Tara Brach - Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part I (2021-12-15)

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part I (2021-12-15) - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. So here we are approaching the end of 2021. And it's, you know, for two years ago, very, very difficult to anticipate how things have unfolded. it. And, you know, from the perspective of, let's say, through the negativity bias, you know, it's been such a time of multiple crises, you know, the ongoing pandemic and, of course, the climate emergency, the rise of fundamentalism, you know, really rough times. And through another lens, there's been a lot of waking up in these last few years. I mean, I really think of it as many, many people have woken up to the reality of our endanger earth. And there's been across

the society-wide, I think, waking up to the horror and dimensions of racism. There's a lot going on. You know, I've been kind of really stunned by the number of nonprofit organizations that have cropped up around the world that help the earth for racial justice, social justice, and awareness trainings, you know, mindfulness and compassion trainings and organizations and prisons and schools and government, you know, there's a lot going on. So there's this huge juxtaposition of forces in the human psyche. I often think of a songwriter, Butch Hancock, And he describes how life in his hometown in Texas taught him two things.

And I'll read you what he writes. He says, one is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. And the other is that sex is the most awful filthy thing on earth. And you should save it for someone you love. So there's a conceptual frame that appeals to me in terms of how we can view these current times. and it's really in terms of two evolutionary pulls that are kind of at cross currents. And one is from the past. And it's really how our survival brain operates, that the survival brain perceives separation

and it operates through fear and through anger and through trying to grasp onto things to protect. and, you know, when we're in a developmental arrest, when it takes over, very hard to be intimate with others. There's a lot of conflict. And on a societal level, when the primitive brain takes over, it's really violence and oppression. The second pull, which is really the pull towards what you might think of as our our future self or our full potential, this evolutionary pull has the perception of interconnectedness and oneness. And as we get drawn in that direction, there's an increasing expression of wisdom

and love and creativity. And in a societal level, as we get drawn towards our potential, it appears as collaboration and as justice and compassion and peace. So here's the thing, and this is for each of us, that as this second draw, the evolutionary draw towards who we can be as it gets strong in us, we start consciously evolving our own psyches. We start training ourselves to deepen attention, to wake up our hearts, because living from an awake heart is what most matters. So in a human, in a wake heart, we're these next two talks that I'm doing this this week and next week, I'd like to focus on a key element in evolving ourselves and becoming all that we can be. And it's learning how to

attend and befriend the more primitive parts of our psyche. It's really deepening our commitment to loving ourselves and to loving all beings into healing, loving ourselves into healing. So we'll start this week looking at in the more individual lens, the practices that cultivate this capacity for a healing presence. And next week we'll be relating to the play of primitive energies and how they come forth in our relationships and in our larger society. How do we hold that? The basic understanding is that the arising of fear and grasping and aggression is inevitable. It's part of our body and mind.

It's part of the equipment. And the question is, when those energies arise, do we react or do we respond? Do we react with aversion, self-judgment, moving away? are can we learn to respond with presence and acceptance and interest and care? So we'll take a moment and pause here and just invite you to reflect. And you might bring up a recent time to your mind in relationship where you were with somebody and you really were caught in selfishness. that it's my way, you know, it's me first, where you're caught in, or maybe it was a time when

you were caught in anger or aggression, but one of those more primitive energies. And just consider it for a moment, just bring up that situation and remind yourself of what it was like to really want things a certain way, to get very controlling, to get angry, to feel aggressive, or maybe it was a situation where you felt fear. But one of those energies, remind yourself how you were behaving, maybe how another person was responding, and see if you can get in touch from the inside out

of what it's like to be caught in those energies in either aggression or selfishness or fear. And since even now, how are you relating to this part of yourself? These feelings or the way they come across as thoughts or the behaviors. Is there some sense that this part of yourself is bad? that there's something wrong with how you are? Is there some judgment? Or is it that you see it and there's a real acceptance or compassion? And not to add any more judgment if you find that you're reactive to yourself,

just to know that seeing is the beginning of shifting. Just to start to become a witness to how you relate to yourself. So the bottom line is this for most of us, that we have a conditioned reflex to consider the difficult emotions, what we might call the limbic emotions, as bad. And that when we're expressing the more evolved parts of our psyche, like love or generosity, that that's good. But this bad good actually obscures a deeper reality, which is that every living form is designed to perceive itself as separate from the whole and to pursue survival energized by fear and wanting.

