Tara Brach - Longing to Belong

Episode Date: June 8, 2013

Tara is away this week. Enjoy a favorite talk from 12/9/2009. Spiritual practice reveals our belonging through bringing presence to three gateways: the aliveness of the present moment, loving relatedness, and the openness and lucidity of awareness itself. This talk includes guided meditations in exploring each gateway. Note: poem, "She Dreamed of Cows" is by Norah Pollard.

Tonight I'd like to begin by sharing a story, talked to a friend recently, and she was describing her experience of her mom's death and described how her mom had had congestive heart failure and was rushed to the hospital and put on life support when she was kind of drowning in a sense. And after a while her eyes were open, but the person that was there wasn't there,

there before wasn't there. And the way it happens is the doctors would, you know, ask her to squeeze their hand, a letter, just a sense if there was any consciousness. And at first she could squeeze back some, but after a while the doctors would ask her and she, there was no response, but when my friend was holding her mother's hand

and said, Mom, if you're hearing me, please squeeze, because the hearing's elast to go. there was still a squeeze. Her mother could respond to her. And she said it got to the point, the way she described it as it was, there was nothing else left but this kind of brainstem-to-brain-stem connection, some primal connection of knowing. And the way she described it,

she said that feeling that primal connection was her refuge. She could be with this whole process of dying by really sensing the power and depth of that connection so that even after her mom was gone, that was what gave her a sense of being able to have space in her life for what was going on. I share that story because I've been reflecting a lot on our longing in a very deep way to sense belonging,

how absolutely essential it is, to each of us for the health of our body and mind and spirit to sense belonging. That that's the very heart of what we long for. And to feel in some way connected with something greater than the way we sense this separate self to be. And that longing arises from a wisdom. And the wisdom is the intuition of the truth that we belong. That there is something in us that intuits connected.

And there are many moments we touch it. Sometimes we just race right over it and don't really let ourselves kind of savor it. But we touch it and we touch it when we're talking with someone and they express something that we've felt and it really resonates. Or when we're laughing with others or sad with others but we sense, oh that sameness, some subjective sameness in what we're experiencing in this moment. And of course we sense it when there's some real beauty and there's just that wonder that washes away all the other misogosh of our personality and it's just ah, you know.

Or when we're touched by another's kindness or goodness. Or when we lose ourself in music or dance or yoga, we have moments when we lose that separate selfness and we're just a part of the life. So, what I'd like to explore tonight because we have those tastes but our suffering comes because we really don't allow ourselves to trust or inhabit our connectedness. We forget and spend great swaths of time not feeling connected, not feeling belonging. I want to explore tonight what are really three very classic and profound gateways to belonging. and the gateways will explore our belonging to the life that's right here.

How do we really connect with the aliveness that's right here in this moment? How do we belong in a relational field with others? And how do we belong to the awareness that's right here, awareness itself? And I'm aware as I say this that I often set out, well, here's what we'll cover, and then I notice, oh my gosh, I've gotten two-thirds of the way. So we'll see how it goes. see how it goes. The entry to a pathway of belonging, to begin to belong, is becoming aware of the pain of separation. That's the beginning. And this is very much the Buddhist first

noble truth. His first noble truth is being human means we sense separateness, we sense dis-ease, unease, dissatisfaction. That's just part of the condition. And his instruction was recognize this. Notice that there's some basic unease here. As soon as we begin to notice this kind of disconnection, unease, not okayness, that noticing is the beginning of what turns us towards a path of connecting. That's the beginning. So become mindful of the stuckness. one of the founders really of positive psychology Seligman was asked a question

of what really was the epiphany that turned him towards a path of happiness which really has a lot to do with belonging to life and he told a story that's become very very well known and I want to share it and he said because he said that

almost everything that I've done that involved big changes happened in a flash and so this was the flash that happened and he said, it happened when my daughter Nikki and I were gardening, and she was just five. I should confess that when I garden, I'm gold-directed, time-urgent. Nikki was throwing weeds in the air and dancing around, and I yelled at her. She came back to me and said, Daddy, do you remember before I was five, I whined all the time, I whined every day? Did you notice that since my fifth birthday, I haven't whined at all?

