Tara Brach - Part 2 - Fear of Aging: Finding Freedom in this Impermanent World

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Part 2 - Fear of Aging: Finding Freedom in this Impermanent World (2021-03-31) - While it's natural to have fears of what's ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. So welcome and namaste friends. Thank you so much for being here with us. This talk is part two of a talk on fear of aging and more broadly the vulnerability that comes with impermanence, with loss. The basic understanding is that how we relate to the reality of change really determines our freedom, our happiness, our capacity to love deeply and to touch peace. When I say how we relate, what I mean is to the degree that we meet the vulnerability of

impermanence, with wakefulness, with an open accepting presence, that will really translate into the richness and depth of our lives. For most of us, even if we don't want to go back in time, we do live with fear about what's ahead. This basic fear is a fear of loss. It's the fear and pain that comes with losing loved ones, perhaps losing a sense of being relevant or important to others, being significant in the world. It's the pain and fear around loss of our own body and health, our appearance, the pain and fear that comes with losing physical abilities, mental capacities, losing a sense of independence. We also might have the fear many people do, of missing out on living fully. Many feel this kind of sense that something's missing.

I'm not really living my life. I'm skimming the surface or stuck in depression or caught in addiction. So there's a sense of not living true to what matters and the fear that I'll die without having really lived. we forget that everyone we meet is navigating with a nervous system that's perceiving these kind of existential fears. And it's triggered in daily life. Pain in our body triggers that existential fear. The stress of deadlines. You know, I recently found out the historical meaning of deadline is the line that was drawn around

prisons that demarcated if an inmate went past that line, they'd be shot. Deadline. So daily life, you know, deadlines. We also have a fear in our daily life of failing in work or in relationships. And if you think about it for early humans, failure, being rejected from the tribe was a certain form of death. So daily experience can easily trigger a very deep sense of being a threatened, insecure, separate self. And some can be very well defended from that vulnerability, from feeling it, but deep down we're all rigged to feel that kind of insecurity. Story of a

doctor comes out of a long surgery to report status of the patient to his wife. And he goes, and this is what he says. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's fine, resting, etc., etc. You know, just once it would be nice if someone asked how I was doing. So everybody is living with a nervous system, a system that's nervous, that's afraid of what's coming, that's insecure. You know, I found for myself that when I pause, often when I pause, and I deepen my attention, and I'm slowing down right now to do it, I'll notice a kind of background hum of fear. Sometimes it's in the form of restlessness, like I want to get away from this, you know. And always it's a fear of what's to come, in some way, tensing against what's around the corner.

And for years I would in some way hitch it to something I was anxious about that was coming up, maybe a trip ahead of take or presentation or a meeting or a work deadline, you know. And then I realized I would get over that, whatever that thing was I was anxious about, but then the anxiety or fear would re-arise again. And it came to realize it's just this underlying vulnerability about changing life, about the threat of loss. And of course, what makes that underlying existential fear get more alive and concrete? And for me, it gets stronger when I'm feeling unwell, when I'm feeling tired, when I'm feeling

physically fragile. A lot of people have that. Most of us have ongoing ways that we try to control life and distance from existential fear. You know, we basically do whatever we can to defend and promote our survival. And of course, there's all sorts of very wholesome ways we do that. taking care of ourselves in the face of aging and loss, in our loving relationships, with meditation, food, eating well, exercise, sleep, doing what we can to keep mental clarity to strengthen our memory. My father used to tell a story about these two elderly couples and

they're having this friendly conversation. And one man asks the other, he says, Fred, how was that memory clinic you went to last month? Outstanding, Fred responds. He says, they taught us all the latest psychological techniques, visualizations, association. It made a big difference for me. Well, that's great. What was the name of the clinic?