Through some form of fighting, fleeing, freezing, we are all designed that way. So judging that is bad, not liking those parts of ourselves, is like saying reality shouldn't be this way. Judging is actually yet another limbic energy, just like aggression, you know, greed, anger. It's another averse of energy from our evolutionary past. So when we're judging ourselves, it's like it's the same thing as hating people. people who hate, it's more of the same. And it hinders continued evolving. As many of you know, this is called the second arrow in Buddhist mythology. The first arrow is the arising of these limbic energies of grasping or clinging, aggression, anger. And the second is, this is bad. I don't

like this, adding more aversion onto aversion. It's so interesting, and it's not, this isn't surprising, though, that how many cultures and mythologies portray a struggle between what is posited as the good, higher self and the bad, primitive parts of the psyche? And you see it, particularly in the Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, where it kind of posits this good evil, God, Satan, and all sorts of war metaphors that we're supposed to vanquish our passions and eradicate the anger and destroy the greed. And all patriarchal hierarchical society is described to some version of this. They produce the, you know, kind of the war metaphors, making war on what's bad and evil and sinful. So here's the thing. So here's the thing.

that when difficult emotions or challenging energies arise, many consider being accepting or loving towards those parts of our being as, first of all, undeserved, that it's a bad thing, and that it's soft or indulgent or weak, and that things won't improve unless we judge and blame and punish and control ourselves. So even though you might intellectually understand that self-judgment doesn't heal, it's so easy to be hooked on it. Of course, there are exceptions. I often think of the famous baseball player icon Yogi Berra,

and I think of him because he happened to live like a couple of blocks away from me where I spent in my part of my childhood. and he said this. He said, I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat. And if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting. How can I get mad at myself?

So when we're talking about loving ourselves into healing, we also need honesty, of course. It's a wise discernment. We just don't need to hate ourselves. Okay. Loving ourselves into healing. You know, it's really a radical way of relating to our inner life. And it runs against the messages of our culture, and it runs against our evolutionary past,

and it draws us towards our evolutionary potential. So we're going to be drawing on Buddhist mythology for how we can learn to instead relate of making war on ourselves, relate with acceptance and a really kind presence that serves healing. And how when the difficult emotions arise, when the shadow looms large, we can really evolve ourselves by responding and not reacting. And most basically that means when you encounter these, energies, when you feel fear or anger or grief, that it's not an obstacle to the path. It's not something

to get beyond. It's actually the path. Rumi says this in a very, and I think in a really powerful way, this is what he writes. She says, if God said Rumi, pay homage to everything that has helped you, enter my arms, there would not be one experience of my life, not one thought, not one feeling, not one act, I would not bow to. In Buddhism, there are vivid archetypes that express both the difficult energies of the survival brain and what we might call a truly evolved psyche, an integrated psyche, what we're becoming. coming. And so the survival brain, the shadow energies are often described as Mara. And Mara's like the shadow god. And that's the limbic energies of greed and hatred and delusion. And the archetype

of the bodhisattva, and bodhisattva means awakened being, is the evolved being as our integrated psyches, which do perceive a belonging or interdependence with all beings. And it's a natural response then to feel compassion when others are suffering and love and beholding the goodness. And the understanding is that we're all awakening bodhisattvas. Now, before I just draw on some of the most basic myths that I think are really actually, they're like reading a good poem, they're a reminder of a deep truth. I want to acknowledge that India, 2,600 years ago, patriarchal society, and of course still is most everywhere has got patriarchal societies, but you'll see it in the Buddhist scriptures

in the Polycanon, the adversarial language referring to Mara as these limbic energies as taints or defilements and with these pejorative tones and a lot of warlike words of overcoming. So same conditioning from patriarchal societies. And you can find in the mythology a deeper wisdom that shines. through. This is what we'll be tapping into these stories and myths and practices that actually transcend the trap of good and evil and that cultivate a very different relationship with the primitive psyche. So let's look more closely. And many of you are familiar with the story of Siddhartha's awakening under the Bodhi tree. This is the most famous where he

through a long night, encounters the forces of Mara. And the way it's described is that the armies of Mara attack, again, these military terms, and they come in the form of arrows and slings and stones. And Siddhartha's response is to arouse mindfulness, to see clearly what's happening in the present moment, and to meet it with a compassionate heart. So he does this Tai Chi move really that is a stopping of the war. There's this kind of the intense forces of anger, greed, passions.

