Tara Brach - Mindful Glimpses: A Conversation with Tara Brach and Loch Kelly

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Mindful Glimpses: A Conversation with Tara Brach and Loch Kelly - Loch Kelly is an author, psychotherapist and highly respected meditation teacher known for his instructions for effortless mindfulness. Our rich and wide-ranging conversation includes themes of interconnectedness, the natural weaves of psychology and meditation, the healing of self-compassion, the power of short glimpses into the nature of reality, RAIN, prayer, awakening through social identities, turning toward dying, centering joy and much more! Loch is offering Tara's listeners a special discount code of 20% off an annual subscription for the Mindful Glimpses App when you use this link: https://mindfulglimpses.com/tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. Today, I'm having a conversation with Locke Kelly, who's a friend, a psychotherapist, highly respected and popular meditation teacher, and for very good reason, Locke guides in what he calls effortless mindfulness. And it brings a very real non-dual depth and aliveness to the path of awakening. He's written several books on it and recently came out with an app that I tried out and found really, really good. So highly recommend. So our conversation is a rich one and I hope you enjoy.

Hi and welcome everyone. It's my great pleasure today to be here dialoguing with my friend and colleague Tara Brock. Welcome, Tara. I feel really delighted to be with you, Locke. Yes. So, so wonderful to have a chance, you know, with all the busy schedules to dive deeply into things that we both love and are kind of have a vision to share with others and now we can share together and while others listen. Yeah, it's my idea of a good Dharma party. Yes, that's right. This is what I love. So, yeah, I know that, you know, just whenever I get a chance to hear you and what you're doing, I get natural sympathetic joy.

So it's like, oh, effortless sympathetic joy. a joy arising because, yeah, go, Tara, go. Oh, well, I'm glad I'm serving in that way. And it's mutual, of course. I feel like we've been tracking each other for a good number of years. Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to start with that just to say that it's a delight. And just to begin, you know, by talking a little about, I noticed that your book, which I

I am rereading radical acceptance published about 20 years ago. But as I read it, it was like, oh, it's almost like it's your new book because it's literally the themes are what we're both still talking about and almost are still cutting edge. So I just thought, I wondered like as you kind of look at it today, what's, you know, what's new, what's the same, what is kind of the core of what you were communicating then that's fresh now. Oh, thank you for that invitation. Yeah, so 20th anniversary edition, and it's got a new chapter and a new forward and introducing the rain meditation and so on.

And I wanted to do this. I wanted to have the chance to bring it forward again. It feels like this is such a time of, just getting divided the dividedness the hostility the contempt and and it's it's amongst so many of us i feel myself going into that kind of dividedness and demoting others in my mind because of their views and it just felt so important it feels like the only healing for these times is waking up consciousness awake awareness you know and an awake heart and an awake heart And so I wanted to really make it fully relevant to these times, including our identities,

how we get caught in social identities and don't see each other. You really don't see who's there. And including, you know, how we forget our belonging to this larger living planet and don't navigate in a way that's sensitive and conscious. So it felt the time, radical acceptance basically means to completely allow without any resistance or opposition the experience that's unfolding. And in that allowing, we open to a presence that has the kind of intelligence and compassion that can respond. So it's not passive. It's actually the grounds for activism, but more spiritually rooted activism.

So thank you for inviting that out because I'm excited to bring consciousness practices into the world that are so linked to what is going on right now. Yeah. Yeah. As you say, it's, you know, as social animals, you know, there is a tendency to want to be part of a group and to bond. But then that connection that keeps us in the more family or smaller sense and current. creates this otherness that makes us feel that movement to the bigger we, to the global family is what's needed by, but not just through politics or actions but also through transformation of consciousness, which is really seeing that we are the same and that we're

passionately, no matter what the view is passionately feeling that we're protecting something valuable by trying to hold a position about it. I love the way you're framing it because I often think of the whole evolution of consciousness as waking up to that belonging, you know, knowing that. But it's not intellectual. It has to be a felt sense. that the life that's living through you, the awareness that's looking through your eyes is completely the same. And that's what wakes up caring. And it's interesting, right before we connected

here, I was reading an article in Scientific American that has to do with insects being sentient and having feelings, feeling pain and joy. And I feel like it takes really to be a very training our attention to wake up past some idea of a hierarchy where humans are better, more worthwhile, and between humans where different groups feel better are more worthwhile. And it's very much part of our survival brain to actually make those differences, to feel inferior and superior. And yet we have this capacity to wake up out of that. And then that takes to me a real dedication to sense this living world as sentient.

I mean, that's a radical thing. But when we actually feel it, if we look at a tree and there's a sense, you know, I have this mantra I'll say, we are our friends and then feel the realness of that. Yes, yeah, beautiful. Yeah, that. Everything changes. It does, yeah. And through that movement from like we often do, like a research study and then some

some, you know, great understanding or philosophy. And then what's the practice to actually feel that rather than just think it or understand it or repeat it? Because then it becomes a kind of a belief system rather than a lived experience. So, yeah, there was a study, I think, at Dartmouth where they took groups of people, people that were all along the spectrum and flashed pictures of people similar and different. And there would be visceral reactions of positivity and visual reactions, no matter what the, how liberal or radical or of otherness that made people. So it is this survival instinct, as you say.

