Tara Brach - Devotion: Grounds of a Path with Heart, Part 2

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

In this two-part series, we reflect on the power of devotion as a gateway to awakening that reconnects us with what we love most deeply. Together, we'll look at how prayer and heartfelt longing can open us to  the intrinsic experience of belonging we yearn for. Especially in these times of fear and division, cultivating our natural devotion helps us soften, remember our true nature, and realign with love.   In Part 2, Tara explores: Devotion as a living expression of our deep longing to belong—to love, to truth, to something larger than the small self. The power of prayer as a sacred bridge between our vulnerability and the grace of an awakened heart. The importance of conscious prayer—rooted in presence, sincerity, and a willingness to listen for the wisdom that guides us home. How the practices of longing, expressing, and receiving open us to grace, healing, and connection with all of life. How prayer becomes a devotional path—awakening our hearts, deepening compassion, and inspiring courageous action in the world.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome friends. Thank you for being here. This is our week two, it's a two-week series on devotion. And the big picture here is devotion is our felt sense of belonging. It's the reverence and love for something greater. whether it's the beloved or a sense of the mystery or divine or life itself. And a key expression of devotion is prayer.

It expresses our longing to realize and inhabit that larger belonging. So a personal share, I grew up, my family belonged to a Unitarian Church, and there was not much talk about devotion or the practice of prayer in my growing up years. When friend shared a story, he said I was brought up Unitarian. I heard the minister say, God, one time. He had come to our house and he said, oh God, I forgot my pipe. I loved hearing that. I mean, there's that question, do the U.S.

That's Unitarians ever pray in the answer, only when they think their candidate is going to lose an election. So I'm totally joking because humans, from all religions, from all ethnicities, political affiliations and on, humans around the globe pray. Huge numbers very consciously and daily and many others in a less formal way. But even before language our ancestors lifted their eyes to the stars, they knelt to the earth, they wept, they sang, they placed their hands on their hearts. And these gestures, of reverence or plea or gratitude, they're all forms of prayer from Meister Eckhart. If the only prayer you ever say in your life was thank you, it would be enough.

So I pray daily. It's a very conscious practice of prayer really, and I feel like it's a communicating from this human heart to spiritual heart space, my larger belonging, the larger truth of really what we are. And because it's very, very sincere, comes from a very sincere longing for love, for truth, there's a kind of humility, a porousness. And I find that in those moments, that sense of ego or self softens, the boundary softens. There's much less sense of separation. There's more of a sense of oneness. So, and of course it's to different degrees, but there is that feeling of merging with love light, with the boundless, with what's intrinsic beyond inner and outer. And I share this with you because when I talk about devotion, this homecoming, this sense of that larger

belonging is the space that guides us when we're aligned, when we're remembering, that guides our thoughts and words and actions in a way that makes a real difference in our own life and in the world. Naturally, there's regular forgetting. But this is the power of prayer because even if we're mechanical, because we have a sincere place in us that does long for love. for truth, it actually wakes up that longing in a way that carries us to belonging. So it feels like a really important time in the history of our world to be exploring devotion and prayer because the healing that we need collectively is a spiritual healing. We really need a collective remembrance of our belonging. There's no transformation that's possible unless more

and more of us deepen our devotion to awakening, deepen our devotion to living from love, to living from truth. So devotion often aroused in its expression of prayer, it's a way of staying true to what matters to us, especially in times when we're pulled to forgetting. It's a way of remembering. It strengthens our spiritual backbone, that courage to act. with compassion even as the world's burning. So my prayer is collectively that we remember the truth of our belonging, that we act on it in courageous ways that can bring some healing

to our world. Thank you, friends. Thank you for being on this path. Thank you for your good, bright, caring hearts. And I hope this serves you as you move forward. You know, before I speak, whether it's publicly or often in, you know, small groups or whatever, I usually have a silent prayer that I reflect on and sometimes different words, but the basic communication is may this in some way serve the awakening of our hearts. And I pray, the reason I do it, I've been doing it for as long as I can remember now in terms of speaking, is that in the moment that there's a prayer, I'm connecting with what most matters to me. You know, it's like I've contacted more consciously what I care about. So then I'm

