Tara Brach - Meditation: Guided Heart Forgiveness Practice (from retreat)

Episode Date: August 7, 2016

Meditation: Guided Heart Forgiveness Practice (2016-05-09) - Tara gives brief instructions on the forgiveness practice, then guides us through a process of forgiveness of ourselves and others. "Forgiving is a movement of your heart not to carry aversive hatred or blame. That you can care about someone and still create boundaries... Each of you has this wisdom, heart, being place that intuits that there really isn't freedom in the moments that you're carrying blame and judgment." (from the Spring 2016 IMCW 7-day retreat) Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Background on the forgiveness practice. In the Buddhist tradition, forgiveness is considered a kind of clearing the way for really freeing the heart, for the metta practice, compassion practices that come out of it,

that we first forgive. And some describe forgiving as really the kind of the ongoing process of the spiritual path that we're over and over again releasing the armoring around our hearts. It's quite natural these human incarnations to keep contracting. So our practice is to notice and let go. Notice and let go. And it can be on a very light level of just noticing tension in the body and releasing or it can be a very deep forgiving of the armoring around wounds that we've been living

with for decades. One teacher described really the freedom that's possible when we commit to not pushing anyone out of our hearts, including ourselves. And yet there's this misunderstanding about forgiveness that in some way if we open our hearts to people who've caused harm that we're condoning, we're saying, go ahead and step on me again or hurt me again. And so just to clarify that forgiving is a movement of our heart to release that encasement. The kind of when we get wounded we develop a scab but then we keep it on and keep it on

and keep it on and never really get to breathe the life through our heart. So it's like a letting go of the scab or the encasement but it doesn't mean we don't in a very wise way, take care of ourselves and others. You can forgive someone and divorce them and you can forgive someone and decide never to speak to them. You can forgive someone and not vote for them or not trust them. But forgiving is a movement of your heart not to carry aversive hatred or blame, that you can care about someone and still create boundaries. So what motivates us to forgive is that each of you has this wisdom, heart being place that intuits that there really isn't freedom in the moments that you're carrying blame and judgment.

It just really isn't freedom. I always like to reflect the way Charlotte Joko-Backa Zen teacher put it is that our inability to experience joys directly related to our incapacity to forgive, that we're joyless when we're armored. So how the process happens, these practices of forgiveness, as I described a bit this morning, that research has shown that we actually, before we actually forgive someone else, there's There's some softening of our own hearts in the sense of our way we're relating to ourselves. There's some self-compassion or we feel forgiven.

That softens and opens us so we can then look through eyes of wisdom and heart at others. So we'll practice in that kind of a sequence, the traditional, there's a classic practice that allows us to move in that way. I like to begin any heart practice and I invite you to do the same, just to feel and listen to your heart and just sense your most sincere intention to awaken and free your heart. With forgiveness, you can't will it. You can't force it.

It's very organic but you can be willing and your intention to let go of blame, your intention to forgive opens the door, lets the light in. Just with forgiveness it takes that sincere intention because it's not a one-shot. We forgive over and over and over. But gradually there's a sense of resting more and more in a forgiving heart in a heart space that really has room for the natural humanness, the imperfections, the reactivities. We have room.

Our heart doesn't have to armor so much. So we feel our intention and take a moment, if you will, to let your awareness sweep through your body and just notice if there's any natural ways of letting go a little right now. You become more available if you've relaxed your body, perhaps sensed a bit of that half-smile at the mouth, a slight smile in the eyes, letting the smile spread through the eyes.

A little softening and loosening in the shoulders, softening the hands, letting there be an openness to the chest, and then the inside out, just a softening and relaxing in the heart area. You might visualize and get a kinesthetic sense of a smile spreading through the heart in the chest area. This doesn't cover over what's here but really makes room for it.

Softening in the belly, feeling the sense of weight or pressure or warmth where you're sitting on your cushion or chair, where your feet touch the floor, where your hands contact your thighs or touch each other. So you're feeling the contact points, the earth, the earth energy flowing through you, open to this whole dance of aliveness, letting the attention rests in the heart area, the aliveness in the heart area, feeling the breath in the heart area. The forgiveness reflection begins by bringing to mind some person that you've caused harm to, that you'd like to ask forgiveness from.

And for all of us, we've all in our moments of being caught, reactive, inattentive, we've all caused harm with our words or actions. So just sense where this may be so for you. It may be somewhere that's current, that's repeated, and that's fine. Let the person come to mind. So you can almost sense right here in the room this person's presence and let yourself sense and feel into the hurtfulness, what's been experienced by this person, how this person's felt rejected or unseen, intimidated, judge, letting that in some so that you can repeat these words

or adapt them, however, to mentally whisper the person's name and then I see and feel the pain I've caused you and I ask your forgiveness, please forgive me. Again, letting the person and their hurt be right here close in, whispering their name, I see and feel the pain I've caused you and I ask your forgiveness, please forgive me. And just in a gentle way, bearing witness and sensing your own capacity to let in forgiveness, to feel forgiven. Regardless of what you imagine the other person to do, can you let it in? This brings us to the second part which is forgiving ourselves, letting in our own forgiveness.

