Tara Brach - "Good Othering" – Helping Each Other Trust the Gold (2020-12-23)

Episode Date: December 25, 2020

"Good Othering" – Helping Each Other Trust the Gold (2020-12-23) - One of the great gifts we can offer is being a mirror of goodness, reminding one another that we can trust our essential awareness, light and love. Because our conditioning is to fixate on flaws, "good othering" takes intention and practice. This talk explores how we can develop the habit of seeing goodness, and importantly, learn to communicate our appreciation and love to others.

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'd like to begin this evening referring to the probably greatest myth in our Western world where we got kicked out of the garden because we were basically impure and bad. There's a wonderful story of a little boy who was leafing through the big old family Bible and a leaf, pressed leaf, fill out actually as he was looking through it and he got really excited and he ran to his mom waving the leaf saying,

Mama, mama, I found Adam's suit. And I love that. Because, you know, there it is. You know, we're covering over right from the very start. and of course this mythology leads to mistrusting our natural being it leads to contorting ourselves

to trying to fit our idea of what it means to be a good person so we can belong again and of course there are some exceptions not everyone feels contorted another little story little boy was overheard praying

Lord if you can't make me a better boy don't worry about it I'm having a real good time as I am. So the Old Testament's teachings really on sin and evil are an expression of the primitive brain. You can think of most metaphysics, most philosophy, is coming from different parts of our brain in terms of evolution. And the Old Testament, especially compared to the New Testament,

was pretty much the part of the brain that felt separate, and identified with aggression and identified with in some way selfishness or fear and so that generated this basic myth that we're bad that we can't be trusted and it goes through history

you can see this philosopher John Hobbs he says the life of man is solitary poor nasty brutish and short that's a lot of fun right What a way to live a life. So I'm bringing this up because this view of basic badness of fundamental evil has affected governments and has affected economies

and has affected really the unfolding of human history and we can see it alive and well today and how it's driving what I described in the last couple of classes that term of this culture of contempt. this culture of contempt, where there's so much dividedness and there's so much othering and real cruelty to the most vulnerable. That's that primitive brain, that sense of basic badness that makes us bad other. And it continues in a personal way in our psyche so we can see it that to the degree we

mistrust ourselves, we're going to mistrust others and it's going to be very hard to be intimate with others, it's going to shape our relationships, it's going to shape our political views, it's going to shape the experience of how we work and how creative we are and our happiness. If we feel mistrust of ourselves and others, it's very hard to be at peace. In the last two classes I focused on the suffering of this and how it takes one of its primary expressions is making others bad and also making ourselves bad and how that proliferates. And then I explored how we can use presence and mindfulness and compassion to begin to wake up out of that bad othering.

And I'd actually like to continue in this class but take a different route or pathway tonight. And this is another way of evolving out of that dominance, that limbic dominance. of mistrust and it's through the practice of good othering. This is going to be what we're going to focus on, how we develop a capacity for good othering. It's basically intentionally remembering each other's goodness. That's really what it comes down to. And it nourishes a very different mythology that instead of feeling like we were in some way kicked out of the garden and we're in the red and we're not okay,

it nourishes the mythology that says, to me this is more of an understanding than a mythology is that we are the garden. We can't be kicked out. We can have an experience of feeling kicked out, but there's an innate belonging, that we are the reality itself, the awareness itself. And Thomas Merton puts it this way, he says, life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or fable, it is true. This is a very different way of understanding. And it's really, I think, it's the understanding that can bring us to planetary healing.