speaking from it, which really matters to me. But there's a second reason, which is that I find that prayerfulness brings a quality of humility or the self-sense fades some. So it's more here we are together feeling, you know, and things flow more. It's not so much a self-here delivering what she thinks are good ideas about reality, you know. So there's this sense of remembering what matters and a little reduction of the selfing. of the egoic sense. And so what we're going to be exploring in this class, it's the second of two parts on devotional practices, practices that awaken the heart, is the power of prayer. And I think of prayer as a communication, like any communication, in the sense that it's

connecting us, we're communing. And in this case, prayer is a conscious. communication with enlarge beingness, however we perceive that. It's conscious communication with enlarge beingness and the blessing of it is that when we're really in a full sense of prayerfulness, there's a quality of grace that arises. The universe can flow through us more. So we'll practice and explore this together and I'd like to again remind you of John O'Donohue's very beautiful way of describing prayer. He says, Prayer is the voice of longing. It reaches outwards and inwards to unearth our ancient belonging.

It reaches outward and inward to unearth our ancient belonging. So that is the experience of grace, the sense of belonging to and being part of the flow, the unfolding universe that's here. And so I'll be using this metaphor of outward and inward, and I often think of it like a tree that when we're praying, our roots are going deep into the earthiness of our human longing, our yearning. We're going deep with those roots. And the deeper we go, the more we can reach out to this enlarge belonging, expressing and communicating and there's a third quality which is in that reaching out, there's a receptivity. So there's reaching in to touch the longing and expressing it out and listening.

So those are the three pieces that we're going to be going over in a more systematic way as we explore together. But first, there's a reason that prayer is a part of every spiritual and religious tradition I've run into. And that's because it's a universal that we humans intuit something larger than our ego itself. Some of us intuit in a sense of a very vague way and it's it's been described as that William James said, you know, that the first expression of religion is the cry help. There's some sense of there's got to be something more than this, this predicament's pretty scary, help, you know. So it's very vague to a very evolved sense

of that enlarged belonging is really the loving awareness that's our essence and we just are forgetting. We've just forgotten and gotten smaller living in our narratives and our stories. So what we're reaching out to is really the truth of what we are. That's the range. or more primitive, you know, something out there, help me, you know, to, we're really just trying to re-remember what we are. There's been a lot of research in the last two decades. Pew Research has described that I think it's more than half of all Americans pray daily. Another study said 85% said they prayed this week. So to me it's interesting, you know, what are we all praying about? What do we think we're praying to? How are we doing it?

It's just kind of interesting to shine a light on it. So I grew up Unitarian, and the Unitarians used to kind of goof on it and say that in our tradition, our prayer is, to whom it may concern. The Unitarians also say that Moses received the ten suggestions. It's very Unitarian. So, but sometimes the prayer, as you know, is very, very direct, very, very specific. And I heard one story of a three-year-old's prayer, and this is how this three-year-old was praying. He said, our father, who does art in heaven, Harold is his name.

Amen. So, always our prayers to whatever we intuit our sense. might be some source of comfort, our safety, our love. And it's as close as we can get to that in another story. And I love stories about children and prayer because it's kind of, some of the rappers are taken off. We get to see a little bit more of the innocence of it. And I might if we have time end with, I have a book I love of children's prayers that I'll, if I have time, I'll share from. But in one story, a little boy was really, really frightened during a powerful storm, and he kept crying out for his dad. And each time his father would get up and calm him down

and say, don't be scared. God is with you. Just reach out and trust that God is here. And it happened several times. And the last time, the boy finally said, I know God is with me, but right now I need someone with skin on. So again, There's a reason we pray and the reason is and it's a universal predicament that it's part of our evolutionary process to forget our belonging, to feel separate and to feel cut off. And that's our kind of universal human suffering that we live in a more contracted reality than the larger truth. And then we go around reinforcing it by