Of course, Fred goes blank. He thought and thought, but couldn't remember. And then a smile broke across his face. And he asked, what do you call that flower with long stem? and thorns. You mean a rose? Yes, that's it. Then he turned to his wife. Rose, what was the name of that clinic? So that comes from way back. So we have these healthy ways of self-care. And we also, and this is what we're going to spend time, have daily strategies to avoid feeling the raw vulnerability of our fear to avoid it. And it comes in the ways in a very physical way, the way we tense our body

and we tense against feeling sensation. We tense against feeling feelings in our body. And it comes in the way that we just are consistently losing ourselves in our mind and mental worry or obsessing or planning. We're getting away from our body. and where the rawness of vulnerability lives, where the present moment lives, you know. We try to get away with overwork. So many of us know how, while we have a lot to do, so much of that chronic busyness is getting away from something, or the way we distract ourselves, or the way we overconsume, or the way we try to control other people. We're trying to control other people. to manage our life so we don't have to sit down into that powerless feeling of insecurity.

Last week, I was on self-retreat and it was really a precious time. I took the days and Jonathan, my husband, did it with me. The intention was really being. It was not leaving and running away, but really being through, you know, meditation practice sitting and walking, simple undefended presence. And I could watch through these days how many poles there were to do something, just to do something, you know, to cook or pick up the mail or arrange my bookshelves in a better way or compose this talk or contemplate meaningful things, all fine, except in some way.

It was this pull to leave the rawness and the immediacy of just being here, just being. So my practice was just to notice those coming up and most of the time letting go of the doing activity and re-chosing presence. And then I'd arrive. I'd just settle back in. And sometimes it was initially uncomfortable, that habitual restlessness, wanting to be somewhere else, wanting to do something, that kind of anxiety, a few times very real deep vulnerability would unfold, much more of a deeper existential kind of fear or grief around anticipated loss, which I'm going to loop back to and touch into a little bit later in this talk. But as happens, as I truly stayed, as I met what was there with presence, with openness, kindness, there is consistently a shift

each round, from being a self and a story that was trying to manage things and feeling fear or feeling this or that, enlarging to really rest in a much more open presence, a caring heart space that really had room for the different waves of experience. The shift kept happening. And the point of this, the point really the theme of this whole talk is that it's quite natural that vulnerability and security will arise in reaction to impermanence. And they're not wrong. In fact, they're exactly what we need. They're really the portal if we're willing to stay that opens us to that spacious heart

that love, that presence that really is who we are beyond our stories of separation. So that's the theme that our grief, our fear, feelings of loss, actually are a very precious portal to true refuge. Okay, a story for you. In a faraway country now lost in the midst of time, There was an old king and queen, and they had a son, a young prince, who was proficient in matters of war, rather competitive, clever in matters of states, self-centered, disinterested in other people and their troubles, impatient, headstrong. So these, I'm kind of listing, this is kind of his strategies that removed him from that vulnerability I've been describing. But enough of my commentary, back to the story. the king was old and ailing and the queen was concerned about the care of the kingdom and so she went to a sorcerer and described the prince and what she was worried about and the sorcerer listened carefully

and he asked a question he said what does he like most of all and the queen said he's passionate about horses. That'll do. Told the queen to bring the prince to the palace gardens the following day and she did so. They went to the gardens and there was this beautiful white horse and the prince ran up to it and he wanted it and he said how much, you know. And first question from this old man was, well, first can you ride on it? So the prince jumped on and the horse began to gallop and went faster and faster. He was thrilled. It went out to surrounding farmlands and they just had, they were just having a wonderful time. He went cantering, galloping through the hills and the high, and high, high into the mountains over passes. The horse never tired. And then they started going

into regions the prince didn't know. And finally they slowed to a walk and stopped in the middle of a deep forest. And he realized he was lost. came upon a small cottage. A lovely young woman answered the door and she had never heard of his kingdom. And her father invited him to stay overnight. He was a woodcutter. He set out the next morning to find his way home, asked every person he encountered if they knew the way, but nobody did. So at night, he went back to the cottage. This happened day after day after day. And he started helping the old man with his work, you know, cutting the wood. And over the weeks and months, he started to grow wise in the way of the forest and the kingdom became a kind of memory. And he was attracted to the

daughter. They married. So he built this new life and he had a trade, gave birth to a son and daughter and took over the business and live simply. He was able to take care of their needs, happily, very peaceful. So the memories of his former life faded and he was living in a really close to the earth way, a lot of love. Often he'd go for walks in the forest and on one walk, there was a glen with a beautiful deep pond. One day he was sitting by that pond and he heard a cry and his two children came running out of the forest. They were being chased by a tiger. and before he could do anything, his children ran into the pond, they disappeared. The tiger jumped in and disappeared.

