Tara Brach - "Make Love of Your Self Perfect" - Retreat talk

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

"Make Love of Your Self Perfect" - retreat talk (2021-04-14) - Like a dense fog, chronic self -judgment blocks the light of our true nature. This talk explores the challenges to loving the life within us, and the pathways of practice that lead to holding our own being and all life in a boundless tender heart (a talk from the IMCW Spring 2021 online weeklong silent retreat).

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Welcome, friends. It's a pleasure to be with you, and I wanted to start by honoring you. Just really the quality of effort and earnestness and dedication to practice. I feel like we're all kind of helping each other along and the atmosphere is just, it's sweet and beautiful. So I wanted to start with a quote. This is Thomas Merton, who once said, of what avail is it if we can travel to the moon, if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all journeys and without it, all the rest are useless.

I'm starting with this because it feels like that's what we're doing, that we gather here, and in a sense we're crossing the abyss, there's so much conditioning to cut us off from ourselves and cut us off from each other. And we're in this practice that is really bringing an intimacy with the life that's here. And you could feel that as Jonathan spoke yesterday, this, it's such a a powerful talk on meeting difficulty, all those challenging weather systems befriending, the wings of mindfulness and kindness. And then the beautiful meta meditations yesterday with Devin and then just now with law that really keep inviting us into this heart space, into really embracing ourselves and

naturally finding how it extends outward. So I had a yoga teacher long, long, long time ago. And she taught this in slightly a different way than we're doing here. She, and these are the instructions she'd give. She'd say, put your left arm over your right and hug yourself. And then she said, put your right arm over your left and hug your evil twin. I had no idea what was coming, I was following the instructions, but then I realized, why not? You know, just embrace all parts of ourselves, whatever we consider them to be. And yet we know that when the difficult weather comes along and you can kind of track how it's been these last days, it's not our first response. It just isn't. You know, our first response is to either ignore it or think it's

in the way of our, of the real meditation. I try to do it. to get rid of it and the most painful is really judging ourselves for it. This shouldn't be happening. This is a sign of something bad about me. It's my fault. I was thinking of just today, my last group of the morning, all of us had trouble getting in the room because the link didn't work. But each of us were just sharing on how quickly our minds defaulted into, this is about me, it's my failure. You know, it just what happens. And many of you are probably familiar with the Buddha talking about this in terms of getting shot by two arrows.

And I find it so useful to remember this because the first arrow is the painful emotion. Let's say anxiety comes up. You know, something's going wrong. I'm going to miss something. And then we shoot a second arrow because we're disillainful. liking our insecure, anxious, failing self. So we're blaming ourselves for the experience. And here's the thing. When we're doing a lot of second arrowing, in other words, when it's a habit of judging ourselves, we're creating an abyss that really locks us in suffering. It solidifies our identity

as a bad self, that undercurrent, that nags away, something's wrong with me. And the reality is that any degree of self-aversion, any self-aversion in the moment is creating an abyss that distances us from others, and it actually obscures reality. It obscures reality. So the focus of this talk as you might be detecting, I think of it as loving ourselves into healing and it's a really continuation of what you've been exploring with the different teachers thus far, loving ourselves into healing, into freedom. And I often think if this was the last talk I was ever going to give, you know, what would I talk about and I would talk about love. I would talk about love because in the deepest way it's what we are and it's what we're coming home to. You might consider it loving awareness. There's all

these different words. So I find it helpful to consider if I just think kind of more in terms of the lifespan that what you as an infant or young child most needed and what I needed and what we all need, if we really came down to it, is to feel understood like others were getting us. They understood us and that what was seen was loved, that were loved. There's an evolutionary psychologist Kozolino who says it's not the survival of the fittest, it's the survival of the nurtured. And so this is what we're practicing really, learning to offer to our inner experience, this nurturing. And when I wrote radical acceptance, I termed it as spiritual reparenting