telling ourselves stories about what's wrong with us or what's wrong with others. And if you just in some way we're able to record the main, you know, the kind of narrative that goes on in the mind through the day, a lot of it is fear-based. You know, a lot of it's driven by a sense that around the corners there's going to be a problem and I've got to figure it out and I've got to be prepared and if I'm not prepared something terrible is going to happen. So there's a sense that we're tensing against what's around the corner and it's not so common that we can just relax and open to this moment. There's a sense of leaning ahead.

So there's some wisdom in us that knows that we're living in something contracted, that we're kind of in a bind of fear and it's a very self-centered bind. because if we again track those thoughts, the common denominator to all our thoughts is what? Mois. You know, we're at the center of the picture. We're the protagonist in all our stories and what we want that could be good that's going to happen has to do with me and what we're afraid of. I mean, it doesn't mean we don't have concern for others,

but we really are quite a draw in our own mental attentional field. So we reach out because something in us is trying to find our way to something larger. Does that make sense? So here is Rumi on prayer. In times of sudden danger most people call out, oh my God, why will they keep doing this if it didn't help? Only a fool keeps going back where nothing happens. The whole world lives within a safeguarding, fish inside,

waves, birds held in the sky, the elephant, the wolf, the lion as he hunts, the dragon, the ant, the wading snake, even the ground, the air, the water, every spark floating up from the fire, all subsist exist, are held in the divine. Nothing is ever alone for a single moment. All giving comes from there, no matter who you think you put out your open hand toward, it's that which gives. So we're exploring what I sometimes call conscious prayer, not all prayer is conscious and we're always praying in some way, we're always reaching and wanting and hoping that something will help us out. But this is wakeful prayer and what I'd like to do is start by reviewing some of the indicators of less wakeful prayer, with immature

versions of prayer, which we all also do. And I think of it, again, the sense of it's a, we're in relationship. We're in relationship with ourselves and each other and this enlarged being and how are we communicating. And so you'll sense that immature prayer is like just communications that aren't that evolved. So what is it? I mean, what do we notice with immature prayer? Well, one thing is mechanical recitation, right?

When it's just unmechanically or automatically and there's not a sense of presence where the roots have not gone down to contact the longing. So we're just going through the motions and we know in our relationships with each other, of course that happens, of course we're with each other and we, we, our persona's out and we're not tapped into the depth of our vulnerability or passion or we're just kind of going through the rigamarole, you know, saying the expected things. So that's mechanical recitations, a less evolved kind of prayer. And then another sign of less evolved prayer is when the fixations narrow.

And of course people joke about praying for finding a parking space, but we do that, okay? Now we can do it more consciously but we do it. But it's kind of like rather than that tree with its branches out, we're kind of like a lightning robber saying, I want this particular strike right now. I want to win the lottery or I want to have a certain person like me back or I get the raise or get into this, you know, get this new position or whatever it is. So again, it's not deep roots. It's just in the moment whatever our limbic system is wanting. Again, the story, I think every story has to do with children in it. So a family invites these guests to dinner and at the table that mom turns to her little six-year-old

daughter and says, dear, would you like to say the blessing tonight? And little girl says, well, I wouldn't know what to say. And the mom says, just say what you hear mommy say, sweetie. So the daughter takes a deep breath and bows her head and solemnly says, dear Lord, why the hell did I invite all these people to dinner? So so far we're talking about less evolved prayer. So it's, mechanical recitation, it's when it's a narrow fixation. We're praying for something really, it's egoic wanting. That's what's driving it. And then another sign of not conscious prayer is that there's not that listening quality. It's like we might be putting something out but there's not like in communications. We speak just the way we'd exhale but then we inhale. We take in

what's there. So it becomes not separate. We're entering a relationship where two become communed, right? That's what happens in real communication. Well, when there's prayer but not listening, we're not available for grace. So again, we're going through the steps here. We have to drop really in to feel the longing, what's there. You have to reach and express it in an authentic way and then listen. It takes practice because we have spent years communicating in less conscious ways with each other and with enlarged beingness. We just have.

