Tara Brach - Humility

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

Humility - In Buddhism and most faiths, humility – feeling that we all share common ground, feeling neither superior or inferior to others – is both a prerequisite to awakening and an expression of mature spirituality. This talk explores how our conditioning and culture reinforce a swing from ego-inflation (self-importance, feeling special, better than others) to ego-deflation (feeling unworthy). We then look at how a wise and kind attention opens us to who we are beyond these confining egoic states, and enables us to live with humility and grace.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Good evening. I'd like to start tonight's talk with a very brief story about a prisoner who had spent many years in solitary confinement where he spoke to no one and his food was given to him through a little opening in the wall. And one day an aunt, and one day an aunt, crawled into his cell and the man contemplated with it with real fascination as this little ant crawled around his room and he held it in his palm and at one point he gave it a grain or two of food and kept it under a tin cup at night and and

this went on for many many days that he just observed and engaged with and got involved with this aunt and one day it really struck him that had taken him ten long years of solitary confinement to open his eyes to the loveliness of aunt. To the loveliness of aunt. So I was reflecting on this and found it interesting to wonder about what really enabled that connection, that valuing of aunt to arise. certainly a quality of presence, but also something else that's very particular that's

related to presence. And that's a word that we don't often filter our experience with and that is humility. That contrary to the habit of self-centeredness and putting ourselves above others or other creatures, he didn't put himself above ant and because he wasn't set up. separate from her above, he was able to be in that kind of intimacy that appreciates what's there. These Serbs have a really wise saying and it says, be humble for you are made of earth, be noble for you come from the stars. Be humble, you're made of earth, we're made of the stuff and be noble we come from the stars.

So, humility, you know, the word hummus, humility and humble come from it, can be understood as close to the ground, the kind of feeling of the essential common ground or equality with all expressions of life and that we all have the same conditioning and we all have the same basic aliveness. And spiritual humility is in no way a kind of debasement and it's not a kind of false modesty. Maya Angelou writes this, she says, it's important that we learn humility. She says modesty is a learned affectation. It's no good.

Humility is great because humility says, there was someone before me. I'm following in someone's footsteps. There'll be others after us. We belong to each other. We're inter-influencing each other all the time. gets that we're part of something larger. So it's not a debasement. There's an honoring of our particular talents and there's a recognition of our limitations and the places that we get that we're really conditioned and reactive. But those are like ripples or waves on the ocean.

We know the depth of what we really are. So in the Buddhist tradition, humility arises out of what might be described. as wise view are a deep wisdom understanding, one of this interdependence that were essentially from the same essence, we're from the stars and we're absolutely everything we experience, everything we know, everything that we perceive is related to everything else in the world. You cannot take yourself apart from things. And that our self-centeredness, when we get caught and self-centered, we get caught and self-centred and the opposite of humility is self-importance, self, the kind of pridefulness, it obscures

who we are. It's a way of inflating that's temporarily a kind of a false refuge but it covers over what we most want to experience. The guided meditation we did today based on this homecoming, we can't be at home if we're living in some afflated self-important place. Nor can we be at home if we're living in a deflated self-demeaning place. So I think of humility, the mark of humility is the lack of self-importance. I think of humility is without that kind of self-fixation that when we're humble we're

truly able to see the goodness everywhere within ourselves and others. not blocked. So I want to talk about this quality tonight. I've been reflecting on it some and I shared with Jonathan, my husband that I was going to, because I haven't given a talk just on humility. So I shared with him that I was going to do that and he said, well maybe your talk on humility will make you really famous. So that was his sign off, you know.