because it's really, when you think of what is meditation doing, we're recognizing what's arising, we're coming to understand, here's what the experience is, and we're holding it with kindness. This is what actually undoes the identity of bad self. This over and over again, seeing what's here and relating with kindness. It's what reconnects us with our basic goodness. The starting place is really becoming aware of the thoughts and feelings of bad self. Sometimes they're subtle, sometimes they're really overt. Well, maybe for a moment, if you're not already on gallery view, switch to gallery view if you don't mind. Okay, you hear? The question I have really is how many of you feel like you're aware of judging yourself

too much and really the pain it causes in your life? And you can do it by hand raise your arm or else just putting it up and take a moment just to look, kind of screen through. And it may not be everybody, but we're getting it, that there's just a lot of us that know how deep a habit this is for us. So thank you. Whenever I do stuff like this, please know it's really optional and I'm sorry I didn't say that. Decades ago, again, this is when I wrote radical acceptance, I described this as a trance of unworthiness because most of us are aware that we are judging a lot and it causes pain. But as we move through the day, we're not conscious of how many moments there's this undercurrent of something's wrong that I'm falling short in some way

and how it impacts everything so that when we're with other people on some level we're monitoring to see how they're responding to us because we're afraid of being judged and rejected. I remember doing a course on fear, and I had people get into small groups and write on a piece of paper their greatest fears, and then we shuffled them around and read them out. Most of the fears had to do with the fear of others' judgment. This trance of unworthiness affects how we approach work because we're so anxious about mistakes that we can't be as creative as we want to be. It affects meditation. We so often feel like we're falling short. It's really important to notice how much the trance of unworthiness totally bleeds into the spiritual path,

this idea of how we should be speaking, acting, feeling. I mean, on some level we're always monitoring ourselves and seeing if we're meeting a standard that's our perfectionistic standard. And there can often be a background sinking feeling. of falling short. I saw a cartoon with a woman, she was having kind of an entry meeting with God in the afterlife. And he's shaking his head and saying, nope, that's not a sin. Uh-uh, no, not that one either. No, no, that's not a sin. He goes, my goodness, you must have worried yourself to death. And I liked it because I'm so, I'm interested in the word worry. The old English for worry is

strangle. And when we're judging ourselves, when we have that anxiety about imperfection, it's just this strangling. And so many people report, like, I want to inhabit my full vibrancy, and yet as long as there's that patterning of judging, it's very hard to feel fully alive. People often ask me, you know, why do so many of us struggle with this? When I was doing book tour for Radical Acceptance, that was the biggest question. How come so many of us are, they didn't put it this way, but going around strangling ourselves, you know? And our sense of value and our sense of belonging and they go together, they go together, is shaped by our caregivers and our society.

You know, how well do others see us? Like, really see who we are, mirror who we are, and how unconditionally do they love us? And it's caregivers and society. One man wrote about it, the kind of messaging growing up in his particular religious community. He said, they taught me two things. 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 maybe we didn't receive this much of a mixed message, but each of us were given messages about how others viewed us, including how we should be different, where we're falling short. Maybe to pause right here and invite you to reflect for a moment, and just explore this for yourself, if let your attention go inward,

if it helps to have your eyes downcast, or closed, go ahead. And imagine yourself at around eight years old and you're in a room that you might have commonly been in with whoever were your primary caregivers. So just imagine that. It might be a dining room, might be in a TV room, kitchen. And they're looking at you. And just notice face, eyes, expression. I'm sensing how they're viewing you, what they're focused on about you. And you might just wonder, what brings approval or love from them? What about me?

What about me brings disapproval and our distance or rejection? What's the degree of belonging that you feel of truly being understood and loved? You can continue to reflect if you want a journal in any point to just write something down because we're going to do a few reflections that really have to do with waking up out of the prison, really, of a small self that in some way might be falling short. So many of us had parents or caregivers who do to their own fears, their own beliefs, wounds, their self-focused, their trauma, their generational trauma, they weren't able to see and understand us, to love us, unconditionally.

and some neglected and abused us. It's all to varying degrees. But the upshot as many of us got the message that there's something wrong with us, that we need to change to be okay. And here's what's important. The caregivers are shaped by society. So even when they're more awake than the society, our society has great power to turn us against ourselves. I'd like to read you something This is written by a mom. It was in the Sun magazine. Am I gorgeous, my child asks, drawing the word out like pulled taffy? Yes, I say you are. Pink and teal dress is probably made of highly flammable material, some chemist's approximation of satin, pudgy fingers decorated with pink polish, trace the sequins on the bodice. I love this. A giant pair of bubblegum pink wings flaps slow. little feet dance in sparkly red slippers. I'm just like a real princess. Yes, I say, you are. Thick blonde hair, blue eyes, rosy cheeks, flawless skin. This child is the American epitome of beauty.