And so it takes that acceptance of that, not negating it or not saying, it's bad to have that. or if we're spiritual, we wouldn't feel that. You know, that's, I think, something you and I have in comments like, you know what? We were human beings. We got feelings. We got emotions. We got all the default, you know, settings.

And the first arrow that arises of, you know, anger or hatred is just arising. And it's, you know, the response that is possible. and the not only response, but the compassion to that, that changes. And the type of compassion, I think, is, you know, we talk about, I think that's the key because there's kind of levels of compassion or depth of, you know, meditative possibility of discovering, you know, what both you and I talk about is just, you know, being kind, being compassionate, attitude adjustment, positive thinking, and then expression of that, and then a kind of deep discovery of a natural compassion and a loving awareness or open-hearted presence

or that we are the love. Yeah. And then we can express or see through those eyes. Well, that's a powerful, beautiful way of describing both the capacity to cultivate compassion and also the spontaneous compassion that arises when there's a wide open presence. And if we bring that to what we were just talking about, that we are wired to see difference. You know, we're wired. Yes.

And so to feel guilty, you know, I've spent a lot of moments investigating white guilt, you know, all the guilt for feeling, you know, I am responsible, I'm not doing enough to alleviate the horror of racial violence. And my own process, just to make it very personal, was just what you were describing, which is I had a face, and this is ongoing, this is not a fetta-complea, but face the conditioning that, you know, my mind judged as really ugly. and face it and feel the suffering of it, feel how it actually created separation. It imprisoned me and made me not know my belonging to others. And it was when I felt the realness of that suffering that, I'm putting my hand in my heart

because I do that sometimes, that there was a tenderness and an acceptance of, just as you said, this is just this body mind's conditioning. But in that presence, there was a capacity to see beyond the ways that I had been creating separation. And like you said, it takes practice. I have one friend who described how he'd be on the subway and he'd notice himself in that classic, you know, making others other, the unreal other who's less than. and he would then meditate on the word thou. He would just sense them and sense spirit, sacredness,

you know, these sentience living through them, and just mentally whisper thou. And it dissolved that separateness. And it's like the gift of bringing our attention to how we create separation, holding it with complete compassion, and then being able to see beyond, and start to foster that sense of true belonging.

And we can't be alone on this planet if we truly know our belonging to, you know, the insects and the trees and those of different races and onward. And I guess I just keep coming back to there's motivation to do that because there's some deep part of our being, our already awake heart-mind, that really longs for that true belonging, not the belonging to a subgroup and feeling, you know, rah, ra, we're the best, but that true belonging,

because that's the only way there's, you know, a truly fearless, hard and a loving heart is knowing we're all, knowing that oneness. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, the, I'm just, you just, as you shared personally about your experience, I immediately kind of went back to going, early on to Asia and being introduced in a kind of a deep way to meditation and starting in Sri Lanka

doing nine months Vapasana and site meditation, both at the university and then doing, you know, five-day retreats, 10-day retreats, 21-day retreats, and then going up and having good fortune of meeting a Tibetan teacher, Toku Ergen Rimposhae, and kind of getting a, you know, a full introduction into from you know, all the traditions, you know, having done some Zen before that and kind of feeling they all were connected. But I just remember after having a kind of initial dropping into that meditative insight that's experiential, feeling like, well, do I want to be, stay and be a monk? And I was like, no, I want to go back to New York City where people are suffering and finish, you know, do a social work degree and, you know, right into my family because that's where that's where it feels like

that, you know, meditation and action leads to almost a kind of a playful, you know, joy of like, you know, we're all kids in a playground, but we're everyone's innocent and suffering and a little bit crazy. I love it. It's the essence of the bodhisattva path, you know, the path of an awakening being is, if you know your belonging, you know, why leave the field of beings that we're all a part of? And that doesn't mean that we don't take, as you did, take real time in quiet contemplative retreat. But there's something so. so beautiful and powerful about holding hands and helping. I just think of the activity of awareness is love.

And of course it gets confused and twisted, and we have all the expressions in the world of cruelty and ignorance. But the original impulse of awareness is love. Yes. Yeah, that's that expression from its freedom and almost absence of negativity, like non-judgmental, almost neutral or free, but then as that non-dual in the sense of that pure awake awareness recognizes not other than aliveness. When we drop deeply, we go, uh-oh, there's shame, you know, oh, there's that memory of I did all that.

