Tara Brach - Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 - This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome, friends. Tonight we're going to be listening to Part 2 on this series of navigating conflict. And I thought I'd start with a quote, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who writes this. He says, if only it were all so simple, if only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy a peace of his own heart?

So these two talks that we selected from the archives feel very meaningful for our times. We so easily get lured into thinking they're evil people out there that we have to beat or vanquish. And in our species, the real sign of evolution is capacity to collaborate, to feel our empathy and compassion. And as we know, when fear takes over, we get cut off. our primitive emotions take over, the hate, the anger, violence, we can get hooked on this and find ourselves always reacting. And you can see this in our personal lives, always kind of reacting with mistrust or hostility, being a naysayer, assuming somebody's out to get you. I remember seeing a cartoon of a dog on a psychiatrist's couch and the dog saying, I bark at everything. You can't

go wrong that way. So these times call for us to consciously cultivate our capacity to resolve conflict. Just to remember the vulnerability and the goodness in each being and to find our way to love and understanding. So I hope you enjoy this talk and find it valuable on your path. Blessings. Namaste and blessings. and welcome. We are exploring tonight. This is our second of a two-part series on navigating conflict. And we're going to continue the exploration,

starting with one of my favorite little parables that has to do with porcupines that are going through the coldest winter that have been known for many, many years, and many animals froze to death during this one. So, in an effort to save themselves from this icy fate, they decide to gather together and fend off the chill. And they huddled very close to each other and covered and protected from the elements

that were worn by their collective body heat. But as you can imagine, what happened was their prickly quills proved to be a bit of a problem in that kind of close contact. And they were poking and stabbing each other. There was some wounding going on with their closest companions. in particular. The warmth was wonderful, but the needling became really uncomfortable and eventually they began to distance themselves one from another and they scattered in the forest only to when they were alone start freezing up and many of them died. So it soon became clear they had to

choose and they had to choose between solitary deaths and a kind of frigid environment in the wilderness are the discomfort of being close up but being needleed by their companions, by each other's quills when they banded together. Wisely, they decided to return to the huddle and they learned to live with the little wounds caused by a close relationship with their fellows in order to benefit from the collective heat they generated as a group. And in this way they were able to survive

and flourish. So that's our parable and you might be thinking for yourself and consider in this last week or so did you get needled some anywhere along the line by somebody around you or were you needling somebody? Did you invoke or trigger a reaction? And if we're honest it might not be this last week but most of us, it probably was, you know, and if we're honest, we do hurt each other. We often aren't aware of each other's needs, we step over, not so carefully, step on each other and don't really notice how much the other is needing to feel appreciated in a certain way or attended to or seen or cared about.

So we do prick each other and for the sake of our collective well-being and freedom, evolution has given us the capacity to find ways to work out the conflicts and the wounding. It doesn't always happen but we have that capacity. It's really part of the evolution of consciousness that we can deal with that and wake up in a way actually that brings a tremendous amount of intimacy and understanding and connection. The classic symbol is the lotus growing out of mud and the saying is no mud, no lotus, no lotus. That it's not whether or not we're going to have conflict because the given is conflict. We have conflict with our inner life and we have conflict with each other.

The question is how do we respond? and that's what we're going to continue to explore. And the given is that it requires a really deep commitment. It's a training, a willingness and a commitment to be uncomfortable, sometimes to be scared, to be vulnerable if we're going to work out the conflict in our lives. and we actually have a lot of strong conditioning to do the opposite of that, to run in the opposite direction, to avoid facing conflict whenever we can, are to get locked into the kind of blame that perpetuates hostility.

