Tara Brach - Part 1: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Part 1: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom - The Buddha said, "I would not be teaching this (a path of awakening) if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible." While this is our potential, we each have deep conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of wellbeing, and with practice, develop them into ongoing traits that bring presence and joy to our lives. In Part II, we will investigate how to cultivate an unconditional presence, and the radical acceptance and love, that are the grounds of true happiness and inner freedom.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. One of my favorite all-time stories about the Dalai Lama was when he was interviewed by Network News after publishing his book on happiness. And the question they gave him was, what was the happiest moment of your life? and he had that mischievous look before responding and then he said, I think now. We have all these misguided notions of what's going to bring us happiness, what's going to make us happy, what will stop us from being happy. And then we have habits, ways of paying attention that kind of lock us into a certain range of moods.

True happiness is a natural expression of our being when we're open and present. and far from being a self-centered emotion, when we're happiest, we're actually free from our self-narrative. So, friends, this has all been on my mind, the nature of happiness, the pathways to happiness. And I've selected from the archives, two talks that I really like for this week and next, that really explore how we cultivate our capacity for happiness. It's an inquiry into happiness that I think is powerful and beautiful and potentially life-changing. So my prayer is that this serves you on your path. Namaste and welcome.

So I welcome those that are right here at River Road in Bethesda. It's, as I mentioned earlier, it's great to be back. And I also want to welcome those that are joining us for live streaming, our friends all over the place. It's just a pleasure to be with you all. I've been away for, oh gosh, like five weeks, and I'll share a little bit about that, but I thought I'd start with a profound teaching story. The setup is Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and they're on a camping trip.

And so they set up their tent and they fall asleep. And some hours later, Sherlock wakes up his faithful friend. He says, Watson, look up in the sky and tell me what do you see. So Watson replies, I see millions of stars. Sherlock Holmes, what does that tell you? So Watson's pondering, he says, Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.

Time-wise, it appears to be approximately quarter past three. Theologically, it's evident that the Lord is all-powerful and we're small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we'll have a clear, beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you? Holmes is silent for a moment and he speaks, Watson, you idiot, someone's stolen our tent. Okay, so here's why it's profound, okay? Ready? We all have distinctive patterns of paying attention where our attention goes. Things we're looking for, things we're scanning for.

Some of us are paying attention and it's based on what we're wanting. Can I get more of this? Will this satisfy me? And others, it's what we're afraid of, that we're seeing around the corner. For Watson, you know, it was in some ways wanting information or maybe approval for homes. He's got this mistrust of humans and he's looking for what goes wrong. Our habit of how we pay attention totally shapes our moods. Your habits of how you're thinking, what you're thinking about every day and they're very repetitive. It said that we have 86,000 thoughts today and we had the same yesterday. You know, we just keep repeating. The Buddha put it best, he said, whatever we think about regularly,

that becomes the habit of our mind. So how do we pay attention? And if we look at ourselves, we can ask, am I primarily paying attention to what is around the corner that? what's going to go wrong? Am I primarily planning and worrying? What's in it for me or how people are going to be appreciating me? Is it self-blame? A brief reflection that I really love. You close your eyes for a moment and mentally conjure up the word trouble and just say it to yourself.

Hear your voice saying trouble. You might add a little charge to it, trouble. Say it a few times. hear your inner voice saying it strongly. Just notice what it's like to be saying trouble and what happens in your body, your heart, your mind. Okay, put that on mute, turn that off, erase the blackboard, whatever works for you. And now the word kindness. Just mentally repeat the word kindness a number of times and just notice.

And again wonder about what's the kind of thought. the ways you're paying attention through the day. If you like you can open your eyes, there's a lot that's been written about set points for our moods, that with happiness, with anxiety, that there's a set point. And what we know is that some of it's put in place genetically and some of it is generated by early life experiences and a whole lot is either sustained or changed or changed. changed by your habit of paying attention. Okay?

So the saying is, whatever we practice grows stronger. If you're practicing a lot of meta, that's going to change your set point, the love and kindness practice. Kindness will change your biology. If you practice worry thoughts, that'll sustain a set point of a lot of anxiety. Talk to one woman who was in her 50s recently, she was saying, she said to me, is it sane to even think it's possible I can change? I've been like this and she said, depressed and insecure all my life, it's my habit. So she's the one that if she was looking at the sky, she'd be scanning for evidence of something's

wrong. She would come up with something like, I'm so self-involved, I can't even feel awe looking at the nice sky. It would like reflect back on her. That's the habit of it. of paying attention. So I run into this a lot that many have perhaps one of the deepest layers of fears I can't really change the way I want to change.

