Tara Brach - Loving Ourselves (Retreat Talk)

Episode Date: May 5, 2013

2013-04-28 - Retreat Talk: Loving Ourselves - The greatest truths we forget, and one of them is that if we don't love the life that is right here--what we perceive as self--we are unable to embrace our world. This talk explores the suffering of turning on ourselves and the deep freedom that arises when we commit to relating to our inner life with loving presence.

Amosthay and good evening. I often find that when I have a theme or something I know I'm going to kind of be exploring in a Dharma talk that inevitably it's something about it brings me to my own edge in practice as I'm kind of reflecting on it, which is why for years I didn't pick death and dying. So the theme tonight, has to do kind of carrying forward from James' wonderful talk last night, really going deeper

into what does it mean to embrace the life that's here. And I had brought some notes with me to retreat and had planned to use the afternoon and, you know, we have an internet and on, you know, my laptop and print out a talk. And the internet was down and I ended up having, a meeting I hadn't expected and various other things. So I watched what I think is the essence of what we do, which is we forget and then we remember, and then we forget and then we remember. I watched the forgetting and going into this kind of trance of,

oh no, I'm not going to have it together. I'm going to let people, you know, my whole spiral into tightness and anxiety. And then, wait a minute, this is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about being kind to ourselves. Oh, it's okay, sweetheart. And then it could be like two minutes later and I'd be back in the same cycle of churning, forgetting. So yeah, and I just really honor in the groups

the beautiful practice. I can see here just in two days as we intentionally deepen our paying attention, the seeing of the forgetting. and how it happens, and how we get caught in suffering in these cycles. And so many have described as one of their more revealing insights, what I call sometimes the tyranny of the judge, this incredibly persistent judging mind that judges forgetting,

you know, as we forget and we come out of thoughts, and along with whatever we're coming back to, there's some overlay of, I shouldn't have been gone. And that's a kind of a sticky one. And in addition to that, what James talked about, the second arrow of whatever it is that we're experiencing, and it could be fear, it could be grief, it could be anger, could be obsessive thinking.

this add-on of it shouldn't be happening. Something's wrong with me for it happening. I own this and it's a bad reflection on me. You know what I'm talking about, right? How many of you have noticed this kind of add-on of judgment on almost everything, how quickly it comes? Yeah, okay, so we're in the same field on this. So the tyranny of the judge.

and what it creates is a sense of a self that's not doing it right you know one one cartoon as this therapist telling his client you know these feelings of unworthiness are common amongst the unworthy you know and and what I like about that is that it's not just that we're judging there's an identification as the unworthy one it's like it's a very deep solid sense of self that emerges, this identification that causes the real suffering, which is, I'm separate and I'm falling short in some way. There's something missing or something wrong. So I think of meditation, you know, in one frame as a kind of evolutionary strategy. It's

awareness coming back home to itself. And the activity is a movement from fight, flight, and being identified with the self that's doing the fighting and flighting to tend and befriend. And pretty much all of the instructions and guidance that you're getting and the ways that we're working with ourselves are tending and befriending. That's the intention. And of course the challenge is that when the fight-flight activity is strong, It's very biochemical, the feelings of aversion and so on. And so then when we're asked to befriend it, it feels very mechanical at best.

I mean, have you noticed in doing meta towards yourself that if you're not in a certain space, that it doesn't land? Because if the body's in a state of aversion, it's very hard to befriend aversion. So that's the challenge and really underneath it all, it requires quite an intentionality that something in us longs to be friend and something in us senses the possibility of embracing this life even though we know we get caught in being at war a lot. I had a phone call with one of my best friends last month. She turned 65 and she said her commitment has been self-love. And she said, it really matters the word self-love. I mean,

she's done other things. Embrace herself with compassion. That doesn't work. It had to be self-love. And it doesn't have to be for everybody, but it was interesting when I started asking questions for her what that meant. What did that mean? And what happened when she felt that there was love being offered inward and what she described as a certain kind of grimness that always seemed to be a kind of undercurrent, a seriousness about life, you know,

getting through the day. The kind of survival brain, right? She said, there's something about that grimness that would just loosen and she just said, I'm more who I really am. I mean, there's just more playfulness, more spontaneity. in any moment that she even had the intention to regard herself with self-love.

