Tara Brach - Part 1: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening

Episode Date: August 24, 2018

Part 1: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening - We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts. (a favorite from the archives)

So I can get a little cozy. I'm going to begin with a mythological kind of teaching story. Some of you might remember. This is a Scandinavian story where a king and a queen had fallen on some really hard times. And it was kind of dicey financial trouble. And they needed to raise some money from the dragon's hoard. And when they went to ask for that money, the dragon requested a small thing in return their daughter so you've probably heard these stories before they they went to the princess and said well dear we've decided I'm the proper betrothed for you but drawled over you and you're going to be married to the dragon you know and she was a resourceful

princess so although she was frightened and tearful she had an instinct of who could help her and she went to this woman that lived at the edge of the marketplace and found her surrounded by a dozen or two children and grandchildren poured out her story. And so the wise woman said, so you want to marry the dragon? And she said, absolutely not. And she said, well, I have a way that you can do this and I think it'll be safe. Here's what you have to do on your wedding night. So she whispered a little into her ear and then she sent her on her way. But the first thing she said is you have to get a number of wedding gowns, 10 in fact.

Okay, so that's all we know. So the wedding day comes, and all the people in the court were there, and it's a big celebration. It was a little tough, but they retired and went to their bridal chambers. And the dragon turned to the princess and said, well, dear, isn't it time for us to consummate our wedding? And the princess responded,

yes, my dear husband, but for me to do so, I must remove my wedding gowns. Is that not so? absolutely my dear he says so she said I'd ask a small favor from you in return and that is would you not remove a layer of your own so as to be more pleasing to me and so she took off a wedding ground and he had worn a few decorative things on his dragon body and he took them off okay fine to a surprise you notice she had another wedding gown on so she took that one off and as dragons are used to taking off

their scales, you know, like reptiles they have to shed here and there. He peeled off another thin layer. Oops, she had another dress. So she took off each wedding dress. He had to peel off his dragon scales, and his dragon claws had to dig deeper and deeper into his own flesh and his own skin. And on the eighth wedding gown, she took off. The dragon was down to taking off parts of himself that were stuck and his form began to change. And on the ninth it changed more remarkably. And then when she took off the tenth ground, by the time the dragon had pulled off so much dragonness

that what was left, as is often true in such stories, was a handsome prince, of course. And so she took the advice from the old woman from beyond the marketplace that had dozens of children and grandchildren. and continued a night of wedded bliss. So, this is really everything about this practice of meditation and really the whole spiritual path that we're on.

And often it's described as just letting go and letting go and opening and opening. And what we're letting go of has been kind of stuck to us or we've been identified with it for a long time. So it's not often easy. There's a growing understanding when we look more directly at what it means to be intimate with each other, what it really means to heal our wake up, that does have to do with disarming, that we're learning to recognize and shed the kind of defensive strategies,

the judgments and the preoccupations that we have and the pretences that we have, and the pretences that we have that cover over real feelings and that create distance. And it's challenging because each one of us has pretty much the same core fear that will be rejected for who we are, that there's something inherently flawed or rejectable there. And so we keep our armoring on and it's kind of difficult. to let it go. And yet we at the same time intuit that it's not unless we let go of it that will really be free, that will really be happy. My very number one favorite book as a child was

wrinkle in time. How many of you also liked to wrinkle in time? A whole lot of us, yeah. So I was reading about the kind of the history a little bit of dangling, I'm not pronouncing it right, Madeline Langel, I'm saying it wrong still, but anyway, she tried to sell the book and she had 30 rejections before it sold. I think that's amazing, 30 rejections. And so here's what she writes. She says, over the years I've worked out a philosophy of failure, which I find extraordinarily liberating. She said, if I'm not free to fail, I'm not free to take risks in everything in life that's worth doing involves a willingness to risk failure. She says this is what's true in all human relationships. Unless I'm willing to open myself to risk and to being hurt, then I'm closing

myself off to love and friendship. So what I'd like to explore tonight and also next week is vulnerability, intimacy, and spiritual awakening. And as I mentioned, one of the the descriptions of the spiritual path is letting go of armoring, and I love the description Chogam Trangpa uses of meeting our edge and softening. That the whole of spiritual life is that we keep on, in some way meeting an edge, an edge where we feel uncomfortable, where we feel threatened, where we feel like we've blown it, where we feel insecure. And the whole path is in some way rather than pulling away or fighting or whatever we do, just softening. It's as we were meditating tonight.