Then his wife, who had been chasing behind the children, she ran up. She jumped in after them and disappeared. The horse, his beloved white horse, galloped up, leaped into the pond and disappeared. And when the waters became still, clear, there was no trace of his family or the horse. In the space of two minutes, everything in his life had vanished. There was a great shock of loss. He filled to the ground his body shaking with sobs, crying, crying, until he felt a hand

softly touching his shoulder. And he looked up and he saw the eyes of his mother, the queen, concerned faces of others from the court, saw the palace gardens, the horse was standing quietly there. The queen was relieved. She told him that as soon as he had touched the horse, he'd fallen to the ground. He'd been lying there and trance for two to three minutes. No, said the prince, not two to three minutes. Years. I had a life, a family, a trade, people I loved, a wife and two children. I had things that mattered to me. I lived my whole life. It wasn't two to three minutes. It's not possible. He was dazed and bewildered. He stood and walked away. The old man bowed to the queen, took the horse, and left. The young prince

was profoundly altered by the loss and by the mystery of this fleeting world, and it entirely changed his attitude. His heart opened to every moment of his life. and after his father died, he ruled wisely, will attentive and caring about the welfare of his kingdom. So what does this story tell us? You know, maybe you have some life-threatening illness and you found that the illness has really made you cherish and value life in a new way, to love life in a new way. your priorities have shifted. Or maybe you've lost or losing a dear one and you know the quality of presence or care that's come up around that person. One friend of mine is a doula, you know,

helping those who are dying, accompanying those who are dying. And he says it helps him stay aware of the edge, of that impermanence, that mystery. It helps him live his moments from full presence from a loving heart. Let's reflect for a moment, friends. You might want to lower your gaze or close your eyes, whatever's comfortable. Feel your body here breathing. Let your attention come right into the moment and to the changing moments. feeling the breath changing moment by moment, sounds around you changing, sensations through your body. And then to bring to mind someone who's close to you that you dearly care about. It's very dear and there's a mutual caring.

And this could be a pet, could be a human, someone who's dear. And imagine you're with them and you both know you're taking. together for the last time, there's no need to know why. Just that this is the final time you're going to be together and just notice how the knowledge of finality that these forms are together for the last time. Just notice how that brings up your cherishing. And you might imagine looking into their eyes and that they're looking into your eyes. sense in their eyes, that love, that presence, how they look when they're feeling care towards you. And just let go of all other externals about them, personality, other types, parts of their

appearance, it's all going anyway. Just sense the love and the presence looking through those eyes and sense the love and presence looking out through your eyes and sense how really it's the same, the same loving presence, that you're both loving love, the field of communion, the experience of being in that field, being that field, and that this loving presence, this field of tenderness, is more the truth of who you both are than any of the stories of separate forms, personalities, appearances from the Tibetan teachings. If everything changes, then what is really true? Just sense that.

If everything changes, sounds, sensations, these bodily forms, come and going, then what is really true? what is really true? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious and tender, in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious, tender, in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Is there something, in fact, we can depend on, some refuge that does survive what we call death? Okay, if you'd like, if your eyes are closed, please feel free to open them.

So on the spiritual path, awakening is the shift from that sense of separateness, which is painful, to a realization of oneness, that timeless belonging. beyond the changing dance. That's the shift. And opening to impermanence to change reveals that changeless loving presence, reveals our refuge. And here's what we'll look at now, that this refuge of love, trusting our belonging, our oneness,

is what gives us room for this changing, living, dying world. In other words, the more we trust that formless loving presence behind the appearances, the more we trust that, what we might call spirit, the more we're able to hold and cherish this changing life. Again, the understanding is this, that feelings of love dissolve the pain and fear of separation. Our suffering is feeling separate. there's love, that hard edge of separation starts softening. And research shows there's some really good research on when people are feeling the fear of anticipating pain and they're wired up and

they're, you know, they know they're going to get a shock. If they're holding hands with a loved one, they can measure that the fear level goes down. Feeling connected reduces our fear. Love calms fears. It also nourishes our life force and our happiness. There's so much research that those with good social networks live longer. My Aunt Carol, when she was 92, about six years ago, she's still going strong, I decided to become but misfit. And I thought, wow, in her elder year, she's seeking a deeper understanding of Jewish scripture and teaching and faith. And I asked her, you know, really what was drawing her and so on, because I was really curious, you know, 92 getting about misfit. And she said, oh, I wanted to spend more time with my friends.