Just even a little remembering that it mattered to her, she said, and things would start to soften. So, Srinarsar Gadata, who's one of my favorite of the non-dual teachers, he writes, 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. All I plead with you is this. Make love of yourself perfect. So let's take a few moments to unpack what that means.

So it's got some words in it that could easily be triggers and not so useful. First off, making love of our self-perfect doesn't mean we're loving the self-character, the storyline self, the narrative we have about a self. We're not loving a story. It's loving the experience that is right here. here moment to moment. So we're offering love to the aliveness that's right here, the most immediate sense of beingness, the felt sense of our being. It's an important distinction. And you can just keep that in mind. And the second question is, what is when we say love of ourselves

perfect? What's perfect love? And again, my understanding is not perfect as in setting up another hoop to jump through and you're not good enough, you're not loving yourself perfectly enough, not one of those things. It really has to do with a quality of sincerity and presence that we bring to the moment. So rather than me adding words, I'd like you just to take a moment to inquire into this yourself. Okay, let's just see what's in the room, our collective wisdom. on this. So if you want to let your attention go inward, and the invitation is just for these few moments now to explore the possibility of fully loving this being right here that you call self. That's the purpose or intention right now. It's just to love yourself.

in as pure and authentic a way as possible. And let there be a place of witnessing and noticing what's the activity of loving really involved? What's the words or qualities that are intrinsic, intrinsic to moments of pure loving? So let me just ask, just to say, Let's just put a few words in the room, just like a word or two, yeah. Tenderness.

Let's hear what else, yeah. Attention in the back, yeah, Ben. Patience, take care. Playful is all embracing. Yeah, spacious. So that's, I just want to get a little bit of the feeling, because they're all. truth and any words would be a part of it. And those are a beautiful expression.

Krishna-Murti, our full attention is the deepest expression of love. Now what is full attention? It's the same question as asking what is love. What is our full attention? Full attention, spacious, it's as is totally allowing, contact full, it has a capacity to respond with tenderness. If we want to sense a ground for cultivating loving presence, the very grounds include this recognizing what's happening, the kind of attention that recognizes in the moment what's happening. If we're paying attention to ourselves and we're really recognizing what's here, seeing it, feeling it, contacting it, and utterly allowing it. No interverence, the space of as is. That's the grounds for any of the flavors which would

include the playfulness or the tenderness or joy or compassion, any of the flavors of love spring from that basic quality of full attention. And you might even remember when someone's paid attention to you fully, fully paid attention with complete acceptance. that is love. So tonight what we'll be doing is exploring how self-love, we've had little definitions now, actually dissolves the self-sense, how when we're paying full attention, contacting, completely allowing, in that presence, there's no self that we're loving, there's just loving presence. And we'll look at how it naturally serves the beings in our life.

Contrary to any idea about it being navel-gazing or anything like that, this is the Buddha in the Samuta Nakaya. He says, the moment you see how important it is to love yourself, you will stop making others suffer. So the key inquiry here then is what are the habitual ways that we keep ourselves from loving presence? How do we do that? How do we keep ourselves from that full attention?

And Rumi puts it this way. He says, Your path is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself you have built against it. I love that one. Your path is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within your self,

yourself, you have built against it. Without taking it personally, we know there's truth, that there's ways that these body-mind organisms are defending, protecting, and pushing away love. So we start investigating the barriers. And James did a beautiful job last night at describing the way we pursue pleasure and avoid pain and the condition reflexes. and our identity coagulates around that, we become smaller. I'm just going to continue that exploration in looking at how does this way that we have what what Srinarga Dada is saying,

kind of an immature love for ourselves that gets us to try to get things that we want and push away what we don't want. That's a less evolved form. But if we can see it, then we can open to something more mature. So one of the ways we know and we can see it today is that we leave presence by wanting something more or different

and I wonder for you for yourself how you might consider what was it that you were waiting for because if you were waiting for something or looking towards something you weren't right here so what were you waiting for some it's the bell we know that right you just waiting for that because there's incredible relief for a moment. Some it's food or shower or nap. But it's interesting to know that, you know, in daily life we're wanting the next fix. And in those moments, it's like wanting the next moment to contain what this moment does not. In those moments, we're not available.