I better, you know, oh, that person did it to me. We go out, we go in. But going, willing to go deeper and then include this, you know, with a real full on the cushion, off the cushion way of being in the unfolding of this awakening, which seems like it's the potential for just human. development rather than some esoteric advanced, you know, Olympic athlete thing. I'm with you. It feels like that is the hope. And you also are pointing to where the stuck place is and the suffering, which is, you know, the activity of awareness is love. There's a basic

goodness. And so many people say, well, I can't find it. I don't trust it. If there's basic goodness, how come I feel hatred and anger? and it feels to me like one of the most powerful ways of deepening attention is to start realizing that every emotion is intelligent. And it gets torqued because we get caught in the sense of a separate self and get all identified and twisted and so on, kind of like a hose that gets twisted and the water's not flowing through. but we can pay attention in a way that naturally untwists when instead of adding that second

arrow that you described of, oh, this is bad or I'm bad, finding out deep down, right, really investigating those emotions, anger, and finding right embedded inside anger, is an energy that is trying to in some way protect us, serve us, It anticipates something is an obstacle to our unfolding. And if we can sense that, since I think of it as life-loving life, that there's a life-loving life energy at the heart of every emotion, and then we can sense the way it got twisted. Our awareness, because we're not judging,

is actually a healing attention that can untwist that hose and allow the waters to flow and actually get integrated in our whole body. So a lot of what I've been doing and working with people is when they're stuck saying, well, what's that part trying to do for you? And I know you have similar approaches because if we actually sense the fear is trying to protect us, you know, if we sense that we can say thank you to the fear, I'm okay right now, but thank you, the relationship with that part shifts. And so there's some actual possibility of untwisting the fear and freeing up

what's under it, which is a care about life. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. And, you know, with the different psychological and contemplative views we have, I mean, I think that's something we certainly have very much in common, you can experience that feeling or emotion in many different levels, almost like eyeglasses or microscope or electron microscope, or then a sub-personality or a persona or a, so that we don't just kind of spiritually zap it away

with awareness or mindfulness as if it's just a story or just a thought or, you know, as one type of way of working with it. But as you say, it's almost like off the cushion the way I find that emotions arise is sometimes they'll rise as natural emotional reaction, like a response to a loud sound, just kind of fear or initial anger will get triggered.

But then often they form into thoughts, feelings, sensations, worldview, and kind of sneak up the back of one's head and then take over and get, you know, feel like I'm possessed. And then adrenaline and cortisol goes into the body from there so that it's like, well, this must be true because it's embodied and happening now. So from here, what do I know and what are the options? And then that, so in some ways, that what I call the mindful move, that first ability to, you know, to step back or to pause, you know,

or to take a breath. the breath leads to an openness and then this other level of consciousness that is, you know, with but not possessed and then not staying in a detached witness, but finding a way, as you do with rain, to kind of then continue back to include and and have a felt sense of what exactly is this part that feels angry, where is it in my body? And what is it saying? And what age is it even? Sometimes, but sometimes it's multiple ages, but it's got a view. And as soon as you realize that there are parts that you don't have to be eageless, you don't have to be, I'm either a self that is, you know, fearful or I'm no self. But that's like, no, I'm awake consciousness.

that has these parts that some are very functional, some are not so functional, some are, some have, but there's the where you're aware from, which level of mind you're mindful from starts to be the center, but it doesn't, as you say, eliminate or doesn't, it gives you actually more capacity to be a sensitive human being. That's so, I love the clarity in that. in the sequence that you described. It's very intuitive and wise. And one of the things I think a lot of people want to know and want to trust,

but have a hard time, is that that awake awareness is the truth of who I am, that these are parts they don't define me. You know, I am not my fear. I am not my anger. And so it feels to me that a lot of spiritual practice is really about cultivating, the quality of attention, this accepting, compassionate, clear attention, relaxed attention

that allows us to disentangle our identity from the part. And I'll never forget, at one point somebody shared this story about a wise sage and people would bring their problems where they were most stuck, most small, most feeling like they were unworthy. And he was, would swear them to silence and he'd say I have just one question and that is what are you unwilling to feel and it seems so clear that it's our resistance to feeling life that keeps us identify with a small self the small self is a a patterning of resistance to what is true right here and now And you described very beautifully the way of we have to pause. There are these patterns that keep us identified.

So the sacred art of pausing, I mean, if we can just remember, just to pause for a moment. Just that. Yeah, that's exactly right. Because if we've paused, there's a little more space, a little more remembrance of presence that can allow us then to have the courage to feel what's here and the tenderness to feel what's here in a way that transforms not the thing but the sense of identification, which is the whole deal, as you know. And one of the things I'm finding so helpful is that even once there is a sense of resting in a larger presence, there's often these different thoughts and feelings that re-snag and it becomes really helpful then

to you know where is the self that's experiencing this? What I've noticed is actually inviting ourselves to sense, okay, where is it living? You know, like finding a place in a felt sense that correlates with that familiar sense of a self that's owning experience, that's running experience, whatever, that if we can connect with that, it's possible then to just invite that sense of a self to relax in and as the awake awareness that's truly, it's home. But we have to see it, we have to catch it.

It's like a ghost self. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's always trying to go one up on everything else. It's like, are you aware of your feeling? Yes, I am. Well, you're aware of the one that's aware? Yes.