And then instead of judging or opposing, he meets them with this awake and mindful and tender heart. And that creates the alchemy for transformation. And the way it's pictured as a, that each attack is met that way and turns into like a flower pedal. And by morning there's a huge mound of petals at his feet. He transformed the energies. And later in his career when he was fully awakened Buddha, there's another myth, and this is told beautifully by Ticknodhan, where Mara appears again, because Mara appeared repeatedly, these energies don't go away. They didn't go

away for the Buddha and they don't go away for us. He appeared again and this time the Buddha was teaching a group of people in a field and Mara was kind of going around the outskirts of the field and the Buddha's loyal attendant Ananda saw Mara and he went, oh no, Mara's back. This is terrible. But when he told the Buddha, the Buddha said, oh, kind of no worries. And he went over to Mara. He looked Mara in the eye and he said, I see you Mara. Come. Let's have tea. And that really, that response, instead of reacting, but responding saying, I see you, which is mindfulness, come, let's have tea. Kind of that. open-hearted, friendly, let me get to know you. Let's get to know each other.

Is really perhaps one of the most elegant, you know, psychological and spiritual antidotes, really, to suffering. Attend and befriend. It's really the grounds of all transformation. And it's never a one-shot. Again, Mara kept returning to the boo-friend. Buddha, so these energies keep coming up. And why bother having tea with Mara? It wasn't because the Buddha was being a nice guy. It's because these energies, these streams of energy that come in the shape of hatred, fear, or greed, they belong.

They're part of our system. They're part of our aliveness. You know, we know through evolutionary psychology there's a lot of our life, there's a part of our There's an intelligence to every emotion. They evolved to serve survival. They let us know when there's an obstacle to our well-being, when we need to back away, when we need to protect, when we need to move towards something. I like to consider them these energies as limbic caretakers. You know, their fundamental intent is to serve our aliveness.

So in a basic way, these primitive energies are life-loving life. They're primitive. They cause suffering when they take over, when we've had unmet needs in our life or trauma, when we're part of an unhealthy culture, big tendency for these limbic caretakers to take over. And then our lives get organized and identified with them. And when that happens, when we move around with a chronic sense of being threatened or endangered or lacking something, we're caught in a very small sense of our being. So they definitely cause suffering.

But their fundamental intention or purpose is to help us. And we know it. We know there can be, let's say, with fear or anger, there's healthy fear, there's healthy anger, letting us know that we need to create boundaries or take care of our own or others' vulnerability. There's unhealthy fear. There's unhealthy anger. When we're chronically mistrusting, chronically avoiding, or blaming, then it's a trance. So the point is that we suffer not because these energies exist, but it's just that they take over and we forget when they take over. Like when fear takes over, anger takes over, we forget who we are.

That's the suffering. It's forgetting the larger truth of who we are. So, again, even when we're suffering from anger, from fear, from selfishness, its purpose, It's a fundamental purpose is to help us. It's just become a torqued energy. The on button's been jammed due to our conditioning, our past wounds, or limiting beliefs. So we need to untwark it. We need to free up the pure energy of the emotion. You know, the Tibetan teachings really highlight this understanding in a powerful way. They say the medicine is in the poison. and they describe in their imagery of their art in the temples, they have these animal-headed deities,

and that's these energies. And when we engage with presence with them, it's if you're going into the temple and you move through the animal-headed deities, you can come to the center of the temple and experience the fullness of awareness. the enlightened qualities of those deities. But the point is that you have to go through them, that they're part of the path, and that engagement is what actually frees up the energy in its pure expression. So if you can remember this, if the next time fear arises or anger rises, you can recognize it as a limbic caretaker, perhaps misguided, but a limbic caretaker, that

