearly that the sense of the power of wanting and when it goes out of control and then it turns into societies that are over consuming that are addicted to fossil fuels. We can see the destruction of the living web that comes out of it.

And of course with the greed, the vast inequities of wealth that are getting worse. So we're going to be exploring wanting mine and what happens with it. And the bottom line is that every one of us has nervous systems that are designed to have desires and wants and potentially get addicted. given certain circumstances, and most of us live in societies that amplify our wanting, right? What happens, and this is where it really becomes key on the spiritual path, is that when we are not conscious of our wanting and wanting gets strong, our identity gets wrapped around it

so that rather than feeling connected to our wholeness and rather than sensing love and awareness and connected to the living web, we get very, very small and it's all about more and what I want and what I need. And it's not that there's something ethically bad about it, it's just that that's suffering. And we know it. We know it when we're consumed with self-concern about what I want, when there's that grasping, we're not happy. So we're going to take two classes for this probably.

Sometimes it goes on, but I think it'll be two talks. We'll really explore how do we bring a wise and liberating attention to what some call wanting mind, that deep drive in us to have and to get and to want more. And we'll do it in two parts in the sense that this time we'll explore what we might call more wanting that's not fully amped up into addiction and next week we'll explore more when it becomes addictive wanting. So it gets interesting to notice in our own lives and you can think about today. If there were periods where you were consciously sensing enough, where there was a resting

in how it was, where there wasn't a kind of a drive towards something more, just to sense, was there are periods of enough. And if we look closely, it begins to shine a light on how often there's a sense that something's missing. There's a restlessness. There's just a restlessness as if there's something more to get to. And how intense it is depends on our degree of unmet needs. And this is unmet needs that come from our family and from our societal experience. But I'd say on a most basic level, to the degree we didn't feel seen and loved in our early life, in other words, where there was some severing of a sense of healthy attachment, that's going to fuel our wanting as we grow up.

And then what happens is if our basic needs aren't met, our wanting fixates itself on substitutes. and most of us have an array of substitutes that we fixated on. And some of us are more onto it than others but we have them. I remember about four years ago, right before the holidays I got a catalog in the mail and I was wondering where they were targeting me as a special population. It said this, it said, get Zen, get a Zen sugar high and dose of antioxidants with solid, dark, chocolate Buddha, $110 from Neiman Marcus. So Buddhism in the West, you know.

There you go, right there. Desire is natural and it's necessary. Just the way in the last few weeks we've talked about fear as nature's protector, desire is natural. In fact, it's the existential urge to be and to manifest and to take form and to exist and it's intrinsic to all life forms. Every life form has its urge for being alive and you wouldn't be here if it weren't for desire. And neither would I. You know, it's it's it's it's what brings us here, it's what keeps us here for a while. So attraction is the glue for atoms and

it's the glue for galaxies. It's what keeps life in its forms. And in us it expresses as an urge to connect and we want to connect in a material way, we want to feel safety, we want to feel nourishment, we want to feel emotional connection, we want to feel spiritual connection, that makes us feel alive. So there's a lot of misunderstandings on the spiritual path about how to relate to desire and I can say for myself I was first introduced to Buddhism when I was in 11th grade in a world religions class and we were introduced to all the religions and then we kind of took a vote on what religion most resonated and what I remember most distinctly was at the very bottom

of my list was Buddhism and it's because in my mind and the way I was picking it up all the Buddhists did were focusing on suffering and telling you to get rid of desire and as far as I was concerned for me and my buddies you know we had a kind of a worship of hedonism. You know, we liked our desires. We wanted to go after them. So Buddhism wasn't really appealing. What I came to discover some years later,

it wasn't even that many years later, was that it's not at all about getting rid of desire. It's really how we're relating to desire and whether our identity gets hooked by desire. And whether desire, whether the on button is so jammed, that we aren't able to rest in a moment and feel enough, which really is peace and freedom. So, what happens as we begin to explore when instead of caring about now, like the little four-year-old was pleading with her mom, please, let's care about now, instead of the urge to realize

our Buddha nature, we're just fixated on the chocolate Buddha. I read this one place, two goldfish are swimming in the ocean. And one says to the other, so what is it your heart really desires? The response, oh, I'd love to have the fishbowl and the colored gravel and the plastic plants and the little castle, you know, the whole deal. And to me that was really actually profound because not only do we fixate on substance, substitutes, we move away from what's always and already right here. The goldfish was already in the ocean, you know.