He was, we'll see. So let's take a moment from. first do a little check-in to see how that word is a filter for your experience, just to check in for a moment. And as you check in, just as we've been doing, since the possibility of having that intention just to come home right now, just to take a full breath, knowing that humility and any reflection on humility, whom us belonging to the earth, is going to rise out of presence. and invite you to just scan a little of your life and sense when you have experienced a taste

of this kind of humility, spiritual humility, that kind of humbleness, okay, made of the earth, belonging to what's around, maybe it's in nature, sensing your place in the universe, being part of, not removed and important, are removed and bad, just part of. Maybe for you you felt some sense of humility in helping a loved one. You weren't in the role of help or you just plain were helping, just part of things. Maybe you found it in the face of incredible beauty, a sense of wonder that's humbling, scanning different settings of your life, different activities, people. Just notice where you might sense that quality of humility and when you're sensing it,

what your experience of yourself is. Just examine a little, how am I perceiving myself? You might notice that when your heart is most sincere, when there's that quality of innocence or sincerity, that with that comes some humility, when you're really in touch with what matters to you, your aspiration. And I invite you to continue to filter for where this is in your life, both where you feel humility and where you sense that you cut off as we continue to reflect together. So moving through the world with humility is valued by every religion that I'm

I've kind of looked into, the common denominator, if you start reading what different scriptures and religions have to say about humility, the language isn't always this, but the common denominator is that there's some surrendering of a kind of small egoic identity, importance, pride, whatever, surrendering that to realize the sacred. And the Taoist put it this way, they say all streams flow to the river, or I'm sorry, all streams flow to the ocean because it's lower than they are. Humility gives ocean its power. That's loud too.

Humility gives ocean its power. And this means the idea is that a low place, it means without any false constructions or pretensions of ego, that we're really resting in the essence of what we are and we're not trying to put ourselves above or power over or control or manipulate. The Talmud, just as water abandons a high place and goes to a low place, so do words of Torah that spiritual wisdom only survive in one whose mind is humble. We cannot experience wisdom unless our mind is humble. in Judaism, in many, many scriptures is described that humility is essential for spiritual progress.

One story I read, the canter of a synagogue's impressed, the rabbi effort at first is in a moment of spiritual passion falls onto his knees and says, I'm nobody, I'm nobody. Okay, that's the beginning of the story. Then the canter of the synagogue is impressed by the rabbi. He says, this looks good, this is inspiring. So he joins the rabbi at his knees. I'm nobody. I'm nobody.

And then the Shamas, that's the custodian, watching from the corner, couldn't restrain himself either. He joins the other two on his knees calling out, I'm nobody, I'm nobody. At which point the rabbi nudges the canter with his elbow, points at the custodian and says, look who thinks he's nobody. So in Christianity, it's also all over. that it's essential to feel this kind of humility to find God, that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle

than a rich man get into heaven, and there's more. One of my formative influences, Monty Python, this is from wisdom, this is from the life of Brian, okay? So there's a dialogue between characters as they're listening to Jesus, give the sermon on the mount, and one says, I just heard, blessed are the Greek. The Greek? Hmm. Well, apparently he's going to inherit the earth. Did anyone catch his name? And a woman says, no, they're saying the meek are inheriting. Oh, isn't that

nice? I'm glad they're getting something. They've all had a hell of a time. So the meek, the gentle will inherit the earth. And again, this is in contrast to being identified in a hierarchical way as self-important, it's the opposite of arrogant, you know, being superior, it's opposite of being in a place of harshness or judgment towards others. I love the way Henry Nguyen writes about this, he talks about humility as found in being a child of God and he describes being a child of God as a second innocence, that we're a child of God, we're born and we have our child experience, but we return to that innocence and that sincerity as we become more conscious and re-chews.

We choose, we're purposeful about waking up from the egoic conditioning and becoming a child of God again. So again this is the becoming a child surrendering this egoic identity that covers over our purity and our innocence, becoming humble. Okay, Islam, the very term Islam can be interpreted as meaning surrender to God, surrendering the egoic coverings, humility. It's right in the center of Islamic faith. Sikhism, humility represents again the end of egotism, the capacity for God consciousness.

The Sikhs consider a begging bowl before God. That's what humility is. And then the Shaman Don Juan, if you read some of the Carlos Castanada books, how many of you read some of Carlos Costanada? Okay, not alone in that one. I was one of my first entries into spiritual life. Castagnata describes as the greatest enemy. What weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow man.

Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone. Can you relate to that? No, nobody here. Not us, just other people relate to it. I'm going to read it again because I think it's good. What weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone. He writes,

As long as you feel you're the most important thing in the world, you cannot really appreciate the world around you. You are like a horse with blinders, all you see is yourself apart from everything else. So this is potent medicine, okay? It's very much not in our conscious awareness that we move around with self-importance and that it blocks seeing goodness and it blocks feeling connection. In Vivekananda Hinduism, the mark of humility is shedding any inferiority in the inferiority

or superiority. I feel like that's a clean way of saying it. Realizing each human being is the universal and that's where Namaste comes in, this I see the divine in you and in me and in all beings. It comes from humility. So in evolutionary terms and I come back because I feel like that seems to embrace all of the different mystical perspectives, it's quite natural as we evolve. that we feel a sense of separateness and that out of fear and grasping the separateness

has us get inflate ourselves and deflate ourselves. And it's part of our evolutionary journey. We have this frontal cortex with its capacity for mindfulness to see that happening and to have this longing, as Maya Angelou put it, this longing to be at home, to rest at home as part of this earth as coming from the stars. So Buddhism talks about humility as rather than having self-importance that we really get beyond this sense of being a solid, centralized self-self, that we let go of self-fixation. Hinduism more talks about the oneness with all beings.

They're the same thing and we all have different temperaments which kind of way we might want to think about it or talk about it. This is Narsarghadatta Maharaj. He says, wisdom tells me I'm nothing. Love tells me I'm everything. Between the two, my life flows. Let me ask you to reflect again for a moment, okay? Let's check in.

I'd like to invite you to bring to mind someone you know who you feel has the quality of humility. Very, kind of very transparent. really sense it. A mature kind of spiritual humility. Christians might call it the child of God. You might sense it as where the person's ego doesn't obscure who they are. You can sense it. They don't put themselves above or below. What's it like to be with this person? Imagine that that quality is filling you right now. Just that energy, that quality, that consciousness. not above, not below, belonging, seeing the goodness.

What's it like inside when there's a real letting go of that notion that something's wrong with me or something's better about me? There's just letting go of it all. What's it like in your body, your heart and mind? So again as we reflect, just sensing this is an innate capacity or quality of our being and And yet it's often blocked and it's blocked very naturally because if we look at evolution, we know that for many phases of our evolving consciousness, for all of our historical evolving consciousness, we were living in a sense of separateness and living in societies where hierarchies

were and are the defining feature. If you think of apes and dogs, alpha matters. It's not like you get a humble dog. You get a dog that's maybe beta but not humble in a spiritual way. You know what I mean? So it's the same thing. Humans, it's our evolutionary history to feel separate. And one teacher, Ajum Buddha Dasa, describes most of our narrative as eyeing and mying.

That most of the thoughts, 99.99% are thoughts that have to do with the protagonist us, and what Wa is doing and what Wa wants and needs and the goodness of Wa and the badness of Waugh and, you know, and everybody else is kind of like a fixture on the stage, but, you know, that's how, if we want to be honest, we go around with that narrative of eyeing and mying. And real basic to eyeing and mying is comparing. I mean, the mind, the mind is designed to make comparisons. And when we're in an ego state, the comparisons are who looks better, who looks worse,

who's got more power, who's, you know, more intelligent. We have all these different ways we compare. So the lens of humility gets really interesting. When we start sensing, we actually start picking up more quickly how we're making ourselves important or we're making ourselves special or else we're making ourselves like in some way deflated. I just want to take a few moments to go over deflation and inflation, since we all do it and we swim usually.

I don't know if you've already identified where you are, but usually we go inflated and then we get inflated, not thinking really deep down that we're terrific but temporarily thinking we're better than other people and then we deflate. So deflation, it comes from a strand of truth. Okay? And the truth in deflation is we belong to this earth, we're vulnerable, we're subject to conditioning, we have fears, we have anger, we have hurts, we get reactive depending on our historical experience, we can cause harm.