Mara isn't fundamentally evil, it's just misguided, then you can relate in a different way. So I'll give you an example. One woman who I worked with, she was very dominated by her anxiety. She was you're going to run by it. And she also had chronic fatigue, poor sleep. By day, she's very hardworking, very performance focused, and very very very very successful person and she had a repeating nightmare. And in the nightmare, she was being chased by some demon, some bad energy she felt like. And everything in her was about running and getting

away. And then she'd wake up. And when she told me about it, and I asked her, well, what did it look like? That energy chasing her, she didn't know. So we started to explain. floor her anxiety. And with that anxiety was this belief, this very deep sense that she always needed to do something or she'd fail, like she was about to fail, about to get fired, about to be shamed, about to be rejected. So there's this thing in her that felt like if I don't do something, if I don't change something, if I don't in some way deal with things, something bad's going to happen. And so I invited her to let go of the thoughts of that and just feel the experience of that in her body. And she said that she could feel the fear and she felt the self-hatred, like that how I am is not okay.

and this image came to her of this demonic wolf. And so I asked her, what does it look like? And she just felt like there's this demonic wolf inside me with these yellow eyes burning through me and the feeling is this kind of a twisting and burning in my heart. And she said, this demon, this wolf is ruining my life. This anxiety, this self-hatred is ruining my life. So I'm going to pause here and just make a comment to you.

So many of us feel that, that our anxiety, our fear, our self-aversion is ruining our life. And so we hate those parts of ourselves. And that's the flag. That's that when we get that, that there's a part of ourselves we hate. That's the time to deepen attention. And that's what I did with her. I said, so, okay, talk to that fear place, that hate, that part of you that hate you and that's filled with fear. What's it trying to do? What's it trying to do? And she had a very long pause

there. And then I could see tears in her eyes. She said, oh, it's trying to protect me. And And so we really slowed down and I invited her to thank this demonic wolf for trying to protect her. It was misguided, we know, but thank just to do that. And she, she, you know, inwardly sent that message, thank you, thank you. And I could just feel the shift in her. It's like she just became larger. Then I said, continue to sense what's going on and ask that part of you, you know, how it wants you to be with it, you know, what it needs. And that the wolf play said that it needed to be allowed to be here, to be included. It needed her to pay attention. and let it be there, let it accept that it's there.

And so I said, can you do that? And she said, well, it's my intention to accept, to listen, you know, to include. And so during that session, she just felt a lot more space. And she continued to practice in this way that when that energy would arise, she'd slow down and sense it was trying to protect her and say thank you. And then she would offer presence. And she told me that over a few months that wolf transformed and it became just this vibrant energy with a kind of a yellow glow from the eyes, you know, this vibrant energy that

was alive and warm and there was clarity. And its message to her was, I'm here to protect you from getting lost. I'm here to protect you to help you remember what matters in your life. Be here. Be empowered. Trust yourself. She described so much more energy. She, again, just to remind you, she had been struggling with fatigue and exhaustion.

She had a lot more energy. And again, just to comment on that, that, when we're running from the demons, when we're at war with Mara, when we're at war with our anxiety, when we're judging our anger, when we're judging ourselves, it's exhausting. There's a war going on inside us. So in the moments when we begin to appreciate what those parts are doing and to befriend, to align with life, there's a lot more. energy and a lot more space and a lot more tenderness. So this is the beginning of really

shifting our relationship with our inner experience in a way that's powerfully transformational. And the beginning is to get that these energies are trying to help us in some way. This is a poem by Kaviri Patel. She writes this. She says, There's a monkey in my mind swinging on a trapeze, reaching back to the past or leaning into the future, never standing still. Sometimes I want to kill the monkey, shoot it square between the eyes, so I won't have to think anymore or feel the pain of worry. But today I thanked her, and she jumped down straight into my lap, trapeze still swinging as we sat still. The process of transformation doesn't get rid of the energy. It's awake up from being possessed by the demon,

by the shadow energy, so that we can then include its pure essence into our larger system. It's a process of integration. You might think of the words, demon and diamond, D-A-I-M-O-N, both from the Greek language. And demon is this kind of evil creature that's when we're caught in a contraction. And the diamond refers to this natural force of nature arising from the ground of being. And it's within each of us to experience a full beingness, a wholeness, a totality. So there's this shift from being caught in the evolutionary force of the past. to really being drawn to our fullness.