So as mentioned, when our basic needs are unmet and that goes for all of us to some degree, you can't be born into this culture and not have your needs in some way violated. When our needs for safety or self-worth or love aren't met, our attention and our desires get narrow and they fixate on certain substitutes that we use to try to help us feel better about ourselves and feel more connected. And you can see how this primitive reward system, this fixation on substitutes happens in other species. I read a really interesting thing with fruit flies and the research shows that male fruit flies

when they're rejected by females because the females have already made. then go and drink significantly more alcohol than those that we're able to mate freely. So here we are thinking we're so special and pathological when we go out and drink, you know. So the sign of desire that's fixating is what sometimes we call if only mind, which means there's some part of us that thinks, well, if only I have this, then I'll feel good, then I'll have what I want. And we do it to all sorts of things. If only I get that promotion, then it'll be okay.

Or if only I lose that weight or that person gets interested in me or I get my degree or whatever it is. We have our if only our idea of what's going to give us happiness. One of my favorite teaching stories on this about desire and fixating is when a, in this one a man's on a beach in California and he's praying to God, please just grant me one wish. And the sky darkens and there's this booming voice, well you've lived a good life, I'll grant you one wish. So he says, please Lord, build me a bridge to Hawaii so I can drive over when I want to

see beauty and alleviate stress. So God says, you know, that's very materialistic and it's a really substitute gratification. This is a very psychologically savvy deity. And it goes on to say, and you know it takes a lot of support to reach the bottom of the Pacific. It's not ecologically sensitive. He's also really PC, you know, a lot of concrete steel. Take some more time.

Choose another wish that'll evoke my almighty power of blessing. So the guy thinks for a long time, says finally, Lord, I wish I could understand women and know how I can make a woman really happy. After a few moments, God says, you want two lanes or four on that bridge? So here's where the delusion is, is that we think we know what will bring happiness. We think we know and we are regularly wrong and there's a huge amount of research on that, that substitutes don't work. They work enough to have us temporarily get a temporary fix or we wouldn't stay hooked on them, but they do not create any sustained or deep happiness. And the research on relationship shows that one of them that I thought was interesting, 13 studies

on lottery winners, they're ultimately over time no happier than non-lottery winners. And paraplegics usually become as content as people who can walk. And in many different ways they focus the research, we anticipate that good things will make us happier than they actually do and bad things will make us unhappier. It's because underneath we do have some sort of a psychological kind of a zone where we keep coming back to, a quotient that we keep coming back to unless we meditate, which really does change it. But the point is that our external, our substitutes don't translate to happiness.

Thoreau said it beautifully, it says it's like we spend our whole life fishing. only to realize it was in fish we were after. So we begin to sense, all right, how do we relate to desire? And one teacher, Sri Narcadata, who I find really, really inspiring, he said the problem's not desire, it's that your desires are too small, too narrow. Again, it's because they're fixated on substitutes. So, what happens is the first step is that we need to become mindful of when we're in wanting

mind and mindful of the suffering of being in wanting mind, when your wants are strong, to be able to pause and really sense, okay, what's it like right now? Because unless we do that we're going to be identified with the wanting. Ajan Shah, who's a wonderful, no longer alive teacher from Thailand, when he came to the United States and he'd come to retreats and work with students and if somebody looked like they're having a hard time and he said, are you suffering and they said yes, he said, must be very attached and that was the understanding. That if we're suffering it's because we're attached to life being a lot.

