Tara Brach - Part 2 - Mindfulness of Emotions - Introductory Series

Episode Date: October 20, 2010

2010-10-20 - Part 2 - Mindfulness of Emotions - Our conditioning is to live in a reactive trance of either resisting or become possessed by strong emotions. This reactivity fuels a trance of being separate from others, and feeling defective and insecure. In this class we explore how to free ourselves from this suffering by bringing a mindful and kind awareness to the stories and feelings that make up our emotional life. Please donate at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

Maybe before we begin the formal class, I'll invite you to take a mindful pause. Let's take a moment to let your attention go inward. You might close your eyes and just make yourself at home in this moment. As part of this homecoming to presence, just to notice what it's like, the sensations in your body, whatever mood or emotions might be here. So without any judgment, just noticing, life as it is right here and relaxing with what's happening. So welcome to our second session of the art and science of meditation. As a brief review, the first gathering really was to explore

how meditation can be a path of awakening from trance. And I use the language of trance a lot because we spend many moments of our lives in some story of a small and separate self on our way somewhere else and there's not that many moments of a full sense of right here right now so meditation is a practice of coming back of coming home right to this moment to what i sometimes describe as our natural awareness in the last session we talked about the goal of golden Buddha are that light, that awareness that's always and already here but we forget about. And the Buddha described our suffering really in terms of forgetting, that we forget who we are,

that we get caught in some way wanting life to be different, the sense that this moment should be different than it is that something's missing, that something's wrong. so part of this practice of mindfulness is noticing that and arriving again and again and I love the phrase that our sickness is homesickness that when we're suffering there is some sense of not at home in this moment not at home in this body

in this heart not at home with each other So cultivating a mindful awareness, a present-centered awareness, has two qualities, and we'll keep coming back to these through the weeks we're together. And one quality is recognizing what is happening in this moment. And the second quality is allowing it, that what we see we allow. This is the Buddha on mindfulness. My friends, it is through the estuary.

of the lovely clarity of mindfulness that you can let go of grasping after past and future, overcome attachment and grief, abandon all clinging and anxiety, and awaken an unshakable freedom of the heart here and now. So the Buddha and the mystics through the ages have described the fruits of training our attention, this kind of inner freedom.

And then now, as many of you know, the last 10 years or so, science has really been able to validate many levels of what the mystics have described. Especially in a very immediate way that practicing mindfulness actually strengthens the body, strengthens the immune system, helps lower blood pressure, helps to mediate all the negative effects of stress.

stress, and that importantly on an emotional level, that the practice of mindfulness actually stimulates the parts of the brain, activates the left frontal cortex that's correlated with less difficult emotion, more sense of unity, more sense of peace, more sense of happiness. So some of you might have been at some of the mind-life conferences that reported the findings of many of the research projects over the last decade to this end. And one of the first of those conferences was held here in Washington, and the Dalai Lama was here, and at one point he was interviewed, and the question that he was asked was,

will you share with the viewers on network news what was the happiest moment of your life because he had just come out with this book The Revolutionary Art of Happiness what was the happiest moment of your life and the Dalai Lama took some time and he kind of then he had that mischievous look he sometimes has and he said I think now

and I love that because when we really pay attention. We discover that true happiness, true feelings of love, creativity and wisdom are only possible in the present moment. It has to happen right here. So the challenge that the Buddha described, as I mentioned,

is that we have very strong conditioning to leave the present moment. And I sometimes think of it as if we're on the this bicycle, where there's restless beings on a bicycle that's always exiting from the present moment. We're always peddling away somewhere else. And we're always on our way to something we hope we'll be better, or pedaling

away from something we're not liking, or that's uncomfortable. And it's mostly we're in this chronic thing of we want more pleasant and less unpleasant. There's one writer said, what we're seeking is

endless excitement and perfect peace at once so we have this ongoing search for it to be different and check it out just perhaps periodically pause and just sense is it okay right now

just as it is one of my favorite cartoons has a picture of it's on a desert and there's a family and the father and mother on one camel and the kids are on another and then all their possessions

are on the third and what you see is that the father's responding to the son and he's saying will you stop asking if we're almost there for crying out loud? We're nomads. So mindfulness training is training

to be here. We're learning to be here. It really is that simple. Our conditioning is to leave and we're inviting ourselves back. And I find that when I meet with people, perhaps the greatest despair is this sense of skimming the surface, that in some way we're racing through life, we're kind of trying to get to the finish line, and what's that, you know, death. And we're not really dropping in, and that we're just kind of rolling through, but not arriving in our moments.