And that's what happened to this woman, that that wolf with that, those yellow eyes went from being a very constricting force that kept her run by anxiety and self-hatred to a force of energy that reminded her how to really be all she could be. Let's practice a bit here. You've heard a lot of words. Let's just, we'll do a kind of a brief practice in attending and befriending, in loving ourselves into healing.

So wherever you are, my friend, just take a moment here to pause and breathe, to come home into your body and into your heart. Again, scanning your life and sensing some situation that brings up a reactivity. in yourself that you might judge, a situation perhaps that brings up anger or fear. It might directly be a situation that brings up self-aversion that directly put you at war with yourself. It could be a situation with another person. It could be an addictive behavior that plays out by yourself.

But go right into the situation so you can get in touch with the feelings. the way you're inviting your survival brain forward, you're inviting these limbic energies forward. Remind yourself of whatever most brings up that kind of disturbance in you. Anger, fear, self-aversion. You might sense what you're believing. Something bad's going to happen maybe, that you're causing injury to your own life, whatever it is. And when you're in that situation and having those feelings, you might sense how your body and your faces and even exaggerated a little to get in touch. The facial expression that

goes with the fear or the anger or the self-aversion and the bodily posture. And sense where you feel most strongly in your body, whatever feelings there. And perhaps like this woman I described, there's an image that comes. Maybe there's an image of some sort of a demon. Maybe there's colors. Maybe there's eyes. Feel what's there physically in your body, sense if there's an image. Go right into that part of yourself. And begin by asking, what are you trying to do for me? What's the intention of this part? And if it says something like, I'm trying to destroy you, ask to what? end? In other words, what's it really trying to do? And as you sense into, in some way, that it's trying to help you, take a moment to appreciate that. And whatever way helps for you,

to honor it, thank it, and then find out how it wants you to be with it. What does it need? Does it need your attention, your acceptance? Does it need protection? Does it need love? Compassion, forgiveness, understanding, whatever you sense it needs. Imagine offering. Just offering from an awake heart.

Imagine and feel that you can energetically nourish and nurture and feed and comfort and bathe with care this part of yourself. Notice what happens. You might invite this part of yourself to dissolve or change or shift however it wants to. And notice the experience of your own presence now. Just notice who you are, the sense of your own being. notice anything that shifted from who you were taking yourself to be when you felt the anger

or fear or self-aversion and the presence that's here now. Take your time if you had your eyes closed to open your eyes and I'll just, I'm going to move into another story because I've seen in so many that many rounds of this is what creates a kind of tolerance for discomfort, a tolerance for raw emotion. It takes practice to get used to having something feel unpleasant or uncomfortable and choosing to stay because there's a deep confidence that by staying it serves awakening. And the more we do it, the more quickly we find that we can really be with and there's a kind of a transforming that happens. And with practice, there's a deeper and deeper letting go, a deeper and deeper opening to what we

were running from. It's very, very amazing that the more we open to the fears and the difficulties we've been running from, the more homecoming there is. So the story is one of Mel Raper's And Melarapa, Tadhan Yogi, lived in a cave, and he'd go to get firewood. And at one time, he returned and found his cave had been taken over by demons everywhere. So he tried to get rid of them. He did everything he could to chase them away. But they were completely unfazed because, as we know, you can't really chase them away. And so realizing that wasn't working, he tried a different.

approach. He decided to try to talk them into changing and he decided to teach them to Dharma. And it was very mental. And he took his seed and he talked about existence and non-existence and so on. But they were still there. They just stared at them. Nobody left. So it didn't work. The talking to them, trying to talk them out of things didn't work. So he led out a breath of surrender, knowing now that these demons were not going to be manipulated into leaving and that maybe there was something he could learn from them. So he looked at each one of them and bowed and says, looks like we're going to be here together and he opened to whatever they had to teach him. And all of them disappeared but one, one huge, especially fierce demon, flaring nostrils,

dripping fangs. So then he lets go even further. He decides to, he steps over to the largest demon and he offers himself completely holding nothing back. He said, eat me if you wish. He placed his head in the demon's mouth. And at that moment, the largest demon bowed low and dissolved into space. And the teaching is that when the resistance are gone, the demons are gone. and what remains. I described before the diamond, the transformed energy of the demon in its enlightened version is what's left, which is clarity, tenderness, ease. So this is really kind of the essence of practice when we talk about attend and befriend that we're profoundly allowing what's here to be here. It's surrendering is really surrendering any reason.