It's the opening to be with the life that's here, not tensing against it. So what happens when we start opening to the life that's here is we open to all the layers of vulnerability that we've been habitually running from. You know, we open to the layer, the kind of rawness. Pema Trojan describes it as a soft spot. And it's that, vulnerability that are protective scales have been covering where we feel endangered in some way or uncertain or at risk. But we're also covering over our aliveness, our creativity, our spontaneity, or, you know, all the juicy stuff.

So from the perspective of personal healing and awakening, vulnerability is the portal. you know opening and feeling that which we don't really want to feel by we're not conditioned to want to feel it that's the portal to freedom this is a reading Valerie burton who's an african-american woman who writes and this is called strong i really like this she says if strong means taking care of everyone else to the detriment of yourself if strong means pretending everything is okay when clearly you're hurting. If strong means keeping it moving after you've suffered disappointment, then strong becomes weak. Strong is good. Resilience is better, but resilience can sometimes look messy. It may look as if you are down for the count, but as long as you eventually get

up, you're resilient. You have permission then to be human, to grieve, rest, cry, and feel what you feel. Learning to face your fears by being vulnerable is the first step. So there's strong, countervailing way of looking at this in our culture. Our culture looks primarily differently at vulnerability. And from the perspective of an individualistic and competitive culture, vulnerability is a dangerous thing to do, especially a more masculine valued culture. It's weakness. It shows flaws. And it gives our opponent, whether it's a political opponent, or it's a rival country or a rival company, or a spouse we're in an argument with, or a teen who's being defiant, supposedly our opposition, it gives them the advantage. So we're inclined

through most of the culture to not reveal vulnerability. So I always find the developmental perspective is the most useful for me, and that is just to keep remembering that we're meant to not want to look vulnerable, that it's part of the development, you know, the reptilian and even egoic development, that we come into existence, and there's a felt, sense of vulnerability. We know we're mortal. We know we can be hurt. We know we're utterly dependent on other people. We're very vulnerable. And so there's this, you know, individual selection means that we try to compete and hide the vulnerability and look strong and try to make it.

And so you can see it in all parts of nature. You can see the way, you know, cats bristle and make themselves look larger. And I remember when my son always had geckos, had a gecko, it absolutely freeze you couldn't see it. You know, it was like in some way trying to block it and protect its vulnerability. I remember, you know, reading about all the different viruses that camouflage themselves so they can't be seen. And then, of course, the fish and the butterflies,

you know, have these eyes on the other side of their body so their vulnerable parts are protected. It's through all of nature that we do a lot to cover over our vulnerability. So, when we start getting the message from the more progressive or spiritual or psychologically attuned parts of our culture that we're supposed to take off our skills and just be who we are, that doesn't go with fight-flight freeze that's very built into our nervous system. So that's the first step to remember.

And we're also affected by group selection, the more recent parts of our brain, know about the benefit of cooperating and collaborating. And it's there that, and women have evolved in this way before men that tend and befriend begins to be the more effective way of dealing with vulnerability. That we're more soothed by tend and befriend than by fighting and fighting. But men are getting it too. I mean it's in the men biologically, it's just not as quite as strong. Also, research shows that when we're protecting our vulnerability,

when we're covering ourselves and acting fake in some way, others pick it up, others can tell it's happening, and their nervous system registers discomfort. We're not comfortable around people when they're faking it. So inauthenticity doesn't work so well. Okay, so we might agree that it's more evolved to begin to take off the scales and be vulnerable, to be less defended. But we can't will it.

You can't just say, okay, I'm going to drop all my strategies for looking good. And all that we can do really is deepen our attention because we care about being more free. So this is where meditation comes in. We can begin to develop a capacity for an undefended heart by deepening our attention. And I'll read you one of the most well-known of all of Rilke's writings.

He says, Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. So my sense is that for us, one of the most revealing kind of clusters of questions we can ask are, you know, do I recognize my skills?

I mean, am I on to my own ways of protecting vulnerability? And we'll go over some of the ways we do it, but am I on to that? Am I aware of it? And also the question of when my vulnerability does arise, how do I relate to it? What happens when you start really feeling that sense of exposed, uncertain, shaky, in danger, a risk? How do you do that?