By way of example, Rita Rudner, she says, I love to shop after a bad relationship, I don't know, I buy a new outfit and it makes me feel better, just does. Sometimes if I see a really great outfit, I'll break up with someone on purpose. So it's fun and for each of us, part of waking up to ourselves, being on to ourselves, is catching onto what is my strategy when there's conflict? What do I do? And what we're going to be exploring because the teaching is whatever we practice grows stronger. So if there's tension with somebody and you regularly

practice locking into resentment and blame, that's just going to cultivate the neuropathways that bring us to more and more resentment of blame. If you're one of those conflict avoidant in people that's always trying to harmonize and smooth over but then ends up feeling really, really angry or wronged or really distant from people, then that's going to be the groove that gets deepened. So it becomes really important to catch on to what is my mode when there's conflict. And of course, as we do in these classes, I'll be inviting you to pick an area where you feel you've been at odds in some way and we'll do some practice with that. Last class, one of the basic premises is that when we're in conflict,

It's not like the humans are in conflict. What's really in conflicts is a clash of unmet needs. You know, my need for being seen and your need for feelings controlled or safe or whatever it is, there's a clash in needs. And no matter how right you feel in a conflict, and this is a hard one but it's really, I keep having to re-experience it on my own. life, no matter how right you are, when you're in a conflict and feeling right, you're in a trance. Your world has become very confined and the lens then is, you know, the right self

and a wrong or bad other. And what we see through that lens, the self becomes tight and judgmental and either aggressive or defensive but small. And the other, the other is, And the other, all we can see of the other, is the sliver of their being that we've decided is wrong or bad. We forget about all the other stuff. The lens is really, really narrow. And it's interesting because when we're in our rightness, we're operating off of our survival brain, the limbic brain.

And the thing is that no matter how right we are, we don't like our limbic. self. If you watch when you're in a conflict and whether you feel like it was your fault in some way or whether you feel like it's the other person's fault, when you're caught in that trance, one of the signs of trance is there's something that feels slightly distasteful or yucky or not good about yourself. We don't like who we are because we're coming from a very small portion of our being. One of the things that's always interesting, to me is when we're in conflict, the way we take in information, how we're sorting for information to prove our rightness and another's wrongness.

And it's always a distortion. So one of my favorite, this is a historical fiction that I think has a really illustrative point in it. And it goes like this. About a century or two ago the Pope decided that all the Jews had to leave Rome. naturally there was a big uproar from the Jewish community, so the Pope made a deal. He would have a religious debate with a member of the Jewish community. If the Jew won, the Jews could stay. If the Pope won, the Jews would leave.

The Jews realized they had no choice, so they picked a middle-aged man named Moisha to represent them, and Moisha asked for one addition to the debate. To make it more interesting, neither side would be able to talk. The Pope agreed. The day before the great debate came, Moisa and the Pope sat opposite. other for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. Wisha looked back at him and raised one finger. The Pope waved his fingers in a circle around his head,

and Wisha pointed to the ground where he sat. The Pope pulled out a wafer and a glass of wine. Moisha pulled out an apple. The Pope stood up and he said, I give up, the man's too good, the Jews can stay. So an hour later, the Cardinals are all surrounding the Pope, and they're asking them, well, what happened? what happened? And the Pope said, well, first I put up three fingers to show the Trinity,

and he responded holding up one finger to remind me that the one God, common to all our religions. Then I waved my fingers around me to show that God was all around us, and he responded by pointing to the ground showing that God is the very ground of existence. He, you know, I pulled out wine and wafer to show that God absolves us from our sins. He pulled an apple to remind me of original sin. He had an answer for everything. What could I do? Meanwhile, the Jewish community is crowded around Moishe. What happened? They asked. Well, he said, first, he said to me the Jews had three days to get out of here.

I told him that not one of us was leaving. He told me this whole city would be cleared of Jews and I let him know we were staying right here. Yeah, yeah, and then said the crowd, what happened then? I don't know. He took out his lunch and I took out mine. So do you see what I mean by a trans? you know, when we're in conflict, we just interpreted our own way. So the trouble with communicating when we're in a trance is that it doesn't lead to understanding

and caring. That's the given. If you are caught in your limbic brain, if you're feeling defensive, aggressive, I'm right, you're wrong, if you speak from that place, it creates more distant. I know for myself I'm always, it's always, always like an axiom of truth that when I'm feeling agitated and have some blame, if I speak, I'm not going to get what I want, because I'm just going to push the other person away and they're going to be more to offend it.