And if you just take a moment to reflect for yourself about wanting mine, close your eyes again, just a simple reflection, which is again a continuation from last night, is to sense somewhere in a relationship that's close with your child or a parent or a spouse or partner, where you really have a charged want. You really want something from that person. You want to get something, you want their attention, you want their cooperation, you want in some way for them to be different and show you love in a different way, something that really matters to you. And for the fun of it, get into how much it matters. Like, get into it.

Rev it up for yourself so you can feel it for now. When you're really wanting somebody to be a certain way or do a certain behavior or some way give you something you don't have. And see as you're doing it if you can let your body express it a little. Maybe it might be that your face has a certain expression, but go ahead and play along here. You might have your face, see what your hands might do to kind of embody wanting them to be different or more.

You might lean forward a little if that feels like it fits, but just go ahead and nobody's watching except me and just notice what wanting mind does to your body, your heart. Do you like yourself? what's your sense of connection with others? Okay, you can let go of all wanting. Release all clinging. Okay, so wanting mind gets in the way, and it's more than it gets in the way.

When we're wanting, there's a kind of need or neediness that we really feel ashamed about often. And I've seen many people talk about their wants to do with other people, and when they really started uncovering it, There was a very deep shame that comes from being very young and saying, mommy, mommy, can I have? And somehow or other being told you're asking too much. You want too much. Don't bother me.

A lot of shame in that one. Then we do a lot to try to prove our worth. These are the false refuges. These are the chasing after, the pursuing, the pleasure of feeling that we've proven ourselves. Through overwork, we try to impress. I was remembering how when I was in first, second, third grade, and a question, you know, teacher would ask the room a question, I remember the feeling of my heart banging and pounding and waving my hand and being so excited to have the right answer, you know, and of course

horrified if I didn't, but just the desire to be seen as knowing something are right. fast forward 30 years, I remember going to my first retreat into an interview and coming out of the interview and realizing that there had been a kind of tug of war where part of me I was as interested in impressing the teacher as I was learning something. It got in the way. It starts very early. It's in our culture that we get so much reward. for looking good. This has children's response to a question named six animals which live specifically in the Arctic. One answer. Two polar bears and three and it's crossed off four seals. What was Sir Walter Raleigh famous for?

He's a noted figure in history because he invented cigarettes and started a craze for bicycles. What's a vibration? Well there are good vibrations and vibrations, good vibrations were discovered in the late 1960s. What happens during puberty to a boy? He says goodbye to his childhood and enters adultery. So there's the proving ourselves, there's the wanting to be right, and of course we know the difference between, okay, you got it, you're right, and do you want to be right or do you want to feel close, connection?

And there's the ways that we pretend in order to be liked. And if we're honest with ourselves and we watch ourselves with each other, many moments we're presenting the self we hope will get approval. We're presenting the self that we hope will be appreciated. I mean, you might sense yourself, what is it that you really want others to see about you? Just consider that. What is it you really want others to see about you? What is it you want others to see? And how much does that affect your naturalness? How much presentation is there?

And what is it you really don't want them to see? What don't you want others to see about you? And how does that affect your way of being with other people? So part of this pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain is leaving our natural being, our authenticity and presenting. And then the way we leave is we distract ourselves when there's raw feelings of discomfort rather than being, tending and befriending, we go online, we watch TV, we sit in front of a screen, we distract ourselves in our own minds.