Every one of us has caused harm, okay? So deflation picks up on the truth that, oh, this being, you know, this being, we've being has caused harm, or this being isn't so good at such and such. But the delusion of it is owning the experience. In other words, we belong to the earth, we have all the conditioning. Every one of us has the conditioning to grasp, the conditioning to resist, and yet if we own it, we're going to go around feeling ashamed. And shame is pervasive.

To me it's the kind of fundamental challenge we have, which is we own the conditioning. We think it's my fault that I'm addicted to food or my fault that I lash out at so-and-so. It's the earth conditioning, living through us. So the deflated ego basically says something is wrong with me and it debases itself. I'm not deserving. Guilt, shame. And it's another form of ego. And often there's a confusion between humility and that kind of false modesty that's actually

debasing. I was reading about in the history of Buddhism, this is a nominally Buddhist historian, says that the first generation of Buddhists were rather serious people, but their descendants lightened up to an amazing degree. In the fourth century, Indian Buddhist scholar Barahata identified six degrees of amusement. range from a faint smile to AdiHasta, which is when you laugh so hard, your jiggly bits wobble. They developed a surprisingly modern style of comedy featuring the excessively self-deprecating style that many people think was created by New York stand-ups or Moni Python.

And so here I'm going to give you an example. This is, check out the brilliant My Life Sucks contest. that two famous Buddhist scholars had an 800 AD. I did not make this up, by the way. Okay? So this is, you know, this is false humility. My life sucks. Chow Chow says, I am nothing but a donkey. Wen Yang says, a donkey, you're so lucky. I am merely a donkey's buttocks. Chow Chow says, actually I dream that I could one day be a donkey's buttocks. At this moment, I'm what comes out of a donkey's buttocks. When Yang says, you're privileged. anything to be what comes out of a donkey's buttocks, for I am but a worm living in what

comes out of a donkey's buttox. And do you know why I'm there? Chow-chow, why? Wen Yang, because I wanted to go somewhere special for the holidays. And with that line, Wen Yang won the competition. No lie. So competition in modesty. So the thing with deflation is we cling to it.

That identity becomes familiar and it actually feels more secure. more secure to hold on to deflation than to entertain the possibility that we're okay because it's dangerous, it's dangerous to let go of inferiority because then we might get slammed sideways, you know, we might start loosening our boundaries and then have an unpleasant truth come, be encountering it. So we hold on tight to deflation. But we also move to inflation and that too, inflation just like deflation has a strand of truth. Remember we come from the stars.

We're made of awareness. There's this radiance and luminosity that shines through these lives and we sense that awareness and luminosity and then what happens? Eyeing and mying, the ego owns it. And so there's some part of us that thinks we're actually very special and mysterious and great and out of this world different and kind of mysteriously awesome, you know, and basically specials because we're owning that awareness. Does that make sense?

So we own the vulnerable stuff, the earthy stuff, all the different emotional weather systems and feel deflated and we own the specialness of this luminosity that's here and feel like we're different and special and they're both delusion. They're both an ego owning something that is part of the universe. But when we're in that, in that sense of special or important, we feel superior to other animals. And you can sense what it's done to the planet Earth, humans feeling special. It's meant being cruel to other species and it's meant not recognizing because we're not sensing our belonging to the Earth that we need to take care of this larger body of ours.

It takes expression as arrogance, as entitlement, as feeling that we're right. And we cling. We cling to that too because it protects us from what's underneath it which is it's covering over an emptiness and a feeling of badness. So this specialness and pride that we cling on to because we don't want to feel bad is the kind of central element in all fundamental. There's good and there's bad, we're on the right side, you're on the wrong side. But even more than that, and this is what's through all of us, it's pervasive and stereotyping.