And there's a sense when we really check in of what a flash this life is, that we thought we were in the midst of raising our children. All of a sudden they've graduated or at a job and that's history or our bodies have gotten old. It just happens very, very fast. And so there can be this sense of sometimes despair that we're missing out. And sometimes that's part of what motivates us to train in presence, that there's something in us that really longs to live the life fully.

So in the first session that we had, we explored how do we arrive here, how do we learn to be here by bringing our presence, our mindfulness, to the realm of sensation. And that's called the first foundation of mindfulness. And the Buddha, when he invited the monks to train in mindfulness, that was the beginning point. This living body, this world of sensation that's right here. And what we'll be doing today is expanding the domain now to say, well, how do we be mindful of emotions? And it's always going to come back to sensations, but because emotions, the very ground of emotions, are the felt sense.

sense in the body. So each of these foundations builds on each other. And what I'd like to do is begin by doing a brief meditation where we arrive in our bodies fully so we can then expand the training. So if you will, find a way of sitting that's comfortable. And as you close your eyes and let your attention go inward, from the inside out, check your sitting posture. The guidelines for a sitting posture that can support meditation are actually simple. Sit in a way that allows you to feel alert. And that usually means sitting in a way that the spine is tall but not stiff, that there's a sense of balance.

You're not leaning forward or backwards. You're not leaning to one side or the other. And then around that tall, upright quality, let your body relax. and I invite you right now just to sense letting go a little relaxing. The real beginning of a meditation practice is to sense our intention for meditation. So take a moment now as you begin to just listen to your heart and remind yourself or listen into what really matters to you. what is your intention in these moments for meditating.

Let that sense of sincerity that your heart really does care about presence, about open-heartedness, about truth, about realizing really who you are. Let your sincerity be full, be here. You may take a few long, deep breaths to really gather and collect your attention, your energy right here, so inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. Again a nice deep, full in breath. And gentle, soft out breath, letting go, letting go. And once again, inhaling deeply. And as you release the breath, feel a relaxing, letting go. And then letting the breath be natural, relaxing with the in-flow and the outflow.

might let your awareness scan through the body and sense if there's any areas of obvious tension or tightness, bringing your attention there and softening. It can be particularly helpful to intentionally soften the shoulders, feeling the shoulders from the inside out and imagining a dissolving or melting sensation there. Letting go. Relaxing the arms and feeling the hands from the inside. Again, softening, softening, so that you can feel the life in a very direct way, contacting the sense of pulsing or vibrating, tingling.

Notice how as you become intimate with the sensations in the hands, there's more of a sense of being here, present, alive. Let the chest be open, the belly soft. And let this next in-breath be received in a softening belly, this breath and this one, and again. So you can feel the aliveness deep into the torso, aware of the hips, the legs. So you can feel sensations moving down through the legs, right into the feet. You felt the feet from the inside. you could notice then again the tingling and vibrating there.

And widen the lens of attention now to feel the whole body as a field of sensation. Mindful of the changing vibration and tingling heat, cool. Places of tightness, loose and openness, flow. Being mindful of. the field of sensation, not stopping anything, just receiving an awareness, this changing dance of aliveness, noticing in the middle of this field of aliveness,

the sensations of the breath, wherever you feel them most distinctly, the kind of river of the breath, flowing in, flowing out, perhaps at the nose, the nostrils, maybe the back of the throat. Maybe you notice the breath most with the rising and falling of the chest, the abdomen. So there's a relaxed attentiveness receiving this movement of the breath, aware of the broader field of sensation.

Quite naturally the mind will pedal away into the future or past. And when you notice that, the practice is very simple, just to pause. And gently invite the attention back right here, coming back, relaxing again with the next in-breath or out-breath, relaxing with this play of sensation, knowing that you're here, right here. If you notice some sensations are particularly strong, perhaps very pleasant or unpleasant,

then let whatever is compelling be in the foreground. Rather than pulling away, let your intention be to notice what it's like and to lean in a bit to receive with a very accepting, allowing presence, burning, stinging, squeezing, flowing, tingling, tingling, continue to be aware of the breath,