You know, I can never really feel close to others or I can never really feel a sense of at peace or at home with myself. I can't really like myself. So the reason I'm wanting to talk about what we're talking about tonight, which is really what I'm calling rewiring for true well-being. Well-being. I like that word, you know, really well-being, is because we all have the potential for it. And one of the most classic teachings of the Buddha was, I would not be teaching this if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible. It's possible. So we're going to talk about rewiring. You know, what's the rewiring that

actually shifts our habits of paying attention so that we can cultivate that inner freedom of well-being. And we're going to look at really, you know, it's really cultivating mindful awareness the ways we do it. We'll look at how the patterns get deeply grooved and just to name that this is really something that takes patience, dedication, and practice because it really is a rewiring of patterning. It's an apt kind of metaphor. Part of what motivated me, I mentioned I was away for a while, I was on a one-month writing retreat

and it really was a retreat. I was mostly offline. There were a few things that had to tend to. And so things slowed down as they do at retreats and I got to meditate more, kind of meditate and walk and write and so I got to watch my mind more and I kind of watched my mind more and I kind to watch the ups and downs of my moods. And I got to see much more clearly as I was witnessing that when writing was flowing and the weather was good and I was, we were, I was able to swim, you know, when there was news of the world that was encouraging, that was a very tiny splinter,

but my mood would go up, you know. And then I also noticed how when I was having writers block or I was, my energy was low. or Jonathan felt sick for a while or news of the world, you know, I would watch it go down. And one of the realizations that I had that I keep having over and over and over again is that when I was really feeling a true sense of well-being, it had nothing to do with my mood being up or my mood being down. You know, there was one morning that we were watching the seals and the waves and I was just feeling ecstatic.

Another day that I was, you know, listening and taking in more about, you know, just feeling the agitation around Christine Blasney Ford's testimony and just the agitation of it and then underneath that the sorrow of the currents and the society that are so strong, the abusive currents and the sorrow was there. But when I was feeling real well-being, it was just how present was I with either. One person put it beautifully, the joy is in getting real, not in whether good things are happening or bad things are happening. So you might wonder, well, why when so much is going on in this world are we talking about

let's get feeling happier? But what I've seen over and over again, and I read a really beautiful article, person was describing that what we most need in this world is the resilience, the inner refuge of presence of inner well-being that can allow us to respond in an intelligent, compassionate way to what's going on. When aggression is met with reactivity and more judgment, it just perpetuates. So there needs to be this inner capacity to find balance in the midst. So we talk about rewiring for well-being and the Buddha described this capacity whether

it's up or down to find that sense of well-being as really the deepest happiness in the world. And it's sometimes described happy for no-being. reason, which I love. So there's two kinds of happiness we're going to explore. And this is in Buddhist psychology and they're both really important and one of them has a shadow side. The first kind of happiness is called worldly happiness. The word in the Asian script is pamoja. And worldly happiness is like when I was seeing those seals and feeling that sense of wonder, you know. Our worldly happiness is when

and you're feeling really connected with somebody, and just that feeling, just that sense of, wow, there's a really good, good deep trust that's here. Our wordly happiness is when you're seeing beauty and feeling awe. And it can be when you have a really good meal or a great massage. So it's the pleasantness of life being linked to certain conditions. And if there's not grasping, it can be really useful. happiness with cause because it cultivates a gladness in the mind, a lightness that makes us actually more available to the second kind of happiness which is called sukkha,

which is happy for no reason. That's the happiness, and this is really the place of freedom that is not really dependent on any cause. We're going to look for the rest of this class at Pomogia at happiness with cause first. And the reason is this, that because of our negativity bias, because we tend to be looking, if there's, we're told to look at the sky, we're worried about who stole the tent, because our habit is to think something's wrong and that there's a problem, to balance it out, to access the more full truth, we need to get more in the habit of savoring