So it's a training. And I want to say that again, prayer is a training and in many, many traditions, it's a very, it's an attentional training that's really power. and there's all sorts of science on it, what happens when we really, really get in touch and reach out from that place of being in touch. One of my favorite, the kind of line that comes back to me over and over again is the poet Hafeis, who says, ask the friend for love, ask him again, for I have found that every heart will get what it prays for most.

Ask the friend for love. The friend is really that enlarge belonging. Ask for love and ask for the depth that in you which really yearns for love. Ask again. For I have found that every heart will get what it prays for most. In the Buddhist tradition, in Buddhist psychology there's an understanding that whatever we most regularly think about, whatever you think about regularly, it's that to which our mind and our attention is inclined. This is all, this is neuroplasticity, whatever pattern we have, it gets, the grooves get deeper and deeper and it becomes more and more the inclination. So if our thoughts are how do we win or beat another person or impress somebody or how are we the victim and how do we let other people know

that we're right, whatever it is, then our whole biochemistry becomes really locked into that. and in a way we have separated from that channel of grace that's possible. So mature prayer is like creating a new circuitry in the heart mind, where we begin to remember what most matters and have that be what's moving through our mind and heart more and more. And I've given a few times what for me is a very useful, way to think about it with the idea of dipping cloth into this indigo dye. That every time you did, the way you dye cloth is that you dip it into the vat of indigo dye and when you

bring it up it's very rich, beautiful color, but then very quickly it fades. So you have to dip it in again and it comes out and it's rich and you think ah but it fades but each time it fades to a little bit less of a fade than the last time, each, you know, the other, and the In other words, each time it's getting more saturated until after a while it holds the color. And it's that way with prayer and with meditation that every time you dip into presence and every time you dip into prayerfulness, that becomes more and more available. It more and more and more informs your life. More and more of you gets to live from that place.

So we're going to take the three pieces now and look at the more close. closely and then practice a little. Okay? So the first piece is inward. How do we begin prayer? And many of you if you're practicing the meditations with me know that at the beginning we often reflect on aspiration, which is a form of prayer. And the challenge is that the more you're in touch with your aspiration, the more it guides what happens and yet it takes a certain amount of presence to get in touch. So if I asked you your aspiration at the beginning of a meditation, it would be less full and alive and deep than if I asked you at the end of a meditation. Now, it's still useful, but the point here is that the more you come into

presence, and when I say presence in embodied presence, the more you feeling yourself from the inside out sitting here and feeling your heart and feeling the state of your heart, the more you'll be able to touch into the longing that's most sincere to you. So the first step in prayer really is to come into as much presence as possible and really contact whatever vulnerability or yearning or fear or aliveness is in the heart area. It really has to do with learning to stay. If we can't stay long enough to feel our hearts, we can't pray from a sense of real longing. I'll give you an example. Some years back, a man I was working with, he had married his high school sweetheart and after they divorced, he

was always with somebody and the relationships would fail because in some way he would become possessive and jealous and kind of demanding and they'd fall apart. So, when we talked about it, I suggested that he take a pause from being in relationship so that he could kind of find out a little more of what's going on. And he very quickly found out that not being in relationship brought up a very primal sense of anxiety, very kind of existential, like something's really wrong here. He had been in some way linked with someone for so long. It was very disturbing to him.

became restless, he started drinking more beer, eating more food, he hadn't been alone. So the preparation for prayer for him was just stay. Don't hook into others, see if even those other false refuges you can chill out on some so you can feel what's really here. What are you running away from? And I feel like that's a really important question. If you want to pray, you have to be able to ask, what am I running away from? It'll help you. And for him, what he was running away from was a feeling of loneliness that was like a kind of anguish. Now he was getting closer, okay? He was staying enough to feel the loneliness.