I said yes, Nikki. Well, Daddy, that was because on my birthday I decided I wasn't going to whine anymore. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. And if I can stop whining, you can stop being so grumpy. So what I really love about that is that for him, as he described it, that was it. He just like totally the light was shined on, okay, so that's this kvetching, his own grumpiness was some place he was living in. And it was causing, didn't make him feel good in his life,

it certainly wasn't making his daughter or his wife or anyone else feel good. We can choose. We can begin to choose. I don't want to make it absolute, but we can begin to turn in the direction of belonging when we really register, ouch. This life right now is in a kind of trance of separation.

Ouch. So that's the beginning. So we begin to reflect. And in a way the question is, you know, what's the story we keep telling ourselves about how I am or how the world is that keeps us feeling separate and not okay? I mean, are we telling ourselves that our life isn't turning out right? Do we keep telling ourselves that so that we feel not good? Or that someone's treating us badly or that we're falling short in some major way, that we need to achieve more or get somewhere different to be happy. So this is the beginning of turning towards connection is to realize how am I stuck? How am I keeping myself stuck? Most of us live with a map in our mind and the map has a self-located on it and where it is now,

and where it's going to, and how things are now and how we want to get somewhere else. In other words, what's missing or wrong right now and what am I on my way to and how might that be better or worse? We have a map in our mind. And that map is part of what keeps us stuck. I love this. This is called reverse living. The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends.

I mean, life is tough. It takes a lot of your time. all of your weekends. What do you get at the end of it? A death? What's that? A bonus? I think the cycle's all backwards. You should die first. Get it all out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch. You go to work. You work 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college. You party. You get ready for high school. You go to grade school. You become a kid. You play. You have no responsibilities.

You become a little baby. You go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating, you finish off as a gleam in someone's eye. So we live with a story. It's not so easy to drop it, to say, okay, instead of chasing after things and steaming forward to the finish line. You know how that is?

We're kind of tumbling forward on our way. It's very hard to say, wait, wait, what am I trying to get somewhere so fast? fast, where am I going? Especially if we've intuited that the only stuff that's worth experiencing is here. But it's not so easy. And it's not so easy because we have a story going on that something's wrong or something's going to go wrong and that we have to be very, very careful about it. And that when there's unpleasantness that's a sign that we're really making some sort of a mistake that really something's off. So we lock in and then we start tumbling

forward and tumbling forward. We keep thinking that when we make mistakes, when there's imperfection, we're really not okay. Some of you might remember the story of a reporter that asks a bank president who's very well known in the business world, sir, what is the secret of your success. Two words is the response. What? Right decisions. And how do you make the right decisions? One word. And sir, what is that? Experience. And how do you get experience? Two words. And sir, what are they? Wrong decisions. So here's what I think is the heart of our suffering, which is we really are for the most part perfectionists. And by perfectionists, I don't mean some huge, glorious idea of perfectness of how it's supposed to be, but we have a very

distinct idea of how things should be in every moment. We really want to be comfortable and we want to be acting a certain way and feeling a certain way and so on. And large chunks of time, the world and our state of body-mind does not cooperate with our idea of how it's supposed to be. There's some sense of it's not supposed to be like this. It gets us in trouble. We have the sense of trouble consciousness that it's just not how it's supposed to be. And you might just sense in your own life right now because to the degree that there's any suffering,

There's a sense of life's not the way it's supposed to be. And you can just kind of check in. I sometimes close my eyes and just ask this, a sense of, well, what right now do I feel like has to be different for me to be happy? Like right now, as you sense your life, what are you telling yourself really, or maybe not consciously telling yourself, but believing really needs to change for you to be happy and okay?

what's unacceptable? Can you sense the separation that exists, the feeling of separate self, the not okay separate self, when that's the mindset that something has to be different? Zen master Dogen says to be in harmony with the wholeness of things is to not have anxiety over imperfections. Now just for a moment sense that possibility. What if right this moment just even for like five seconds you let go of any anxiety about imperfection? You can pull them back again when you're done but just for five seconds. Just for five seconds, just no anxiety about imperfection.

Can you even glimmer the radical freedom that opens you. up. Okay, you can get anxious again. Bring it back. So here's the basic teaching, is that we can belong. We can find that harmony, but it takes a kind of intention and a training. And it takes finding the places where it feels imperfect and we don't want to be there and choosing to stay, choosing to open to our life as it is. So the first of the gateways to belonging is being willing to be with the aliveness that's right here. And when we first start opening to what's right here, it can feel very imperfect. I noticed as I started sitting tonight and I, you know, I said, okay, just the way I asked you to,

just to be with life as it is in the moment. And the first thing I was aware of was, whoa, I'm pretty tired, you know. And hey, that's not good. I have to talk tonight. I need to be alert and lucid and clear. You know, and so that was the first, it felt very imperfect. And then I went, wait a minute, you're talking about being with imperfection. So it always helps when I'm about to talk about something.