but to include whatever is here with an accepting presence. And in these last few moments, you might sense if it's possible to relax just a little bit more and to bring a relaxed attentiveness, a mindful presence to the life of the body. I'd like to share a story with you. In the north of India lived a Buddhist monk

known as a brother of mercy. He was a healer who could breathe with people and touch their hearts in a way that allowed them to hold their sorrows. He could be with him in that kind of compassionate presence. And he did

this for many years, but after some decades, he became tired and dispirited. So he had heard about a great healer who lived hundreds of miles to the south, a woman whose reputation had spread far and wide, She was a Buddhist nun, and she had a very deep meditation practice,

and she was known for her directive style of teaching. She invited people to investigate with deep attention and mindfulness, their inner experience, and used the practices and discipline to discover the power of their heart and awareness that way. So he felt a need for her wisdom and vowed to walk barefoot across the country to meet with her and he walked halfway one night a week into the journey found a shelter in a temple where pilgrims stay and there in the temple he encountered an old nun he told her a story and how he'd spent his life trying to help but became exhausted and without inspiration and so sympathetic with his situation the old woman offers to guide him to the residence of the great healer he was seeking

they arrive at the edge of a bustling village and are warmly received the old none had been none other than the much-loved healer that he had sought. So she taught him over the years all that she knew. She taught him how to set limits and how to empower others by training them to train their own minds, to look inward, to investigate their experience. And many years later, she lay dying, the old nun beckon the monk to her side.

There is something I never told you, she said. On that day we met, I too had lost heart. I was headed north seeking a great healer I had heard about. She smiled, squeezed his hand, and peacefully passed away. So how do we understand this story? I know for me when I first heard it, it really spoke perfectly of the archetypes that I think are really at the center of this practice. And these archetypes are often described as the two wings of a bird.

And both wings are absolutely essential for freedom. And one wing is the wing of understanding or wisdom. That's the wing that arises from mindfulness, from this deep inquiry into what's true in the moment. And the other wing is the wing of compassion. This allowing heart that frees us. and in a most beautiful sense the monk had that great heart

that great compassionate heart and he needed to in some way cultivate a little more of this wing of wisdom of inquiry and the nun had this wing of inquiry but she was looking towards having the heart wake up some more and what I've found is that we can really sense the entire spiritual path as the awakening of these two wings of freedom,

of understanding and compassion. And what I'd like to do for the rest of this session together is explore how do we bring these two wings to difficult emotions? When we're stuck in the trance and the suffering of a difficult emotion, how do we awaken and free ourselves? And I'd like to say, first off, that all emotions are intelligent. We are wired with emotions for very good reason. There are a message in us that moves us to action that helps us to survive.

So fear lets us know there's a danger. And anger lets us know that something is in some way going to threaten us and interfere with our boundaries and interfere with us getting what we need. And desire lets us know that there's something that will enhance us or enrich us. the Buddha made very clear that we suffer not because of what's happening we're not suffering because of the cancer diagnosis are the divorce

are the lost job that's not it we suffer because of the way we're relating to our experience and this is really to me the nutshell of what makes the difference between suffering and freedom that it's not what's happening, it's how we relate to it. And when we really look closely, we'll find when there's strong emotions, how we're relating is either we're possessed,

we're totally believing the stories, we're totally identified with the feelings in our body, and we're in a completely reactive state, we're possessed by it, are when emotions are going on, we dissociate, and in some way remove ourselves, so there's a kind of a numbness, a dissociation, a sense of being removed from life. We tend to swing from one to the other. Both are reactivities that are other than presence with what is. And we know how that goes, that sometimes we're kind of a prisoner of fear,

where there's this clench in our hearts, and there's these stories that are rolling through our minds, and we might wake up in the middle of the night filled with dread. And the world gets kind of shrunken. We're living in a very small world. And at other times, we're disconnected. We're not caught up in fear, but life's kind of unreal. It's like we're skimming the surface. Either way, our sense of who we are has become narrowed.

We're living in what I call a false sense of self. we're feeling separate, deficient, not okay. So the Buddha described five different energies that we mostly react to and become small. And the primary ones are wanting. When craving comes up, it's like, now is not okay, I have to have this to be all right.