In fact, I'm mindful of that one. Oh, I see. And I call that often a transitional subject. Yeah. So it's not a transitional object like when you're trying to bond with and self-soothe, but it keeps. So as you said before, getting used to that home base that is actually everywhere, nowhere and here, and is more of a awake presence, open-hearted field that is aware actually from

within your body as much as all around and interconnected. So it's almost those, that's the home base. It isn't just this separate battery of a physical animal that is physically separate. one of the keys is to recognize, no, I will always feel, in fact, it's important to feel separate physically from that tree or from as I'm driving a car. So there's a separate dualistic level of experience that is important and that this and feelings happen within there, but who they're happening to isn't a point of view. It's, it's, um, and that feeling at first to the current

protective system or ego defenses is like, oh, wow, it's a little spaced out or that's a little woo-woo. That's like, oh, there's no ground here. But if you stay there, it's like, what's the ground made of? Oh, it's made of space. And it's, but it's not just space, it's dancing.

It's alive and it's, oh, and it's not other. And that little pointing, I mean, that's been my interest is like, okay, if this is already here, as is said in, you know, what you write in and reference in radical acceptance and your teachings and I do as well as kind of a unique premise that it's not, there is development and training. but there also is more unlearning and untraining in order to discover something that's already here, not something that's... And that... So giving some trust and courage and support to almost directly recognize this

and then abide and then include... And the key to living from it is to immediately have to include the triggers that will then come up and say, wait a minute, what are you doing? You're not going to be able to function from here. Thank you for sharing. Yeah. Yeah, what you're saying, most of the liberating practice is undoing. It's like having a clenched fist.

And if you just bring awareness into the clenched fist, you don't have. to, there's no self that has to unclench. There's a natural, the muscles know how to do it. Awareness knows how to wake up. We, you know, I just need to pay attention. And I feel like the message for me behind what I'm listening to is that the more we get familiar with boundless awake awareness, you know, the more, it's like every time there's that glimbing, there is some place in us that knows that this is more true than any story or narrative ever. There's a resonance of truth and the more glimpses, the more sense that not just I'm going to let go into awake awareness, but awake awareness is what I am.

That keeps calling us. And one of the things I've noticed in a lot of teachings is you kind of refer to emptiness, dancing, how there's just this living dynamic, that there's a kind of dry emptiness where there's a sense of awake awareness, but it's very vast and there's something really wonderful, and yet there's no tenderness. And what feels crucial is, and you talked about this earlier, is that we sense the awareness that is in and through our bodies. And it means really living and feeling from the inside out, that awareness that's in and through our bodies

and through and around in every direction. And that that is continuous space that's filled with the light of awareness. It's whole. And then when something comes up, there's a natural tenderness in the response. It's like the Tibetans talk about the three qualities of awareness as being that openness and that wakefulness, that knowing, and a natural tender responsiveness.

And we don't get that third quality unless we're really embodied inhabiting it. So I feel like the more glimpses, and I want to name right here that I'm going to be the one to bring it up. Locke has a new app that is just wonderful. It's like, it's just wonderful. And it has all different pathways to glimpsing, you know, to really sensing the larger truth of what we are, whether it's, you know, a one-minute practice or a longer practice. And so I just want to bow to you, Locke, because I know the amount of energy and what it takes, you know, blood, sweat and tears to create an app. And it's really wonderful.

Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, it just felt like it's the delivery system or the contact place that people need in the midst of a busy life. And that because it is already here, they can do a glimpse and then what I call marinate for longer periods of time instead of meditate. You just glimpse, recognize, realize, embody, feel open-hearted. and now turn off, put the phone away. But you have, now you're kind of given a short pointing.

And that's been my interest like you is how to bring this into contemporary forms to translate not only the language from the cultures of contemplatives, of all traditions, not just, you know, from Western traditions as well as Eastern traditions, and psychological traditions and neuroscience traditions of, you know, freedom and joy and maturity as well, and give tools that are experiential rather than just written supports. You know, this is something that I felt would be a way to share, you know, with people so they could make it part of their lives wherever they are.

Yeah, so it's, it's fun. Yeah, and as you say that, so I think that, you know, and that's kind of how I set up like the intro course is kind of like natural calm is the first one, which is calm abiding, shamata, but different ways to do that. And then the second one is types of mindfulness, deliberate and effortless. And then embodiment. And then I introduce a kind of way of doing this called local awake awareness, which is a way to actually unhook and drop and have awareness know itself,

both within and outside and rather than efforting to do it or trying to imagine doing it. And then embodiment and what I'm calling there, awake-loving flow, which you and I've trained. translated in 12 different ways because we want to try to get at it somehow like open-hearted awareness, you know. Ram Dass called it loving awareness. You sometimes call it open-hearted presence. So there's something there or heart-mind. Those three kind of moves from, you know, being introduced to mindfulness and which it unfolds naturally through Theravad.

insight or to point to the pure awake awareness and then to point to the non-dual, which in Buddhism non-dual emphasis isn't just non-dual awareness, pure awareness, it's actually the awareness that is not other than the aliveness. So that's the embodiment. It's like, oh, they're not two. That there's what's called in the Mahmoudra's same taste or simultaneous mind. So this, and then what Ticknaud Han so beautifully called interbeing. So that grounding, interbeing interconnects us to everyone.