So the key is not to communicate from trance but to remember our intention, to remember what matters to get in touch with what's going on inside us. And when we don't, there's always always repercussions. I'll give you an example from my own life and this is a story about my husband and I, Jonathan, we have a, one of our rituals as a couple is that we meditate at least twice a week together in the morning and when we do part of our meditation is a kind of check-in, where we speak what we're grateful for and we speak of, you know, where challenges are and then we check out to see you all, is there anything between you and me and really feeling happy and free, connected, etc. So, not as much currently, but back in the day,

maybe five years ago, six years ago, because this is when this event happened, I had a certain tension and a grudge that I felt like I was always more interested in looking at the day, at the what's between us thing. You know, it was a little bit of a gender thing, but I always wanted to look at, you know, where is there something we need to pay attention to? And he was always a little bit real ready to harmonize, not so into looking. So that's a preface to say that that morning we chatted about everything and about our relationship and he almost forgot that last piece of, you know, how are we doing?

So I asked, I said, so, how are we doing? we doing. Now, I just want to know, I didn't have anything in that particular moment that I thought was going on, but I kind of wanted to put him on the spot a little. So, I said, so anything good we should, anything we should be paying attention to. And then after I framed it in this positive, invitational way, I kind of sat back. So I was on my turf, you know, I was good at this part of things. And he started squirming, you know, because he figured there was something I had on my mind. And he was, you know, his fear of course, he was. He was, you know, his fear, of course, he missed something and I was going to pounce.

And he looked at me hopefully, like maybe I'd give him a clue. I was totally silent, you know. So I'm just sitting there. Then he gets that deer and the headlights look like, oh my gosh, something's really going on. And then he got this mischievous look and he pulled out his iPhone and he asked Siri, how do you respond when your wife asks, how are we doing? Within moments he had an answer, and this is absolute truth, Siri said, you say, I'm okay, you're okay,

and this is the best of all possible worlds. Honest to God. Siri's too good. I mean, what could I do? So, we kind of, you know, thought that was really funny and went out and had a walk or whatever, but the follow-up was that I had to own the terms, trance I was in, which was, it was kind of a passive-aggressive move I had done where it wasn't

well intended. I wanted to make them uncomfortable. But actually by naming that, by naming the trance and the patterning, it actually set us on kind of a new ground of a little more space, a little more trust to actually be able to look at what was between us when there was something that had come up. So in our last class, the last exploration of this, the first step when there's conflict is what I call the U-turn, where we go from there's something wrong with you or there's something going on that's bad here to, okay, what's going on inside me right now?

And this pause rather than going at it with somebody, but this pause to take some time to give some space, to check in, is absolutely essential. I call it the sacred art of pausing, whether it's for five seconds or for five minutes or until the next day, is where we have a chance to come out of that limbic trance and to actually come from a more whole and intelligent and compassionate place.

Pausing is really important in any sort of of interaction when there's a reactivity and especially with couples. There's been research. One of the most renowned authors and couple therapists, John Gottman, did a really interesting study with couples where they'd come in and he'd wire them up so he could watch their brains as they interacted and all these physiological gauges and then they discussed these difficult issues. And he'd wait until the pulses went up and they got to a certain point, you know, in midst of an argument and then let them know that the camera had broken down and they needed to just wait while they fixed the cameras.

So he'd put them off in their own rooms for 15 minutes, come back again, and then after they came back, found that they could really resolve a whole lot of problems pretty easily. They were entirely two different people because it takes adrenaline about 15 minutes. minutes to be metabolized. Now this is a pause without any real intentional kind of meditative process. So imagine you combine the pause where you just have time to physiologically settle with making the U-turn and actually becoming more intimate with your own experience and you can sense that you then can engage from quite a more resourceful place.

which is our practice. So that's what we covered last time was making that you turn and when we do, what we're doing is saying, okay, so what am I feeling? Okay, I'm feeling hurt, I'm feeling fear. What are my unmet needs? Well, I have an unmet need to feel like I'm special, like I matter to this person or I'm respected or I'm seen, but we get in touch with that. that when we're communicating, rather than saying you're bad, you're wrong, we can say,

this is what came up for me. This is the feeling, this is the unmet need. Does that all make sense thus far? Because we're about to take the next step. So the next question is, then how do we go about skillfully engaging with another person after we've made the U-turn? And that's what I'd like to spend the rest of our time now talking about. And it's really a process of naming to the best of our ability what's true about what's going

on. And there's several guiding inquiries when we're naming things with each other. The first is to get in touch with our deepest intent. So it might have been with Jonathan that if I had, you know, recognized, you know, we'd recognize that I would recognize, oh, the intention I'm operating off of now is kind of a gotcha intention. But if I really go deep, I want to be intimate. And unless we pay attention to these things, my fear is that will always be a little bit nice to each other but not really know each other.