a certain way. We're attached. And we're in a trance. We're small. We're forgetting the larger truth. So the inquiry is can we begin to notice the trance of wanting mind? And we're going to practice together but some of the signals are that when we're in wanting mind our bodies are tight. They're agitated, they're restless. They can't really relax until what we get what we want. Our thoughts are narrow, fixated and usually circling around and around. There's a saying in India that when a pickpocket sees a saint, they see the saint's pocket. So our thoughts are like that. It's like whatever we're doing, we're just looking for a certain thing that we're wanting, whether it's food or approval

or some possession. We miss that on the world. And then our behaviors impulsive, driven, speedy, we're cut off from our full executive function. We're really living in a kind of driven, torqued kind of a mind. There's a brief little story of a guy who goes to a bar and he orders a drink. And the bartender gives it to him and he pushes it off to the side. And then he orders another drink. And the bartender serves him. This time he drinks it.

the bartender says, well, what gives? And he says, well, I go to AA meetings and I hear regularly, it's really the first drink that leads to trouble. So we talk ourselves into things. We are not living from our most intelligent self. So let's pause here. Let's do a little brief reflection so you get to kind of explore yourself the nature of what we might call the wanting self

when you are in wanting mind. just to get familiar because only if you notice it can you then begin to interrupt it and wake up so closing your eyes if you'd like and take a few full breaths and invite you to scan

and sense where in your life there's some compelling place of wanting where you might have some if only mine that's a bit charged it might be around finances and money right now It's certainly increasingly uncertain times.

You might be having great wanting around relationship for romance. Or maybe your wanting is around for somebody that's close to you to be different to change. Or maybe you're wanting something for your child or wanting something at work or wanting something about your body to change, appearance or your health. Choose something where you sense there's some charge of wanting. so you can gain a little more familiarity here. And you might exaggerate by really going inside at sensing what matters about this so much, what's so important, what would be bad about not having it, what would be great about having it,

and what's going on when this most matters to you. And if there's somebody else involved, visualize them sense what you're wanting. And experiment by letting your posture, right now your posture, model what wanting feels like. Like are your fist clenched, you're leaning forward, what's your face feel like? Your eyes are closed so nobody's looking at you. Go ahead and model it, just feel wanting and exaggerate it some. What is the wanting self? And since as you're doing this there's also a witness.

There's a witnessing, that which is watching, okay, so this is wanting mind, this is the wanting self. Are you relating to yourself? When you're wanting, do you like yourself? When you're wanting, what's your heart like in terms of relating to others? Just notice, just witness that. When you're really wanting something, what's your heart like? Do you like yourself?

Do you like the way this is? You like the way you're relating to others? So the purpose right now is not to judge wanting but become familiar with how wanting shrinks us, tightens us, removes us from a real relational field of true connection. Take a few breaths, open your eyes when you're ready. So wanting is usually accompanied by some form of aversion. It's like two sides of the same coin. When you want something you also are afraid of not getting it.

And you're upset with somebody else that might get in the way of you getting it. Especially when you're wanting is really for another person to be a certain way and they don't cooperate, your wanting turns into a version. I saw a cartoon some years ago and has a... in it there's a poodle and a hounder. a hound dog and they're in bed. Okay? And the poodle has arms crossed and she's very annoyed and he's looking incredibly dejected and

she's saying, bad sex, bad, bad sex. And you can see the dejection of the hound dog and you can see the relationship and even though that's a silly example, if you consider any relationship, how many people want their partner or their child? or their sibling to be different than they are and what happens when the other doesn't cooperate? Aversion. The biggest aversion though that happens with the wanting self is towards itself.