And it's a really important place. When I am working with somebody or with myself and hit loneliness, that's like, oh, okay, now we're getting right into the real heart of the heart. So for him, I started asking, you know, well, inside that loneliness, what's going on? He said, well, there's just this profound urge to be part of something. And I said, imagine it. What do you want to be a part of? And it became very clear to him. I mean, he had the language of God. I want to feel that I'm held in some way by God.

I want to belong to God. I want to belong to what's here. And he had this sense of, I said, well, what would it be like of a kind of peacefulness and light where he could absolutely relax and let go? He said, if I don't feel that I have to defend myself, I could absolutely let go. Now let me read you these words from the poet Hafez because they really speak to what is going on here in this story.

He says, don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need of God absolutely clear. We have a longing to belong. In a way you can think of it either we're in the realization of belonging in that oneness and communion and if we're not then there's going to be a longing to belong because we have a longing to realize the truth of what we are which is not separate. That's the longing.

And loneliness is a sign of us getting closer to the rawness and realness of that longing. Let it cut more deep. So that's the beginning of the roots going down that we stop running away. We stay, we go into the rawness and we sense that longing. Because only if you sense the rawness of the longing, can you then reach out from that longing in a way that gives prayer its power. I want to check in. You can just either not or just hold absolutely still.

Does this making sense as I'm speaking right now? Okay. So we go from tapping in so we're feeling the longing to we need to express it. Because it's really important to express, to inhabit and express it. And it can be in a wordless yearning but felt as if we're like bringing it in, it can be like we're offering it into an enlarge belonging, we're surrendering it into it, or we're asking, whatever, there are many different versions of it, it can be a mental whisper, but it's infused with a felt sense this expressing.

And it helps to have your body in a posture that has to do with expressing being in communication with. Now the traditional posture is palms together and the yogis will say because it, you know, in terms of chakras, it centers the energy at the heart chakra, it allows the full circulation with the palms touching of energy of prana. posture has an effect. I have to tell you that I saw this two insects talking and one of them is saying, I don't know why everyone calls me a praying mantis, actually I'm agnostic. Okay, we'll put that one aside, that I can speak for myself that I have experimented a lot

with postures of embodying prayer and feeling the power of it. And for me, there are times that just bowing my head and having my palms together is, it's like all I have to do to, in some way, send some back into communication with something larger. Just that. And it's not like, oh, this pathetic little ego is subjugating. It's none of that stuff. It's more this recognition. There's something more than this little world I've been living in. Okay?

So it can be quite beautiful. Sometimes I'll bow like this. Sometimes I, it's kind of an offering. It's like saying, may all these narratives and ideas and beliefs, I'm just handing it over to the largeness that's here, not holding on to it, not owning it so much. One of my inspirations in the realm of prayer is, I've mentioned him already, is John O'Donohue. a book called Eternal Echoes. And if you can see the book, I've got a lot of little tabs there. He writes beautifully and the subtitle of Eternal Echoes is exploring our yearning to belong. So if prayer

is something that you want to explore more, he's Catholic, writer, mystic, philosopher, poet, no longer alive recently, about 10 years ago died. I'm going to read you just one. one piece from it. This is from the chapter, Prayer, a bridge between longing and belonging. One of the most tender images is the human person at prayer. When the body gathers itself before the divine, a stillness deepens. The blurring din of distraction seizes, and the deeper tranquility within the heart envelops the body. To see people at prayer is a touching site. For a while, they've become unmoored from the grip of society, work, and role. It's as if they've chosen to enter into a secret belonging carried within the soul. They rest in that inner temple,

impervious to outer control or claiming. A person at prayer also evokes a sense of vulnerability and fragility. Their prayer reminds us that we are mere guests on the earth, pilgrims who always walk on unsteady ground, carrying in earthen vessels multitudes of longing. To be gathered in prayer is appropriate. It is a gracious, reverential, and receptive gesture. It states that at the threshold of each moment, the gift of wrath and blessing come across to embrace us. So expressing, we express through our words,