So do we see our scales? What happens when the vulnerability starts coming? And for each of us, what's the way that we can begin in a very compassionate, wise kind of way, to disarm? What's our way? Where in your life right now is it possible to meet your edge and soften a little bit more? So those are the kind of questions we'll keep looking at. And as a context, if we go back to the noble truths, it can have. help us, the first noble truth being that the feeling of vulnerability, when you feel vulnerable,

it's absolutely universal. And if you can recognize that, a lot of people report when they first come to a Buddhist retreat. And the first talk they usually hear is the universality of suffering, of uneasiness, which is vulnerability when we're feeling really uncomfortable. And when they really register, oh, you mean this kind of depression or this kind of anxiety or feelings of embarrassment? This is pervasive. There's a really deep relief because there's something in the moment we get that this is just a human nervous system registering existence and feeling shaky. And every other person here has that same stuff going on. it's not so personal and there's not as much suffering around it.

There's freedom in knowing that. So the first noble truth is vulnerability is universal. We're not alone. There's a background hum of anxiety in everybody's nervous system, anticipating that something around the corner is threatening. Now the second noble truth says the reason we're vulnerable is because we perceive ourselves as a separate self, because we're grabbing onto that separate selfness.

And it's true, as long as we go around with the sense of, I'm separate, there's going to be a sense of, therefore, I'm doomed, and I have to tense against what's going to go wrong. That's the second truth. It totally translates to relationships. We're pack animals, and our survival depends on each other. So our vulnerability is not just this broad existential, it's we are vulnerable with each other. We're a little afraid of each other, at least a little.

most of the time. That's hard to name and register that that too is universal. It's like everybody has been wounded, everyone I've ever met, and everybody in some way, depending on the degree of the wounds, has some tendency to try to protect for more. So that too is universal. And no matter how seemingly defended we are or even seemingly confident, underneath there's a bit of a sense of at risk as one author writes, everybody you meet is struggling hard. So the key here is to be in a wise relationship with vulnerability and get that it's not so personal, that not to blame ourselves for how we feel, and to understand that our defenses, while they make sense at some stages of development,

they become a habit and then they become not so useful. And so we begin to understand that the defended isn't safe. And that's a deep understanding, that we might be defended and in some way comfortable because we've got our armoring up and people aren't really seeing what we're feeling or we're not speaking our truth. In some way we're defended,

for the moment, but we're not safe because inside there's still that fear that if I wasn't offended, I'd be in trouble. So we still live biologically with that hum of fear. Another way of saying it is that our ego defense is a false refuge. It gives us a kind of temporary sense of ease. But meanwhile, as the saying goes, what we resist persists, the fears underneath keep on going. And by defending ourselves, we've blocked out pleasure. We've blocked out love.

We've blocked out joy. So, first noble truth, universal. Second, it comes from holding on to this idea of a separate self that's threatened. Third, noble truth, it's possible to be free. It is possible to live with an undefended heart. And this is the

exquisitely beautiful promise we get in every mystical tradition. It's possible to be free. We don't have to stay identified as the armored dragon. And then the fourth of the noble truths that the Buddha put out was, here's how. Here's how we can disarm in a way that can actually free us, that we're not tearing it off in a kind of bold, but hurtful way. Here's how. And the how, for me in a nutshell, is that we respond

to our vulnerability with loving presence. We respond with loving presence. This is Roomy. He writes, very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground, be crumbled, so while flowers will come up where you are. You've been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender. So the beginning of this trying something different, of beginning to, in a way, sense our longing to let go of some of the armoring, to be ground, to be crumbled. I love these words. is to start noticing where the scales are. And there's a possibility to come into a kind of porousness where really life can flow through us.

Well, we first have to recognize, well, where are they for us? And so we begin to look. And one of the ways of even coming into contact with them, it's like an idea until you actually start practicing, is a training I think of as just contacting our everyday vulnerability. And it's a training that we can do not when we're in the clutches of really being anxious and insecure, but just when we're moving through the day.