I keep thinking there should be a sixth precept about in some way not going into trance in front of a screen that, you know, kind of makes it more contemporary because how many of us do it? So distracting ourselves. Some of you might remember the story. This older man writes about working people. He says, they frequently ask what us retired people do to make our days interesting. Well, for example, the other day Mary, my wife and I went into town and visited a shop. When we came out, there was a cop writing out a pocket ticket. We went up to him and I said, come on, man, how about giving a senior citizen a break? He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him a jerk. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for worn out

tires, so Mary called him a creep. He finished a second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing more tickets. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote. Just then our bus arrived and we got on it and went home. We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age. So distracting ourselves. So what I'm really described, right now and just to bring it into basic terms is the different ways we leave presence out of fear and get ourselves further and further away from intimate contact with ourselves or each other. Now the biggest way that we do it is through

judgment in my view because judgment not only do we judge but then we judge the ways that we're judging. It's like it's the nail in the coffin. It locks us in bad person. And so I want to explore that a little bit more, but just read you what somebody put forward as one of the more creative responses in terms of how to, kind of a strategy for forgiveness. It's meditation on a raisin net, okay? You know raise in meditation, right? Okay, this is Raisinette meditation. And you sit in a comfortable chair and you just relax. And then you place the raise a net in your hand. And there might be a problem. problem because it could get a little, it could melt a little if your hands warm.

But examine the raisinette as if you've never been to a movie theater. As you look at the raisinette, ask yourself what you could be doing if you were not examining a raisinette. Now smell the raisinette with dignity because no one's looking. Okay. Now is it difficult for you not to pop it into your mouth? You did pop it into your mouth? This is, now these are steps nine through your mouth. 12. You ate the entire box. You want more and more. Is there no end to your desperate

cravings and neediness? Will you never feel loved? Then 13. Forgive yourself. Don't become impatient with this first step to inner peace. Soon you will advance to the Kit-cat bar and finally to the highest level of candiness, the almond joy. So, Raisinette Meditation, if the forgiveness practice is here don't work for you. So judgment. Just a way that I find is really helpful to check in is a kind of scan, and it's a scanned to sense in a way, what am I holding against myself in this moment. So I'm going to invite you to kind of, we'll do just a brief rendition, and I'd like to base this rendition of the scan on the word should.

because should is a word that is really a wake-up word if we're onto it. Anytime there should, I should be different, you should be different. There's a signal there to deepen attention. So I'd like you to consider here at retreat, what are the shoulds on how you should be? In other words, at retreat, I should be, fill in the blanks. Is it present, kind, trying hard, grateful? What's the shoulds that come along with here at retreat? You might add on, at retreat I should not be. Maybe you should not be sleepy or

lazy or judgmental. What are your should not be's? And as you're scanning, just notice if there's any really true gaps there. Are there places at retreat thus far where you have an idea of how you should or shouldn't be and there's really a mismatch? And just be honest. This is a moment where you can just, without adding judgment if possible,

just notice where there's a gap, where there's an undercurrent of, I should be different. because if you become aware of that, then you don't have to be so identified with it. You might notice that you listed perhaps some really virtuous things like I should be present or kind or grateful, and at home we have our list too in a close relationship,

what we should and shouldn't do. But here's the thing. You can open your eyes if you'd like. What happens, no matter how noble our idea of what should be is, What happens if we're different from the should? No matter how noble it is, what happens? Now the language that's been bantering around a lot is if you have a should, it's an argument with reality.

You're in trouble. Because as soon as there's a should and it doesn't match, we're at war. We're at war. We've turned on ourselves. It creates distance. It fuels the trance. and this goes for the big shoulds,

but it also goes for the very subtle shoulds, like the should, like, I shouldn't be so caught up in myself. And it gets subtler than that when there's any trace of a self here, any trace of an ego self that's wanting, that's not wanting, there comes with it some sense of it shouldn't be like this. There shouldn't be that contraction,

because it's a contraction. Do you know what I mean by that? That when there's a sense of a self, there's some sense of a contraction? There's some part of us as it shouldn't be like that. And I can sense that in myself when I ask, you know, what is between me and full presence? There's some sense of a self in there, some presence that wants something different and doesn't want this. And even when it's very, very subtle, there's not an at-home feeling if there's some identification with that self. And in a way, there's some truth because when there's any identity with an egoic self, we're identified with a sliver of being, and we are not resting in the wholeness of who we are. And some intuition in us knows that. Now, the response doesn't