This child, my son. He's four years old and prefers to wear dresses. Maybe it is a phase, maybe not. Even as I wonder how I produce such an angelic-looking creature, I wish he would put on some pants and go back to playing with toy tractors not because it matters to me. It doesn't. But because I'm already hearing in my head the name-calling he will face in kindergarten. Many adults already seem a bit disturbed by the dresses. Strangers utter awkward apologies when they realize he's not female. This culture wants little boys to dream only of baseball trucks and trains. This culture has no room for little boys who want to be gorgeous. He picks up a parasol, a neighbor gave him, and opens it jauntly over his shoulder.

Am I beautiful? he asks. I sweep him into my arms and plan to kiss on his cheek. Always. So what happens in this society when it doesn't have room for us? You know, our societies are caste systems. They're most notably racial caste systems. also demean and violate us because of gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and on and on. What happens when the daily message is you're inferior, you don't belong, something's wrong with

you. And while society actively targets and violates some, it divides all of us from each other. In other words, it prevents all of us from true belonging. So I'm speaking this way because the need for belonging is in our human DNA. It's a fundamental survival need. It's essential for our continued evolving. And when belonging is severed and that's what we're talking about, it brings up huge fear, huge insecurity.

And then with that all these behaviors because when we feel so insecure, severed belonging leads us to behaviors to self-soothe, to find some ease to protect. And so that's over-consuming, medicating, you know, using anger, defensiveness. One woman with a lifelong eating disorder had been terribly emotionally abused by our mother, really continuously demeaned, shamed. And she describes about her eating disorder, the kind of beginning, she describes a bedtime ritual, and I want to read this too. She says from the age of five or six, until I was well into my teens, whenever I had trouble sleeping, I would slip out from under my covers and steal into the

kitchen for a bit of bread or cheese, which I would carry back to bed with me. There I'd pretend my hands belonged to someone else, a comforting, reassuring being without a name, an angel perhaps. The right hand would feed me little bits of cheese or bread as the left hand stroked my cheeks and hair, my eyes closed. I could whisper softly to myself, they're there, go to sleep, you're safe now. Everything will be all right. I love you. The self-soothing was a primitive way of her loving herself. and yet it became the enemy.

It fed into self-hatred. And I bring up this example to you all because it's the first way we can start controlling things is with food. So so many hate themselves for food and for bodies that they feel are the wrong size. And it's our primitive nervous system trying to feel, feel better. And this happens in many, many ways, so many of the ways that we try to feel better we hate ourselves for. And so part of waking up from the trance of unworthiness, this is what's

important, is to recognize that what we're hating is our best effort at loving ourselves. It happened in an early time and we locked in. But we need to be. be able to see that what seems most destructive on some level is an effort to cope. So what happens is instead of seeing that, we have a lot of self-dust, a lot of self-aversion, and it shows up daily, you know, continuously anxious about what others think and having these standards I've been talking about and feeling like we're making mistakes or falling short. You know, I can see it in myself, that kind of chronic monitoring. If I paused and slowed down right now as I'm speaking, there is some part of me that's saying, well, how am I doing now? You know, am I authentic? Am I here?

Am I embodied? Are we in a resonance field? You know, it's like there is that monitoring. And so often there's a sense of, oh, not fully here, a sinking feeling. It helps to name that out loud. I'm just saying right now on the spot, when I can name out loud that the monitoring is going on, then I'm not so identified with it. Do you know what I mean? So this is part of trance that we get divided against ourselves. and it can come up as fear, as doubt, version, sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic.