or through our wordless yearning, through our posture. And again, this is relationship. The posture and the expressing is to link us more fully into this communion with something larger than the small self. We often get caught in thinking that's what we are. It's a remembrance. To give you an example of the power of this, of what happens when we tap in and then express,

and then receive. I thought I'd share a story of a man. This is another story of a man I'd work with some years back. He's a recovered alcoholic. He had divorced his wife when his son was still young and he was still drinking and he tried to maintain contact with his son as he grew up but there was some estrangement and he could, over the years he could see the result of his drinking, the impact that he had. it had, you know, how his temper and his instability, it affected his son, and his son suffered from anxiety and depression. So, there was years of kind of superficial contact, even when his son and his wife had a child, he stayed in touch with, or two, they actually had twins, he stayed

in touch with them, but he always felt the sense of distance like he had really blown it, and there's no way that he could ever be forgiven. And he had this sense that, he had this sense that even if they forgave him, it couldn't make up for the damage that he had done. So, he had this core feeling of badness and guilt that he was living with. And so as we explored things, he realized that he in some way needed to make peace with that core sense of imperfection, because it was just, it was basically the prison he was living in. I'm a bad person, I blew it, I can't be close with other people that I love. And he couldn't forgive himself.

So he really sensed that there had to be something larger that he could feel a sense of mercy from. So he began to pray, and his prayer was really a bit of what I described of kind of offering it out. He would feel the sense of guilt and I'm bad and I've kind of ruined other people. and he'd take it all as if he's taken two hands and kind of offered, he'd say, God, universe, please hold all of this. Please may this be held and may it be held in forgiveness and in mercy. That was his practice over and over again.

And the more he did it, the more he became sincere. And by that, I mean really touching the feeling of the angst and the shame, but really sensing, please, may there be something larger that can hold this. So he developed a relationship with the something larger, just through the action. Initially, he had intuited it as possible, but he didn't quite believe in it. But the more he did it, the more it actually came a lie of that relationship because that's what happens with prayer. You start and it's mechanical and you're not dropping in so deep and you're awkward

and it feels like you're going through the motions. But in time, the truth of your own heart and sincerity start to really come through. That's the beauty of it. So, he would do this process and he started sensing more and more a kind of lightness and space. Instead of that murky hole of darkness, there was just more space. It was just like he was part of something larger. And he noticed that with his son and his wife, there was a little bit of that there was more light conversation and so on and he described his visits and that one visit he brought a sprouter for the children and they started watching you know how you can make all sorts of mong bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts you know this some of you might know these sprouters

and he the children would watch them grow and then he brought greens from his garden one time and home baked bread and so he started you know just engaging more with them and one and at one point they invited him for a meal, he had always not stayed, but he stayed and after the children went to bed, he had his first real conversation with his son and he actually said, you know, I failed you and I can't make it up, but I love you, I love your wife, I love your children, and I hope you'll accept me back into your life. And what had happened was he had felt himself acceptable to be able to do that. That process of prayer, he had enough of a belonging to a larger sense of being that he could at least reach out in that way in his human relationships.

Well, just so you know what happened, his son was speechless and he kind of got afraid because he saw his son kind of like frozen and it was mostly shocked. But then his son had tears. and started weeping. And basically, his son said, I felt like you were still rejecting me. I mean, in some way it was a feeling like his aloofness that came from shame was still interpreted as a rejection, which is what happens. We're so inclined to assume people are rejecting us when they're really rejecting themselves. But he was able to interrupt the pattern through prayer. And that's, just to say, it wasn't like, I mean, they hugged and they wept and it took a while. But that's the possibility that we can become intimate with ourselves and each other.

And prayer is one of the vehicles that we start this process of communicating. So there's these three pieces tapping into the yearning, reaching out. And then this receptivity where we're willing to take in, for this man, he had to take in some sense of forgiveness or being forgiven. The verse from Rumi is so beautiful. Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground, be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. You've been stony for too many years.