need to be a verse of judgment. But there's something in us that knows that we're not at home whenever there's a self-sense. There's a really interesting description of research that was done with rats, and they took a bunch of rat pups in a lab and just recorded them playing and just how they behaved. And then they put in one hair from a cat's fur into the cage or environment they were in,

and henceforth the rat pups never regained their playfulness in any full way as soon as fear was introduced and so the question and it's interesting when you think about it because it reduced play but when there's fear it also you know reduces our capacity for bonding and for the natural development of intelligence and a lot of other things So the inquiry, it's kind of where Rumi says, what is our barrier to love? Where is there a cat's hair?

You know, where is there some fear and reactivity going on that's keeping us from our naturalness and our playfulness and our wholeness? And it can be really overt, as some of the descriptions where we're grasping after something in an addictive way, or it can be a very, very subtle thing or there's just some thoughts about, you know, how we should be doing something better

and a sense of a self that's not quite up to par. Kat's hair. So the inquiry is powerful. What is between me and love? It's a powerful one. Rachel Remen. She says, there are laws of our inner world that bind each of us as firmly as gravity. Beliefs we carry about ourselves and about life in general,

that we experience is true in all conditions at all times. A feeling of personal unworthiness is one such inner law. One moment of unconditional love may call into question a lifetime of feeling unworthy and invalidate it. Now, I like the power of this quote, and I share it on purpose. I like the languaging of love of our inner world, because whenever there's a self, there's a not liking of that self. The ego doesn't like itself. It might inflate itself to try to feel better

and be in a process of inflation and having temporary fixes of feeling good. But basically there's insecurity and vulnerability because that self is mortal, it's threatened, it needs more to be okay. So there's these laws of our inner life and one such law is a feeling of deficiency. and we carry it around.

And then what Rachel goes on to saying is one moment of unconditional love may call into question a lifetime of feeling unworthy and invalidated. So she points to the power of what I think of as moment of enlightenment, a moment of experiencing truth. Any time here that you have a moment where there really is that befriending

and a sense of in that befriending just becoming that loving presence, that moment of truth begins to unearth, uproot the old identity as a deficient self. So this is where we're going to spend the rest of our time is in that kind of uprooting. The whole path is one of awakening from this trance of I'm a small deficient self and realizing,

Ajak Shanti says, who's looking through the mask? Realize the loving presence itself. This whole path. And the key element, because we have such a conditioning to be at war, is, and I use this gesture, this capacity to bring kindness to the life that's right here. So just to share a bit of my own preference, process in that the beginning of loving ourselves is caring about it, that it matters to us,

then something in us gets that we cannot awaken and be free if there's not that quality of tender, full presence towards the life that's here. That there's these two wings and one of them is recognizing what's happening, the other's absolutely tenderly, kindly being with that we can't do without that. So the beginning of self-love is getting that it matters to us, like my friend Alice, who said, you know, I'm committing myself. So about, up until about eight years ago, I had a repeating dream. And it just would keep coming up, you know, year after year after year.

And this stretched for a long, long time. And each time I was in a different situation, but had a very young child, child was under a year, female, and I'd suddenly realized I'd lost my child, and the rest of the dream was the horror and the fear and the grief, and what have I done to have lost my child? So I have a son, and it continued after he was born for a number of years, and I kept thinking, what's going on? I have a son, and here's this little girl that I keep losing in my dreams. Well, one morning, and this was the eight years ago, I woke up, and I woke up, And I was crying, it was uncontrolled crying.

And I wrapped my shawl around me, and I said, okay, let's be with this. And I invited the crying place to be as big as it was, you know, really weeping. And I was just feeling grief and separation. And the words that came out were, I'm sorry. I just kept saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So, you know, I kept investigating and, you know, was I sorry? it was the sorry going towards this dream child, you know, who was it going towards? And as, you know, you might imagine, it was, I was saying, I'm sorry to some inner part of me.