So then it comes to like, how do we really just be willing to belong to what's here exactly as it is, exactly as it is? And there's no way to connect to the aliveness. of our life to really feel a sense of belonging to aliveness if we can't belong to how our body and mind are experiencing things in this moment. If we're postponing it for a moment when our body minds feel good, that's trouble because then that's our habit is to keep postponing, right? So the trick is can we start choosing, just as in the Seligman's story, just it might be

hard but choosing to be here for how this is. just choosing to stay. There are several steps in the training to stay. And the first one has a lot of compassion to it, which is that before we, in some sort of a harsh way, say, okay, I'm going to feel the rawness and roughness and intensity of this right, let it all just hit me. Instead of that, we first very gently sense,

is there a way that I can relax my body a little and quiet my mind? because as long as our minds are spinning in their thoughts about what's wrong and what's going to go wrong, our body's going to feel really terrible and it's going to be really hard to be with our body. So if we can quiet our mind a little, because there's this looping that goes on, if we can quiet the mind a little from sending those messages of, watch out, things are going to go worse, you know, the body starts settling a little and then it's a little bit easier to find some space of presence with what's right here. It's easier to belong to the life that's right here. So the first step is often that we let the breath or some other anchor, home base, be a kind of

focus so that we can just let the mind quiet and just come here and here with that anchor until we're a little more settled. So then the second step, once we're a little more settled, is classically known as we invite Mara to tea. Now you remember Mara? Mara's the shadow side that's kind of personified in Buddhist mythology is the god of greed, hatred, and delusion. Mara's who confronted the Buddha on the night of his awakening and threw arrows and swords and all sorts of bolts of fire at him and just challenged him in every possible way. And as the story goes, the Buddha sat through the night and

just stayed present and all the arrows and swords ended up turning into flower petals and falling the Buddha's feet in the morning as the dawn came. There was this great mound of petals. The teaching of the story is that rather than reacting to Mara the Buddha stayed in presence. Now he woke up through the night, discovered freedom and yet Mara did not vanish totally. Mora through the Buddha's life. And this is one of the best parts of the story kept coming back, which goes to say we can be very free. We can wake up profoundly.

And greed and hatred and deluded. Stuff keeps coming up anyway in our psyches. It's okay. It's not a once-and-for-all thing necessarily. Okay? But the way the story of the Buddha goes is that when Mara would appear in his life, the Buddha's attendant, Ananda,

was also his cousin, would freak out and say, oh no, the shadow side has come again, the devil's here and he'd kind of make the cross and want to protect and chase away Mara. But the Buddha said, no, no, no, no. And instead he'd invite Mara to tea. So hence inviting Mara to tea. That's the background to that phrase.

But what a powerful idea. Instead of reacting, instead of freaking out when our own psyche produces mean-spirited, thoughts or jealous thoughts or anxious thoughts. We go, okay, come on in, let me feel this, let me be with this. So this is the second part of the practice. We quiet down some as well as we can and then we invite what's here to be felt as well as we can do that. With one woman who had a lot of fear, she spent quite a time, you know, learning to be with her breath and and calm down. But when the fear was strong, she also had a practice where she would

imagine that she was sitting on a park bench. And she'd first imagine and sense the trees around her in the air and the sky. And when she'd feel fear, instead of inviting Mara directly to tea, she'd say, Mara, you sit here on the bench next to me. And I'm not quite ready to have, you know, feel this inside. So she'd put the fear next to her. And for a while, she'd just keep on feeling her breath and feeling the winds and the trees and the sky until finally she could begin to say, okay, now let me feel a little bit of that, breathing, feeling it, breathing, feeling it, until she found she had the space of heart and awareness to include this current of Mara, this fear in her being. So this is just an example of how we can belong to

a life when it's difficult. So I'd like to do is just take a moment. We're going to practice each of these three pathways of belonging. This is the first one which is really how to be with our body, with our heart in the midst of whatever is going on. So just sitting however helps you to pay attention inside. And you might sense some difficult circumstance in your life where you'd like to have more access to really staying connected. It's kind of like if you can be in the fire and stay connected with your own heart and awareness, find belonging to life in the midst. So I'd suggest you not pick something traumatizingly difficult. Practice a little tonight with something just medium.