Try something different. Surrender. So prayers in a way of surrendering. It's saying this little self isn't the whole deal and I'm surrendering this little self into something larger. There are many different forms of prayer. One that I find is a very beautiful template for mature prayers described as the bodhisattva aspiration. Bodhi means awaken, satva means being.

And the bodhisattva aspiration actually has two parts. And the first part is, may whatever is arising, whatever it is, whatever circumstances are here, may this serve to awaken this heart. So, what it's saying is may whatever is happening and you really touch into what it's happening, may whatever it is serve to awaken this heart, it's not saying may whatever's happening, come out with this resolution. You see what I'm saying? It's not a narrow fixation.

It's may whatever is happening and we have to open to it. it, may it serve the awakening of this heart. And there's a second part too. And may this awakening be of benefit to all beings everywhere. So it doesn't only open, it really opens with that wisdom that knows that we're not healing and freeing a separate self. It's like an even deeper surrendering. What we're getting is that the prayer is really for this whole living web.

But we start with the life that's right here. May whatever's arising awaken this heart and may this awakening serve all beings everywhere. So we're going to, when we close in just a few minutes, we'll explore that together because it's, to me it's one of those prayers that the more we practice it, the more quickly and immediately anything that goes on shifts from being owned by an egoic self and a problem. of this egoic self as a portal to an awakening beyond the egoic self. It's very powerful.

But just to say that the prayer naturally, an authentic prayer will naturally ripple out. Because as soon as we begin to feel that humility and that enlarge belonging, there's no limit to how large it is. When a friend's mom died of, recently. She would say loving prayers for others in each day, each night before she go to bed, she spent an hour and she'd include everybody she could think of, like hundreds of people she'd say prayers for and that was her practice and she was very, very authentic with it. I mean, she just felt related to everybody and she died really, really peacefully. Because if you know your belonging, there's nothing to fear. If you know,

that the essence of what you are is that field of love and of presence, then where can you go? And that doesn't mean there's not pain and loss and fear and grief that stuff can happen, but deep down there's an okayness because you belong. So in a way, one way of describing the theme here is that the more we realize our belonging, the more unnatural grace arises. Grace is the kind of blessings, the blessings of love and freedom because we're available. It's like when we've let go of that separateness, it all can come flowing through the whole intelligence and love of the universe can flow through us because there's not

that selfness blocking the way. Grace can flow through and then we can live from that. You know, I was just a couple of days ago, as many of you have, I'm sure, I was listening to Obama's eulogy when he was down in Charleston. How many of you listened to that? Can I see by? Yeah. Okay. So powerful and I was just sensing the power of it and the power that came from that

quality of prayerfulness where he was just, you know, kind of described the reservoir of goodness. I love that. This beloved, that we tap that grace. So there's this quality of prayerfulness that taps that grace. And then of course, then we have to be active. So the idea is that when we care, when we care about harm, when we care about suffering, we first feel our prayerfulness, you know, may this serve awakening.

May the serve awakening. and it's from that humility and openness and tenderness that this kind of intelligence was through us that we then act. Prayer is not passive. Prayer actually creates the quality of heartfelt presence that allows us to act in ways they can really be healing. I just want to make that clear. And I felt that with Obama's talk that, you know, it was very prayerful and, you know, not to be passive. and what's happened this week? Seven predominantly black churches in the South have been burned down. How can we respond?

Can we let our roots go deep so we can feel the pain of that? Like let ourselves be touched by the pain of hatred and violence? Can we feel our longing? Our longing made this awaken us. Can more of us care? Can we take this in and let our, ourselves be touched and cared. You know, it's like, can we awaken? Can we have that receptivity to sense really what wants to happen through us? And can we act? Because grace, and this, I thought

a pommet did this beautifully, he says, we manifest and deserve that grace through our actions. We need to live from the wisdom and compassion that flows through us, let it manifest. Thus far we've talked primarily about the kind of prayer that comes from the roots into the place of where we feel that deep yearning. There is also a way that we go deep roots in and feel a profound gratitude. I mean, there's probably not one of you here that hasn't in some way felt that sense of the beauty and the goodness and the love that you're grateful for in your life. And so that's another expression of prayer.