How many of you noticed when you were in wanting mind that you just didn't like the self that was wanting? Can I see by hands? I'm just curious. A lot of you. And it's a pretty universal thing that we feel a kind of disgust or shes. shame or dislike towards the wanting self. The worst word you can put on the wanting self is the N-word which is needy. But it doesn't feel good to be in wanting self. We really

don't like it. So we're looking at the suffering of attachment when we get fixated on substitutes, what happens to our body, what happens to our thoughts or our emotions, or just bringing them into the light of awareness. And the beginning of a shift of a shift, and the beginning of a shift comes, this is really the beginning of rain where you're recognizing and allowing, oh, wanting mind. And I encourage you to use even that language, not I am wanting, but this is a wanting mind or as one of my teachers used to say, wanting mind, wanting, you know, fearful mind fearing. So it's not so personal.

It's just you're just watching a constellation of thoughts and feelings go through, including the feeling of I don't like this. But if you can recognize wanting mind, you can actually interrupt the chain and not be hooked. So the first step is for you to get, okay, wanting mind is happening. And you can imagine what would happen if you could pause in the midst of it that there would be more choice. And I bring that up because one story that struck me, there was in St. Louis, there was The jails were overcrowded and one judge started giving a lot of sentences, this was about

eight years ago, to offenders on probation that included taking a meditation course. So one of them came out of the course and said this, 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 wanting is an urge and when you can sense wanting mind there's a little bit more possibility in the moment after noticing it, not continuing with the thoughts and feelings that lead to grasping.

We're going to be exploring tonight and have you practice working on a place where you get caught in wanting using rain that means recognize, allow, investigate and nurture as a way to loosen it. The beginning of rain is just what we've talked about, that you recognize, okay, wanting mine and you allow it, you just give it some space. But now I want to go on to how you can begin to investigate wanting. And the key is, and this is the bottom line, this is the key to the whole thing, is that wanting fixates on a substitute, I want this money, I want sex, I want possession, I want food, I want drink, whatever it is. If you want to investigate it, you recognize and allow that's going on and then you make

the U-turn and you bring back the attention to the actual feeling of wanting. You withdraw the attention from the object and make a U-turn to the inner experience. This is the life-changing move if you want to free yourself from grasping an addiction. Let me give you an example of how it works because once you have made this U-turned, you can begin to investigate and bring a non-judging presence to wanting mind. The story I'm going to share with you because it was such a powerful example for me was a man who came to a retreat some years ago, worked with him, he had just actually been dumped in a relationship and they had been together for a while so he was really

really, really bonded and attached and he was desperate to get back together. He felt like this was his only chance for love. She was the only one in the world for him. The process that we went through when we did rain was really recognizing and allowing, okay, caught in major time grasping and then investigating it in a way that I sometimes term tracing back desire, really investigating and finding out what's going on. So I want to give you a sense, I'm going to read some of my notes because I wrote it all down. This particular story, if you want to look for it, is in radical compassion. So first after he recognized and allowed it, he said, well wait a minute, this feels really

hard, I'm so ashamed of wanting her so badly. So that often happens with wanting. So when you recognize and allow you have to include I'm allowing wanting and I'm allowing the shame about wanting. Does that make sense? After that I asked him, well what's the strongest emotion right now that wants attention? I began to investigate and he said the wanting, you know, the shame was there but the wanting every cell in me is yearning to ever back.

So we started investigating and I told him to actually bring up a fantasy as if it was on a mental screen. So I said, now notice what happens when you turn away from the screen. What's going on in your body and your heart? So in other words, he's watching a fantasy of getting to be with her. And I said, what's going on with your body and your heart? And where does wanting live inside you? So he's making the U-turn now and he said, well, it feels like this clawed hand with nails sinking into my heart and yanking at me. It's like every part of me is wanting her. It's my heart's ripping apart. By the way, investigating is mostly somatics, you have to feel the wanting in your body.