And then the operating system, we don't have to go back to create a thinker and a doer in order to be a calmer version of our small selves. But this heart mind or open-hearted awareness has. that fullness or wholeness, as you say. And so one of the glimpses is literally feeling how we're identified or attached to thought. And then, you know, it's like a small self-riding, a horse of our body looking out of our eyes. And then this local awareness, which is identified or attached, but is made of this spacious this awareness can unhook and kind of drop and know your jaw from within,

your throat from within, and then feel completely embodied, and then find this heart mind or heart space that becomes the center. It also drops to the dantean and to the legs and to the feet and to the ground as well, but kind of is connected from, and as many, you know, many people who this is a good match for, some glimpses don't work for everybody, but those who find it literally just like, oh, I'm home.

Like, this is, I've been trying so hard from here to get there by being here. So. It really resonates in a way, it's a guide to move from that smaller, more constricted identity to relax the clench and yet there's many different pathways that help us to relax the clench and um for for many people the starting place is really feeling stuck in a small in a reactive small self i i often think of

romdas who said you know i'm learning to treat my personality as a pet you know it's and and you're right that when we're actually resting and knowing its home, that heart space, our personality, actually the natural intelligence of the universe and the love of the universe actually moves through our personality. It actually shifts. But there is that learning to trust who we really are. And as you know, one of the pathways that I, many people, have found valuable. We've touched on it a few times is the rain practice. But I just speak a little bit about it just because so many people, Locke, have told me that rain saved my life. And I thought I'd share that what convinced me to write a book about rain, my book, Radical Compassions,

a guidebook to Rain. And now this new 20th anniversary edition of Radical Acceptance features it. because it wasn't there 20 years ago. But people have kept giving me that feedback. And I remember about 12 years ago my own experience with Rain, where my mom, who was 82, came down to live with us. And I went into this part of the trance of unworthiness where I was falling short on being really there for my mom, but I was also falling short on this book I was right.

I just felt really trapped in that anxiety and guilt. And I remember one day I was right here in my office, and she came in with a New Yorker article to show me. I was actually working on a talk on loving kindness. And I didn't look up. And so she just laid the article down nearby and very graciously walked out. I turned to look at her retreating figure and I had this thought, I don't know how long I'm going to have her. And so I decided to take a pause and go sit down and practice rain.

And the acronym stands for recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. And so recognize, okay, there's just naming it, there's guilt, there's, you know, kind of fear and there's anxiety. and you know, kind of you let in all the parts that want to be there and then sensing what was most compelling was that that feeling of guilt of letting her down. The A allowing means truly let life be as it is, not try to fix it, get rid of it, judge it, anything, just let it be.

It's kind of like it's a wave in the ocean. It belongs. And I actually say to myself, this belongs. It's just to undo resistance, you know. And then the eye, invest. investigate, you know, there's beliefs there. You know, I'm failing her and causing injury and I'm failing what most matters to me. And underneath that, this felt sense of a kind of clench in my chest that was squeezing and aching and painful. And so I kind of put my hand on my heart and I often do

this as part of investigating because it's so quick that we exit from our bodies and just to keep there and really said, well, what do you need to that guilty squeezing part? And it just needed to trust my goodness. You know, needed to trust I loved her. And that was the compassion. I was just kind of from my own awake heart sending that message of, you love her, trust your goodness. And if I said it enough rounds, which I did, it got very tender and sincere. and after those steps there's what I call after the rain and after the rain is where we notice the presence that has unfolded. There's a lot of undoing and when there's an undoing of a clutch,

the natural presence that's who we are unfold itself. And I just felt that I was, this field of tenderness and wakefulness. The reason I'm sharing is because I started noticing when I was with my mother, rather than guilt, I actually was showing up. Like I wasn't trying to figure out when we'd be done so I could come upstairs and get more work done. And she died maybe three years later. And, you know, I could still feel the sorrow of that. But I realized that Rain saved my life moments with my mom.

And that, you know, that precious. just the way you describe those pathways of being with as much awareness as possible, not resisting, and then discovering that what unfolds is really who we are is so liberating. Because then we get to, and I got to live with her for more of the truth of my heart. So I thought I'd just share a little bit about the power of rain because it's so similar to the work you do with part. and with recognizing the awareness that has emerged and knowing that's our home. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, I've always enjoyed that.

I also, like you, I love playing with acronyms. I've also played, you know, I've played with those words. And just as you said this now, you said, the after the rain, I just thought, oh, rainbow, be open with. Oh, my gosh. Let me write that down. But, I mean, it's almost this kind of playful. way of teaching. It's so important because

most people. It's simple. And people need that because when you described so powerfully earlier, what happens when we get a limbic hijack? You know, the way stuff happens and then the frontal cortex kind of shuts down and then we're being run by the limbic

system and when that happens it's like the times we most need effortless, mindfulness, it's not accessible. So having four steps that are simple and easy to remember, it's like that pause. It gets us, it undoes the reactivity and allows us to remember who we are. Yeah. Yeah. And the investigate, you include both, you know, like head, body, and heart in it, which I love. Because, you know,

just the word seems to be more head, but you say, and then just know what it is, but then, you know, feel the felt sense and then, you know, listen to what it says. So that really is a deep, a deep investigation. Thank you for naming that, mirroring that back, because I think of it almost as probably 90% somatic. That investigates the most misunderstood step because so many people spiral into the kind of psychotherapy of the stories and I should have and he didn't. and know the beliefs that are there. It's helpful to say, you know, what am I believing right now? Because whenever we're suffering, there's a belief that's keeping us identified.