Either way, what happens is it's like clouds that obscure the sun. We can't see who we are. So again, pause to reflect. Take a moment, let your attention turn inward. And I'd like to invite you to just scan and sense how you've been relating to yourself during this retreat. and notice anywhere you might have been holding on to the judgment of, I should be different. Doing it differently, feeling different, having different kinds of thoughts, less thoughts.

Maybe there's a judgment about how you've been in relationship with those where you're living if there's others around. Maybe you had a teacher's meeting and you didn't feel like you really expressed who you were. their judgment for sleepiness, for ways you've been eating, or for maybe something you carried in to retreat with you, something that's hard to forgive you carried in with you. Real gentle, real gentle. You can bring up a lot of sadness, a lot of pain, sometimes despair or just to sense how thick it is. We're in it together. Sense yourself witnessing. Yeah, breathe, breathe and witness, just naming it, okay, judging, self-aversion, this is the trance. And with that,

you might just sense your deep intention towards spiritual reparenting. Really, it's towards trusting your basic goodness. You know, the most basic truths are the ones we regularly forget. and one of those truths is, if our hearts are closed against ourselves, that closed heart is not going to be able to really love life. We need to cross the abyss. There's a teaching from one of my teachers, Sri Narasar Gadata, he's a non-dual Indian master no longer alive. I want to read it to you and then unpack it a little. Here's what 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 you do not need them, you are beyond. All I plead with you is this. Make love of yourself perfect." So the words, your flight from pain and search for pleasure is love you bear for yourself. And this is what we're looking at before. It says that the grasping, the aversion, like that woman's eating disorder.

are coming from love, that this organism is trying to live fully. It's misguided love. It's coming from an illusion of separation. It's what I sometimes call a false refuge that causes suffering. But it's coming from love. Here we are. The plea is this, make love of yourself perfect. So what is yourself?

Many people ask this. They say, well, here we are and Buddhism says there's no self. Why are we trying to love this self? So let's say you're angry. You're not loving the narrative self. In other words, the story of a person who's righteous or who just lashed out. What you're doing is you're loving the life in this moment that's expressing through you, whether it's the heat of anger or the tightness of the heart.

So you're loving the aliveness that's expressing in the moment. not the story of a self. I hope that's helpful to you. What does it mean to say make love perfect? And that is really talking about dedication. That when we realize what the trance of unworthiness does, that it keeps us in a prison of bad self, then it becomes the center of our path, a deep, deep commitment to love ourself into healing. Then he says, Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover you do not need them. You are beyond. That if you love yourself without holding back, true, unconditional love, letting it in, it dissolves

that sense of a limited separate self. It reveals the reality which is really a boundless field of tenderness, of wakefulness. It reveals our wholeness. So it takes intentionality. This is one of the main things I really want to convey that the trance is sticky, it's persistent. And so what I'd like to do is look at really the challenges that we run into when we're trying to make love of our self-perfect, the challenges people run into with the meta-practice or self-compassion or the N-of-Rain, the nurturing of rain.

And often I'll ask people, well, what's that? What stops you? You can sense this for yourself right now. What stops you from accepting yourself just as you are? You know, what stops you from bringing kindness to the places you've been reacting to? What stops you? For many, and I'll share what I hear often, is it's the fear that if I don't judge myself, I'll never be the person I want to be. In fact, I'll get worse. No? Let me just check with you. How many can relate to that?

If I stop judging, I'll never improve. Can I just see by hands? Yeah, I mean, I see that at myself. It keeps driving the effort. Yeah. So the truth is I have never seen someone judge themselves into spiritual transformation and to who they want to be. And I've never found someone who dedicated to true self.

self-kindness, not find increasing freedom. Never seen that. So let's look more closely because you have to, the only way you'll discover it is if you do it at the challenges. And the most regular challenge, we offer meta, we invite you to really experiment. And meta is not just, I mean, there's one classical form where you're repeating several phrases over and over, but as you've been sensing with Devon and with law, there's many different facets you can experiment with. And one is touch. You can touch your hands on your heart or a hug. Images using imagery. You can practice any words you want. You can imagine offering yourself love or you can invoke a love or trusted being. It could be a non-human being. It could be your ancestors. Could be anybody.