We go deep into that pool of gratitude and we express it. And that's another beautiful way of really manifesting the devotional heart. So one of my favorite stories, it's one of my closing stories before we practice, Kabir, not the poet Kabir but another Kabir, was a shoemaker and as he worked he always repeated this mantra, Ram, Ram, Ram, which is another word for God or the sacred or the divine. And he did this day in and day out for I think about 20 years or so, and then one day Ram appeared. You've been saying Ram, Ram, Ram said. So Kabir said, who are you? And Ram said, well, why are you here? And then Kabir said, well, why am I here? You've been calling me for years. Now I've come. What do you want?

And Kabir said, well, I don't want anything. And Ram said, what? You know, why have you been repeating my name all these years? And Kabir's response was, I just love repeating your name. And so, for the years to come, wherever Kabir would go, he'd be followed by Ram and the sound, Kabir, Kabir, Kabir. You know, you already pray. You pray in less awake ways and sometimes more awake ways. And so the hope in exploring this together tonight,

is that we leave with a little more intention to make it conscious and to recognize like any attentional training, any form of meditation, this can wake up our hearts in a way to make this available to grace. We are cultivating a communication in a Buddhist terminology might be more with our own Buddha nature, with our own awakened cell, Christian might be with God, you know, with nature, however you want to think of it, but with a larger sense of what we are. So I'd like to close with a little bit of practice as I promised. Yeah, let's take a few moments to sit in a way that is comfortable. And as I described earlier with the practice of prayer, the beginning is to come and just

stillness and be here, just be here. You might feel the sensations of your sitting posture, feeling the movement of the breath, and feeling your heart, letting yourself connect with the state of your heart right this moment. It might feel tender and open or tight, numb, fearful, excited. There may be a sweetness, there may be a defended, You might, as you listen to your heart sense, if there's anything going on in your life right now that is very challenging that you feel like you're in some way not wanting to be with, not wanting to really feel something that's difficult for you. And again with that image of a tree, a sense of a difficult situation and sense the feelings

that come up and what makes it so difficult, what you're afraid of, what loss is involved perhaps, so you begin to let yourself send down those roots into the earth of your body to feel what's there, to feel the fear or the hurt, the anger, the grief. It's very optional if you'd like to assume a posture of prayer, if you'd like to gently bring your palms together, explore, you know, the very tender. or light touch of the hands together and just to feel your forehead bowed of it, just to sense that you're really tapping into what's here and bringing it into communication with your highest being.

And to explore this bodhisattv aspiration as you feel really the vulnerability or rawness of what's difficult, to sense that simple prayer may this serve to awaken my heart, my mind, my being. And if you have different language for it, please feel free to put in whatever feels true for you and perhaps there's a different prayer that wants to be whispered. And it helps to repeat your prayer, a soft mental whisper with as much sincerity as you can connect with,

to sense with the bowed head and the, felt sense of that, that you're really calling on the highest truth, the most tender love of your being, may this serve to awaken? And you might even sense it as an inquiry, how may this serve to awaken me? How may this situation? So you're really listening, feeling into. You might let the ripples widen out to sense and may whatever awakening unfolds, may this be of benefit to others. May it ripple out endlessly. Just to feel yourself part of this living web. May our awakening be part of the awakening of all beings. May it serve. As you're ready to just relax your hands and just in a receptive way, just feel your heart, feel your presence,

sense the field, the heart space that's here. Relax and just inhabit that. We close with the words of Hefece. Ask the friend for love. Ask them again. For I have found that every heart will get what it prays foremost. Namaste and thank you.