And we don't realize how many moments we just look at someone and we immediately have a category that's either better than us or worse than us. And it happens all the time. This is conditioning from tens of thousands of years but we do it right away with that noticing it. And we're better, let's say, because somebody we get, oh, different socioeconomic are, oh, less educated. Oh, this different race and immediately, that's one of the big and most toxic ones, different religion, sexual orientation. Oh, I'm tolerant, but there's some sense of, you know, a little bit strange or something if somebody's sexual orientation is not

mainstream, our gender orientation. I have an increasing number of friends right now in my life that are gay, lesbian, but also are transgendered. And it's opened up my world a lot, this rainbow, this sense of all the degrees of what's possible. And I watch, and it's painful to watch how many jokes and deriding kind of views there are for people for their gender orientation. It's painful. It's a rejuest story. Am I gorgeous, my child asks, drawing the word out like pulled taffy? Yes, I say you are. The pink and teal dress is probably made of highly flammable material, some chemist approximation of toll and satin, pudgy fingers decorated with pink polish, trace the sequence on the bodice. I love this. A giant pair of bubblegum pink wings

slap slowly, little feast 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. He is four years old and refers to wear dresses. Maybe it is a phase, maybe not. Even as I wonder how I produce such an angelic-looking creature, I wish you would put some pants and go back to playing with toy tractors, not because it matters to me, it doesn't, but because I am already hearing in my head the name-calling he will face in childhood. 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 his shoulder. Am I beautiful? he asks. I sweep him into my arms and plant a kiss on his cheek. Always. So both as a culture and as individuals, this conditioning to have hierarchies, to see right

and wrong and good and bad, to be super, superior to others, our inferior to others is very deep in our psyche. And if we can begin to see it, seeing is freeing. If we can take some time, if all of us leave and we have just a little bit more of that lens of mindfulness of how am I in some way putting another down, creating separation, are up creating separation, just that mindfulness begins to loosen the patterning. So how to awaken? How do we begin to notice? How do we begin to free ourselves? And as you know, it's the truth that liberates, right?

In other words, we start letting go of the superior, inferior, as we start touching into the aliveness, the aliveness, the realness of what we are. And as we start touching into that awareness, that light that's living through all of us, we start seeing that, it's almost like those structures or ideas of better and worse start dissolving. Yet sometimes we catch ourselves in the thick. And so I want to just give you a few examples of how awareness can help us wake up when we get caught in rather than humility, either in deflation or inflation.

And that's going to be the last part of tonight. to preface and say, the more that you practice waking up out of thoughts, just a simple practice, you know, 10, 20 minutes a day of noticing when the minds drifted into thoughts and waking up and having some presence-centered awareness that's not conceptual. It's when we wake up and experience the quiet or the space between the thoughts that we can start seeing reality, that we can start recognizing who we are and recognizing each other. The thoughts separate. One guy had said, one guy was sitting at the bar and he said to a bartender, you know, I know

I'm nothing, but I'm all I can think about. And this is C.S. Lewis, you know, he says the opposite of pride is humility. So this is what he says. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. So, this basic training we're doing a meditation to wake up out of conceptual mind actually starts loosening and dissolving this whole trance of a self who's better or worse. So that's the ground level, is to keep practicing waking up out of thoughts. And then when we're deflated, this is when we get caught in the trance of unworthiness.

One woman I was working with after a breakup and she had been in her life as many people had, had a string of rejections and so it plunged her deep into the sense of I'm undesirable. You know, I'm too sensitive, I'm too insecure. As soon as I want to be with somebody, my wanting makes them go away. It was that kind of a syndrome. And so we began to bring the two wings of awareness, which is to notice what's happening in her body, okay? And also to bring a love to it, we began to explore that. But we started with what she was believing, just so that could be framed and seen. And the belief, the

egoic belief that was there was, as I mentioned, this kind of, I'm basically flawed, and nobody will ever want me. So that was the deflated belief, the core belief. And I ask what I often ask, and you'll find this. there's some wonderful work on working with beliefs and with thoughts that's out there now but I ask the question, is this true? I mean, is it true that you're flawed? Byron Katie is one of the teachers I most admire, by the way, on working with these thoughts and beliefs.