It could be something going on with another person that's conflictual or some way that your own body is challenging or your mind, your emotions. And as you say, sense the circumstance, begin for a moment to know that the circumstances are there in your life, that this difficulty is there. But allow yourself to settle a little with your breath, to find your breath, to find for now and there are many anchors but we'll let the breath be there. And I'll read you a short verse about the breath just to draw you to that kind of safe place. and if the breath doesn't work for you, you can feel your hands or listen to sounds.

But this verse goes like this, breathe with me in the rhythm of mountain streams, in the hypnotizing cadence of waves breaking on the shore. Breathe in the peace that plays just beneath the agitated surface of the mind. Find the breath that expresses your connection to silence to the shining light of spirit in your heart. Your own true breath can release you from the prison of your fears and plumb the depths of your awareness. Feel your breath.

Find the breath that expresses your connection to the silence that's here, to the space. So feeling your breath and sensing the difficult circumstance now and then choose to breathe and relax and feel what it is about that circumstance. that's asking to be felt. What is asking for attention in your body and your heart about this difficult circumstance? Maybe it's fear that wants to be just accepted.

Maybe it's grief that wants to be acknowledged. Maybe it's anger that needs to be respected. Just to breathe and open to whatever wants to be acknowledged. attention in this moment, sensing the possibility as you breathe and connect with what's here, a feeling more connected to your life, to wholeness. That the only way to be to belong to what's real is to connect with what's real in this moment, in this body, in this heart. So the first pathway of belonging is to come home to what's right here.

the moment and it takes a kind of courage and a commitment. As in the story with Nikki it's a choice to turn towards presence. The second path of belonging is to pay attention to the relational field. And again we can get so in the trance of a separate person in here that we don't let ourselves breathe in and be nourished by the love that's in this world and we don't actually free ourselves to, we hold back our love, both. I remember a story of a young boy and his family lived in one house, an elderly couple and another, and the wife of the elderly couple died, and the older man was in a lot of grieving, and the little boy would period go over and visit

with him and spend some time with him. And some months later, the town had a gathering, and they had a reward for acts of kindness and the young boy was given first prize. And his mother was driving home with him from this gathering and she said, so, hon, what was it you said to him all those times that you went over and visited? And his response was, I didn't say anything, mommy, I just helped him to cry. There's a way in which we have such a conditioning to feel separate that it's when we begin to feel what we belong to, that it frees up the parts of ourselves that need to be expressed and need to be grieved and need to be felt. So it's conditioning that we can wake up out of as we deepen our attention.

In order to be fully here, we need to feel some safety, some love, some belonging. I love the way Annie Lamott puts it. She says, my mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try not to go there alone. And that's why we meditate together. I mean, this is, again, this is the field of community. I remember my first Buddhist retreat. I was going through a rough time.

It was just when I was about to get divorced and I had a young, young child, and so on. And I didn't know what to expect, and there I was in this place I had never been to before. about to enter 10 days of silence. And the way the retreat started as we were given these chant sheets with the Buddhist refuges on them

and we saw the English translation but I didn't really pay attention to it because we were chanting in Pali which is the original language of the Buddhist scriptures. Unfamiliar words, just sounds. But I remember just letting go into the rhythm of the chant and there's a hundred voices,

this chorus that I kind of felt my voice just merge into and I just kind of let the rhythm and the sounds wash through. And I'll never forget in the stillness and silence after the chanting, the sense of some unclenching in my heart that I was kind of coming to a place of ease and belonging just by having this shared sense of community just from the chanting. When we're most distressed, we need a taste of that kind of, of belonging. And that's the training in the loving-kindness practices, is to begin because when we're upset, we're actually, the conditioning of being upset is to feel very, very isolated

and separate. It's an intentional way of looking towards where the connection is, looking towards it. There's a story of priest shared in a sermon. He described a woman dying of AIDS and the priest is summoned and he attempts to comfort her but to no avail. I'm lost, she says, I've ruined my life and every life around me. Now I'm going painfully to hell, there is no hope for me. The priest saw a framed picture of a pretty girl in the dresser. Who is this? he asked. The woman Brighton.