And it was really clear that, you know, it was kind of one of those bangs over the head, that there was this vulnerable place in me that I just wasn't paying attention to. And it's like pretty much the most lay, you know, pop analysis in the law, world will go, yeah, you know, duh. But for some reason, I had to spend years having a repeating dream about losing a little girl to get that there, you know, there's something in my upbringing and, you know, my mother being, you know, having a lot of anxiety and depression when I was younger and me wanting to be strong and it not being okay to be vulnerable and who knows, blah, blah, but I wasn't paying attention. So that more than that more than that, more than, you know, and I'm not,

there was this crying from this vulnerable one, this scared one, the one that's really insecure, the one that feels deficient, no matter whether I write a book about radical acceptance or not. You know, that place in me that's in there. And so I, you know, as we practice, you know, what's needed, what do you want? And just as we know, just to be seen, see me. see me and to be held. So my practice, which is often, you know, in some way putting my hand on my heart and saying it's okay or became it's okay sweetheart or also includes, you know, calling on loving energy and feeling it come in. You know, I practiced and it's been, it's

continues to be a beautiful practice. But what was really pivotal was that I shift from somewhat grudgingly paying attention when I had to to an eagerness almost when vulnerability

comes up when I get hit up by insecurity I've shared a few times being fearful about going to a conference or

today the anxiety and having all these miscellaneous papers around that rather than when there's a remembering, oh, okay, all right, so I'll be with this. It's like, oh, this is, and I use the word

portal, this is the entry into the very place that actually is the source of loving. There's a willingness. So our practice here, and we've been exploring it over and over again, is when we sense that something's going on, to recognize it, to allow it to be there, to allow it to be there. It's like, okay, this is here, it wants attention. And in that willingness to bring that sincerity and that interest to investigating and offering kindness, because that's the very place that we can wake up. And the more that we practice this, the more our faith deepens that, in fact, by learning to stay, Pema Chodron, learning to stay, and bringing these two wings of investigating and kindness, there is a freedom. Now, the hardest times are when we feel very

unforgiving of ourselves. The hardest times are when we feel we've really injured others. And then, as I mentioned, it's very hard to offer tenderness to our own being. And so, at times, it's as important as it is to offer it in, it's important to ask. ask the universe for loving. There was one man who I was working with, recovered alcoholic. His three adult children were all struggling in different ways, but each of them was a consequence

of the way he brought them up. He was drinking throughout their childhood and his temper is instability, his unavailability. So when we were working together, He was filled with deep, deep self-aversion because he was living with seeing, you know, one of his sons, you know, struggling with addiction and another with intimacy and just having trouble. So I shared with him the metaphor I often share about forgiving that if you're in the woods and you see a dog and under a tree and you go over to, you're eager to greet the dog and pet it,

but it lurches at you and it bears its bangs and growls and you go from being friendly to going, you know, being angry at this dog that's gotten so vicious. But then you look closer and see that the dog's leg is in a trap. And then you shift again. And then you go, oh, you pour a thing. So to the degree that we can deepen our attention and see that our legs in a trap,

whenever we cause suffering we're suffering. And it's the same for others. To the degree we can see that, there's some forgiveness that begins. And so this is what I shared with him. And he started to see the leg in the trap, his self-doubts and his isolation,

and his anxiety and how intolerant was. And he started softening, but still there was something about seeing his children, adult children in pain, that he just kept looping back into hate. himself. So that's when he began praying. And he prayed to God, his sense of God, which is kind of a field of light and wisdom and love, whatever. He prayed to that energy, that presence to see him and to love him and to forgive him. And so in a way he started looking

through God's eyes. He got outside of himself enough, and he started just, it just made enough space so he could begin to receive. And he felt that sense when he was praying and when he was praying from a really sincere place, like, you know, this hurts, please may I hold this life with some kindness. When the prayer was really deep, the roots were deep and tender and the reaching out was really full, he could feel that being bathed feeling. Like this universe was a loving universe. For him, the process was just to rest in that, and gradually he came to sense that that loving presence that was forgiving him was his own awakened heart. But I share this because he couldn't at first, and neither can we sometimes. And as John O'Donohue says, prayer is a bridge