If we can learn to look around and see the sacredness of life and have a reverence for life, that's the hope. Many of you have heard of Rachel Naomi Raman, who's a wise woman, Dr. Healer, and she describes in one of her books, I think it's my grandfather's blessings, the term, and this is a Jewish term, Takun Olam,

and Takun Olam is the dedication to healing the world. And this is how that creation story goes. In the beginning of creation, something happened, original light of the universe was shattered into countless pieces. It lodged as shards inside every aspect of the creation. And the highest human calling is to look for this light, to point at it when we see it, to gather it up, to see it, reflect it, pay attention to it, and in so doing, we repair the world. So this is a calling. And Rachel says it's an important and empowering

one because it lets us know that every single one of us, no matter how frail or flawed or imperfect we are, that no matter how we feel about ourselves, we have exactly what's needed to be part of that healing, which is this capacity to see the light and the goodness, to look for it, to remember it, to collect it, it's part of the healing. So we look forward in our friends and we look for it in our children and we look for it in the trees and in the vulnerable being that needs our help and in this planet that needs our protection. We look for it. So you might think for yourself, what happens to you when you encounter someone and you actually sense the lighter goodness in them? When someone's doing a good deed, when someone is being

kind or generous or is lit up in some way, a child or just a gentle being, what happens when you see that? And for most of us there is a kind of warmth that spreads through us, a feeling of goodness and the Buddhists call it loving-kindness, that when we see the goodness we start feeling this warmth of loving-kindness and it's possible to train ourselves to see it more. So there's a story I saw in the newspaper. This took place in New Delhi in a train station and apparently a monkey got electrocuted

and it fell between the tracks. It touched some high-tension wire and it fell between the tracks in this train station. And another monkey, some companion of his, came to rescue that monkey and it was all captured on cameras. So you could see him live, lifting the other monkey body and shaking it and dipping it into a mud puddle and let's

see what else, biting its head and skin, you know, just working until the hurt monkey regained consciousness and began moving again. And so crowds of people were watching this and there's a sense as you can imagine of this is goodness. When we see a being, help another being, that's goodness. It deepens our trust in our world to see it. So the fear message from the primitive brain is you're kicked out of the garden. Something's wrong with you, something's wrong with others.

And the message from our awake, integrated heart mind is you are the garden, you belong to the garden. So the question is, you know, if you really sense it in terms of the perennial philosophy, What the message is on belonging to the garden is really that every one of us has Buddha nature. Every one of us has the divine nature of God or whatever word we want to put in there, the light, the spirit, it's in every one of us. And of course we have unique body mind so it shines through in different ways. So the big inquiry is what stops us from seeing that?

How can we go through life day after day in this kind of ego bubble, and see others as other ego bubbles and not see that goodness. How come it's not our habit? And one of the ways I often go around describing it to myself is that life is challenging and we get born into it. It's kind of like we develop this space suit, that's our ego, which is all the different strategies of getting approval and avoiding criticism and going for what we want and trying to control things.

And we all have this space suit that does that. And you can think of it like that anonymous saying everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Like everybody's got their spacesuit and some are way more, you know, scratches and, you know, wounds in different ways than others. But we all have them. And we get identified with our spacesuits with the, addictive qualities of our spacesuit or the spacesuit that's trying to be charming and intelligent or a space suit that feels inferior. And we get attached and identified to our spacesuit. And the more our spacesuit is driven by grasping and fear, the more that identity gets hardened.

And the harder it is to see other people beyond their spacesuit. In other words, the more we get identify with our space suit and forget the awareness and love that's here, the harder it is to see beyond other people's ego spacesuits. Does that make sense? When we're caught in our space suit ego self, it's hard to see beyond the others. I often talk about it in terms of that statue of the Buddha where they discovered the covering of plaster clay but it was over a golden, solid golden Buddha, but the covering was put on to protect the statue through difficult years.

And the sad thing is that we get identified with the covering, with the spacesuit, and we forget the gold, we forget the goodness. We come to mistrust ourselves and others. One of the grade philosophers, Martin Bueber, describes our relationships and he describes it how if we're identified with the ego self, you know, I'm... I'm the aggressive self or the selfish self or the self that's always trying to, is always the ambitious or I'm the whatever, then we're going to relate to others. It's going to be I to it.