So if I had taken the time, I could have gotten to that more vulnerable, I want to be close. So that's the first inquiry. What's our real intention here? What's the real intention as we are with another person? The next few that I'm going to name are adapted from nonviolent communication. And I'm curious here, how many of you are familiar with Marshall Rosenberg and nonviolent communication? Can you raise your hands high?

Good number. Okay. As you listen to know that there's a lot of good free resources on the way, web that you can, if this appeals to, these inquiries about kind of naming what's true and working out conflict, if this appeals, you can look up nonviolent communications. It's a training. It's a training in how to really pay attention deeply. So it's not something you can necessarily just say, oh, here's my list of questions, and I'm going to do it right away. The second inquiry after what's really the intention is, and this is for both

people to say, well, what can we objectively say really happened? So it's that we both, you know, it's not he pulled out his lunch and I pulled out mine, it's like what really can we both say happened? The third is what was I feeling? That's what we do with the U-turn, what was I feeling or what do I feel? The next one's what do I need, what's the unmet need? What am I hoping for? And the last is what do I want to ask for? It might be I want to ask that we can talk about this more. Or I want to ask and see if you understand how I was feeling. Or I want to ask that we can pause more when this comes up again, that kind of thing.

So those are the questions. What's my deepest intention? What do we both agree happen? Feeling? What am I feeling? What's the unmet need? And what's the request? Now, it's ideal if you're talking to somebody and you both take turns with these to mirror

back what you're hearing so that the other person gets a sense of being heard. But I want to share an example so you get a feeling a little more of a grounded sense of how this can work out. And the story I'd like to share with you, this is quite a while ago and I think it's in radical acceptance. I thought of it was a pretty clear example. And it happens to a lot of partners where one person becomes ill and then all sorts of issues come up around how the two are working with one person being ill.

So I thought that would be a good one. For this couple, their relationship was going downhill and they were thinking of separating. He was a fine carpenter and he, on a camping trip he had contracted limes. His fingers were swelling, his body ached. He was getting way behind on work, really depressed. And so she started taking on more hours of work, working overtime, and had to do all the meals and the cleaning and this and that. So what they could both agree on is that he was getting sicker and they were both getting

emotionally reactive. Because basically when they came, that's what they could agree on. And what their intention was was to see if they could be. could reconnect. Okay? That was their intention. So when these inquiries, okay, what are you feeling? For her, she was saying, I feel completely unappreciated by you. I'm trying so hard to make up for things and I feel like I'm never enough that I'm not doing it right and you actually treat me like I'm not caring but I'm trying really hard and so I feel really unappreciated. And his view was that she begrudged the whole situation, that she was blaming him for being sick

and that she was angry about it and she was angry that he couldn't do his share. So that's the setup, that that's where they both were. I had them each do their own U-turn so they could get in touch and then share what the actual feelings were. For him under his anger, shame, frustration, impotency, loneliness, fear about the future, and his unmet need was to feel worthy and empowered and secure. And what he wanted was, please trust I'm trying, I'm trying to do as well as I can. And for her, underneath the I'm unappreciated was feeling helpless. She said, I love you and I can't make you feel better and I don't know if it's going

to work out. I don't know if you're going to get better. And what I need you do is to trust I'm caring. So I'm giving you an example of them, they responded to these questions in a way that rather than blame went to vulnerability and that created a receptivity to each other and they stayed together and it was really, really hard because she very quickly would go into feeling like I'm doing stuff and I'm not appreciated and he'd feel a shame but they had a way to talk about it. Now, I want to name here that in order to be able to resolve with another

person in this way, there's a few things that have to be in place. You have to have a person that's willing to meet you and practice this way. You have to have a person that's actually able to get in touch with themselves so they can actually report out their feelings and their needs. Lots of people can't do that. You might be thinking, yeah, right, well I'm willing, but there's no way the person I'm having a conflict is going to be able to do that. You can still make the U-turn, okay? You can still get in touch with your own so that you can, to the degree you can work out conflict, be speaking from a place that's not going to elicit defensiveness.