When there is wanting in the mind, wanting for another person to like us in a certain way, wanting for food, wanting for sex, wanting for some sort of achievement to come our way, wanting to prove ourselves, we're not okay in the moment. The other major energy is aversion. When there's aversion are not liking,

our energies are all trying to push away the life of the moment and we can't be here. So there's wanting, there's aversion, which includes anger and hatred. Then there's some other forms of aversion the Buddha described and that really we can sense how we get caught. And one is called sloth and torpor. You know how the sloth, the creature looks hanging from a tree,

not moving very much. So I love the description, sloth and torpor, which are in a way, a form of aversion. They're kind of a way of pulling away from life. there's a saying in India that sleep is a poor man's nirvana you know we get addicted okay so we've got wanting we've got aversion we've got sloth and torpor and then there's restlessness and so many of us know restlessness restlessness is that can't sit still because something's really not okay here and so we're just kind of agitated and pacing through our lives in some way

and usually under restlessness is a kind of an aversion or fear. The fifth energy is doubt. And the doubt is basically saying, I can't trust life. I can't trust myself. I can't trust others. And that's another form of aversion. We are rigged to have these reactive energies. Every one of us.

Not only that, from an ever, evolutionary perspective, we are rigged to get hooked in thinking something is wrong, that something's not enough. And I sometimes kind of do invite people to reflect and just to imagine the forerunners to homo sapiens, the forerunners, these kind of nervous little mammalian creatures, okay, and they're skittering around. And what would happen if one of them decided, you know, enough scuttering around? I'm going to sit on this rock and meditate. You know, I'm going to do some chie gung or say my mantra or, you know, just get some sun or something. So there they are savoring the day, you know, practicing presence and what happens, you know, smush. You know, there's some big mammoth just squashes the little critter or a snake slithers up or some big gad comes along. In other words, meditating would not have been a good idea, right? And I think of it that way because we have a reptilian brain in us that doesn't think presence is such a safe or great idea.

Does that make sense? Like some part of us that feels like if I stop obsessing and if I just hold still and I just say, okay, it's fine as it is, I'll never get what I want and worse, something terrible will happen. I think it's important to remember our evolutionary status when we come to this conclusion that we're not good meditators or when we start getting down on ourselves for our emotional life. One of the ways that we like to describe it is that our brains are teflon for positive experiences and velcro for negative. You know, we just hold on to what's difficult.

And the more we've had painful paths, and the more that maybe we have a genetic tendency towards strong emotions like fear or depression, the more locked in we get. So the suffering of these emotions is not that they come up, but it's the way we relate to them. If we get anxious, then not only is there anxiety,

there's usually a sense of, this is my anxiety, and I'm bad for feeling anxious, and there must be something wrong with me. And if we have a sense of grief, there's a sense of I'm grieving too long and what's wrong with me and why am I feeling this so strongly? If there's a sense of restlessness or agitation, it's somehow rather, I'm not okay. And I love the metaphor that the Buddha gave for this. He said, we all get the first arrow.

Every one of us gets unpleasantness and difficulty and fear and anger and sorrows in our life, the second arrow, how we're relating to it, that we judge ourselves for it. This is why shame has been described as perhaps the most universal emotion that because it comes along with, it gets hitched to every other emotion, that sense of I shouldn't be feeling this, something is wrong with me. And I bring particular attention to shame because I found in my own teaching and working with myself that the sense that something is wrong with me is a very core form of our suffering. And it's so core that if we don't recognize it, it keeps us in trance. I was talking about this at one retreat and a woman described afterwards being with her

mother as her mother was dying. She was in a coma and she was kind of coming in and out of the coma. At one point, she opened her eyes and with a lot of lucidity, looked at this woman and said to her, you know, all my life I thought something was wrong with me. And after that, she closed her eyes and lay back and she faded off. She died after that. That was the last word she spoke. And for this woman, it was actually a parting gift. It was a parting gift. because there was such a sense of a kind of a tragedy that a life was lived, and that that was the assumption, the underlying assumption, through a whole life. Something is wrong with me.