To bring to mind a place where you feel you've caused harm and it's hard to forgive yourself. for it. And it may be the same situation and there may be something else you'd like to explore where you've pushed yourself out of your own heart. Somewhere else you'd like to explore bringing forgiveness to your own being, really judging yourself harshly, not accepting or forgiving yourself. And as you reflect on some situation that causes you to turn on yourself, reject yourself, you might investigate more closely as if you're looking through the eyes of a very wise and kind grandparent or friend and just see behind the behaviors that you condemn what was the unmet need, the pain, the suffering that was driving you?

We only cause suffering when we're suffering. How are you feeling in prison, trapped, hurting, afraid, confused that caused you to behave in a way that you condemn? Can you widen the lens and see a bigger truth of what's behind the scene? Looking through the eyes of a wise being and your own highest, wisest, kindest self to see your own hurt and vulnerability behind the behaviors and offering yourself forgiveness and if it helps to put your hand on your heart to deepen the connection, the fullness of your communication, a very light, tender touch.

I see the way I've caused harm to myself or others and I forgive myself now. You might just want to send the words forgiven, forgiven. and just kind of letting go of the hatred, the blame, the aggression towards self, releasing that. Forgiven, forgiven. You find it difficult to release and let go. Again, sense a wise and loving being that knows you, trusts you, cares about you, and sense their energy and love and mercy and forgiveness flowing through your hand and through

your heart. Forgiven, forgiven. We widen the attention now to bring to mind someone who has caused harm to us. And again, this is a universal that each one of us at some point has felt hurt, rejected, judged, or ignored, some abused, betrayed. Sensing where you'd like to bring your attention, somebody that you still feel you're pushing out of your heart, condemning as wrong or bad in some way, where you'd like to feel some more freedom. Whoever emerges can sense that being and sense the situation that is behind you feeling anger or hatred or blame, that armoring, what caused it? And take some moments to let yourself be aware of what has caused you to erect that armoring.

So you can let yourself be in touch with that feeling of blame, the aggressiveness that goes outward to push the other away, making them wrong or bad. This is where you can deepen your attention and make that you turn, where you turn that attention and energy around back into your own heart and sense underneath the blame or anger, what is it that's difficult to feel? If you couldn't make the other wrong or bad, what would you have to experience that's difficult? What is it that's embedded deep in the anger? Is it a feeling of hurt, rejection, unworthiness, feeling unloved, fear, shame,

Let yourself bring your full kind attention to the vulnerable place underneath the anger or blame. And again, if it is helpful in being present with yourself in a deeply kind way to put your hand on your heart or your cheek, or somewhere hold yourself, please do, because this is about communicating and presence with your inner being. and offering your attention to the place of most vulnerability, breathing with it, feeling it, investigating and sensing how it most wants you to be with it. It's the quality of attention it most wants from you right now. Just to see it perhaps, to accept it, to perhaps forgive yourself, to offer a tenderness and energetic embrace, just offering inwardly.

at whatever words, whatever energy you feel most will be healing to the place in you that's been hurting and afraid. If you feel it's difficult to offer inward, again, call on whatever love and wisdom in this universe you trust through another being, through a deity, your spiritual figure. And just imagine and sense that universal love and wisdom flowing through that person. being and through your own hand and into your heart, offering exactly what most will heal and comfort and accompany the place in you that's vulnerable. Bathing that place with light and love, really letting in, letting in, sensing the quality

of presence, the quality of this heart space as you offer. and receive kindness, compassion. And it's from that heart space that you can begin to look out at the other person that's caused injury with greater wisdom and kindness. To see if you can look behind the mask, behind the behaviors, to sense how that person might be acting out of fear, out of hurt, out of confusion. how that person might be in the grip of their own unmet needs, tight and suffering, because those that cause suffering are suffering.

And as you can begin to see behind the mask to that person's prison of suffering, where that person is caught or stuck, you can sense a natural movement of the heart to offer, care, offer forgiveness. You might whisper the person's name. You can use the words, I see and feel the pain that you've caused me and I forgive you now or have not yet ready to forgive. It's my intention, my heart's intention to forgive.

Whispering the person's name, I see and feel the pain you've caused me and I forgive you now are of not yet ready to forgive. It's my intention to forgive you to not push you out of my heart. Letting go of any ideas of other and bringing your full attention to the felt sense of your heart right now. Just feeling the aliveness, light, warmth, flow, or if that's not what's there, the tightness, the stuckness, and letting whatever your experience is be held with a clear and kind attention. It's sometimes part of our habit to do a forgiveness practice and not do it the way we think we should and then judge the practice. So if there's any judgment, this is a nice moment to say forgiven, forgiven, closing by just sensing,

exactly what's here in this moment, changing movement of sensation, sound, letting everything be touched with compassion, like a great ocean, holding tenderly the moving waves on the surface. Everything belongs. Everything is part of us. This heart space is naturally vast and inclusive. this is our home.