So you can do degrees of this. There's another thing that many of you might be thinking because I know the feeling which is When I'm in conflict, it feels in a very specific way scary and threatening to try to begin to work out something because once we feel we've been hurt there's a fear we're going to get hurt again. So I want to first say that again for two people to engage in this more evolved way of processing, They both have to be willing to practice it. They have to be willing to do it.

There has to be a safe enough container or it is dangerous. It will feel like you could be vulnerable and say, here's my feelings, here's my needs, and get completely slammed, right? So here's the thing. Again, we have to practice the full U-turn and then use our intuition to how much we can communicate. Ticknat Han has an interesting way of languaging this. He says, when you get triggered and you're angry, pause, breathe, walk, do the U-turn, embrace your anger, sense what's going into what's inside you, look into its nature. And then if it's still

there, then you have to communicate. But here's this, here's what he advises for communication. three sentences. I'm suffering and I want you to know it. In other words, I want these feelings and I've met needs, I want you to know it. I am doing my best. That's the intention. And please help. Please join me and paying attention to this. So he calls us the language of true love. He encourages you to write down these three sentences. I'm suffering and I want you to know it. I'm doing my best. Please help."

Can you hear the spirit of the language and sense that it's a hundred percent responsible? It's not saying it's your fault, it's not saying I'm relinquishing responsibility, it's just saying, can we look at this together? So we're going to practice. We're going to practice making the full U-turn and a very much of the full you-turn and a imagining into being able to process with another person. So, if you will, just to take some moments to find a good way of sitting for this. And to bring to mind a situation with somebody, if you imagine the porcupine, somebody that's

close. Somebody that's close but where there is a pattern of reactivity that you'd like to wake up from, that you'd like to bring more understanding, more connection to work with. Could be a friend, a sibling, a parent, a child. Ideally, choosing someone that could potentially have the capacity to meet you in the exploration. Some situation where you feel some blame or resentment, where there's some prickling going on. with someone close, or you'd like to explore the U-turn, at least easing up things within yourself, more contact with your own experience and where potentially you might be able

to process some. Let the attitude be how honest can you be right now with yourself. So you can sense, okay, if you were going to describe the situation, what would be the bare bones description that's objective? and honest. And ground this in your intention, what your real intention is, your deepest intention with this person. Is it to understand each other better, to have more loving connection, more spontaneity? And from that intention, begin that you turn of bringing your full attention inwardly so you can begin to investigate and sense so what is it that I'm feeling?

when I'm triggered. It might be more than one feeling. If you're feeling angry you might also feel hurt or shamed or rejected. How does the interaction make you feel, disrespected, not seen? So it'll help to kind of bring the situation to mind and sense, well, what really, what are the feelings that come up inside me? And feel your body, your throat, your chest, your belly. Sometimes it helps to even take a posture that expresses the feeling that comes up when this is being triggered. So you can really get in touch with it. You wouldn't be blaming unless there wasn't some feeling underneath some form of vulnerability. And what's the unmet need? What is that part of you that is reactive really want or need? Is it to be

cared about? Is it to be treated with respect? Is it to be understood? You appreciate it? Accepted? Do you sense the need? Do you have a sense of what you'd really want to ask for that is ecological and wise, like possible? Do you want to ask that you, that this other person spend more time talking or show you that they understand in some way. Take some moments to sense the need that's there and really offer to your own being what's needed in this moment. That's most important. What can you offer yourself?

If there's a need to be seen, can you really let that part know you see it? your highest self, your kindest self. If there's a need for respect, can you honor your own dignity? If there's a need for love, you might put your hand on your heart and really offer care. In making the U-turn, it's key to bring the resourcefulness inside. You'll be in a much better position to relate to the other person if you've brought love and respect and understanding to the part of you that's reactive. So take some moments from your highest self, from your wisest self to offer inwardly what's most needed, offer the words that could be reassuring. And if you feel it would help to have some support, imagine others who care about you or

it could be a spiritual figure, but call on support. So the part of you that's reactive is getting taken care of. The more deeply you resource right now internally, the more possibility of finding connection with the other person. And from a place of awakeness and open-heartedness you might reflect on the other person for a few moments. You might imagine them going through this process and sensing for them what is it that that person's feeling? Call on your intuition. Again, from your high self, your future self, your most evolved space of beingness. What's that person feeling? What might that person be needing that would calm or soothe or heal the upset in that person?