And I call this the trance of unworthiness because so many people are caught in it. We have a very competitive culture, and there's no natural ways of belonging. And for some, one person described, it's the invisible gas that I'm always breathing. Some of you might remember, because I really feel you can't overestimate how much of us has this undercurrent in so many moments. I like sharing this little reading, spiritual fitness. If you can start the day without caffeine or pet pills, if you can be cheerful ignoring aches and pains, if you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

if you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time, if you can overlook when people take things out on you when through no fault of yours something goes wrong if you can take criticism and blame without resentment if you can face the world without lies and deceit if you can conquer tension without medical help if you can relax without liquor if you can sleep without the aid of drugs

then you are probably a dog So when I teach about this, it goes hand in hand with a call for radical acceptance for these two wings of recognizing what is happening here and opening our hearts to the life that's within us. And what usually happens when we're in this trance of unworthiness is that instead of presence, we are very busy trying to make up for what's wrong with us. We take what I call false refuge. true refuge is in the present moment true refuge is in love but false refuge is in the different ways we try to prove ourselves

we take false refuge by speeding up and trying to get more done we take false refuge by distracting ourselves with getting lost in email we get false refuge from addictive behaviors addictive eating trying to soothe ourselves So part of this path of mindfulness when we're bringing mindfulness to emotions is saying, how do I take false refuge?

What am I doing to get away from the feeling of shame or fear? How do I try to avoid being right here? That's an important question. I sometimes give the metaphor I shared with some of you that we come into this planet and it's a hard atmosphere to be in. just the way we arrive in our families and our culture, and it's difficult. And so we take on this space suit to try to navigate.

And our space suit is all the different ways. We try to figure out things and all our different ways of trying to defend ourselves, prove ourselves. And the suffering is that we get identified with the spacesuit and we forget who's looking through the mask. Okay? We forget who's here. So the practice of mindfulness, being mindful of our emotions, is a way of being able to begin to relax some of this defensive behavior of the spacesuit and come home to who's here, to the light of awareness and to the love that's here. And one of the things that is challenging is that the waves of emotion will keep coming. so we really need to find a way to be with them

without being possessed and without dissociating some of you I've heard of Swami Sached Ananda I think I mentioned him in the last session and one of my favorite images of him they had a picture of this is he's by the way an Indian guru

with a long white beard and wearing Indian dress and so on he's on a surfboard and he's serving And the caption underneath is, you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. Come meditate with Swami Satchad ananda. So we can learn to surf. And it really has to do with changing how we relate to what's happening. We cannot control what happens.

And these bodies will get sick. People we love will betray us. not necessarily maliciously, but we will feel betrayed. Things happen. How do we relate? So the basic elements of mindfulness, recognize what's happening, and allow it. Okay, and we're going to now explore how to do that and practice a bit here in a few moments. And I'll share with you a story that for me has been the most instructive in how these basic elements of mindfulness can bring us back.

back to balance. And this is a story of a man who had Alzheimer's and came to a retreat I was teaching. He was in the mid-stages of Alzheimer's. His wife was there to help him find the different rooms where things were happening and to cut his food and so on. He was a clinical psychologist. He knew what was going on. He had also practiced meditation for over 15 years. And when he came into an interview, these are individual meetings we have with students. He was in a pretty upbeat state of mind and I asked him what gives? What's helping you to work with this? Because it's a fairly, it was a very big deal in his life. I knew. And he looked at me and said, you know, I don't think anything's wrong. It's like fall when the leaves come down and so on. It's just the season that.

that's happening here. And he said, I do feel fear and I feel sorrow, but it's not like something's really wrong. It's just what's happening. And then he went on to describe how a little earlier, towards the beginning of the onset, he was having a lot of trouble. He was noticing things falling through the cracks. He was invited to speak in front of a group of about 100 people. And he prepared, and he went there, and then right before he was to begin, he went completely. completely blank. And by that, I mean, not only did he not know

what he was going to say, he didn't remember why he was there or who was here. He had no idea. He was completely disoriented. So here's what he did. First, he paused. He didn't do anything. He just

stopped. And then he put his palms together and he began to name what he was experiencing. So he went fear and then he bowed yeah heart pounding bowed embarrassed bowed very confused this went on for a bit and he began to settle so then he noted that you know relaxing after a while he looked up and he you know said oh I'm sorry and and as you might imagine and many of the people attending had tears in their eyes.

And one person said, you know, no one has ever taught us the teachings in this way. And what had he done? First, he didn't do anything. He just stopped. And I want to emphasize this, that in the training of mindfulness with emotions, our tendency when we're in trance,

when we're reactive, is tumbling into the next thing and the next thing. the next thought and the next behavior and then getting caught up and reacting. Stop. If you want to be able to step out of trance, out of reactivity, we need to pause. That's the first thing. And then he began to note what was happening. This is recognize what's happening.

Name it. Now, you don't have to name it out loud, but it's one of the skillful strategies in mindfulness training. if you name something, there's a little more of you that's resting in the presence that's aware and less of you that's inside the reaction. It's said that the shaman say that when you can name a fear, you're no longer so possessed by it.