Others are going to be objects to us. We're just going to see their spacesuit. But he says when you remember the gold or remember really your eternal nature, when you remember the light, then it's I bow. because whoever you look at, you can sense the thou, the light, the eternal essence, divine essence that's living through them. So part of what we're exploring in this class is how to make the shift from an ego to ego relationship where we're feeling caught in our egos and that's all we're seeing in others

to that eye, thou, where we're really seeing the cause, where we're really seeing the gold and helping each other remember it. We learn who we are. We learn to identify with our spacesuit cell through a number of ways, and some of it's through our society, and some of it's through our genetics, and a lot of it is through the parents, our caregivers that bring forward the messages of the society. So we get deeply imprinted. They tell us you're this kind of a space suit. You know, this is your good qualities, this is your bad qualities and we come out with a good self, bad self. And some of you might remember Jules Fifer who, he did it really well, a cartoonist, he shows a guy sitting there pensively and he's thinking and he's saying,

I inherit my father's way of thinking and attitude about things. Then the next frame, I inherited my father's love of movement and dancing and athletics. The next frame, I inherited my father's style and sense of moving through the world and the last frame, and I inherited my mother's contempt from my father. You know, you get the whole thing, which is family, you know, we get that and if you identify with your family, well, one wise teacher said it this way, that's only on my parents' side, you know, right? So that's who you are.

So, just to note that we internalize the messages of what they thought was good and we internalize what they thought was not good. And the good self keeps us just as far from the gold sometimes as the bad self. Because when the good self says, oh, you're really so smart or so pretty or so athletic, then we hit your identity to that. But then we have to keep on proving that thing. And we don't feel the deep security of knowing the essence of who we are. it's truly golden. Okay?

So let's do a little reflection here. Let's pause together. And so you can get a little bit of kind of more connected to, okay, what are the messages you took in? And this is the time you might close your eyes and take a few full breaths and bring yourself into presence. And imagine that you're a young child, maybe four, five, six years old, in a room that you perhaps spend a lot of time with your family or with whoever you grew up with. And if it's

easier to think of yourself a seven, eight or nine, that's fine too, but young. And imagine yourself with your parents or caregivers in a familiar room. Both of them are there, you are too, you're either sitting or standing, but since you can see both of their faces, and maybe there weren't two, it might have been you grew up with a single parent, foster parents, whatever, but just see who would have been there. I'm assuming to, because I'm going to start with one at a time, just look at that person's eyes looking at you. And if you could sense a message coming through those eyes, how do they want you to be different? In other words, what don't they what are they disapprove of or what are they critical of?

And what do they like? What are they approving of? What are they praise? Take your time, see it through one's eyes and if there are two, both eyes, both of their eyes. What are they disapproving of? What are they like? And you might include in a sense where either of them, if there's two or one, sing

deeper, seeing the thou, and sensing in yourself, what if you carried over the years? What's the imprint? What's your identity, your space suit identity of the good self or bad cell? For some you might notice that you've fixated on the flaws, the stories you tell yourself have to do the what's wrong. You may also notice you fixate on what's inflated, the good cell. Then you might ask yourself, is there a trusting of basic goodness of that light, the shard in that myth of light that's in each of us, the light of awareness, the warmth of heart,

is your trust? Just noticing it for now. Keep that with you and you can keep on reflecting on this and just sensing. It is very, very powerful to be aware of how. how we're identifying, to the degree we're identifying with surface qualities, to the degree that there may be a sense really of that goodness, it's important. You can keep your eyes closed if you like or you might want to open them. As I mentioned, one of the big, big forces that shapes our sense of our goodness is societal

and very much affected, our sense of our values very much impacted by our very much impacted by societal biases, including biases around race, religion, socioeconomic and onward. Very quickly with those biases it becomes I and it, the other becomes an unreal other. And I now speak as a white person, we might think we're colorblind, but many are beginning to become aware of just how deep the conditioning is to sort for racial difference and of devalue. And what happens is then it blocks a true experience of our own goodness and it impacts also who we judge. So I wanted to share a story on this of one woman facing the impact of social bias. Am I gorgeous, my child asks, drawing the word out like puff taffy? Yes, I say you are.

The pink and teal dress is probably made of highly flammable material, some chemist's approximation of something in satin, pudgy fingers decorated with pink polish, trace the sequence. I love this, a pair of bubble gum pink wings flaps softly, little feet dance and sparkly red slippers. I'm just like a real princess. Yes, I say you are. Thick blonde hair, blue eyes, rosy cheeks, flawless skin.