And what you do is you stop in the middle of the action. You know, it's like, let's say you've just hung up the phone, you just stop. Or before you go into your house after you parked your car, you know, before you get out, you just stop. or after a meal before you get up, you stop. And you can close your eyes right now and just imagining that you're stopping, right, this moment. And in this pause, just begin to let your breath help you discover what is actually going on inside you. So as you inhale, it's as if you're opening and expanding to just really touch

and include whatever aliveness is here. You might feel your belly, your hand, open through your whole body. And with the out breath again just exhale and just settle still awake and let your attention be inward. You're asking the question, what's happening inside me right now and can I be with this? Just those two questions. Keep breathing, check your throat, your chest, your belly. And just notice as you breathe in and open whether there's any tightness, knots, edginess, fear. So you're breathing directly into an opening and being touched by what's here, fully

contacting. And with the exhale, soften, sense of space inside and around, just let it float. This is simply pausing and being with what's here, letting your breath help you contact and open to what's here. And just notice if you can sense if and how vulnerability is living in your body right now. And just breathe with it. The moment that you begin to relate to the different tensions and knots and fears and uncertainties versus from them, your identity starts shifting, relating to, not from vulnerability.

You breathe in and in contact whatever is uncomfortable, opening, letting it be there. And you breathe out and sense the space that has room for it. As soon as you begin to relate to the egoic covering, the habitual tensions, the vulnerability that's under, you're less identified, you're inhabiting a larger being. See if you can sense that porousness that comes with presence. with presence where things are moving, be ground, be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. So this is an everyday training of just pausing to check in and sense, is there armoring?

Where's the vulnerability? Can I be with it? You can open your eyes if you'd like. So I do this a lot. I do it often when I'm walking. I find if I'm walking and I just stop wherever I am and I just completely become still, then I get a lot more in touch with what's actually going on inside my body.

And it's most frequently I can find some clutch of fear, some vulnerability, some anxiety that I've been covering over by being on my way somewhere. That's the power of pausing. Stop being on your way and you start discovering what you were staying away from. So, second step, we start recognizing our habitual ways of moving away from vulnerability. One is always being on our way somewhere else, having a job, having a project, thinking

that our life is up ahead of us. You know, that feeling kind of leaning forward, so we're tumbling into the next moment versus really being here. We do that in a lot of ways. One of the ways that one of the emotional layers that usually covers over a deeper vulnerability is anger, blame. So just these are flags of dragon scales. If you are checking to sense what's your particular style of armoring?

Blame and anger is one of them. Depression is another. We depress or push under the vulnerability. Again, these are each ways of doing it. And then a lot of, in relationships, a lot of it is one person's way of covering over vulnerability will be to grab onto and pursue and hold on to another. And another person's way of getting away from vulnerability will be to push away. And that's one of the classic dances.

Jules Fifer put it the best. He has a couple that are in their dance and she's saying, but I love you. And he's saying, don't you threaten me? So that's one way that we cover over with our emotions. Another way that we do it is mentally where we have this kind of chronic judging going on. If there's chronic judging underneath that's vulnerability. Sometimes the judging's of other people, but often it's this relentless inner critic. And if you really ask that judging place, well what would happen if I stop judging?

Underneath, that's a deep fear that I'll never get what I want, I'll never be the person I need to be to be accepted and safe. Very deep. There's these internalized messages that we have about what's wrong with us that we keep playing are part of our armoring. And one story a woman walks by a pet store each day on our way to work and the pet owner started putting a parrot out in a cage out front. So one day she walked by the store and the parrot squawk at her and he said, awk, you're ugly and you're stupid. And she was really kind of taken aback. She said, that's strange. Well, it must have just heard that somewhere. But the next day it happens again, awk, oh, you're ugly and you're stupid and it got her upset. So she went inside and told

the owner of the store and he was abjectly apologetic. He said, trust me that, you know, it's not going to happen again. Next day she goes by, then the parrot goes, ock, ock, you know. We don't need people to tell us. So part of the scales we wear is ongoing, what's wrong with me,

what's wrong with me? Part of the ways that we wear scales are the over-consuming. We do it as a culture, and we do it as individuals, whether it's, you know, drugs or whether it's food, the internet, we just keep taking and taking in

so that we don't have to in some way feel what's there. I remember going to a conference that was talking about antidepressants, and this isn't my own, I don't have anything. I think antidepressants are very helpful for some people at some times. And they had a poster up on Prozac, and it said,

if there was Prozac back then. And the first thing it had was a picture of Karl Marx saying, well, I'm sure capitalism could work if we tweaked it a bit, you know. And then it had Edgar Allan Poe, and he's looking out the window saying, hello, Bertie. I love that one. So again, we're talking about the different things that we defend ourselves with. So one of the big ways that we do it is we over, as we get older, we have this persona,

this mask that we build that, you know, is our way of navigating and getting approval and getting love and so on. And so we develop, we kind of lock into certain personas that are meant to protect us and get what we want, but really kind of cover over the who's really here. And it could be that we're the one with all the answers. or we're the one that creates beauty for other people or we're the, our persona is the one that is the helper, or we're the one that's the boss, the power person, or the controller.