Is it true? Is it true that you're flawed? Is it true that you'll never ever be close to anyone? And she basically said, look, I know that I can't know it. it's true but it feels true and that's good enough. You know, that's what often is the case. It's like we can say, all right, I don't know it's true but my body feels it. But just by acknowledging we don't know it's true, a little bit of space starts opening

up so we can do a little more work. So then I ask the next question I often ask is, what's it like to believe that? When you're believing you're flawed, when you're believing you'll never really be close to anybody. that anybody that really knew you would reject you? What's it like? And this is where very embodied, we go underneath the story and the thoughts to the earthy vulnerability that's there.

And when she got into that, she could feel in her body the ache and the emptiness. And I asked her how long have you been experiencing this and she felt like she couldn't remember a time she hadn't somewhere. sensed that in her, feeling entirely alone. And that's when I often describe this as kind of the ouch moment, that's when the compassion came, that she was able to begin to sense that quality of compassion. This is when the egoic self starts loosening and dissolving. If you want to get out of inferior or superior, when you could start really contacting

vulnerability and feeling kindness, that starts fading away. So I asked her the final question, who would you be if you didn't believe this? If you didn't believe you were fundamentally flawed? You can ask yourself that if you feel like you're in a space of feeling unworthy. I mean, who would you be if you really did not believe that belief? For her and the reason I'm telling you this story is because her decision, her decision description was interesting, she said, I don't know, but there'd be a huge amount of energy and a lot of possibility and I'd be very innocent because I just wouldn't know.

Everything would be filled with possibility and hope. And I got that sense that when she could see who she'd be outside of that old belief, it was like that child of God, that she was just kind of like more open to the world and so it was. This is, she didn't take on a new identity like, oh, now everybody's going to love me and accept me. It was more just this quality of openness of not bad and not better than and not worse than.

That was so interesting. And so as she went on over the months she described the spontaneity that she had never had, not deflated, just not inflated, just more spontaneous. She could see other people's vulnerability. memorability, whereas before it was like those blinders of I'm so bad, she couldn't see others. Everybody else was insecure too. And she could see more of the goodness.

So this is the possibility. Remember when we're not in that humility place of here we are all together, we're up or down. And if we're down, there's a way to bring compassion to that. There's a way to wake up out of the beliefs that really lets us. us be like that child of God, like, okay, so what's possible? Each encounter becomes a kind of adventure because we don't know what's going to happen, but love is possible. So that's example number one. Example number two is for inflation. And by the way, it's easier for

the ego to admit deflation than inflation. Inflation covers over this whole of self-doubt and when it's acknowledged, it intensifies shame. So inflation is really embarrassing, which is why I didn't really go into it until, like, Chapter 11 and True Refuge, and I didn't even start talking about inflation so much until the last five or six years. Because I feel like I've seen in myself

the perfect example of swinging, like wrote radical acceptance because I was deep in the swamp of trance of unworthiness, but I could equally describe being deep in the trance of special person and special persons who I wrote about in true refuge. And so special person gets caught in feeling superior like she knows more or knows better and also kind of entitlement.

Special person, I'll say she but me because here I am. It's easier to say she. Put her out there and it happened 20 years. ago, you know, that kind of thing. Special person, I came from a family of four. I was the oldest, so I was the boss, I was entitled to get my siblings to do whatever they wanted. I was impatient and offended and uptight when they didn't and people after them didn't

cooperate. In other words, this assumption that I'm supposed to have my way. So, you know, I've kind of gotten a lot more gracious and smooth. and not so caught in that persona, except when I am. So example, I think this was about a year or so ago, not that long ago, I remember being, I do a daily walk by the Potomac, we live right near the park and that's when I get really honest with myself and walking and I can replay things that happen and just really get, oh, Okay, well that was really coming from that inflation space.