This child is the American epitome of beauty. This child, my son. son. He's four years old and prefers to wear dresses. Maybe it's a face, maybe not. Even as I wonder how I produce such an angelic-looking creature, I wish he would put on some pants and go back to playing with toy tractors not because it matters to me, it doesn't, but because I'm already hearing in my head the name-calling he'll face in kindergarten. Many adults already seem a bit disturbed by the dresses. Strangers utter awkward apologies when they realize he's not female. This culture wants little boys to dream only of baseball trucks and trains.

This culture has no room for little boys who want to be gorgeous. He picks up a parasol, a neighbor gave him, and opens it jauntily over her shoulder. Am I beautiful, he asks? I sweep him into my arms and plant a kiss on his cheek, always. So I share this because for this woman, such awareness of how much much, this dear innocent little being is going to face in this society because of bias, it's going to pull him or her or them away from belonging to the garden, from trusting their belonging to the garden.

Does that make sense? It's so thick in our culture. So we have to wake up to it. One woman describes hers this way. She describes, for the last 15 minutes I've been walking down 7th Avenue in Manhattan evaluating every woman in terms of whether they're fatter or thinner than I am. Did I say 15 minutes? I mean 15 years.

That's a prison. Takes us away from the essence, the sense of how our body should be. So, some parents were having a very difficult time with their son who was in his early 20s, actually local in this area. He had dropped out of college, he was living at home, had some learning disabilities and he just wasn't able to find his niche. And so they were both very, very afraid that he was really going to... And he was feeling very self-conscious about being at home and very insecure.

of his future so they were worried along with them and trying to give them good ideas and very anxious. So they came to class one night and they told me what was going on and the mother asked me, well what do you think I should do? Should I surround him with white light? And I said you could do that but how about this and I asked them, I asked both of them her and her husband, tell me what you love about him. And it was kind of lit up and she said oh well

you know, he's totally the kindest person you will ever meet. He's completely generous and he's also got a real mischievous streak. He's a lot of fun. And dad said, he's a creative guy, he's a really creative guy, you know. So they're kind of telling me, I said, okay, you're a practice and this is the meta practice, the loving kindness practice, every day when you meditate, they meditated, take some time to bring him to mind and remember and appreciate him what you love, just that. So I saw them about a month or a month and a half later and

they were much lighter. In fact they said, you know, he's volunteering now, he's doing some video work for a non-profit and you know, he's doing better and things had lightened up. And as it turned out he actually, that became more than a niche, he's, he does video now. But what happened to them was was, they began reflecting on what they loved and appreciated about him. They lightened up and felt a little more confidence in the gold living through him. He started feeling better about himself and things spiraled out. How many of us, and you don't have to raise your hand, but as parents have fixated on the floss. Since I'm up front, I'll raise my hand, but I know

what it's like raising my son. I'm still, you know, it's my tendency. see, my first reflex is to look at what might be wrong or going wrong. We need to remember the light and the gold and remind each other of it because we're mirrors for each other. It really makes a difference. So the good news is even though we have a negativity bias to look at each other, see the space suit and see the flaws, we can train our attention. This is neuroplasticity and we can evolve our own.

our consciousness this way, by purposely good othering. So we're going to talk about how we do it. The motivation for us to do it is that we can really see now in our society and most of us in our lives when we're bad othering we're not happy and when we're bad othered we're not happy. In this wise cartoon the psychiatrist has a patient, the patient's a dog and the dog saying, it's right on my fence, beware of dog. How is that supposed to make me feel?

Bad mirroring. And then the other motivation for good othering is when we see the power and the effect of when we good other. And in this cartoon, a man's on a psychiatrist's couch and the psychiatrist is saying, go home and let your dog look your face. Dog slive is the most effective self-esteem medication you can get without a prescription. I think every one of us has seen the power of it, of good othering. My first immodel and my consciousness of good othering and the power of it was a supervisor.