and seeing the beauty and opening to goodness. So that kind of happiness is something many of us miss out on and that we need. And just to note that purposefully gladdening the mind as we're going to be exploring in this class doesn't mean that if there's a difficult emotion, like let's say we are feeling anger at what's going on in our world, that we say, oh, I want to get rid of that anger, can I feel grateful for things? It's not that. We're not trying to cover over the negative. If something's difficult, we bring mindfulness and compassion to it. This is a both-end. Learn to be with the difficult but also learn to cultivate the capacity for joy. Okay? For most of us, it really

is a practice because of the habit patterns of, you know, You know, what I often think of is this kind of grimness of getting through the day. And one of my favorite expressions of it is in a poem that the poet Hafeus wrote and it's called chess game. And in this poem there's a chess game going on with God. In other words, this is reality. And he writes this, what is the difference between your experience of existence and that of a saint. The saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with God and

that the beloved has made just such a fantastic move, that the saint is now continually tripping over joy and bursting out in laughter and saying, I surrender. Whereas, my dear, I'm afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves. How many can relate? to moving through the day grimly, a thousand serious moves. You don't have to even raise your hand on that one. Okay, so let's do a little bit of a reflection together, okay? If you will, just to close your eyes. And this is a reflection on your own level of well-being.

Do you experience well-being often? Scanning the last few days today. right this moment. When you're feeling well-being, if you can sense now or recently feeling it, what gives rise to it? How do you sense the causes for your well-being? Is it sense pleasure when things are feeling good, your body's feeling good, just got that exercise in, or the pleasure of beauty or touch? Is it when you're involved in an activity, you're meaningfully engaged. Is that when you're feeling well-being? Accomplishment? Close to another person? Do you feel that you sometimes experience

well-being spontaneously without cause? Happy for no reason? Consider today what ways of paying attention might have blocked happiness or well-being? Were you preoccupied? were you trying to check things off the to-do list and there was no space in between? Were you judging yourself or falling short in some way or judging someone else? Where attention goes, energy flows. As you're witnessing right now and asking these questions, just add in a little dosage of kindness. Let this be an interesting kind.

inquiry. Just noticing the patterning as you feel ready, please open your eyes. Okay. So, what we practice grow stronger and every one of us has habits and some of us have good habits but we all also have habits that keep us smaller than who we are, that keep us in stories of what's wrong or what's missing. So let's look now on how do we brighten and gladden the mind on purpose? And the beginning of it is, and there's research on this, that people that are happy that really experience well-being also have an intention to be happy,

that there's some intention or wish in their heart, may I be happy, may I feel well-being? I share often this one story that struck me so much of, this is a woman in our community who's a cancer survivor and she was having a conversation with another woman in her survivor's group and her friend asked her, well, what would it feel like for you to think that something good rather than something not so good or bad was going to happen today? Something good is going to happen today and my friend responded totally weird and uncomfortable. And her friend said, good, now try it. Now this is rewiring the mind. Rather

than thinking something bad is going to happen, just that openness, something good. Something good is going to happen because good things always happen. We just don't notice them. So a deep habit is to anticipate trouble and not even to assume that well-being is possible. Often we don't wish for happiness. We don't eat. We just rule it out. So, next reflection. Close your eyes again, if you will.

Notice what happens when you say this. I want to open to my potential for well-being. Please may I be happy. May I experience well-being today in this season of my life? free to change the words and say it again a few times. Please may I be happy. Please may I feel well-being. And then with interest again and kindness, just notice what happens.

Does it bring up doubt that it's possible? Does it bring up a question about whether or not you deserve it? Do you feel a little tinge of excitement? Oh, this is possible. Wow. I could actually cultivate this capacity to enjoy more. This is the first step, this conscious intention to uncover our natural capacity for happiness. What happens when you try on this intention?

The Catholic mystic André Nguyen, here's what he says. He says, joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. So the understanding is, and you can open your eyes if you'd like, that given our habit, given our conditioning to rewire begins with this intention, to open to what our capacity is. May I feel well-being? So, favorite story and if you've been with me for a while you'll remember this. This is Marty Seligman who's the father of positive psychology tells this one.

He talks about being out weeding in his garden and his daughter, Nikki, who had turned five, 11 months earlier, is there. And he says he's a very serious gardener, you know, and that afternoon he was focused on what he's doing, which is weeding. And Nikki's having fun on the other hand. She's weeds are flying up in the air and dirt spraying everywhere. So he pauses, Seligman says, now I should mention here that despite all my work on optimism, I've always been somewhat of a nimbus cloud around my house.