She's my daughter, the one beautiful thing in my life. And would you help her if she was in trouble or made a mistake? Would you forgive her? Would you still love her? Of course I would, cried the woman. I would do anything for her. Why do you ask such a question? Because I want you to know, said the priest, that God has a picture of you on his dresser. It's very difficult when we're in the trance of separation, when we don't feel belonging, to perceive ourselves as deserving and lovable. And there's kind of a catch-22,

because the more we feel terrible and distress and upset and anxious, the more we feel that nobody could really ever want to be with us or love us or care about us or respect us. The more we need that connection, the harder it is to reach out and receive it. And yet, there is love in this world and when we begin to pay attention, we call it towards us. This is one of my favorite poems, and it's called She Dreamed of Cows. I knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed her body and put on the nightgown she'd worn as a bride and lay down with a 38 in her right hand

before she did the thing she went over her life she started at the beginning and recalled everything all the shame, sorrow, regret and loss this took her a long time into the night and a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief until sleep captured her and bore her down She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree. She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood under the tree and the brown and white cow came slowly up from the pond and stood

near her. Some butted her gently and they looked her bare arms with their great coarse drooling tongues. Their eyes wet as shining water regarded her. They came closer and began to press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed an almost unendurable joy came over her and lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly. She flew over the tree and she flew over the field and she flew with the cows. When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror. She looked a long time at her living self. Then she went down to the kitchen which the sun had made all yellow and she made tea. She drank it at the table slowly, all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked. It's a primal need to feel our belonging. And it's a primal need because the truth is

that we are utterly connected with all aspects of this world. You know, quantum physics from a molecular perspective were absolutely in a wash of interconnectedness, made of the elements in a constant exchange, no way to sense where the boundaries really are, the beginnings and the ends. We belong. It's a primal need because we need to experience the truth of what we are. We can't be happy if we feel separate because it's not the truth of what we are. We're not at home in truth in those moments. So we have this longing to belong. It's in us.

We often do not recognize it. More we're aware of feeling anxious and uncomfortable, afraid, sad, discontent. But underneath that, there's a longing to belong. So we practice, we train. We do the gateway, the first gateway of, really coming into presence with what's actually happening right here. As one friend said, what she does is she breathes and she just tells herself,

right now, right now, right now. And by bringing that kind of radical, just this, she comes back in some way to a sanctuary that can hold this life. That's the first gateway. The second gateway, remembering what we love, remembering what loves us. This is the meta practice. So we'll do our second reflection tonight, if you will,

just to come sitting in a way that you are comfortable. And in this pause, feel your intention, feel your intention to turn towards love. The movement towards belonging starts with a choosing. Just feel your intention to be receptive. You might feel your breath in a gentle way, just feel it at the heart. You might soften the brow and sense a smile that's in the eyes, a slight smile at the mouth,

and a smile that spreads through the chest through the heart. And inviting into your awareness someone who you trust cares about you. It could be somebody alive, somebody not alive. could be a human or could be a dog, could be a pet, could be a spiritual figure, but some being that you trust cares about you. And since this being right here close by,

looking at you with eyes that really express that care, that want to be with you, close with you, that appreciate you, that understand you, and sense your intention to let in that caring, to soften and let the warmth and the love from that being bathe your heart, pour in, pouring in, and receiving it, knowing that this is an experiment, that sometimes it's not possible but we can bring a mindfulness to that

and let that be part of a process of gradually opening like breathing in we have the intention to let in the love of this world let it touch us and like breathing out we have the intention to offer our care outward you might bring to mind someone who you care about that you'd like to offer your metta your loving kindness to right now sense what you appreciate about that person, what brings up a sense of loving,

as if you could put your hand on that person's cheek, just feel yourself touching them with your care, offering your wish for them, and imagining them receiving that, feeling held in that, being uplifted by that. Imagine that. Sensing the connectedness, the field of connectedness, the belonging that unfolds itself as you reflect on love.