resistance to what's here. Now, as I say that, it might feel like a real risk, and it is. It's like our whole life has been organized around avoiding these experiences. And so opening to them can feel like surrender, put my head in the mouth, you know, not so, not such a good idea. I mean, let's say we're angry. Just surrendering me, the anger's just going to take over, you know. a student recently said, you know, I have this sense with fear is that if I open to it and surrender to it, I could have a heart attack. It would kill me. So I want to say that these are fair and even wise concerns because there are times we're not ready to fully allow. We're not ready to put our head in the mouth of the demon. Or we're maybe not even ready to invite Mara to tea.

We just don't feel we have enough resourcefulness to be with the difficulties. So there's a final story I'll tell that is really how do we work with the challenging energies when we don't feel resourceful enough. And this is a favorite story of mine, perhaps the favorite story in Buddhist mythology. if you've been with me for a while, you've heard it, and it's a beautiful one to reflect on together. I mentioned earlier that the Buddha spent the night under the Bodhi tree and met all those attacks of Mara with loving presence, and they turned into flower petals. And he was very awake at the arriving of dawn, but he wasn't yet free.

And that's when Mara brought forth the largest challenge, the deepest, most challenging energy that comes forth from our shadow or limbic system. And that was, who do you think you are? It's the challenge of doubt, really not trusting who we are. And the Buddha didn't try to do the same Tai Chi of mindfulness and compassion with that. Maybe it was too great a challenge. But instead, what he did was he touched the ground, and this is a famous jessure, calling on the earth goddess. And it was an expression of calling on his full true belonging to the entire living web of life, calling on the source of all being.

And in response to that calling out, the world shaked and there were great flashes of light in the night's guy. And it was at that point that Mara withdrew, that the Buddha, that he was no longer possessed by the forces of Mara by doubt. And Sadartha became the Buddha. He became free. So what happened? You know? My understanding and I think this is so beautiful is that he was reaching out, touching the ground of who he really was. He was calling on his future cell. You know, when he wasn't caught, his Buddha nature wasn't fully realized, but he was living in a more constricted identity that could get caught by doubt and he called out to the truth of who he was.

So what's important here, he wasn't really calling out to something different than his true nature. But when we reach out, that's how it feels. when we're identified with a separate cell. We feel like it's something outside us that we're reaching to. But it's really this ultimate wise strategy calling on that truth and by turning towards it, realizing and coming into oneness with the truth of who we are. Now, there are many different expressions of larger belonging.

We could call it the living web of life or God or Allah or Divine Mother. I mean, for each of us, it's whatever most resonates as an expression of a larger source of love and of wisdom. Now, some might say, well, wouldn't that just make us dependent if we keep on feeling small and calling on something out there that seems out there, there? there is a shadow to all practices. In other words, if every time you felt discomfort, you cut off from the pain and turn to some outside source, some sense of, okay, a Buddha out there and said, oh, please help me, then that would deepen the sense that help is outside of you, which means there's no real

healing. And in our lives we know there are many expressions of unhealthy dependence looking for love and healing in the wrong places. And if there's no presence and there's no tending and befriending with the inner and it's just a grasping for outside relief, then in fact it's not a wise strategy. And you can see in some of these illustrations, I'm going to give you three of these. them of the pursuit of the guru on top of the mountain. You've seen those cartoons. Well, here are three of them to give a sense of the kind of shadow side. And the first one, you've got a backpacker here

that's gone up the top of the mountain to this skinny guru. And he's obviously asked him for something. And the guru is indignantly saying, no, I don't have any weed. So, seeking outside. The reflex of continually turning to an outside source keeps us in the illusion that what we seek is not within. And this next guru encounter, the guru is responding again to an inquiry and he's saying, I don't have any answers. I'm a non-profit. The point is that when we reach out to a larger source, we're not turning away from our inner experience if we're doing it wisely. If there's fear, if there's grief, we're not turning away. We're bringing that experience, full presence,