any other source. But many people, when they start experimenting, still feel blocked and they feel in some way hypocritical or fake, are they going through the motions, are even worse, that just the practice of loving kindness, they actually bring up more of a sense of unworthiness. And I won't do a hand-raise on this, but I know how common that is, that the very idea of offering love to ourselves, we feel incredibly undeserving of it. One friend of mine, a philoderma teacher and buddy Shauna Shapiro describes her pathway to Meta. She was going through a difficult divorce and she would wake up each morning in this kind of pit of shame and failure. And her meditation teacher said, well, how about saying to yourself each morning, I love you, Shauna. Just, you know, I

I love you, Shauna. And Shauna said, no way. It's too far from what I'm feeling. And then the meditation teacher said, well, how about instead? Just put your hand in your heart and say, good morning, Shauna. She said, I could probably do that. So she practiced really regularly. And a few months later, teacher said, okay, you're ready to graduate to the advanced practice. Now it's good morning. I love you, Shauna. She did it the next morning. She didn't. It wasn't terrible. She didn't feel any love, but she just did it. And she kept it up. And one morning, she put her hand on her heart and did it. And she felt her grandmother and her grandmother's grandmother and the whole lineage of women, her own mother, just surrounding her and infusing her with

loving. And I share this because you don't have to feel it all very strongly, but what you do need to do is just plain practice. Go through the motions and do it regularly because our neuro, you know, our neuro pathways actually gradually wake up the more we run the same experience through and what you practice grow stronger. That's what it comes down to. And you can be gradual. You can feel a vulnerable part of you and just send the message, I'm here, I'm listening. You don't have to start with love. Or you can go, I care about this suffering. Or you can just put your hand on your heart and breathe. Experiment at what minimally is the entry. But here's why it works. Because if your intention is to bring love to the life that's here,

if that's your intention, that intention is coming from love and it helps open the door. That's why going through the motions help. All you need is somewhere deep down to want to bring more love to your own being. Okay? So that's the first piece is practice makes whatever you practice gets stronger and as long as there's a sincere intent, it's okay to go through the motions and keep experimenting how you do it. Now I want to name a second challenge and that is that whether we're offering care to ourself or we're receiving it from a source we have in mind, the inner place of vulnerability can have trouble letting in love.

Letting in love. And I remember about 12 years ago, Harville Hendricks and Helen Hunt, some of you know Harville Hendricks, marriage therapist, best-selling author and so on on relationship. Well, they were going, you know, they trained couples and so on. their relationship was crumbling. And it turned out that Harville could not believe that Helen loved him. He couldn't let in love. You know, often I do a reflection, I'll just say, you know, bring to mind someone who loves you and what's it like to feel their love? And I'll ask a person, so what are you noticing? And often they can't answer because it's conceptual. It's in the

their mind, but it's not embodied. And many of us, especially if there's an abyss, if we feel cut off, very hard to let in. Let's explore for a moment together. It's always best to anchor these things in lived experience, okay? So, again, let your attention go inward and bring to mind someone you know who loves you, who cares about you. And if it's not a living person, that's fine. And if it's a spiritual figure and you have some trust in that, that's fine. But take a moment to let the being be close in. You might see in their eyes the appreciation that's there, the love. What's it like to let in love? Check your body. Check your heart. heart? What does it feel like? Are you aware of some warmth and some openness of expansion

or spaciousness? Or if you're finding that no, you don't feel anything, let this be a valuable moment of just inquiry. What stops me? And you might ask the, whatever the armoring is, whatever feels like is being blocked, what stops you from letting it in? Just as if you're addressing this to some bit of armoring, what's stopping you from letting it in? Is it that you don't believe it's possible or that they really don't know who you are or that you just don't deserve it? And again, you can keep reflecting, feel free to journal if it's helpful to you. The more severed belonging, in other words, the more insecure early attachments, the more trauma from caregivers or society, the more difficult it is to let in, the more armoring.