And to know that we can discover that belief, but we don't have to believe our beliefs. You know, we really don't have to believe our beliefs. They're, as I think it was Sokney-Rimpichet, said, they're real, but they're not true. That's right. Real but not true. Yeah. And so to see the layers of beliefs actually a portal back into the body, a lot of mindfulness teachings for years was, you know, get out of the head and come into your body. But in a way, there was a bypass of stories that are part of the narrative, but they're actually a portal to what's stored in our body.

And if we try to step away from the stories of being abandoned or being betrayed, or whatever it is, it's harder to actually connect and be intimate with what's alive and locked in our bodies. Yes. Yeah, that's right, because the protective parts of us that are strong and often the ones rejected are protecting something that we care about, something that's deeply precious. So it's that, you know, so to be curious, to be curious towards. them and, you know, not even to transform negative motions into positive, so even that

transformational, you know, there's some levels of that that are helpful, but ultimately, the meeting of them as, you know, as, you know, the other eyes, ignorance and interconnected and innocent and interdependent. So the sense that, what is the saying that, you know, the reason, you know, that being in a human body is the perfect vehicle for awakening because of the suffering. So it gives us that, so it gives us that ability to see that it's not to, that there isn't a problem from love,

and that doesn't mean we're not healing or we're ignoring or we're passive, that there is action and interaction. But that, you know, the untying of the knot or the detoxing process for everyone goes at a different pace and certainly with our colleagues bringing forth trauma these days with Gabor Mante and the body keeps the score

with Bessel, Vendercocke and others that it's becoming so now the key is to bring to that is that the small self or the ego cannot handle trauma It's no matter how smart or psychologically trained, the reason it's repressed is because, you know, it's not, it can't bear the unbearable. And so it's only by upgrading to forms of mindfulness and compassionate presence that isn't just an attitude or another part that's trying to be a polarized part that's just like.

like, you know, I'm hurting. Well, you shouldn't be hurting. I feel compassionate toward you. You know, like, okay. So who's compassionate toward those two parts? Oh, there we go. Yeah, I am right there with you that with that story of what are you unwilling to feel, there's an intelligence to being unwilling to feel when it's trauma,

and there's not enough of that authentic resourcefulness. And you're describing it as really living. from a more full sense of presence because it's the presence slash love that actually frees up the identity of a traumatized self.

And sometimes it takes for many people because trauma is so much in the society it's in so many of our bodies. It takes a lot of emphasis on the practices that just create safety and love

that really remind us of our belonging and actually not going right into where the pain is, but really resourcing with ourselves and not alone. I mean, that's the power of connecting with others, whether it's a friend or a therapist or a healer, or we now have Cloud Sanga, which is a online community of mindful friends who, just to explore this unfolding together, we need each other. It helps us realize that it's not so personal, which is some of the agony of it is feeling like this is happening to a separate self that's deficient and this trauma means I'm really, really broken. And as soon as we, I'm able to say, wow, you know, I go to a very deep place of angst about such and such,

it begins to heal because we enter that broader sphere that you were describing. But it takes some time of that resourcing, to be ready and able. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some, you know, that the sensitive human beings are often the ones who come to meditation as well, so they often have the sensitivity. They're looking for a sensitive cure and solve. So that, you know, that, you know, gradual support and love and whatever works for different people. But certainly the, you know, one of the things that can, you know, has been held somewhat is the belief that, well, the, you know, the direct introduction to awake awareness shouldn't be done until you are healed or it's an advanced practice. but often I've found even working in outpatient clinics, you know, in Brooklyn and the Bronx,

that, you know, at the right timing, people do have access, even if they've had trauma and haven't developed a strong ego. I'm right there with you. Yeah. Yeah. It's, this is not like a progression where what's always and already true, that loving awareness is, and, We've all had glimpses and the more the better. It may be that when someone's really stuck, they can't follow a sequence that will enlarge them that might be some of the traditional ways of disidentifying.