He names that. And he goes, so he says, really, I'm not that good with kids. And he kneels down that afternoon's garden. He yells at Nikki. This is her response, little girl's response. And this is how he describes it. She got a stern look on her face, and she walked right over to me. Daddy, she said, I want to talk with you.

And this is what she said. From the time I was three until I was five, I whined a lot. but I decided the day I turned five to stop whining. And I haven't whined once since the day I turned five. Then she looked him in the eye and she said, Daddy, if I could stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch. So positive psychology actually, this is a really lovely overlap with Buddhist psychology and positive psychology, which is recognizing that if we want to undo the negativity

bias, this survival brain of ours that's out looking for an attack in the jungle every moment, we need to intentionally gladden the mind. We have to be on purpose. So there are many ways to gladden the mind, but I'm going to go over three of them and ask you, if you will, to practice these three because it'll only take you a few minutes every day. Okay? And the trick with practicing, the trick with rewiring, and this is a bit of what neuroscience has discovered in the not distant past, is that if you want to install a new habit, if you want to have a state become a trait, to install it, you have to invoke a positive experience and then sustain it in awareness for 15 to 30 seconds.

What usually happens, we look up at the sky or the full moon, we go, wow, that's really cool. And we get this kind of like feeling like we're part of the universe for a moment. And then our mind flicks onto what we need to get done next and we look on our iPhone and that's it. And what neuroscience just have found is that when a negative experience happens, it immediately goes, down into our implicit memory and takes root and it gets recalled over and over again. And so that one really impacts us. Like if you got six compliments and one piece of negative feedback, you know what your mind's going to like latch on to, right?

I mean that's the way our brains work. Well, if you want a positive experience to take root and start informing your life, you have to on purpose sustain your attention. and actually in an embodied way feel the pleasantness of it. And then it goes into the implicit memory and it's available for recall. This really is a very explicit training of the mind. So the first area that we can begin to gladden the mind and install that positive state is gratitude, is on-purpose gratitude.

Now, I don't know about you, but I have an inner complainer and it's there a lot, you know, and it just grumbles through the day, you know, just like makes things, it just kind of like mumbles and grumbles about stuff and now it's more entertaining because I really, you know, I just notice it and I talk back to it and so on. But I have that and I think that a lot of us do that. There's just kind of an ordinary place in us and when we're left around, own devices we get into it. And of course there's one wonderful story of a woman who enters the monastery and the rules in that particular monastery is you only have one meeting every five

years with the head abbess and you can only say a couple of words. So, you know, first five years go by and she says, bed hard and the abbess says, well you work on it, you know, learn to be with everything. Five years later, food bad. The abbot says, yeah, well, you know, you want to not have your happiness hitch to food or whatever, go work on it. Five years later, she says, I'm leaving. And the abbess said, I can see why, you've done nothing but complain since you've been here. So we have this part of us that far from being grateful is the habit is to complain. Seligman did some very interesting research on gratitude. He worked with some severely depressed people and he said,

for 15 days each day, just write down three things you're grateful for. And 92% had an increase in happiness from just that. That's small. One of his other things in his training, she said that was very effective. Pick someone you feel grateful toward, write a one-page letter, read it to that person and listen attentively to their response. Now, that one takes more effort, but it's very powerful. I had someone do it to me and just being involved in the process, I'll never forget it. So, for many of us, the best way to practice gratitude is to have a gratitude partner and that I've done also. And with a gratitude partner, you can make an agreement that at the end of the day you're

just going to send an email with three things you're grateful for. You don't have to say anything else, no conversation, nothing. But you're accountable. Very, very beautiful practice. Even when life is more difficult, you know, if you think about people you know, that are grateful. You can sense the inner freedom. And you know for yourself, I mean, when I am really feeling appreciation, I feel a sense of purity.

Like I'm very, there's a level of innocence that comes out where I'm kind of, I have resolved back into my, you know, kind of a very sincere, innocent, pure beingness. One of the teaching stories I love on gratitude is about a man called Kabir, who is a shoemaker, not the famous poet. And whenever Kabir worked, he would just repeat the mantra Ram, Ram, Ram, which is his way of saying God, sacred, divine, you know, and it's just a feeling of ah, gratitude, appreciation for the divine. So he did this day in, day out for 20 years.