A couple of weeks ago was exploring this during my Saturdaysat-sung. And one of the men that I was working with, he's a gay young man, bullied in elementary school and deep sense of something's wrong with me. And perhaps it was intensified. He had intersecting identities. He was gay and Latino. no self-compassion. And when sometimes when there's not a capacity for self-compassion for offering it to ourselves, I'll say, well, who else do you trust loves you? And he said,

my younger sister, absolutely, my mother. And then when we explored that, he couldn't let in their love. And the block was, you know, I don't deserve, there's something really wrong. And when I asked him, what does it feel like to be blocked that you can't let in love? He had a real wave of sorrow. And I said, you know, okay, so what's there? He goes, there's this longing. And I said, well, go ahead. Let the longing speak.

And his prayer was, please, may I let in love. And so I just had him reflect on it. Please may I let in love over and over. And when he opened his eyes, his eyes were moist, but I could feel the softening. And that's what he named. He said he felt serenity, that he was, he's on this pathway of opening. So I'm sharing this with you because we all get stuck in sometimes giving out love, sometimes letting it in.

You know, our hearts have been wounded. There's armoring. But what we can do is feel our prayer, feel our prayer to let in. And again, just as I mentioned before, the source of our prayer is our awake heart. It's really love calling us home when we're praying. So when we inhabit that prayer, when I, if I in this moment say, please, please, may I let in love, and become more porous. There's a certain kind of dissolving of the armoring.

John O'Donohue said it so well. He said, prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. It starts allowing us to dissolve. So this letting in love practice is really, really a powerful, necessary part of loving ourselves into healing. And in the moments that you feel you are letting in some, get familiar with it. Remember Jonathan's word familiar? Get to know it. What's it like when you're really letting in love? And you start strategically where you're least offended, your dog, a child. For me, the natural world, I know often when I go to retreats, let's say,

at the Forest Refuge or the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts, there's fantastic mature woods there. And when I'm feeling vulnerable and stirred up, I'll often go out into those woods and sometimes lean against a tree and I'll feel this sense of like the great mother's living through that tree and feel really loved and held and protected. And I can kind of cry and feel held by that tree. One friend here brought into our group, the power of the word the hug of gravity. You can kind of sense this natural force of gravity shows us our belonging to this larger body of ours, this earth. So maybe you can let in love by feeling that hug of gravity. Start where it's easiest and then you can graduate to people as you go. There's a line from

another teacher, Pungriji. It's that love is always loving you. And the more you practice letting in love, and it doesn't matter the source, you'll start being able to let in the love of this world, the universal loving awareness. You'll have it washed through more and more and sense that when you're feeling separate and small, that you can have some more access to that sense that love is always loving you. Okay. The last approach I want to look at with you. We've talked about ways to just go ahead and practice because it'll get stronger. Experiment, really experiment. Use your hand, use different words, see what works, letting in love. The last approach I want to mention to really

waking up our hearts is opening directly to the suffering of not belonging, to the fear and grief and shame and pain of not belonging. And this is where we often will weave together the mindfulness and compassion of rain. And rain is not some special technique. It's really the very core techniques of this path. It's mindfulness and compassion in a weave that makes it easy to follow. Now, in opening directly to the suffering of not belonging, the big remembrance is that especially if there's trauma, because not belonging, feeling separate is what trauma is, if it feels like too much, we spend more time directly nurturing. We don't go right into where it's most painful. First, we need to create the kind of warmth and space

that comes from the heart practices. And then when we're ready, we can open to the vulnerability and that vulnerability can become a portal to true belonging. So I just want to say that again, that if you get any signal of, this is too much, I'm going to be overwhelmed, go back to what we call resourcing, which means grounding yourself, feeling the hug of gravity, doing the slow breathing, imagining love pouring into you, something that helps you feel safe and safe is the keyword and more connected. I want to give you an example of this that came from a one, one woman who gave me permission to share this, a woman of color on the retreat, who was describing last year the horror, the trauma of the murder of George Floyd, and how when the video came

out couldn't go near, I mean, just the horror of it. And yet now, this year, she's been listening to every part of the Chauvin trial. He's the one that lynched George Floyd, every testimony. Something inside her told her to go through this process of listening every day, watching every day. She said she owed it to, she owes it to George Floyd to bear witness. And here's what is really just so striking, that as the days passed, those first days of the trial last week, she started realizing, wow, I can witness and discern this is anger. This is rage. This is fear. This is sorrow. This is empathy. Really hold it in a witnessing presence that had space. And she found this really deep healing in having the capacity to be with.