And I realized that this is as deep an expression of her faith as any to really take refuge in communion and connection. A woman shared a story with me. This is different shifting here. Her father was unable to communicate his love for his children. And she found out later he did love them very much, but he was not able to communicate. So when her brother was dying of brain cancer, his wife told her that the only thing missing in her brother's life, his name was Jay, was that his father had never told him he loved him.

And so this woman encouraged her father, but on the next, he had a visit with his son, but he didn't do it. And he just claimed, well, the subject didn't come up. You know, he had just been blocked a really long time. Then she got a call, and it seemed that her brother would probably die in about an hour. So at that point, her brother was blind and paralyzed and hadn't spoken in a week. So she called her father and said, Daddy, you have one chance. Jay will probably die today. Please pick up the phone and tell him you love him. She wrote this, she said, and Daddy did just that. He called Jay, told him that he loved him. And Jay, who hadn't spoken for a week, started talking and talked to his father for a half an hour.

And Jay didn't even die. That day he rallied and lived for another month. There is such power to knowing the truth of our belonging beyond these forms. Just the truth of that belonging. There's a poem called Bedside Manners by Wiseman. It says, how little the dying seemed to need a drink, perhaps a little food, a smile, a hand to hold, medication, a change of clothes, an unspoken understanding about what's happening. You think it would be more, much more, something more difficult for us to help with this great disruption. But perhaps it's because as the huge shape rears up higher and darker each hour,

they are anxious that we should see it too and try to show us with a hand squeeze. We panic to do more for them, especially when it's your father and his tears and his eyes are far away and your tears are all down your face and clothes. And he doesn't see them now but smiles perhaps just because you're there. He smiles perhaps just because you're there. How little he needs. Just love. love. If you ask yourself, you know, if you had three minutes to live, what would matter?

In other words, what would you in those three minutes want to experience and trust? I know for myself, when I examine that, if there's just a few minutes, what I want to know and trust is that this being belongs to love, that I belong to loving presence. to a universal, tender, loving awareness, belonging. Srinar Sargadatta, who's one of the teachers no longer alive I most draw from and read, he writes this. He says, as long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, you seem short-lived and vulnerable.

And of course, you will feel anxious to survive. But when you know yourself to be beyond space and time, you will be afraid no longer. It's such deep wisdom. You know, if we're identified in the limiting stories of being a separate self, we're always going to be fearful. As we deep in a sense of realizing and trusting our true belonging, that we are that we are, that field of loving awareness, then we have a fearless heart. So what I want to do is as we continue now is look at what deepens that trust in who we really are.

And when we're caught in fear, how do we find our way from that squeeze of feeling like we're a separate, threatened self to that fearless heart space? that is timeless and that can include this living, dying world. How does that shift happen? So this is actually where more purposeful practice comes in, because when we're cut off, when we're in what I call a trance of separate self, where we're feeling short-lived and vulnerable, we need to cultivate a pathway home, cultivate a kind of remembering.

And there are two approaches that I'll describe right now that really help to create that pathway. The first is familiar to many of you as really a practice of loving kindness, that we learn how to, on purpose, reflect on what will warm and open our hearts. It could be words that we say to ourselves of self-blessing, such as, may I feel happy, may I be peaceful, may I be free. It may be a reminder, may I trust my goodness, may I trust my belonging. There may be a mantra that we love that refers to the sacred. Or maybe we do loving kindness by bringing to mind a person.

who their love and their way of being with us helps us feel safe. Or maybe we bring to mind a part of nature that gives us that sense of belonging or a spiritual figure. Whatever we bring to mind, the process of remembering love helps to undo the negativity bias in the mind because the negativity bias is just part of the survival. is designed to keep us fixating on what frightens us. So instead, what we're doing is cultivating neuropathways that really correlate with well-being and strength and peace and love. There's a story I heard about Mahatma Gandhi that when he was a youth, he was often bullied by older kids in school

or bigger kids because he was a pretty skinny little guy. And so he became very afraid to be in the neighborhood. And he'd come home day after day after school. He'd come running home in tears again and again. And his nursemaid finally said to him, look, next time this happens, just stay put, stay where you are, stand your ground and say rom, rom, you know, the name of God. So that was his loving kindness practice was to call on the protection and love of God. Ram and she told them that would give him strength.