So then we continued investigating and I said imagine you could go inside that wanting energy, and I'm going to have you do this too, that clawed hand that you're yanking at your heart and so he's completely concentrating and ask what does that wanting energy want to experience? What are you really wanting to experience? And he said, it wants company, it doesn't want to be alone. Okay, so we're beginning to get into the desire, what he's wanting is company, not to be alone. And so I said, okay, stay inside that yanking feeling. If it had company, what would that be like?

So I'm getting him to get in touch with what he's wanting and how it would feel if he got it. He said, well then it could relax, it could let go. It would be part of something. Okay, so what he's wanting, the desire is he wants to be. company and if he had it he could relax, let go, part of something. And then I said, and what would that be like? What would that give you? How would you feel then to be part of something?

And he said, it's like, and he put both hands on his chest, it's like my heart is this open space then, it's totally alive, it's filled with warmth and light. And I said, can you feel that right now? And he nodded. He said, yeah. So this is what the energy, the wanting place really wants. He wants to feel that warmth and that light in your heart. And so he was very still and he said, right now there's no wanting.

There's just a space and this light. And so investigating had opened him to nurture and that's when he just rested in and totally allowed himself to be in that space of tenderness. And then we did what's called After the Rain where I got him to get really familiar with who he was, that presence, when there's no longer a sense of a self that's trying to get something. So then that was the end of the rain practice and he said, you know, as he was leaving, I know I'm going to leave this room. Oh, he said, first of all he said to me, this is love and it's already here, like I know what's

already inside me and I'm going to leave this room and totally forget and want it with her, which is really, really honest and really, really true. Because we might get that, oh, the substitute's not it, the love is here, I can feel it and really feel it, and then it just takes no time at all before the mind starts going, voop, and we're back on it again, right? So I'm sharing that part of things because it's so deeply grooved these pathways of wanting and he had touched a way of getting completely... connected with where the source of what he wanted was, but it took many, many rounds of practice.

The truth is that it's really important not to judge the desires. Like I told him, if you judge the fact that you're wanting her, that's only going to dig it in deeper. So to be very forgiving towards the desire, but keep learning this art of tracing back. And it doesn't mean we don't still want love from the outside, it just means we also know, and that knowing can get deeper and deeper that what we long for is in here. Okay, let me speak a little more and then I'm going to invite you to try this out a bit. Most of us have spent a lifetime fixating our desires on external objects. So we start there, you know, whatever it is and often it's a love for another person

and attachment to another person. For one woman when we explored this, she started to, started with imagining getting love from another person so that that loving could help the crying child inside her, stop crying. And I said, so what does that give you? She said, relief, the child's no longer crying. Well, if the child's no longer crying and there's relief, what does that really give you? What's really the gift of that?

And she said, then I have freedom to be. freedom to be. So the longing is really deep. It's like we think it's for that but it's the longing to be. It's just to be love. Rumi says this, he says, let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love. Each of you have desires.

Each one of us has desires to get fixated outward but if we learn to really try to really trace them back, we discover that they're the voice of loving awareness calling us home. That's a pathway for each of us. Again, Srinor Sorgadatta, it's not the problem of desire, it's just too narrow. Why not want complete freedom, the freedom to be to love? So I want to read you one of my favorite quotes from Srinor Sarkadatta, he says, all All you need is already within you. Only you must approach yourself with reverence and love.

Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this. Make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing. yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them, you are beyond. This is not about indulging ourselves.

This is about withdrawing our fixations on substitutes and really sensing what is it we really long for. What is it we really long for and discovering in that longing the love and the awareness that is already here. You might just close your eyes for a moment, take a few moments just to breathe and sense, what would that mean to make love of yourself perfect, to give yourself infinity and eternity to not narrow your desire but make it much, much wider and discovered you do not need them, you're beyond when you'd like to open your eyes.