In fact, she described it as gave her a kind of courage and a confidence that was really empowering that she can handle what life brings. We don't get that courage and confidence until we actually open to the vulnerability, but we can't open to the vulnerability unless there's some level of feeling safe enough. So she had intuitively known she knew she was ready to be able to do that. And so I asked her the question, what allowed you to do it? What allowed you to be with this intensity? she shared the thing that came to mind, which is for the last year or so, she's been participating weekly in a woman's meditation group that was completely rooted in kindness, in meta.

And senses that accessing that field of tenderness made it possible that she could bring that field to such pain. It gave her the space. So I'm bringing this in because we need great care and opening to the vulnerable place. places and as we do, that's what reveals the openness and the power of loving presence that's really our nature. So I want to close, we're going to be doing a bit of a rain meditation addressing the trance of unworthiness.

I'm going to name a little bit about rain that I found is really helpful for me over the years because I've been, and I still am, working with the ways that that trance appears through my life. And so we know that recognize means that when we get some sign that it's here, you might notice it as a judgmental thought, it may be a sinking feeling, maybe anger, but then we check in a sense, okay, the abyss, I'm cut off from myself. That's recognizing it. Allowing means that we're really able and willing to let it be here. We're not leaving. We're not trying to get rid of it.

We're not adding judgment. We're not adding resistance. It may be simply the most we can do is say, okay, I can let this be here for now. Yes to this for the moment. And that yes can deepen. And if you can get to the point of saying to what's coming up, this belongs. It's waves in the sea. These are part of the waves of my being.

That actually deepens the process of freeing up. Each step of rain reduces the identification of a self. The moment you see it, as Jonathan said, if you can name it, you're less identified. The moment you let it be there without resistance, you're even less identified. Now, I want to make a comment on allowing. I was working with someone last week who was judging themselves and they thought allowing meant saying yes to, the judgment, like this part of her that was saying, you're failing, that she was saying, yes, it's true.

Allowing doesn't mean we're saying that the content of the judgment's true, we're just allowing the experience of judging to be there. I hope that's clear because it's a really big difference. And then we investigate. And I find it very useful with the trance of unworthiness to first say, well, what am I believing? And often a person will say, well, you know, I've been. rejected before it's going to happen again or I believe I'm failing. And to let that story be a portal, we don't want to stay with the story, but first sense the story of what you're believing

about yourself and then come into the body and sense when I'm believing this, what's going on with the felt sense? What am I feeling? Is it sinking or squeeze of shame, fear? I think of it like we're treating the felt sense like a shy animal that lurks in the darkness of the woods and we're inviting it out into the light. And so that's the attitude, a kind of curiosity and a gentleness, inviting the felt sense, inviting what's here. It's like you're saying, I'm here, it's okay. As much as you want, I'm listening.

The key of investigating is to get to what I call ouch. a pure place of this hurts. I know for myself, once I really get, okay, I'm strangling my own spirit with these judgments, I'm hurting myself. It's so unnecessary. There's a kind of soul sadness like I'm grieving the lost moments. So we're investigating to get to that place of ouch. We're not saying, oh, I deserve it or oh, others have it worse, but just this hurts. So just explore that. And that will lead to nurturing because we get tenderized. And we've been talking this whole talk about how to nurture, experiment.

with your own wise-away cart offering nurturing, experiment with calling on others. I know for me when I'm really regressed and feeling separate, I'll often just say please love me. just feel that prayer, please love me. And that brings that porousness. So in some way I'm reaching out and often what I'll feel is almost like I'm reaching out, please love me, I'm kind of bowing, I'm offering my being into something larger and that just invites a washing through of light and love and tenderness. And then what happens is there's a shift in those moments And this is what we call after the rain, where once we let in love, we discover we are the love that's holding our life.