So recognizing is the first element of mindfulness, just name or internally just notice. And then he bowed. Now, for me, that's a beautiful gesture of the allowing. Okay, there's recognizing and allowing. Remember these two wings, this clear seeing,

and this allowing that actually leads to open-heartedness. So he kept recognizing and allowing, and in that process, he reestablished a presence that was larger than what was happening. He went from the waves to the ocean. Okay? Let's practice.

a little because these are the basic elements of mindfulness. Take a seat that'll work for you. So take a moment as you settle and sense if there's a situation in your life that you'd like to explore bringing mindfulness to. A situation that's not traumatic, not something that brings up an overwhelmingly strong emotion, but rather something that you know triggers you in some way maybe gets you anxious or upset or sad or angry so this might be a situation that has to do with a relationship you're in conflict that comes up

it might be that your reaction your emotional reaction as to what's going on for someone else in their life might be something to do with work might be something to do with your health and take a moment let the situation be right here so you can feel yourself right in the midst of it

as if you're rolling a film and watching the frames of the experience until you get right to where you get most triggered maybe that you see someone's face and hear the words they're saying see your own behaviors

stopping the frame where you find yourself triggered, just to begin to notice what's going on. And first, the first inquiry I'd really like to bring up is just to notice for yourself, how do you typically relate to what's going on when you get triggered? Is there a sense that I don't want this to be happening? Is there blaming yourself for something?

Are you blaming somebody else? Are you feeling like a victim in some way? The first thing is just to notice, how do I normally relate when this comes up? Are you resenting the situation in some way begrudging what's going on? Just to notice the attitude, how you relate. Begin to sense what's actually going on in your heart and your body

when you're in the midst of this. If you weren't reacting, what would you have to be feeling? Would it be fear, anger, hurt? To be mindful is to notice what's going on inside you in the moment. To feel the experience as sensations in the body.

For these next few moments, the invitation is to just note what you're aware of as if you're right in the middle of this situation, just naming inwardly what you're aware of, and in some way bowing, and it may be that your way of bowing is an image of bowing,

and it may be that you say the word yes, which is a word of just allowing things to be as they are, or you might just, on a kind of cellular level, sense that your body is allowing things to be as they are. You're saying yes in a cellular way. So to name and allow. Name and allow. If you find your attention getting distracted,

go right back to the situation in mind. Refresh yourself with what's going on when you get most upset. And then again, feeling your body, feeling your heart, just to name what you're aware of. And in some way, bow and sense what it's like when you do bow or say yes

to your experience. Our suffering is not from what's happening, but from the way we're relating to it. What is it like when you say yes to what's happening in the moment? You might experiment by deepening the yes

so that no matter what's going on for you right now, perhaps you're not even paying attention to your initial situation, whatever is going on inside you right now, What happens when you offer the energy of yes? The poet Dorothy Hunt writes,

Peace is this moment without judgment, that is all. This moment in the heart's face where everything that is is welcome. Now, when I guide people in this meditation, this basic exploration of mindfulness with emotions, many people find that when they start saying yes to what's going on, in some way bow, that space opens up and that the same feelings are there, but there's more space, and they really directly sense the freedom that comes from that. But sometimes people find that when they say yes to what they're experiencing,

let's say they feel fear and then say yes to the fear, actually the fear gets stronger. either is possible saying yes doesn't get rid of what's going on when we bow to our experience it doesn't mean it fades away and dissolves it actually frees the experience to continue to unfold itself and sometimes

it's like a vector sometimes it has to reach a certain peak before it then dissolves and passes everything passes eventually naming and saying yes frees it to come and to go and there's actually now research that in the moments of naming and experience

there is an activation again of the left prefrontal cortex and some reduction in activity in the limbic system so this naming really is helpful but it doesn't have to be a klutzy process of trying to find a name to put on an experience it's more the recognition that the experience is happening

so that you're not inside it, you're recognizing it. Now, one of the questions that comes up, I hear a lot, is because I talk a lot about, okay, recognize and allow, recognize and say yes. And I have many people say to me, well, I was trying to say yes to it and allow it, but actually, you know, it was like I was bargaining. You know, I'll say yes.

you'll go away. And that's inevitable. We want things, we want unpleasantness to go away. So part of mindfulness is to notice if you're being mindful for the sake of getting rid of something. It's okay. You can keep on being mindful, just include that in mindfulness. Another question that comes up is, well, I named it and I said yes to it, but I feel every bit as stuck as I was before. I'm just caught.

