Tara Brach - Guided Meditation - A Forgiving Heart

Episode Date: November 28, 2012

2012-11-28 - Guided Meditation - A Forgiving Heart - Forgiveness is the letting go of armor we have erected around our heart. While forgiving is a life-long process, it can be engaged and deepened by practices such as the one offered here. The best attitude in approaching this meditation is one of gentleness and clear intention. Reflect on what matters to you, and then let go of any judgments or expectations as to how the meditation "should" unfold. Blessings! Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

As a way of beginning today's reflection on the heart, just to invite you to bring your attention, mindful attention to the heart area, feel the breath at the heart, and just become aware of the state of your heart right now. By state of the heart, I mean both the felt sense there, direct experience of sensations at the heart, perhaps any defined mood

you might detect an openness or tightness numb, sensitive see without adding any extra judgment just to notice how it is right now to continue the reflection by sensing how you are with yourself right now how is your heart relating to your own being

again without adding judgment just to notice in a way it's your attitude towards your own aliveness, your own beingness. Quality of intimacy. Extending the reflection to the relational field and just sensing

how it is with others. The felt sense or intimacy or sense of belonging or not belonging with those that are here you might allow a few key people from your life to come to mind and just sense

in an intuitive way, the degree of connectedness or separation. One of the most powerful gateways to unconditional love is to begin to investigate where we've created separation in our lives and to sense what allows us to include others, and the parts of our own being that we've been excluding from our hearts. Another languaging for this is forgiveness. A forgiving heart is a heart that can let go of the armoring that sustains separation. So as we practice some of the forgiveness meditations today,

it's important to know that forgiving isn't in any way a process. of saying, oh, what you did was okay. It's not a process of indulging. Of even putting down boundaries in our life. We can divorce somebody and yet forgive them and hold them in our hearts. We can decide never to see somebody again and yet still not exclude that person from our hearts. So forgiving really is a movement. of our own heart to let go of averse of blame,

hatred. It's a way to free our own heart so that we can, instead of living from the past, take the next step into presence with more openness. We'll begin the practice by reflecting

on where we feel perhaps unforgiven by others, where we may have caused pain to others. And if we scan our lives, for each of us, we know that whether it was intentional or unintentional, we've spoken in ways and acted in ways that ended up having others feel hurt or rejected or unseen, not understood.

So you might choose right now some situation in your life where you feel like you've caused injury to another person chosen and try to give yourself a break on choosing where to pay attention and you can trust that wherever you land it's going to serve you when you've chosen let the situation come right close into your attention so you can sense in a very immediate way what the harm might have been, how the wound took place. Let yourself see the other person's face,

perhaps remember a scene or setting, something that connects you to the realness of being part of a situation that wounded another person, letting yourself register another person's hurt. And opening to your own feeling of sorrow, remorse, whatever naturally arises. And in the traditional practice, you can mentally whisper the person's name.

The classic phrase that is often used is to whisper the person's name and then say, I see and feel the pain that I've caused you, and I ask your forgiveness now. Please forgive me. So just sense if those words or something like that

helps you in asking for forgiveness. I see the pain I've caused you. I feel the pain I've caused you. And I ask your forgiveness now. Please forgive me. May I be forgiven? Just tune in to whether you will allow yourself to feel forgiven. Is it possible to receive forgiveness?

We continue the practice by sensing how we have kept ourselves out of our own heart, being unforgiving of ourselves. You might bring to mind either the same situation and sense how you're holding against yourself for it or any other place that feels very alive for you right now that where you're having a hard time forgiving or accepting yourself for something.