And so over the years that became like a deep devotional practice calling on God's love and protection and it brought him much courage. It's a training. Whatever we practice gets stronger. So it's a training and we start, people often say, well what do I start with? We start wherever there's some accessibility to feelings of love are belonging. Even if it's just a tendril, because some people have had severed belonging, so much trauma that it's hard to find a place where there's a sense of connection, but I always

discover that it's there. It just may be wobbly and need strengthening. And again, it could be a beautiful place in nature that reminds us that there's something inherently good and beautiful beautiful in this natural world. Or it could be some spiritual figure that resonates to us like Gandhi's Rahm, could be a child or a dog or a grandmother who's no longer alive, a teacher. It might be our ancestors, calling on our ancestors. So we'll just take a moment, a very brief practice of this, just to get a taste and then we'll move to the second approach that I'd like to explore with you.

Again, letting this be a pause, letting your attention go inward. So you come into stillness, either closing the eyes or maybe the gaze is downcast. And the attention here is to turn towards love and the invitation is to take some moments and bring to mind where there's the most uncomplicated, easy-to-access love that you can consider. Again, it's fine if it's your dog or cat, child, and whoever or whatever you bring to mind, bring it close in so you can visually see it clearly. if the other is one with eyes, just sense those eyes looking at you with pure acceptance and love. And just feel what happens.

Sensing the goodness of the other. Just let the warmth, the openness of loving be here. Field of togetherness. You can let go of the object and just feel the loving. Just feel that there's more space, more heart space. And as you continue and many of you have done this, we continue by widening the circles so that we can feel that sense of connection and loving with more and more beings on the planet. And so that we can feel that our own awake hearts can hold us.

And so this is the first approach. It's the loving-kindness practice where we purposely look towards where there is some loving connection and we nurture it and we feel how it wakes up our body and our heart to that tenderness. And this is a way of, it fits in the category of resourcing where we're actually developing an inner resource, a sense of strength and connection. if your eyes are closed you might want to open them now we're moving to the second approach and this is really the approach that brings the kind of deep awakening that I've been pointing to in this talk where we directly face our vulnerability and we meet it with an awakeful kind

presence and just to name that because vulnerability can be so in tense and so deep and so raw and sometimes traumatizing. It's important to know that at any time that it feels like too much, either as we practice or on your own, that you can always shift your attention and go back to resourcing yourself, to using the loving kindness practice to regain a sense of connection and safety and calm. And so that's a support. and as you feel more and more ready, it's by meeting the vulnerability with presence and with compassion that you really will free your heart. So let's say that fear or grief arises as you are facing the changes in your life.

In the last talk on aging, I basically framed the three refuges, the three pathways to working with that. And the first pathway is being right with what's going on right in the moment. And that's being, it's called, it's the pathway of truth or Dharma where we're contacting just what's happening right here and now. And the second pathway is where we bring kindness to that. the pathway of love. The third pathway of awareness is where we then discover the presence that has woken up and rest in that, be in that. And if you're familiar with rain, you can sense rain

in what we're doing now, that we're being with vulnerability using rain, that the pathway of truth is recognizing, allowing, and investigating. The pathway of love is nurturing and then it's in after the rain. And this is, I encourage you not to skip, that we sense that timeless loving awareness that has unfolded and recognized that as who we really are. So we're going to be practicing this process of presence, but I want to say a little more about it that you can actually see over the span of a lifetime when there's wise aging how this is actually what happens, that the more over the years we encounter losses with presence, there becomes this very close-in direct cellular sense of mortality.