to a larger source of love and wisdom. And it's a process that awakens. It's the process that awakens. It's going through that that awakens us. Final illustration. The seeker of help is actually a dog in this one, sitting with the guru on the top of the mountain, and the guru is patiently explaining the bone is not the reward. Digging for the bone is the reward. Okay, thank you for bearing with me. I just enjoy those little cartoons. So we end with looking at how do we reach out in a healthy way. And many of you have experienced when you're hurting, if you reach out with presence, a kind of sincere prayer,

something softens in those moments of saying, oh, please, oh, please, there's a softening. a dissolving, we become enlarged. It says one, I think it was John O'Donohue, says that the prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. We discover the belonging. Any sincere communication with what we perceive as the source of love and wisdom, any sincere communication with a sense of the divine, with a sense of our own future self, draws us to realizing that that's what we are. One student would write journal,

and she'd journal from her limbic self, from her place of fear and self-judgment and shame, to her future self. And then she would journal some more from her future self in response. and she did this and she described to over the months this incredible gift of this growing trust that the wisdom is here, the love is here, as she said, even when I'm feeling disconnected. So this talk really we've been exploring how each of us emerges with primitive energies, fear, anger, and we also emerge with the draw to manifest our awakened heart mind.

And that evolution, that very evolution, is dependent on how we relate to the less mature parts. So we explored how we need to recognize them as limbic caretakers, how we can attend and befriend, how we can deepen to a real surrendering, and when they feel very much like they've possessed us, how we can reach out, as the Buddha did to the earth goddess, we can reach out in prayer to some larger source that feels resonant to us. And with each of these processes, there's a kind of alchemy that transforms the energy. It doesn't get rid of them. It transforms the energy of the fear or the anger so that it's

pure essence can join a larger hole. It brings us a real kind of a homecoming to our full potential really, living from an away cart. And Srinar Sargadatta, who I share often from because he's such an inspiration in my life, he writes about this in a powerful way. He says, all you need is already within you. Only you must approach. yourself with reverence and love. Self condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this. Make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing. Give yourself infinity and eternity, and discover that you do not need them. You are beyond.

So we'll close with a final practice of really reaching out to a larger source. And I'll be using the language of future self, this draw, this evolutionary draw to who we really are becoming. But feel free to substitute. You can substitute in high self or awakened and target, any word that points to the more evolved expression of your being. Find a comfortable posture. Close your eyes and come into stillness. Take a few long, deep breaths. You might see if with each out breath you can release any tension that may have accumulated in

your body. Now, scanning, as we've been doing, any place of emotional stuckness. that comes up you're experiencing in your life, any place where you might be living right now inside fear or doubt, and for now just to note that. And now imagine you could journey into the future, perhaps five years or 10 or 20, whatever fits where you are in your life. But you could journey into your future and encounter your future self, which is an older, more awake, more evolved version of yourself.

Visualize your future selves home. Where your future self is in this home or perhaps outside and how your future self looks, perhaps clothing or hair, facial expression. Especially notice the look in their eyes as you meet. Notice what their presence is like,

how it feels to be with them. And sense that you're not letting your future self know about whatever feels most challenging right now in your life, wherever you're most vulnerable or insecure or doubting yourself, anxious, uncertain, and ask for whatever you most need from your future self, whether it's a feeling of being loved or valued, trusting yourself, feeling more connected to your world and receptive, sensing you can receive from your future self, what's needed, that you can take that in with an open heart. And before leaving, find out what message your future self wants you to remember,

perhaps some reminder about yourself that will serve you in the moments of your current life. And now take a moment to imagine the awareness, the wisdom, the heart of your future self filling you. So as you return to this moment, you can sense how the spirit of your inner bodhisattva, your most evolved being, lives in you now and always. And with practice, you'll naturally deepen trust. you'll naturally access and live from this awakened heart with more and more ease. And when you're stuck, you'll remember a pathway back, how kindness and presence can carry you. Namaste, blessings. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list,

please visit tarabrock.com.