And for the last few moments you might imagine yourself together speaking, imagine hearing each other's feelings, hearing each other's needs, and sense the possibility of deepening understanding of a willingness to respond in a way that can be helpful to each other, knowing that you can continue on your own with this practice and that it's again a life training to be able to process within ourselves and then bring it in and communicate with others that it takes a lot of practice and a mutual commitment so there really is a safe container but you can take steps you don't have to wait and the more you make the U-turn and bring the compassion within, the more you'll find a kind of creativity and

an intuition on how to begin to speak with another so you can both share where the vulnerability is in a way that's healing, not creating more distance. Now a big question comes up, well, what if I do the U-turn and I'm still angry? And that actually happens a whole lot because the more the conflict is, the conflict taps into wounds that are historical, the more it takes actually many rounds of U-turns to begin to kind of quiet and calm so that you're actually coming from a place that's not hijacked by your limbic system. But that's okay.

Do it a number of times and resource as well as you can. Often the resourcing is not just inward. It means getting in touch with other people and being able to process with them and sensing that they are holding you in a way that's helpful. One trick that's helpful is if you're really agitated and aggravated by a person is to, in your mind's eye, imagine that trigger person moving away from you and shrinking into the distance. Just imagine that and the more visually you imagine them smaller and more distant, actually the

more you can resource yourself. I'm just giving you a couple of tricks that I've been. heard and found are actually helpful. Another is to view from your future self. Like just imagine your future self. You're more evolved and awake and loving self imagine through that part of your own eyes. Now another question is, what if the other person is still really angry? And the best approach I have found when somebody else is angry and I've kind of settled some is to ask them, say, help me to understand what's going on with you. Help me to understand what you're saying.

Help me to understand what's important to you or what I'm missing. You're not saying, help me to understand what you're feeling right now because that's going to get them walked back into feeling but what are you saying, what's important to you actually conveys you care, you're interested and it allows them to begin to be, to communicate. Pema Chodrom puts it beautifully. This is one of my favorite of her quote. She says, we don't set out to save the world. We set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's heart. We started last class with a frame of what it means to be 100% responsible. That when there's

conflict, when there's blame, when there's wounding, there's a true empowerment to say, okay, I'm 100% responsible for my experience. Whatever a person does, now if they're being abusive, that doesn't mean you don't set boundaries or get away. You're 100% responsible to take care of yourself. But blame any moment of your bad and you're wrong takes away from your own empowerment. If you want to feel a sense of your own strength and resourcefulness, 100% responsible. And there are two ways that can take expression that I want to close with naming that both have felt really, really important in my life. And the first one is the power of apologizing. Every one of us hurts other people at times and apologize. And apologize

is super powerful both in offering what it does for you to offer it and also in receiving. There are three steps to apologizing, and these are neatly summed up. I want to give you the author's name, Beverly Engel. I like the way she does this, the three R's. The first is regret. That's a statement of regret for causing harm. Second is responsible. That's 100% responsible. I accept my responsibility. for my actions. And then the third is remedy, some statement of willingness energetically or actively to remedy the situation. So we do these three.

And I'll give you an example for me with Jonathan, a different one, where apologizing became really important. And this was a couple of years ago, he had agreed to meet a small group of working on a project. He agreed to meet with them for a morning. It didn't have anything to do with his domain. They were a little bit confused and even asking him. And he had to drive a really long distance.

So I kind of, he felt obliged in some way. I knew it wasn't on his priority list, so I pounced. You know, I was really critical. You know, you're always pressed by how much you have to do, how much is, you know, on your plate. And, you know, here you go, just agreeing to do this, this, this. So, then, you know, he kind of got quiet and didn't say much and then I realized, oh geez, I was out of line.