And one day, Rahm appeared. And Kabir said, well, who are you? And Ram said, well, I'm Ram. And Kabir said, well, why are you here? And Ram said, why am I here? You've been calling me for years and years and years and now I've come. What do you want? And Kabir said, I don't want anything.

And Ram said, what? You've been repeating my name. And he said, well, I just love repeating your name. So for years to come, wherever Kabir would go, he'd be followed by Rahm and the sound, Kabir, Kabir, Kabir, Kabir. Again, the mystic, Henri Neuann says, the choice for gratitude rarely comes without some real effort, but each time I make it, the next choice is a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious. Okay, so this is practice number one in gladdening the mind. Let's reflect a little, okay? Let's try it out.

For these next few moments, what I'd like to invite you to do is to whisper the words, I'm grateful to, or else I'm grateful for and fill in the blank, and then just keep repeating it, saying whatever else comes to mind, so it might be if I'm doing it right this moment, I'm grateful to be here with my extended community, my friends. I'm grateful to feel healthy and alive. I'm grateful to have practices that can bring me back to my heart. So we're going to continue together. We're going to all just be whispering.

Don't be self-conscious but just begin to whisper I'm grateful for or I'm grateful to until I ring the bell. It could be the people in your life, experiences you have, whatever you love, what are you grateful for. Whispering it a little louder now. And now just pick one thing that you might have named or haven't yet named that feels very resonant that you're grateful for. Repeat it.

Be a person, something you love. And let yourself fill with the gratitudes. You feel it in your body, your heart. Feel how much this matters to you. Feel the innocence and purity of your gratitude. from that depth of feeling, you might just say the words, thank you, let it fill you. Notice what does it feel like to really be grateful in your body and your heart? What do you most notice?

It's the sense of who you are when you're really filled with gratitude. Just notice the quality of beingness that's here when you're grateful. So one beautiful pathway to gladdening the mind is to be grateful on purpose and install it, feel it, let it fill you. Second is serving, its act of kindness in some way being of benefit to others and those I know who are most depressed feel entirely locked into self-centeredness and in the moments when there's some giving, some sense of helping another, it lifts a bit. It doesn't mean it doesn't recollect. It takes a lot. Depression is, I don't want to make light of it like, you know, just say you're grateful

every day and everything changes. A lot can change when we do over time these practices. but giving to others is a way that wakes us up out of that habit of focusing on what's wrong or missing here. I know I was thinking as I was putting this together of one young man I know who was in Haiti when there was just so much natural disaster and so much suffering and he was accompanying an old man with a broken hip to the emergency room, spent many hours with this man who was in a lot of pain but wasn't getting attention and this young man was feeling his helplessness and how hard it was to not be able to help. Then he describes at one point the old man was given a piece of bread and he broke his

role in two and he handed half of it to this young man and the young guy's embarrassed says, oh no, you eat it. You're the one that's not well and you're the one that needs it. And the old man insisted he would not let Phil say no. So he eventually took it and ate it. And when he did, the old man just looked so pleased to have shared his meal with this person. And Phil realized in those moments that he was still kind of helping from a, I am in a remove more privileged place and I'm helping poor you. And it was in those moments that he sensed a deeper level of what helping means, which is we're in it together, keeping company and the deliciousness of that.

There's a radical freedom that comes when we sense our mutual belonging, that we're in it together. And then when we reach out to each other, it's not, oh, I've got a lot of stuff to offer and you can take it, it's because we're in the dance together. It frees us from that self-centeredness and that pain. There's a lot of correlations in the body and the moments that we wake up that sense of compassion of that shared resonance that we're both touching into the suffering, that far from causing more pain, it actually brings up a

oxytocin and it lights up the part of the brain that feels good. It feels good to help when we're coming from that awake place. So again, let's reflect. Just brief little reflections. And in this one, bring somebody to mind, if you will, that in some ways having a hard time. Just imagine something that you could do, some way you could be helpful, including a secret act of kindness. the person in some way relieved or uplifted because of it.

So take your time and sense where this might be relevant. Somebody in your circle who's having a hard time and something that you could do from your heart because you're in it together. You feel that vulnerability and just care. They're part of your heart. Some act of kindness. It could be just a few affirming words. It could be something you give that you hadn't thought of they might like, just something kind.