between longing and belonging. And when we reach out with sincerity, our heart just in the reaching out begins to open and become more available. So we come back home to what's already here. So, talking about the pathways to befriending, and it begins with committing ourselves, saying, okay, it really matters to wake up this heart and hold myself with kindness. Now, as with Meta, the loving kindness practice that we do that has a kind of formal sequence, the invitation is usually to start where it's easiest to feel love, and because it's not with ourself, we often start with others. So I want to share a story that I found that Gil Franzdale wrote,

that really speaks to this. And in this story, this is an engineer who visits a monastery regularly for many years. And the practice made sense to him. It was pragmatic, gave him hope that he could overcome his chronic unhappiness and deeply felt pain. So he would try all the practices that the abbess of the monastery gave him. But he keep on encountering this wall that he couldn't get through, this suffering he couldn't pass. and then he'd start figuring things out and try to think his way through and it wouldn't work. So after many rounds, she decided to give him a different practice.

And what she did was she said for two years, you're leaving the monastery. And when you complete this, you can return for deeper teachings. So what she had him do is volunteer 10 hours a week at a maternity ward at a hospital. And he was to hold babies born prematurely. And these are babies that if they didn't have enough physical context, they die. So he plunged in and he would be holding these little small, fragile beings ever so carefully and watched every breath and sensed the danger that they might stop breathing and realized it was most effective to care for them by holding them against his chest. Six months

he begins to feel something new, a little spot of warmth, a little spot of kind of softness right in the center of his being. But it felt foreign. It felt different from his ideas of himself. So he kind of ignored it. He kind of thought, okay, I'm not going to think about this, which was good because that didn't interfere. Over the months, that warmth expanded to fill his whole body. And gradually it dissolved the dark and the hardened wall around his heart. So he completed his time and he returned to the monastery. The abbess saw that he was, was transformed, that he was no longer desperate to try to fit everything into his conceptual framework, and gave him new instructions. When you meditate, don't think about what is

happening. Rather, let your awareness be seated in the tender warmth where you feel your body. If you do this, any meditation practice you do will be fruitful. And the man found this to be true, to leave the thoughts behind, to keep his heart and his body, to come home. Let me just invite you to check out something for a moment in this particular stage of the practice, just the simplicity of starting where it's easy, and you might sense for yourself where it's very, very easy to feel a loving connection with somebody. And it could be a friend, it could be somebody that's close to you in your family. It could be somebody that's not alive. It could be an animal. It could be a spiritual figure. But some being that it's easy for you

to feel love for. And you might sense that being's love for you. Just see that being's eyes, sense the message that could come through those eyes of care. That's a possibility of letting that in a bit. And sense that being's goodness, what you love about him or her. And as you do, you might mentally whisper that being's name and just simply say, thank you. Just whisper, thank you, I love you, or whatever else you'd like to convey. And you might say the words again, sense it coming from the most sincere place in you. Thank you, I love you, a few times even, until you feel the actual visceral sense of where the words come from, awake, letting that warmth and tenderness be as big as it,

wants to be, sensing the possibility of it including your whole being and all beings. Keeping your heart and your body, including this life. Keep your eyes closed as we close this evening's talk with just the sense of what we've touched on. I've never seen authentic self-love or compassion or forgiveness lead to anything but widening ripples of love. If we hold our own being with love, this body, this heart, we're going to love the earth. We're going to love this life around us and take good care.

In any moment of our lives that we remember love, that we remember to ask, what is between me and love in this moment? Just that bit of remembering. that we care about love, the armor starts dissolving. The first reflection I invited you is just the simplicity of what does it really mean to bring a very pure, full loving right to the life that's here. Just to experiment again with curiosity, with care.

When there's loving of the life that's here, is there any self you can find? Is there anyone who's doing the loving? receiving the loving. Just notice what happens if you let yourself rest and be the loving. Just be the loving. 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 thank you for your attention, your presence.