And to me, that is a kind of a signal that we need to deepen mindfulness. Because sometimes we get kind of locked into a habit of, okay, name it, say yes, name it say yes. And so there's a deepening of attention. And I've described the process of a full application of mindfulness to emotional difficulty with an acronym rain and the last part of the evening of this session we'll just look at this acronym because I think you'll find it very helpful in training in mindfulness with emotions we've already done the first part rain R and A is recognize and allow okay name it recognize it say yes allow it the deepening of rain is

the I and it's a double I where we take that recognizing and really investigate eyes investigate but not we're not just investigating in a cool objective way it's investigate with an intimate attention with heart okay so the deepening of mindfulness is with the eye where we actually start investigating what's happening with a quality of heart and investigation and this is the key thing I want to make sure that you understand Investigation is not an analytic process.

We're not investigating in a real mental way. Now, you might investigate and find out, well, what am I believing? But once you find out, oh, I'm believing that I'm unworthy, or I'm believing that I think I'm going to fail, or I'm believing that no one loves me, you go right into your body and investigate, how does this feel in my body? So if there's anything you take away from tonight

is that the suffering is not what's happening It's how we're relating to it And we need to be able to relate to what's happening In a very embodied way We have to feel it in our bodies The vulnerable places in us I sometimes imagine They're like these shy creatures

That live in the woods But we want to invite them out into the field into the light of awareness and that the way we invite them out is there has to be a real quality of safety and kindness. In other words, the parts of you that are really having an emotional reaction

will not really unfold themselves. You'll not be able to really contact the vulnerability in a balanced way unless there's a quality of heart when you invite them out. By way of example, I was working with a woman some years ago who was the parent of a teen that was in one of those phases

where this young woman was getting involved with drugs and her grades were tanking. And the woman that came to see me was feeling like, well, we're in a standoff. You know, I'm so angry at her for the way she's conducting herself that every time I start to talk to her, I'm angry, and then she gets defensive and angry back, and we're in a standoff.

So there's no communication. So we began to explore it, and we began with the R and the A, and I said, okay, so what is going on? And she said, I'm recognizing anger. And I said, okay, allow the anger. So that was the beginning, recognizing and allowing anger. But then when she began to investigate,

She started asking questions like, you know, what am I believing right now? I'm believing I failed. I'm believing I'm going to ruin her life, you know, that she's having trouble, but it's my fault. And then she felt a real sense in her body, you know, of fear and came into her body. And I asked her a question I ask often, which is, how does this place of deep guilt and fear want you to relate to it. How does it want you to relate to it? And immediately she knew it just wants me to be kind and accepting.

And I had her practice rain a way I often do, as I had her put her hand on her heart. And I said, now continue to relate to this energy, this emotion. Continue to pay attention to it, but bring those qualities of acceptance and kindness. And it was at that point that she began to have what we sometimes sense is this shift. And she reported, she said, you know, I feel like I went from this feeling of I am a guilty, failing, fearful person to resting in the awareness that's compassionate. This is the shift that the Buddha described as possible.

That we go from the spacesuit self, the small self that's in reaction. to the presence, this vast presence that's compassionate. In other words, we come home to who we really are. And that's the N of Rain. You might have been wondering if I was going to get to the N of Rain. Recognize and allow, and then you deepen that with investigate, intimate attention. And when there's that fullness of presence, where there's really seeing what's happening and really opening our hearts to ourselves,

In that fullness of attention, the N is not identified. We're no longer identified with that small self in the trance. And another way you can think of the N is back to our natural awareness, back to natural loving presence. So I'm covering a lot of material right now, but the world of working with emotions and bringing mindfulness to them, you'll find is over and over again at the center of spiritual practice. Every one of us gets possessed and caught in this emotional and reactive trance.

And for every one of us, if we can begin to develop these skills of recognizing and allowing what's happening, and if it's sticky, if it's really caught us, investigating, inquiring, but with intimate attention, then we begin to free ourselves up. So I'd like to do another brief guided meditation where you get to practice rain and please know that with such a brief meditation that this is giving you a kind of prototype that you can practice on your own.