Often it's hardest to figure of ourselves for ways we feel. feel we've caused pain. You've landed on something. Again, let that situation, the behavior, the what you've done that feels unforgivable, let that be right close in right now. So you can sense what feels so bad about it. And allow your attention to go deeper now. So you can sense underneath whatever feels unforgivable, what was driving you. Was it fear, confusion, craving, with the perspective or understanding of a very wise being, see behind the action, see the vulnerability, the hurt, the suffering that might have led you to cause suffering? When you sense that, to begin to offer forgiveness yourself in the same way, we say,

I see and feel the pain I've caused myself or others, and I forgive myself now, or else just simply the words forgiven, forgiven. And you might explore to deepen the communication and the intimacy in this, putting your hand on your heart. Just experiment a little. You might vary the pressure so the touch is communicating understanding. I see and feel the way I've caused suffering to myself to others. And I forgive myself now. Forgiven, forgiven. And whatever you notice coming up, it may be resistance to forgiving. You can forgive that too.

Forgive means to let go of the aversive blame, to let go of the should and open your heart to how it is. forgiven forgiven if it feels difficult to forgive you might get the support of an ally of some being you trust either a living being

or could be a deity of some sort universal energy of wisdom compassion and since you could look through the eyes of that wise and compassionate being to see the truth

to see that it's not your fault. You might even whisper that inwardly. It's not my fault. Forgiven, forgiven. So many find that when we stop punishing ourselves and blaming ourselves, when we can say it's not my fault and see the causes and conditions, the suffering that causes suffering,

we actually tap into the place in us that can be truly responsible. able to respond from wholeness. But first, the forerunner of unconditional love is forgiveness. Even the intention to forgive yourself can open the door. Continuing for these last few moments, sensing that with whatever arises, if it creates separation from your own heart, forgiven, forgiven.

And we widen the circles of, forgiveness and opening to include someone who you are in some way continuing to sustain separation from with blame or resentment, somebody that you feels hurt you. And again, every one of us at some point has felt betrayed or violated, misunderstood, rejected. Every one of us. in a sense where this is true for you and where your heart is still feeling armored and to know that this is a life-long process often

and yet in any moment that we enter into it with the sincere intention to open there is a crumbling on some level of the armoring and the potential it will shine through more of our heart. So bringing the person to mind,

letting that person's being be kind of more close in so you can recall and connect with what really has felt like the offense, the violation. And just knowing your own psyche only go as close to it as feels like you can be with that.

There may be certain words that were said, a certain action, or maybe something over time that occurred. See if you can have it so that it's clear enough that you can sense what has caused you to push this person away in your heart. And as you connect with the hurt, with the fear, with whatever's inside that vulnerable place within you,

just take some moments to breathe with that. again I invite you to bring your attention in a very gentle way to your own place of hurt because underneath any lack of forgiveness there's hurt in some way hurt fear

so you're breathing with that you can put your hand on your heart and accompany that place you might sense that you can breathe in and fully touch the place of woundedness or hurt, fear, and breathe out and feel the warmth of your palm, feel the warmth of your attention, feel the space that it's floating in, give it space. This is the essential grounds of self-compassion.

To breathe in and touch what's here, and with the out breath to offer it that tender space of kindness, of care. The inquiry is how tenderly right now can you hold your own heart, And if like the Buddha you'd like to reach out and touch the ground metaphorically and call on some being of love and tenderness to support you, that's quite fine. The bodhisattv of compassion, the Buddha, Kwanin, Jesus, a grandmother, a child, your dog. Feel that energy flowing in. into you too, offering care to the place that's hurting. As you sense a compassion that's holding your own heart, you might let that space of heart open outward so you can look through clear eyes at the

person who hurt you. See if you can see past the mask, the exterior to the hurt or fear or confusion that might have been driving that person. Your deepest wisdom knows that when we're not suffering, when we're happy, we don't cause suffering. What's the suffering in there in that person? The sense of possibility of extending forgiveness, you might use these words, again, whispering the person's name, I see and feel the pain you've caused me, and I forgive you now. Or if not yet ready to forgive, it's my intention to forgive you. I see and feel the pain that you've caused me and I forgive you now. I've not yet ready to forgive, it's my intention to forgive you. Bringing the attention a very simple way again to the state of your heart. And sense if in any way

you're holding against yourself for the very way you've gone through this meditation. There's any judgment. This is another opportunity for waking up from that trance, that habit of holding against ourselves, and just very gently, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven. It's okay. These are the words of Rumi. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.