One of the things I found more and more with people that I teach and work with is the power of prayer. At times we're very stuck in that separateness. And it's John O'Donohue that the poet Mystic says that prayers the bridge between longing and belonging. And we all have this longing to belong. It's just part of our DNA. And if we get really in touch with it and habit it in our body and feel the sincerity of it and out of that place, you know, reach out towards a larger truth, a larger love. the power of that longing connects us. It's like the longing is love calling us home,

is the way I think of it. And you said so beautifully before suffering is awareness sending the message that we're stuck in something smaller than the truth. We're in that cocoon. And so prayer helps us to connect with a larger reality. And the beauty is it's one of those practices that begins in a dualistic frame of mind and dissolves the duality. And I practice enough myself that I can, with prayer, that, you know, I know how if I'm feeling really small or I kind of cotton being down on myself and I'll sense that prayer of, you know, please love me. Please may I feel loved and held and belonging. And then the yearning, actually opens me to, there's a, one teacher put it, love is always loving you, that there's

just love, and there's still a you for a little bit, but as we let in that love, you know, as we really let it just bathe us, we start discovering the awareness that is already inside and lit up and loving too, and then that sense of separateness from that loving awareness dissolves. So I really encourage people to experiment. It's all an experiment when they're caught in separateness, the different ways to bridge to a very heart-experienced opening sense of belonging. Yes, beautiful. Yeah.

I think, you know, it's a very kind thing of you to bring that back in some ways because I think some of the secularization, particularly of booed. Buddhism more than even yoga or other Eastern traditions is, was to take out the religion and to make it more available for people who have actually had either, you know, traumatic religious experiences or were forced on them or there were other reasons that it wasn't, you know, the best place. And they're looking for something that's simple and soothing and, you know, working with their own consciousness. but prayer or reaching out to something greater is in all Buddhist traditions. And it's also in, you know, secular traditions like recovery communities, you know, prayer or meditation, you know, just call it power greater than yourself. You know, like whatever that is, it's just not you, you know. And resource with the source, what's that?

and, you know, say, you know, help or thank you or just open to, you know, to nature and to the universe and to, but to not stay in and just meditate in and just try to, you know, do the work that doesn't open to the mystery and to something that is undefinable, but, palpable once you find a way, and especially people who are devotional types of people, they need that so that it doesn't, you know, because you and I make sure they don't do it to us, because that's the key. That's one of my main thing. If we are not playing guru here, it's like, it's within you and look bigger or more in or more out and resource with community. but find

that you know that plugging in to something greater and you know whether it's talking or singing or chanting dancing yeah just feel that that's

there's a willing openness to something you don't have to define and the beauty is as you open to it there is a natural space of wisdom that reveals that there was no self there.

It's like it is part of dissolving that identification. And I remember one teacher, it might have been Ramakrishna, but I can't remember, said that if you can't get rid of that self-identity, then just dedicate it to love. It's like if you can't get rid of the self-identity, then cultivate gratitude or devotion or prayer or being in nature and just feeling, oh, I love, this is, this is me. me and expand a part of me. And that kind of bridging then actually frees up the identification. So it's a very cool pathway from dual to non-dual. Yeah. And it is that, you know, it is that, you know, finding the love that's greater than you

that is who you essentially are. Yes. So there's the non-dual. Yes. So it's, and then you can actually say, Then you can say, then you can feel, I am love. Oh, I don't need to get love. Love's already here because it's not love with a small L or a type of love, but it's the love that you didn't, it's the unconditional love, the unconditioned love. Yeah.

You know, as you say that I'm so aware that for so many people, as soon as they touch into that more of that sense of freedom, there's a tendency to then move right on to the next thing. And neuroscience is such a support in this, talking about how for a realization to really stick, for it to be really deep and pervading, we need to actively install it, like spend 15 to 30 seconds, you know,

just attending to, oh, this, the isness, that's, you know, just learning to stick. some, and that's what creates the familiarity. So, whether it's through gratitude or through that bridging of love or prayer, whether it's through a guided glimpse that you do, it's that intentional getting familiar, getting curious. What is this like? Curiosity is, oh, my gosh. You know, there's the twin pathways of curiosity, you know, loving the truth and loving love.

And we all have our, you know, we all have both. And we sometimes lead with one or lead with the other. And I'll share with you, I was just with a very dear friend who's probably got a week or two to live, maybe three, Roland Griffiths, who's very known as a pioneer psychedelic. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So we just, I had the honor and privilege of about three and a half hours with him a few days ago. And here's this person who is on his way out and yet utterly curious about the whole passing. And it's like there's unpleasantness going on, just as you said, you don't have to get rid of the unpleasantness.

It's just that his curiosity is keeps on linking him to a larger space of gratitude and wakefulness and openness so that there's a profound quality of acceptance that's, you know, when I'm with him, there's a part of me saying, well, so what, what can I learn more about, you know, facing death close up and, wow, curiosity. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, that's so amazing. His work is so important, I think, for so many people. And, you know, having also been with people who are passing, just walking in the room is such a sacred experience. Yeah. It's, there's like a, you know, with most people, sometimes it can be very agitated, you know, but it's very, it's very full of something, you know. sometimes people are early on, you know, clinging, but others who have kind of started that process are opening. And, you know, I've spent some time even was fortunate with my mother four years ago, who had a stroke and then was in the hospital.