That small self dissolves and we become the love. So we move from that sense of I'm a small self and love is always loving me to the loving that's holding our being. That's the shift. Srinar Sargadata says, you can say it's soon. simply nothing is wrong with me anymore. That's a shift to freedom. So let's take a moment to practice this.

I'm going to lead you through a very brief taste, which is something many of you are familiar with, just a brief kind of review with rain, you exploring with yourself and I invite you to carry it on on your own when you have more time. And you might as your attention goes inward, feel your body briefly. breathing, bring yourself right here. And you've already been reflecting on this Psalm, allowing yourself to bring a situation to mind that brings up self-doubt, self-aversion, where you feel you create an abyss in some way you get separate from your inner life. And you might let the lens get a little closer and sense what is it that really bothers you about the way

you are? What is it that really brings up the judgment? What's the worst? part about what you perceive about yourself that really makes you judge or feel aversion or dislike and the recognizing is just to name mental whisper what you're noticing. It may be aversion or dislike or anger, fear, whatever is most predominant. And with whatever you notice, that allowing, that willingness to let it be here. Let the experience be here just for now. And if at any point it feels like too much to really put aside anything I'm saying and go back to the meta that most helps you feel connected. But if you're able to allow, if there is that sense of you can tolerate it,

then begin to investigate what are you believing about yourself? What's the story you're believing believing that turns you on yourself? Do you feel, are you believing that you're unlovable, that you'll never be close to anyone, that you're failing in your life in some way, that you let others down, you cause harm? What is it you're believing? And whatever you notice, sense how it affects your life to be turned on yourself. Just let yourself feel in your body what it's like when you're believing something's wrong with you, what's it like? Check your throat, your chest, your belly. And if it helps to put your hand on your heart as a way of accompanying the experience, it can be very powerful to help steady the attention. It's like you're

already beginning to self-nurture, you're saying, okay, I'm here. What does this really feel like and invite the vulnerability forward? What's the worst part of this? You might sense how long have I been living with this? And most important, how has it affected my life? What has it taken away from me? And since, and this is the deepest question really, what do I most need to remember? What do I need to trust? Right in this moment, what would bring some healing to know, to trust, to remember?

And what might be the source of that message? Who do you want to receive it from? Know that just intuitively you know that. You know is it your high self, your own awake heart? So you want to hear it from the Buddha or Bodhisattva or is there an ancestor, a group of ancestors? Is there a person in your life, a teacher, a friend? It doesn't matter what the sources of who is delivering the message, beginning the nurturing

by really sensing and you can breathe a little more fully, bring yourself right here, that you are receiving exactly the medicine, the heart medicine that can serve you right now, the reminder that can serve you. It might be from your own awake heart. It might be a formless presence as I described, a grandparent, an ancestor, and let your intention be to let in. Let that be your prayer. Please may I let in love.

And if it's a prayer you can whisper it a few times and notice each time that you can get more sincere, more receptive. Either please love me or please may I let in love. Perhaps there can be some surrendering open. And with some witnessing right now, just notice the presence that's here. Notice the quality of presence that's emerged. It may be just a little more space. little more tenderness, maybe it's vast, maybe you're still really feeling the vulnerability.

It doesn't really, you can't do it wrong, just notice what's here. And you might ask yourself, who would you be if you didn't believe something was wrong? As you feel ready to open your eyes and know that this isn't like a process with a clear beginning and end. But what you can trust is each time, each time you bring your sincerity to making love of yourself more perfect. Each time there'll be a little bit of an awakening or a shift from that sense of a small self, the abyss in some way turned against yourself, to remembering that you are the loving awareness, that's a little bit of a small self, the abyss, that's holding this life. There'll be some level of shift. Pay attention to that. Get to familiar

with it because it'll really be more and more your home. Okay, friends, feels really good to be with you all. I thank you for going on the journey in a big way in your life, in this retreat, in this little session here. Blessings. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.