So a couple of guidelines. If you want to use these two weeks to bring wanting above the line, we often talk about the circle of awareness and the line going through, what's below the lines outside of awareness, what's above the line is in awareness. So what we're exploring together these two weeks is how to shine the light of attention on the wanting mind and when it's below the line it keeps us hooked and our lives get small and we can feel it, we can feel how we're hooked on all sorts of little things. So we're bringing it above the line so just to begin with recognize and allow when you move

through the week to notice, okay, caught in wanting and then if you have time to begin investigating to really start asking that question so what is that I'm really longing for, turning, making that you turn. And just to know attitude-wise, if wanting mind brings up judgment, it'll deepen wanting mind. But if you bring interest, curiosity, friendliness, and just know we all are rigged. We're all, you know, it doesn't matter whether wanting is around work or wantings around relationship and for many of us we have wants around spiritual practice. And one of my favorite cartoons is of these monks that are gathered on the capital, on the mall,

one of them has a megaphone, he's saying, what do we want? Mindfulness, when do we want it now? So it's like we get grasping after spiritual experience. But what we discover is if we make the U-turn, it's underneath the grasping, there's a longing. And if you can get home to the longing, you actually get home to the source of the longing, which is love. So we started tonight with that four-year-old who really says, let's care about now. And we can't care about now until we start examining the wants that keep us traveling

away from the moment. So in that spirit I'd like to invite you to do, we'll do a brief meditation together, bringing rain to the wanting mind. unlike any applied meditation for us to bring mindfulness and compassion of rain to some of of the waves inside you, you need to be in your body. So I'd like to invite you to begin this meditation by briefly scanning through your body and sensing if you're here. You might let the shoulders drop away from the neck, relaxing back and down, just feel inside

the shoulders and soften a little, relax a bit and let your hands soften so that if you feel from the inside out you can feel the tingling and vibrating there and let your chest be open and see if you can soften your belly, taking a few full breaths deep into the torso, soft belly. And again I invite you to scan your life and sense we're wanting my body. mind is in some way a kind of prison where you know you get caught. It makes you smaller in some way. Some attachment to it could be in others' approval, attachment to having a certain relationship that's romantic, attachment to somebody changing, attachment to some recognition, work, something

to do with health, body. where do you get caught and take some moments to recognize just that it's wanting, whatever the fixation is, sense of story and the images that come up in your mind of what you're wanting and allow it to be there with wanting, it helps me often just to say this belongs. This is part of human nature, part of all nature, to want. Just an energy, let it belong. That'll help you to pause, give some space and it also gives you the possibility of making that you turn so you can begin to investigate some.

Sense the feeling of wanting in your body. You might sense if you're getting what you want. Imagine if you're getting what you want, what is it you get to feel and what does it really give you? This is tracing back desire. Whatever you're wanting, what does it give you if you get it? Is it relief? Is it a sense of no longer alone? There's a sense that then you can feel okay about yourself? Is it a temporary pleasure that makes you feel more alive? What does it give you if you get what you're wanting and see if you can feel in your body what it gives you? What is that wanting mind really wanting to feel? That's what you're trying to find

out. Deep in the inquiry, well if you have that feeling what does that give you? What does it really give you? Let's say you feel relieved or you don't feel bad about yourself anymore. You don't feel alone. What does that really give you then? And keep investigating, go wonder it. What is it you're really wanting to feel? And keep asking that question, What does that give me? And what's the deepest gift of getting what I want? What's truly this longing, longing for? Whatever the gift, whatever you're really longing for, feel it in your body.

What's it like to experience that? And isn't it true that what you're longing for is already here? You wouldn't be able to even touch into it if it wasn't already here. Perhaps you discover as you trace back, There's a longing for belonging and the feeling of belonging is warmth and openness and tenderness. It's here. Rilke writes, you see, I want a lot, perhaps I want everything, the darkness that comes

with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up. You have not grown old. and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret. For these last few moments, even in a completely fresh way you might ask your heart, what is it I really long for? What do I most long for?

And imagine experiencing what you're most longing for. What's the experience of it? Let go into what you imagine. Just be that experience. You have not grown old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret. Namaste and thank you for your attention. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list,

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