And my wife and I just slept in the small one person hospital bed next to her over the night and would just, you know, hold her hand and just talk to her. And then we were there with my brother and sister-in-law just talking and kind of laughing. And then Paige, my wife, just said, there. And we looked over and she just took, took that final breath and then we just all just gathered around her and just thanked her and prayed and spent this time. So it's, you know, and the thing is she lived a good life. She lived a full life. She lived, that's all you, you know, I mean, I feel like I don't know what would happen

if tomorrow, but I feel like for me it's dessert now. It's like if it's, if it were time, I would hope, you know, like Roland, I could face it because, you know, the now is so eternal. I mean, I don't know if that just sounds like a, hopefully that doesn't sound like a card, you know. But it literally is like that's the preciousness of having been, yeah, in, you know, like you're saying, it's a, you know, very great fortune to be with people at that time. You know, people talk about the birth of babies, but this is the other birth, right? It is.

And, you know, this has been. I hear of it for me, and I just keep noticing that as the body is passing, there's this transparency that happens. And it's much easier to sense the truth of what you said, that timeless spirit that is living through. And I tell myself, you know, as my body is doing its aging things, that, okay, the body's going down, but the awareness is waking up. And it's a trade-off, you know, but I'll go for awareness. And there's a great Bhutanese saying that if you want to be happy, contemplate death five times a day.

And I think it means a death of the moments as much as anything else, that the more we feel like, okay, you and I are together right now, and then this particular encounter will pass. and sensing the comings and goings allows us to tap into the mystery that is utterly still and eternal and present. It's a gift. So it is a beautiful training to tend towards death in that way. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm just kind of called back to something you were saying before.

It's kind of bringing these together, what you would call the fullness of you. Samsara and Nirvana would be one way to say it, but, you know, that as we are had the great good fortune of stumbling into this gift of, you know, this world of meditation and consciousness and psychology and healing, that, you know, when we speak, I just, you know, some people, as you say, like, oh, I don't feel that. I don't want that. I'm in pain. You know, that's too hard. That's too difficult. It's like, I was there too. You know, that was, I'm still, you know, I still have certainly fullness of experience and, you know, bring it on.

It goes through a detox process that there was, you know, I can remember just a couple years ago just sitting at a table with a friend and just starting to shake and and then feel all this fear and he was like, what's going on? I said, oh, it's nothing personal. And I was like, what am I saying? And then what I, and then I said, wait a minute, what it is, is something's moving through. Something's shaking and baking here. And I'm just sitting here with you letting it happen. And it, I'm not even tracking how early it is or whether it has something or how it got triggered. Not sure, but it's clearing through. And then there is, like you said, about neuroscience, there's something about, they say that emotions in the neurons is what takes experiences and

embodies them. So that's why trauma or negative experiences get bound in the body. So the importance of bliss for me is really important. Or, you know, bliss, you could say, is a form of love. You could say bliss, you could say joy, loving kindness. But that, you know, even relief, even like, ah, but letting that, letting that not be a passing, like, okay, that good, that was nice. Now let's go do something. But letting it, you know, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, marinate, you know, marinate the body in open-hearted awareness. And let the bliss go. follow it back to the essential bliss or the unconditional love, which now it's become more, it's not like the passing bliss with a small B.

I mean, it is in some ways, but it's like, sometimes I say it's like that most intense bliss in the body spread out thinly throughout the universe. It's kind of like just, and that, you know, not that everyone can experience that, but when there's moments. So again, it's like, that's why I call it glimpses. So glimpse is not a meditation state. It's not a experience. It's not a positive experience.

It's actually a shift from the openness to be aware, have recognition of the awareness to realization that I am the awareness that's embodied. and then it's recognizing itself. The glimpse is, oh, this new intelligence is aware of itself being here with whatever is happening. I'm not doing it. Taking that with me, especially the part of the bliss spreading out thinly through the universe. I'm going to go with that ride.

That's good. But it does get the, it is the important because there is some kind of almost a little, can be a Puritan quality to some of the Buddhist practice. So it can be a little, you know, and there's a need, you know, just that from the overactiveness to, okay, just sit still. Okay, well, I want to get up. You know, like, okay, just sit a little, you know, there's a little discipline here. but then it's leading to freedom and dancing and joy. We need to celebrate. I mean, Tickna Hahn said that it's not enough to suffer.

You know, you have to touch peace also, and that includes love, gratitude, joy, wonder. You know, we need it. It's part of who we are. It's more that we have conditioning to focus on the negative, so we need to undo that conditioning by just what you're saying, attending to the sweetness. I'm really enjoying this luck. I feel like we both,

we both have developed our languages and our ways of practice and they're very beautifully synergistic. So this has been a treat. Thank you. Yeah, this is such a wonderful thing. And I can, you know, because I can, because they're synergistic,

I can follow your language. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I know what she means. I think it's like this. Oh, that's good. Like, oh, that's nice. I like that. you know, like it doesn't feel, it feels like the same thing coming around the diamond, like we're coming around the diamond in a different way.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. So it's wonderful. Good. Well, such a pleasure. And, you know, certainly now that, you know, we may have a chance to meet, you know, in the near future and glad to. have you in my life and in our lives and in the lives of so many that, you know, having a colleague who's like-minded and like-hearted.

Yeah, yeah. It's such a gift. So I really thank you, honor you and all you do. It's a pleasure to walk together, dear. Yes. Bless me.