And imagine them receiving it in some way of being helped, being uplifted. And as you imagine them being uplifted, sense how it feels in you. What does it feel like to bring relief, ease, upliftment to another? it in your body, your heart, and just notice the sense of your own being when you have in some way extended yourself. Who are you then? Again from Andre Nguyen, every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know that I am moving from fear to love.

So this is the second way we gladden the mind. The third way I'd like to mention is the last is savoring. As E.G. White writes, I wake up each morning torn between the desire to serve and to savor. Makes it very hard to plan the day. You know, I remember a friend of mine just describing a couple she knows well and love to travel and live fully. You know, they're really quite a very active, dynamic couple. He got a diagnosis of Parkinson's and, you know, they're really quite a very active, dynamic couple. You know, the friends was talking about how they continued to be very much lively in a

real capacity for joy and their attitude was this and they talked about it with their friends. They just made a conscious effort to make each day be as good as it could be. It was that simple. And they knew about savoring because savoring doesn't have to be something glamorous, gorgeous, exciting, you know, like wildly interesting. It's the small things we savor. And when that's our habit, life becomes really sweet. Every one of us has access to the small things.

Whether it's just taking pleasure in someone's laughter. I was talking to an old friend a couple days ago and she has this kind of uproars Billy laugh and it's just like I just started realizing, wow, I'm enjoying listening to her laugh. You know, it was just really felt good. There's two ways to live your life, Einstein writes. One as though nothing is a miracle, the others as though everything is a miracle. So there's one of the trainings is that when something is really lovely to you in some way, just pause and breathe with it, five breaths of taking in the good.

St. Teresa, I would like just to read you a little bit of what she writes. on savoring. She says, Just these two words he spoke, changed my life. Enjoy me. What a burden I thought I was to carry, crucifix, as did he. After a night of prayer he changed my life when he sang, enjoy me.

How did those priests ever get so serious and preach all that gloom? I don't think God tickled them yet. Beloved hurry. She's good. So, gratitude, serving, and savoring. Those are the three that I wanted to speak to. And if you want to have a very simple way of practicing for these next couple of weeks,

I would recommend each day you commit to this, okay? You can pull out your pen and paper right now. Pause once, just once, to savor something, okay? And by the way, it'd be great to have a buddy if you can find a buddy to kind of do your rewiring for well-being work with. One's to savor something. And by the way, again, it's 15 to 30 seconds of appreciating for each of these. One act of kindness a day.

One savoring, one act of kindness, and then at the end of the day three things you're grateful for. We'll have this in Facebook if you forget. That would be the training guidelines and remember for each it's 15 to 30 seconds. And just to know that this is circling back to Sherlock Holmes in the tent that it's really about how you pay attention and if you're watching your habits not to miss the millions of stars in the sky, not to miss it. And then if someone steals your tent you'll know how to deal with it.

it from a pretty good place. Okay? So let's close together. Let's take a few moments to come into quietness. Notice where you are right now. What's it like inside? Just without any judgment, noticing the mood, your body feels, your heart, exploring, sensing that intention towards well-being. May I relax? May I touch peace? May I touch true well-being to feel that wish for your own life? You might bring somebody to mind and that's a person that's dear to you, just as I want to touch that peace and well-being, may you touch that peace and well-being. Just feel how your heart spaces including that person too.

And then another person. May you too feel well-being. They touched the natural joy of feeling alive, just sensing and imagining if widening circles of beings touched that innate sense of happiness, peace and well-being that we'd create the world we believe in. We'd live in a world that truly had a reverence for life, that we'd live out of that loving, with a brief reading from the poet Dana Faults. Do not let the day slip through your fingers, but live it fully now, this breath, this moment,

catapulting you into full awareness. Time is precious, minutes disappearing like water into sand unless you choose to pay attention. Since you do not know the number of your days, treat each as if it is your last, be that compassionate with yourself, that open and loving to others, that determined to give what is yours to give and to let in the energy and wonder of this world. Experience everything, writing, relating, eating, doing all the little necessary tasks of life as if for the first time pushing nothing aside is unimportant. You have received these same reminders many times.

times before, this time, take them into your soul. For if you choose to live this way, you will be rich beyond measure, grateful beyond words, and the day of your death will arrive with no regrets. Namaste and blessings, thank you.