So there's different personas that we put on and they get very crusty. Share with you a story that I heard from Pema Chodron that I really liked a lot. And she describes this 15, year old Hispanic guy from Los Angeles and he had grown up in a violent neighborhood and he had an attitude. He was the kind of guy that, you know, he pushed people around and kind of like had a chip on his shoulder and he was just rough. He had this like I'm the baddest guy in town kind of

attitude. So he was sent to Boulder, Colorado for the summer to give him a break, hopefully We have a nice time in the Rocky Mountains where these folks that were involved with Shambala and Choghya Mhrenpa, the Tibetan teacher gathered. And that's how she got to know him. So here's what she says. One day he came to an event where Trunkhpa was, at the end of the event, he sang the Shambala anthem. Now this was an awful experience for the rest of us because for some reason he loved to sing

the Shambala anthem in a high-pitched, squeaky, and cracked voice. This particular event was outside. Rimposchet sang into the microphone, the sound traveled for miles across the plains, and this young boy, his name was Juan, broke down and started to cry. This is the moment. Everyone else was feeling awkward or embarrassed, but Juan just started to cry. Later he said he cried because he had never seen anyone that brave. He said, that guy, he's not afraid to be a fool.

That turned out to be the turning point because he realized he didn't have to be afraid to be a fool either. In other words, all that persona and that chip on his shoulder that was kind of covering over his soft spot, he could let them go. And this guy was sharp and bright and he got the message and he got his education now. He's back in LA helping other kids. So I find that story really powerful because deep down we are afraid of embarrassing ourselves, of not looking good. And the degree of freedom that's possible, that's possible. when we stop using our energy to appear a certain way and just let our naturalness be there and the possibility of really discovering true peace and okayness and belonging when we're

ourselves is such a beautiful invitation. That guy is not afraid of making a fool of himself. That is bravery. So we begin to look at, well, what am I wearing to make my myself be okay. You know, what's my dragon scales? And then how does that get in the way when it really matters? So we'll do a reflection now, just take a moment, if you will, closing your eyes and I'll just ask you a few questions to explore this particular part of the inquiry. You might want to bring to mind a relationship where you wish you were closer,

but are kind of caught in some patterning where you sense some sort of defensive patterning, some sort of disconnects going on. It might be with one of your children or a parent or a sibling or a friend or someone at work. Maybe someone you really like but just don't, can't quite get comfortable with. Just choose someone and then let yourself go to a situation. that would be typical when you're with that person and when you're aware of the discomfort, the disconnect. Just without any judgment if you can, just scan and sense

the dragon flags for you. How might you be in some way creating separation with your thoughts, with your behaviors? How are you protecting yourself? Is there some judging going on? some agenda of how the other person should be, something you're pretending. Just notice how your body feels when you're defended, your heart, your mind, when you're kind of caught, when you're not natural.

You can even let your face make the expression that kind of illustrates what's going on inside you when you're not comfortable, you're not at ease. And you might ask yourself if I let go of some of this, if I was able to be a little less defended, what might I have to feel right now? If I put down some of the armor, can you intuit it? Is it a fear of being flawed, rejected, foolish? The other person taking too much, wanting too much? Whatever you notice, whatever the fear or tension is in there, the vulnerability, for now

just say hello to it. You know, in some way just acknowledge respectfully. This is the universal conditioning. Others have it too. It's okay. We'll be exploring together a bit more of how we then get to know that vulnerability, but for now that's good. Just to recognize what might be under-

under there, feel your body a little, just breathe, say hello, there's a power to starting an active conscious relationship with the parts of us that we generally tend to move away from. So feel free if you'd like to open your eyes. So we're going to come back, I'm going to ask you to come back and check in again and do a little more, but just to say that when we have the time, we often, when we're in the middle of an interaction, do not have the time to get to know our vulnerability. I mean, it's not like there's this huge pause where the other person freezes, and for the next 10 minutes we do some deep inner process, and then we come out, and then we're back and right, you know, that doesn't happen. So, but you can practice actually outside of, you know, the in vivo experience and then actually start training yourself that way, which is cool.