I had a clinical supervisor when I was doing my doctor in psychology. and his name was Rob and he worked with a lot of us, you know, younger psychologists, and he was, what was so amazing about him, with his patients and with us as his, you know, people who was supervising, is that he had a very, very bright mind.

He could see the patterns and you could see how we'd get caught in, you know, shadowy stuck places. So he didn't miss any of that. But he so authentic, ironically appreciated the goodness in others and let them know that he created this field of safety in a sense that we could trust ourselves that was just beautiful. And each one of us knows that when somebody has done that for us, has seen us, has seen past the mask, has seen our goodness, it helps us see ourselves.

the small ways day by day. Just before I left here for class, I got an email from a high school friend I haven't seen for a really long time. And it was a total good othering email. You know, she just said really nice things to me and I could feel a glow in my body. It was very physical. It's healing to good other people. Share a story with you that I heard many years ago that has stayed with me. This is a story about a Catholic nun who's a teacher. She actually wrote the story, and so that's where I got it. She taught in a very small Catholic school

where you actually could follow the students right through to high school, teaching them in different things. And so she got to know them very well, and she was particularly fond of one of her students, a young man named Mark, who was very mischievous. He was totally respectful, but he was full of fun. So she had him in grammar school, and then later on he was in one of her classes when she was teaching math in high school.

And she remembers that this class had a very difficult season, and the math was hard, and they were kind of at each other and at themselves, intense and edgy. And one Friday she had them put everything aside, and she had them write a list of the names of the other students in the class, and next to each person, she had to each person, and she asked them to write the nicest things that came to mind about them. And so she took the list and she cut them up and she gave the next week she gave each student

the list of the things that others had said about them. And she said she was really surprised and touched at what happened to the mood of the class like people, she heard people mumbling, wow, I never thought that mattered to anyone and wow, they really like that, you know. So they didn't mention the papers anymore. but there's more harmony in the group and things went on in that class of students graduated seniors and several years after they graduated she was returning from a trip herself and her her parents let her know the sad news that one student Mark had been killed in Vietnam.

Let you know how long ago the story was. She went to the funeral and she saw all the classmates, Mark's classmates were there And at one point, Mark's father took her aside and now I'll read you. He said, I want to show you something. He took a wallet out of his pocket. They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it. And opening the bellfold, they carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper

that it obviously been taped, folded, and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones in which I had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him. Thank you so much for doing that Mark's mother said. As you can tell, Mark treasured it. Mark's classmates were gathering around us. Charlie smiled rather sheberishly and said, I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home.

Chuck's wife says, Chuck asked me to put this in our wedding album. I have mine too, Marilyn said. It's in my diary. Then Vicky, another classmate, reached right there and then into her pocketbook and took out her wallet and showed her worn and fuzzled list. I carry this with me all the time.

I think we all saved our lists. And that's when I finally sat down and cried. The heart breaks open when we let in the goodness of other people, the preciousness of life. So why don't we take a moment again for a reflection? To closing your eyes. We can reflect on taking in the goodness from people that are actually offering it

and we can also do it in a meditative way. So you might, if you have someone in your life who you feel is really mirrored your goodness, bring that person to mind. You have somebody that has a friend or a teacher or therapist, a healer, a parent, a grandparent, someone who saw you, saw your brain, and goodness and creativity and heart, bring that person to mine and see if you can

remember or imagine them looking at you and in some way letting you know or conveying their appreciation of your goodness, how their eyes look, the care that comes through. If someone's not coming to mind, then imagine someone you trust, that you honor, that you love, teacher, healer, and it could be someone you know or someone you don't know personally. But someone that you imagine could behold you as thou, spiritual figure that could look at you and appreciate the light that's there. And in some way give the message of your goodness. Perhaps the message is simply, please trust your goodness, it's truth, it's here.

You can just let it in. Just notice how it feels when you are seen, felt, appreciated. As part of our motivation to train ourselves to be mirrors of goodness is to know that it is the essence of healing. Everyone has to some degree some of that toxicity of questioning that we're lovable or worthy. We all need reminders. So once motivated, how do we learn to do this? How do we train ourselves to see more?