So, in my mind I rehearsed, I was going to apologize and I was rehearsing it and I was saying, okay, I'm really sorry and it's not how I want to be with you. And I was just concerned that you weren't staying aligned with your priorities. Then that's a whoops because you can see how you can see how you. how quickly an apology goes into self-justification. Notice how quickly when you're apologizing or something, you then say, I just do-da-da-da. Because immediately that just means that you're now showing why you actually were okay doing it. So I, and I realize this is so much like when I reflected further, this is so much the way I was with my son. You know, he

wasn't doing it my way and I assumed he should do it a certain way and I was doing the same thing with Jonathan. So I really apologize and I was accountable for laying my way on him. So regret and I was doing it really all right. You know, I was taking responsibility fully. And then by way of remedy I told him I would pay a coach to teach him how to do it my way. We goof around a lot but I, you know, he liked that. That was okay for us. So I want to just say that I'm apologizing is super hard because we have right come up rubbing against our pain about feeling imperfect. And we all feel like a lot of pain around being imperfect.

And yet if you can apologize, what happens is it breaks down that identification of the, that I've done something wrong and I'm bad. it actually we're coming from a larger place. It frees up our identity. And it's deeply healing to the other person. I want to read you a story that Beverly Angle tells about this. She says, when I was 35 years old, I divorced my mother. I felt that under the circumstance it was the only thing I could do. I'd long felt that she had damaged me with emotional abuse while I was growing up, and during my adulthood, she continued to treat me in ways I didn't like. I became so emotionally and physically stressed when I was with her that it affected my health.

So I made the difficult yet necessary decision to stop seeing her. That estrangement lasted three years. She says I wrote a book titled Divorcing a Parent. I told about the experience of divorcing my mother and encouraged others in similar situations to consider doing the same. Then, one day, the phone rang. When I picked it up, the person on the other end of the line said, I'm sorry.

It was my mother. Waves of relief washed over me. Resentment, fear, and anger drained out. Much to my surprise, those two simple words seemed to wipe away years of pain and bitterness. There were the words I'd been waiting to hear most of my life. I knew that it had taken all the courage and my extremely proud mother could muster to say them.

So I didn't have to belabor the point. The important thing was that she was saying she was sorry, something she had never done before. I could tell by the tone of her voice she truly regretted the way she had treated me. Of course, this was only the beginning of the story, although I believed her apology, I didn't know if her behavior toward me would be different.

This I tested over time. But by apologizing, she had acknowledged that I had a reason to be hurt, and angry, and that was extremely empowering for me. Apology has indeed changed my life. My mother lived only three more years, but she was able to offer an apology and because I was able to accept her apology, we're closer in those three years than we had ever been. Our time together was extremely healing for both of us. So I close with this story because sometimes

we know that we've been off and it's ours to become big enough. And by big enough, I mean really open beyond our small self that wants to be right and doesn't want to be wrong to extend an apology. It's really freeing and enlarging. And as this story shows, it can be incredibly healing for the person receiving. We're talking in these classes really. about evolving our relational consciousness. There's no way to do it without coming up to the edge of where we feel really uncomfortable.

And if there's a lot of trauma, we have to be really gradual. But the invitation is each one of us in our lives, we're going to be pricked, we're going to be needled and we're going to feel pricked and feel in some way. that somebody's wrong. And each one of us has the potential to let that be a place of waking up, to really free ourselves from being the victim or the aggressor, to wake up to a bigger space that really wants to connect and understand. So with this I invite you to a final, taking a final few moments in the deepest sense when we, evolve our consciousness, we're letting go of old patterns of defending, old patterns of

aggressing. It's a surrendering for something fresh and tender and awake and vast to unfold itself. So you might as we close again bring to mind some place where you feel at odds with someone. Again, one of the close-in porcupines is usually useful to reflect on. You might ask yourself, who would you be? If you're not making the other wrong, you're not making yourself wrong, surrendering the stories of wrongness. What becomes possible? The poet Rumi writes, very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crown. Be crumbed. So wildflowers will come up where you are.

Be ground. Be crumbled. So wildflowers will come up where you are. You've been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender. Namaste and thank you for your attention.