The older we get, the more it becomes real. And I can say in my own life, the more I become consciously aware of life being fleeting and that this body-mind is going to go, the more I feel loving. There's a direct correlation. And I think it's because as we move through a lifetime in a way practicing being with vulnerability, we become increasingly porous. increasingly accepting and spacious, not so identified with the hardened, resistant, striving, separate self. And I've been with many people who are older, sick, dying, and there can be a kind of transparency where there's less identification with the body and personality and more resting in spirit. You can see that glow of spirit because they're just less identified with the

egoic self. Ursula Le Guin writes this. She says, for old people, beauty doesn't come free with the hormones, the way it does for the young. It has to do with bones. It has to do with who the person is. More and more clearly, it has to do with what shines through those gnarly faces and bodies. So this is our true beauty, what shines through. This is our true refuge. And here's the thing. You don't have to be dying to sense what's shining through you. And this is why we do spiritual practice so that we can discover this inner refuge, this spirit,

this timeless, formless presence by opening to vulnerability. as it unfolds in our life right now. And in Buddhism, there's a practice of daily recollections where we're on purpose remembering, okay, this body has the nature to sicken, to die. Our life has the nature that we lose all that we love. And remembering, really remembering, not just an idea, but feeling in our body, helps to connect us with who we are beyond this physical form. And if we don't face, if we keep running our avoidance strategies and staying away from vulnerability,

we actually stay in a trance. We stay imprisoned and blinded by the identity as a solid ongoing self. We're cut off from love. We're living in fear. So really the teaching is you're not what you take yourself to be. You know, we take ourselves to be this ego-exself, but that's not who we are, we're more. Again from Sri Narasarga Data, he says, realize that you cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends. You are beyond this bodily form.

So the way to realize this is by opening to vulnerability. And as I've mentioned, the habit when we feel vulnerable is to think, oh, something's wrong. I shouldn't be feeling this. I shouldn't be afraid. Or if we get a big wave of grief, you know, I shouldn't be grieving. And for me, it's really helpful to consider whenever vulnerability arises. whenever you feel insecure in the face of change, that that insecurity is loving awareness seeking to awaken from the pain of trance. It's loving awareness being in a container,

a confining container, a limited self. I want to share that I was really reflecting on this a lot while I was sitting by the river the other day and I actually sent me myself a message about how suffering and vulnerability is really that pressure, that squeeze of living in too small a container. And so I sent myself this email. Vulnerability is when our consciousness is living in the small lemon container of a sense of a separate shelf. It's probably just as true. you know, who wants to spend life in a small lemon container on a shelf? But maybe a more poetic way to put it is it's kind of like the chrysalis, you know, the pain of the caterpillar in a confining cocoon that's outgrowing its cocoon

and its nature longs to fly free through the vast skies. So when vulnerability comes up, it's a message to pay attention because we're living in too small a container in a container of a center. separate self. Okay, one more story and then we'll practice together. And this is from this last week, as I mentioned on retreat. And I was really reflecting a lot on how dream like this life is, how it's all passing, how fleeting. And I thought of my son and Narayan and his wife, Nicole, and the two granddaughters. And then I started really focusing on my son

and sensing how this life is passing and how he's precious beyond words to me and feeling this great wave of grief, real vulnerability. And so, of course, the message is, okay, deepen my attention, pay attention. And with it, there was a sense of something missing, a longing for more connection. And most poignant and painful was of being aware of my own trance

in the ways that I create separation, the way I'm not as present as I want to be, not as available to connect. Then to deepen attention meant to really feel into the very center of that grief, let it break my heart open. And it was so clear that this grief was love wanting to love more fully. It was the longing to connect. So I just kept

bringing like all the deep, deep caring presence to that grieving place. And the prayer that emerged really was, please, may this heart be free to love fully. Please, please, may I be free to love fully, him and all beings. And as that longing really came out, it really brought forth a space of pure, timeless loving, just loving. It's the loving that's embedded at the very source of the grief, you know. And so there was just then this luminous tender field of who he and I and all of us are beyond the particulars. It's that heart space that is undivided, where we all belong. And anyone who came to mind was part of that heart space. What was so clear to me and I keep coming back to it is that it's only by facing change