So what we do is we start to get to know the vulnerability. And we're really trying to sense if you can be fully inside the most vulnerable part of you. We're really asking, well, what's life like from this experience in here? What's the beliefs and feelings of that vulnerable place? The beliefs are usually something in the lines of, I'm unsafe, I'm going to be rejected, I'm not going to be loved. It's not okay. And the feelings could be shame, fear, squeeze, sometimes grief,

like there's already a loss and there's a grieving of it. Now, the more wounding there's been, the more of the defenses, but no matter what level, the key in beginning to loosen the identification with the scales is attend and befriend, is bringing a gentle, curious, forgiving attention. And for some of you it's going to be more the gentle emphasis, emphasis and for others it's going to be really being interested. We all have different temperaments that help us to gentle our way in. For one woman very, very

afraid of being in groups and she would come to workshops that I would lead but she'd leave early and when I'd asked to do a paired exercise she'd be in the bathroom. She just the idea of being in groups and very very scary she'd have panic attacks at times. So we worked on it. This was years ago when I was in a psychotherapy practice. And one of the ways we worked with it is that she'd imagine being in a group and she'd feel the fearful place. And I'd have her imagine she was sitting on a park bench and I'd say, okay, let's put the vulnerable part next to you. Because if I had said right away, let's go in and get to know that place, it would have been near

traumatizing because there was that much panic in her nervous system. So I said, okay, park bench, it's sitting next to you and just start by saying hello. And we'd For a while we were just having her say hello and learning how she could have some space by sensing it next to her and imagining the sky and the birds and the trees and I was talking to her. She had a lot of safety anchors and resourcefulness and the fear was kind of, she could relate to it but not be real involved. And gradually we let her have it sidle a little closer and in time she could feel the fear in her body and begin to just say okay other people feel

feel this too. I'm with you. You just offer a kind of kind presence and not be so overwhelmed. And she started to be able to be in groups and in workshops and not having it be a horror show for her. Different ones of us have to approach different ways. So for some, the vulnerability might be really, really strong and you need a healer, therapist, teacher somebody to keep you company, ways to create some distance, to go out of your way. really slowly. For other people much more direct contact, just the way we're exploring with the breath, we just start to feel it and breathe into right where it is. But make sure with the out breath the sense of space that's inside and around. So I'll give you an example

of how that can work, how Rilke says everything in some way is helpless and wants our love and how we can begin to sense the vulnerability that way and really bring a loving presence. And the example I want to give you is a woman I've known for a very long time and about 10 years ago she was in the thick of a real, very painful, painful season with her daughter who had been addicted to heroin for years and was in and out of treatment center,

and their pattern was that she would go and get treatment and then she'd relapse and then she'd go to her mother and her mother would take her in and help her, you know, again financially and get her back into another treatment center and then she'd leave, be okay for whatever months and something would happen and it just kept recycling. So the armor, this woman, the mother's armor, really was how to keep her control and the way she would keep control was she would either manage her, try to manage her daughter's life or be really angry and blaming at her and then go back to managing it again, anger and blame, but she kept hands-on, she couldn't disengage and she kept

trying to save her and it didn't work. So finally she saw that she was contributing to her daughter's suffering by participating. the way she did, that's what it took. And that's when she had to, you know, Rumi says the word surrender, be ground. That's when she had to let go of her activity, her scales, which really were to control things, and just feel the pure vulnerability of, I'm helpless. I can't save her. She might die, and I have to live with that uncertainty. Now, I'm sure there people living right now, I mean listening right now, that know what that's like with somebody we love where we know we can't manage it and we have to live with the fear and the grief

of what's happened and could happen. And for her, it was like unplugging a bottle as soon as she just let go of doing and managing and trying to save her daughter, what surged up was the enormity of the fear and the grief she had been kind of pushing away. And she wept for weeks. And her practice was over and over to meet that edge of this enormous ocean of grief and then just soften and just be porous enough to let it move through her over and over again. There was, after many, many weeks still fear and still grief. It's not like it goes away. but there was this enormous presence and tenderness that it opened up. Because when we stop running from vulnerability

and we open, what we discover is our openness. And when we offer presence, what we discover is our presence. So the uncomfortableness is there, but it's swimming and unfolding in a very vast kind of presence. And for her, she was much more resting in her wisdom and her heart. And she at that point could relate to her daughter in a very different way, which was rather than blame, tremendous compassion. But it wasn't what's called idiot compassion where you just drop all boundaries.