So we've talked about two of the three pathways of belonging, coming into the actuality of what's right here in the present moment, reflecting on the receiving love and offering love with others. The final one is really what I sometimes describe as belonging to awareness itself. And sometimes it arises through a kind of devotion where we give ourselves to loving awareness. We sense loving awareness that's here that's our very source. And when we feel separate, sometimes it's through some embodiment. It may be that we have a sense of the Buddha or of Christ or of Kwanian,

the bodhisattva, of compassion, or some other deity. I remember hearing a story that Ram Dass told, most people have heard of Ram Dassirope here now. He described gathering an old barn in New England with a lot of people chanting and they be chanting Hara Krishna, Hara Krishna. And this is a rousing devotional love which really then allows us to take refuge in awareness itself. So they're chanting Hary Krishna, Hari Krishana's father walks in to the barn

and he says, who is this Harry Krishna anyway? And, you know, the song is nice, but enough already, over and over and over again. And he had a time explaining it to his father, this Harry Krishna. But in a way, this was a version of what we sometimes call taking refuge in the Buddha, whereby we initially take refuge in or turn our attention to a being that expresses enlightened energy of Buddha, some other enlightened being. And then the attention shifts in a very subtle way from the figure who expresses it to the actual quality of the enlightened awakened mind itself.

And so this is the kind of final gateway where we begin to bring our attention to the very essence of awakeness, openness, presence. Now, one of the questions people bring to me a lot is, okay, if I'm feeling separate, if I'm feeling agitated, which of these gateways do I start with? I mean, do I start by breathing and getting in touch with what's right here or do I maybe do a meta-meditation and try to feel some belonging with love or should I think of the Buddha and sense just pure aware, you know, where do I start? So I just want to name that before our final reflection which is,

In general, as an ongoing practice, this training in mindfulness in noticing what's right here, quieting some with the breath but noticing what's right here will serve you in any of the gateways. So if you're bringing attention to loving somebody else, if your mind is all over the place and scattered, it's going to be very hard to really settle the attention into that loving presence. So that's I think of as pretty much a core training here. If you can practice noticing when you go off in thoughts, coming back and really getting the knack of the two questions I consider to be right at the center which is what's really happening right now.

And can I let this be? That's going to give you access to these other gateways of belonging. But the bottom line is you have the capacity to choose to belong. The beginning of it is to notice, oh, okay, suffering, separate, stuck. I'm caught in a story right now and the story is keeping me separate. The story is keeping me anxious. The story is keeping me from being present. Once you see that, like the Nikki story you can choose.

She was five and she did it, we can do it. We can choose to turn towards belonging. So there's something about in this season that we're in where we're moving towards the really the longest nights and there's something about going inward and sensing really what does it mean to belong to this life? What does it really mean to open to the shadow that's there? Because unless we open to the shadow we're not opening to the life. What does it really mean to step out of our habits of creating separation from each other?

and stop holding back our love. And what does it mean to really take refuge in the awareness that's our source, in that formless presence? So with that, we'll do a final reflection. It's a way to close. And in this pause, just sense your intention to belong to the life that's here, to belong to the love that's here,

to belong to the awareness. that's here. To take a moment to feel the life that's right here. As we did earlier, you might feel your hands for a moment. Feel your feet. Relax the shoulders some. Let the breath be a little more full. So coming into an honest relationship with the life that's here, belonging to the life that's here. Listening to your heart for a few moments with this intention to be tender towards whatever the experience is. Maybe you've been going through a hard time. Maybe you haven't forgiven yourself for something. Maybe you haven't forgiven somebody else for something. In these moments, just holding that with some tenderness, offering care to your own heart. Sometimes just putting your

hand on your heart can be the most direct way to move towards belonging to love, belonging to the life that's here and belonging to love. And then taking a moment to sense behind any feeling or sensation, behind any thought, the presence that's here, that which is witnessing all of this. Basic, lucid, open presence. What's sometimes described as the formless dimension, your own presence. And if you just step back and relax into that, there's a natural emanate nation of loving that comes with it.

With that open presence is love. Sensing in this moment is anything missing, sensing who you are when you're turning towards full presence like this, when you're turning towards love, when you become that awareness. a poem that addresses this awareness, this source, and calls it the holiness that pervades this universe. She writes, O holiest of holies, I pray for the molecules of me to be reconstituted new inseparably part of you, part of this wholeness, this awareness. I pray to radiate at the same wavelength as the beating of your heart. To see it. you see, to hear with your ears, to feel the texture of trust as you do. May I dissolve into

you free at last to know all my words, thoughts and actions as arising from praise are longing. May I know my essential being as awareness and love. I'd like to close tonight in the same way that we opened with the chanting of om, this mantra of connectedness. this expression of belonging. So take a moment just to feel presence, feel love, feel awareness that's right here. And as we chant, and again we'll chant it three times,

feel free to let your voices harmonize to express our collectiveness together with heart. Inhaling deeply. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you would like to contact, the Insight Meditation Community of Washington to make a donation or to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www.imcw.org.