And you can open your eyes when you'd like and I'm aware I shared a very sad story but the actual process of looking at others and having the intention to see the goodness and seeing more of it is really fun. I mean, it's a feel-good, it's a very positive experience. It's a feel-good chemical so it's not grim. I love the way the poet Tukharum puts it. He says, I could not lie anymore. So I started to call my dog God.

First he looked confused. Then he started smiling. Then he even danced. I kept at it. Now he doesn't even bite. I'm wondering if this might work on people. Okay, so how do we train? Part one on how we train, and we're going to do this in the last 15 minutes here, is that

we make it part of our daily practice, just like those parents did with their son, pick someone. Pick someone that's relatively easy maybe. And see them when they're happy, see them when they're feeling loving or curious or animated or feeling a sense of belonging. Sense what you appreciate and you might even mentally whisper the words, thank you, because it'll bring up your appreciation by doing it. Now take note that some people are easier than other people, to do this with. Okay? So you might start where it's easy. Many people find it's easiest with

young children or if somebody's already passed away or our pets or something like that. You're just kind of bypass the personality stuff, you know? But that's okay because if you're having really bigger version, then in a way it's called spiritual bypass to try to see the goodness. If you're feeling real aversion to someone, start by honoring that there's aversion. make the U-turn, be with what's being triggered off, okay? You'll get around to the goodness later. But if there's not great aversion, practice with that person, see what you love. There's just a very simple reflection that you can do and we'll just practice it for a moment right now.

We'll just try it out and this is what you can do on your own. Take some moments to bring to mind someone that's not a super-comer, complicated relationship. We're going to practice seeing the goodness. So bring to mind someone that you care about and that you'd like to explore this practice. This reflection has been adapted a bit from some of the teachings of Christian mystic Anthony de Mello. Now, attempt to look at this person as if you're seeing them for the first time. She's not being influenced by all the past knowledge or experience of them good or bad. And as you look, look for things in them you may have missed because of familiarity.

Because familiarity can breed staleness or blindness or boredom. So look fresh. Anthony de Mello says you cannot love what you cannot see afresh. You cannot love what you are not constantly discovering anew. So consider this person and you might mentally say the word thou, just mentally whisper thou, thou. And sense that essence, that light that that looks through their eyes, the awareness that's there, the love that wants to be expressed, their creativity, their goodness. And as you sense what you appreciate, you may

mentally whisper, thank you. Noticing how when you open your heart to appreciate the goodness in another, you become more whole, you start opening to your own eternal and vast and timeless presence. Thou, just sensing the thou. So this is just a brief taste on one way to train, that you each day take some time with one person perhaps. But you can do it informally through the day too. One friend of mine was describing how whenever he runs into somebody and there in some way he knows he's made an it or an object or an unreal other out of them, he will mentally whisper thou.

So I've been practicing that some and it's really powerful. Like bring somebody to mind and in some way just, just pause and get quiet and sense that it's kind of reverential. It's a deep, deep honoring that cuts through that space suit quality and helps you connect with their goodness. Bow. So that's part one is the meditative. Part two, communicate what you see.

Don't hold it back. Now that's not easy because it's very intimate to let someone know that we're seeing their goodness and to offer our appreciation. We all need that as nourishment. So to practice in your meditation communicating it, just sense that you're letting someone know, but then also do it in daily life. This is Mary Oliver in dog songs.

She says, Percy, her dog, wakes me up and I'm not ready. He's slept all night under the covers. Now he's eager for action, a walk, then breakfast. So I hasten up. He's sitting on the kitchen counter where he's not supposed to be. How wonderful you are, I say. How clever if you needed me to wake me. He thought he would hear a lecture,

and deeply his eyes began to shine. He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments. He squirms and squeals. He has done something that he needed, and now he hears that it was okay. I scratch his ears. I turn him over. I touch him everywhere.