It was wise compassion where she was very boundered. And her daughter was on her own and she totally loved her both. Now that is a lot of maturity, but she grieved right to the, you know, when you've really, really grieved a lot, your hearts wide open because there's nothing left to lose. So she had grieved it. She had gone into the vulnerability that deeply. So this story has a happy ending. And I say it that way because it doesn't always work out. In this case, her daughter, she believed somewhere in her daughter that there was that wisdom, that Buddha nature that was going to pull her through and her daughter came through and they actually,

they're very, very close. It might not have gone that way but it was still she was serving herself and her daughter as best as she could by opening into the vulnerability and letting go of all the control, all the scales that she had been living with. So the training, just to kind of summarize is that when we sense that soft spot to begin to notice our skills and as much as we can to recognize them and in some way allow ourselves to lean in. And sometimes the leaning in really requires reaching out a bit and sensing the love and the support that's around us. Like the woman on the park bench needs to be gradual sometimes. A story that Frank Asc Susske shared when he was here, he works in a hospice that really spoke to me is that

sometimes that vulnerability is so strong. In this story he was with a man who was dying of, I think with stomach cancer and he was helping him to be present and be with and handle the pain. And pain is, whether it's physical or emotional, it was the same inquiry as we're exploring tonight. How do he be with what's real? And for this man, he'd put his, he, Frank put his hands on the man's billy and said, you know, does this help at all? Having somebody else's hands, another anchor just to feel that an added presence. And he goes, he was still too painful because he was trying to teach him to breathe and just be there. And then he put his hands a little bit away from the man's belly and he said, you know, is that

better? And ah, yeah, that's better. Because then he could sense, and here's what's important, both the realness of the vulnerability or pain, but also the space, there's something more. And so the man, you know, said, yeah, much better, much better. And then he said, rest in love in other words rest in that space that space that's filled with love

and awareness and there's room for the vulnerability he was learning to relate to pain and we can relate to vulnerability in a way as Rilka says we can love the life that's here in a way

that really frees us if we're willing to be with we can then live with an offended heart, we can have that porousness that lets us truly be in love. So we're going to close with that with a meditation to again try this out. So just as you begin to settle, sense the possibility of creating a relationship with the human rawness, the place of uncertainty or insecurity that's in all human beings and bodies, and sensing that as you open,

and let that be a portal, you discover this aliveness and beauty and mystery. It's as Rumi put it, the wildflowers can grow. The light of your being can shine through. So this human life is vulnerable and it's possible to rest in a timeless presence. Donna Fawd's writes, go in and in. Be the space between two cells. the vast resounding silence in which spirit dwells. Go in and in and turn away from nothing that you find.

So practice this again to just bring to mind the relational situation you are considering, or if there's a different one you want to, just any relationship that you want to be able to be in with a less defended heart. And I should add not to choose something that feels traumatic to you, that you feel like you've got a buried trauma under it. That won't be serving you very well here. Just a situation that brings up on insecurity or discomfort where you know you contract into a more kind of ego-armored self. And pause at a frame where you see that you and the other person are together and where you might be most unsure of yourself where you're afraid of

something bad happening. You might see a look on the person's face. hear some words that you know trigger you in some way, just start exploring, pause. Put the pause button on and just sense, as you deepen your attention, just feel your body, throat, your chest, your belly. You might sense, what am I most afraid as happening is going to happen? What's the vulnerable part of me afraid of?

Is it that you'll be rejected, that you'll be seen as lacking? hurt. If you want to deepen the inquiry, you might put your hand on your heart and just offer that touch as a kind of support where you're just in some way respectfully saying hello to the vulnerability. You're saying, I get you're here. This is part of what everyone experiences. Just begin to breathe with what you feel inside you. You might breathe in and let the breath really contact where you feel most uneasy or insecure or fearful. It's usually in the chest, throat or the belly. Let the in-breath contact that. With the out-breath, just sense that there's space for it to rest, to float, to be. You might sense with that part in you most needs

and let your hand and your touch your own heart offer that inward. What's the message you most want to offer right this moment to the vulnerability within you. Taking a moment to sense, who are you without the armor, without the scales? What does it mean to rest in love? Can you imagine possible ways of interacting with the other person once your heart is less defended? Namaste. Thank you. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, Learn more about my schedule or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.