And I started sensing with Jonathan, my husband, how my computer had been flaking out and how I was expecting Jonathan to drop everything to take care of my computer. I had so much to do. I was so important that I was expecting him to kind of organize himself around me and got really upset with that because it was so not new. It was so familiar that once again I had kind of created a distance out of the sense of some entitlement or self-importance. And so when I get upset with it, there's a swing and I'm as much in the shame as

I am and in the importance, I'm ashamed of the importance, but the importance has still got some tenacity. And I did the same thing I've done in the past which is at first I tried to make the importance to meditate myself out of self-importance. You know, I tried to, in some way, you know, throw out all the different meditative tools I could do to not feel like a special person or important person or like I had a right to such and such. And what I found was that it just left me feeling defeated. It was like, this has been going on for decades. I can't get rid of this and a real sense of kind of despair like, am I going to, you know, here

I am teaching this stuff about waking up from the ego and realizing who we are and am I going to live huge swaths of time in some way with self-importance? Or am I going to then swing and feel bad about myself for having self-importance? You know, how long is this going to be a structure that obscures truth? So there was despairing feeling. And then I heard a voice and I've heard this voice before that it's very simple. It's just kind of a, just stop. The kind of sweetheart, just stop, just stop struggling.

And there's a kind of wisdom there that's saying the ego cannot transform the ego. The ego cannot vanquish special person, okay? stop. And so in that, you know, in that just stop, there's a part of me that went, yeah, but if I just stop, then it'll come back again, you know, that kind of thing. And then again, just stop. Just stop. Just let it be. And then in those moments of just stop, just let it be, I kind of spontaneously went like this. And for those that can't see, my hands kind of cupped and my head bowed. And it wasn't like I decided to do that, but there was in some way a kind of physical posture

of surrender. It's like let special person and shameful person and everything that's here, just let it be held in the largeness of love and the largeness of truth. Let it be held by something larger because this self can't do anything about it. So there was a kind of physical surrendering and a relaxing, not getting rid of, not getting rid of, just knowing that it belongs, like, it belongs to the earth. It just belongs to the earth. It's not my special person.

And in the moments of that gesture there was this natural relaxing open, a natural, coming back to my Angelo's language, this sense of being at home exactly where I was. There was a sense of space and there wasn't anybody there. There was just aliveness happening and lucidity. I share this because it doesn't go away as far as I know. These kind of narratives and beliefs and feelings keep reappearing, but what changes is our relationship to them. And rather than getting into the trance of self-importance or the trance of unworthiness, there's

increasing moments that we're just noticing it and just resting in a larger truth until gradually it becomes clear that that space and that tenderness and that awakeness is more the truth of who we are, it's more the truth of who we are than any ego narrative. That's freedom. That's when we rest in this humility that is free to love and see goodness and celebrate. This is Rumi. 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 tonight we have been really talking about, you know, I started with talking about the prisoner and the aunt, how we can begin to surrender or let go of those narratives that inflate us or deflate us. And you'll notice as you use this as a filter that there are certain experiences that very, very quickly dissolve that's self-importance. In a moment that you feel a sense of awe or wonder at beauty, it's just not there. That beauty is you and it's around you and you're just at home.

And in a moment where you really see someone and see that who's looking out as that same light and that same tenderness as looking through your eyes, there's no special person, there's no importance, there's no deflation. And in a moment that you see someone else and their vulnerability, you know it's not your fear, it's just the fear and it's in this body too. There's no self-importance. So the invitation for all of us is just to know that we have this longing to be at home and that at home means that we're not better than or worse than and that there is an invitation

that in any moment we can relax back, we can sense the narrative and we go, thank you very much, but relax back into this goodness that's here. We do come from the stars. So let's just take a moment. Close our eyes. The most direct entry, the most direct way home, is just a sense of the possibility of relaxing with what's right here. First perhaps on purpose letting go a little in the body.

Softening the shoulders, softening the hands, perhaps a slight smile and a nice full breath. Just let your attention come right into the moment, the center of now. Just feeling the aliveness of this body, heat, flow, places of pressure, you're from the earth. These are the elements playing out, sensing in the background the consciousness that's here, that which is aware, that silence that's so wakeful, sensing how that wakeful silence fills your heart, that your heart space, this empty, radiant heart, and how the same heart space, the same continuous space of tenderness and awakeness flows through every being, we all belong to this heart space.

Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two, my life flows. Namaste and thank you. more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.