and the pain that comes when we're identified as a separate self, the grief and the loss, it's only by facing that with huge tenderness that we have. get access to that very pure loving awareness that is who we are beyond these changing forms. And each time we get in touch with it, it deepens our trust that that's really who we are, a trust that can carry us through our deaths. All major spiritual paths guide us to look at this truth of living and dying in the vulnerability that's here and to discover that refuge, that formless loving nature that's beyond. And it's entirely natural to get caught up in habits of avoiding vulnerability and avoiding impermanence. And like the Buddha, there's something

in you that wants to open to reality, that knows you'll never be at peace unless you open to reality. there's something in you that wants to find that happiness and freedom in the midst. And like that story of the prince, you know, who realized so suddenly and directly and cellularly how this entire life all that he loved could come and go, how that just cracked him open to really cherishing, to really cherishing the moments. In this closing practice, we're going to explore meeting the vulnerability of impermanence with a caring presence. And the name of the practice is impermanence and timeless love.

So take a moment, if you will, to find the way, the posture that it'll be comfortable or you can be awake and at ease, letting your mind. attention go inward. Feel yourself right here. Take a moment to scan through the body and see if something wants to let go a little. Perhaps there can be a little letting go in the shoulders, softening the hands, letting the breath go deep into the belly, softening there, and feeling this breathing body, relaxing with the breath, and sensing as we did before, how it's all changing. the sensations of the breath, the sensations through your body, these words and the sounds around you, and how your life is changing, how you are changing. You might sense how you're

changing, what's different now, what keeps shifting. You might be aware of relationships, the ones that are most important, aware of really what matters. to you and aware of how you're living your days. And as you view your unfolding life, just notice if there are places of vulnerability, places where you feel fear, sorrow, loss, perhaps a sense of unlived life, if there's a vulnerability that's asking for your attention right in this moment. And if so, trust this as a portal. And of course, if the feelings are too strong, if they feel overwhelming, at any time you can turn to loving kindness, resource yourself, call on love. But if you're able to attend, just honor vulnerability as your gateway.

This is like recognizing and allowing. It's here. Let it be here. This is love, this is life that's confined and wants to realize its natural fullness. And you might sense what brings up the vulnerability. What is it your small self as believing? What are you believing is wrong or is going to happen? What's a story that brings up pain? And as you let that story be very close in of a loss that could come or a way you're not living your life true to who you are, missing connection. Let yourself deepen investigating

and just feel in your body where it is. You might let your face, your posture, express what that feeling is and deep in right into the center of that feeling. Very gentle. You might put your hand on your heart to communicate a kind presence with the vulnerability, inviting it to be free to express itself. It's as if you're saying, I'm here, it's okay. You can be here. You might sense inside that fear or sorrow or hurt what the longing is. If that place could express a longing, what is it most deeply wanting? You might experiment and whisper the words that come up. Perhaps its longing says, please love me, or I want to feel love.

I want to feel belonging. I want to feel held. And whisper again from the deepest, most sincere place in your longing. And if it feels that there's a source that you're calling on, a parent or a spiritual figure, partner, or formless loving presence. If there's a source you imagine your calling, and just imagine that source. Whisper again what the longing is. Now imagine the experience that you're longing for.

What's it like? What is it you're really wanting to experience, to feel, to trust? in a very physical way. Is it openness, tenderness, vibrating, light, warmth? Whatever it is that you're longing for, allow yourself to experience it, that experience of connectedness, of loving, as if you're bathed in it. Let it permeate you. Let it permeate the cells, washing completely through you,

and let it be as big as it is. If you're truly feeling that love or that connection, how big is that feeling? Letting go of any object and just fill your entire body and awareness and the space around you with that loving and let go into it. Sense that this field of loving is the truth of who you are, who we are, the indivisible oneness that is our true belonging, our refuge. And if you bring to mine now different humans or non-humans, you might sense how all belong in this infinite heart space.

Rest in this heart space. Be this unconditional, loving awareness. Know it as your true home. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will carry you here more and more to the indivisible field of timeless tender presence. Please take a few full breaths. If your eyes are closed, you might open your eyes, look around, feel yourself right in the space you're in.

I want to thank you, friends. I want to thank you for your present. presence and your attention and your bright, beautiful hearts. Namaste. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.