He's wild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then he has breakfast and he is happy. This is a poem about Percy. This is a poem about more than Percy. Thank you Mary Oliver. She's good. So we practice expressing the goodness that we see. We practice with the dear ones that we think will benefit and this is how again Anthony

de Mello puts it. He says, it's a sobering thought that the final act of love you can perform. The finest act of love you can perform is not an act of service but an act of contemplation of seeing. When you serve people, you help support, comfort, alleviate pain. When you see them in their inner beauty and goodness, you transform and create. Seeing the goodness. Now there are many ways of doing it. There's many ways that we can see it and let someone know we can say I love you or we can say, wow, you have an amazing way of being kind to others and making others feel comfortable.

One friend, growing friend with Dan Mulhern who's a, he teaches at Berkeley, who's an expert in the field of leadership and organizational culture, he wrote a post about his aunt Linda and about her memorial service where people were speaking about her. And he described how everybody was speaking about her realness and they all came together and they said some of the very same things about her. In fact they felt like they were stealing each other's lines because hear what they said about his aunt Linda. He said when you're with her it's like she's always saying I'm glad you're here.

I'm glad you're here. So I was taking that in and sensing, wow, when you're with somebody that truly sends that message, wow, I'm glad you're here. To be welcomed into another's heart in that way, that's seeing the goodness, that person seeing your goodness. So if all we remembered when we went through the day is when we're cut off just to say thou in our mind and in some way let another person know that we're welcoming that, we're welcoming them, we'd have it.

What are some supports that you can do to help you remember this? For me, one of them is in my morning meditation, I just think about who I'm going to see that day and have the intention to be awake so that we can be mirrors for each other. Sometimes I'll reflect, okay, this is the last day of my life or this is the last time I'm going to see this person. what would I want to say? Stephen Levine put it this way. He said, if you had a few days to live, who would you contact?

What would you say? And why aren't you doing that now? Another thing you can do, a friend of mine taught me this some years ago, is when you're with somebody, look at the color in their eyes. Ask yourself, what color eyes are these? Because if you really connect with the eyes, thou will start happening. Does that make sense?

window of the soul, sense the eyes, pause more in conversation because if you get out of the mechanical speed of conversation, if you're not rehearsing what you're going to say, in the space that opens up you'll be able to sense more what you're appreciating, slow it down. And then emails. One of the things I do, not always, because some days I'm just flashing out emails, but I often will review emails to see if there was a missed opportunity in some way to be grateful or appreciative.

And saying it out loud is going to make life hell for me because now I'm at now when I'm speeding along I'm going to have to slow it down even more so I'm grateful to be able to do that though. So as a way of closing, we started by talking about being kicked out of the garden and what we're really exploring is the shift from the mistrust and bad othering to the kind of good othering that helps each one of us know that we belong. This really is the healing. This is what Takun Olam is.

It's seeing the light and bringing it back into our world with that I-Vow relationship. So I'd like to close in that spirit, if you will, to ask you to reflect one last time and to sense in whatever way it's there for you your own longing and intention to be a mirror of goodness, just to sense your intention. Sometimes we feel it as a kind of longing. It's really the voice of our purest part that does care about our world, cares about life, that place in us that wants to be that force for good to Koon Olam, waking up to the light. So just to feel that intention.

And you might consider someone close to you that you care about and how you might be a mirror of goodness for them. You might bring to mind all of those beings, those sitting here, those reflecting with us and all those beings everywhere that really do care about suffering. They care about those who are most vulnerable, that care about our living earth, those through history who have cared, those who will care,

and those who don't know they care but are in confusion and delusion, but deep down they care. Really, it's all of us. To sense that light and that goodness to imagine a world where increasing numbers are waking up with the same intention of good othering, of seeing that light and bringing it out of each other, of remembering our shared light. We close with the words of the poet Mark Nipo. My soul tells me we were all broken from the same nameless heart

and every living thing wakes with a piece of that original heart aching its way into blossom. This is why we know each other below our strangeness. Why when we fall we lift each other or when in pain we hold each other. Why when sudden with joy we dance together. Life is the many pieces of that great heart loving itself back. back together. Life is the many pieces of that great heart, loving itself back together. Namaste and thank you. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.