So you might sense this as a pause that really invites you to arrive right here, feeling your breath, feeling presence. And I'd like to encourage you to take the same situation that you were exploring before and just continue we're going to add the rest of rain to it. So again, bring to, and if you'd like, if you feel there's another situation that you're eager to look at, please feel free, but some situation that triggers off a strong emotion, again, not trauma, but strong of fear, anger, or hurt, perhaps grief.

And let yourself go to the place in that situation, the circumstances where you most have a sense of something feels wrong, something's upsetting. You might exaggerate it a little to help yourself enter into the experience. Like what's really bothering you about this? What are you most afraid might happen? What's the worst part of this? and be getting this real mindful attention that recognizes what's going on right now. Is it fear, angry? What's the strongest feeling?

You might not have a name for it and that's fine just to notice what's going on inside you and it may be that you're numb or blank and that's fine too. That's what you're recognizing. And then allow it and some way bow to it and say, okay, it's like this right now. The beginning of mindfulness of emotions is to recognize and allow them. Let it be just as it is. And that allows you to then begin to deepen mindfulness and investigate.

You might ask yourself, well, what am I believing when I'm in this situation? Am I believing that I'm unworthy or unlovable? That I'll always fail or that another person is letting me down and they're bad? am I believing that I'm not going to be able to handle my life or handle what's around the corner, that it'll be too much? What am I believing? Am I believing that I'll never be happy? It may be that there's not a strong belief you identify,

and that's fine, but then bring the attention right into the body and sense again, well, what's the strongest experience in the body? And you might check your throat, your chest, your belly. And as you do, sense how that feeling wants you to be with it. Is that feeling asking for acceptance, for kindness? Does it want you to see it clearly? This is the eye, the investigating. And if you feel like you want to experiment,

you might put your hand on your heart, and let the very touch or gesture of your hand on your heart be part of the intimate attention. This is an expression of loving kindness, the Polly Words Meta, a friend with our inner life. And if you've never done this before, it can be a profound shift in how you relate to your inner life,

one that's very freeing. You might even vary the pressure of the touch so that it's very tender. We don't often offer that kind of tenderness to ourselves. So just as in the story of the monk and the nun, you're investigating, bringing a mindful attention to what's here, but with great compassion, a very tender attention,

continuing to name and say yes to whatever you notice in the next few moments. Notice as you relate to your inner life with a clear attention and a kindness, your sense of your own being. Is there as much identification with the strong feelings? can you sense your being inhabiting a more open quality of awareness? There is an understanding that if you trust you're the ocean, you're not afraid of the waves. Can you rest in that oceanness? For many people, the key that allows us to shift from being possessed or reactive

to a kind of freedom is to let go of judgment to hold our own being with self-compassion. The Hindu teacher Bapuji has a teaching that I'm going to give a kind of an adaptation of. He says, break your heart no longer. Each time you judge yourself, you break your heart. You pull away from the love that is the wellspring of your vitality. But now the time has come, your time to live and to trust the goodness that you are. There is no evil, no wrong in you. Your true essence is pure awareness, aliveness, love. Let no one, no idea or ideal obscure this truth. If one comes, forgive it for its unknowing. Just let go and breathe into the goodness that you are. Okay, a few kind of closing words on this practice of mindfulness

and emotions. Very often people will ask me, well, what if the emotion feels really, really strong? And I feel like by beginning to practice rein with it, by being mindful of it, it's just going to just knock me over. You know, it's just overwhelming. And it's true that if there's been trauma in your system,

then opening mindfully to a kind of an experience that could potentially bring up that trauma. could deepen the groove of trauma. So I really encourage, instead of directly being mindful with a difficult experience, if you anticipate trauma, either having the support of a therapist, a heal, or a teacher, are practicing instead the loving-kindness practice, which you can find on our websites,

and which we're doing a piece of when we just sit and bring our hand to our heart and breathe and offer kindness inwardly. So one of the metaphors I like is from kayaking, which is that if you know about kayaking, if the river is really going strong and you need to get out of some of the currents, you can just tuck behind a rock,

and there's a kind of protected area behind a rock. And similarly with meditation, if it feels very out of control and emotions feel too strong, you can kind of tuck behind a rock, and by that I mean, don't bring your attention, directly into these strong emotion. Instead, if the breath is calming, breathe with the breath.

If it helps you to drink a cup of tea, have a cup of tea. If it helps you to walk in the woods, walk in the woods, do whatever it is that helps you to find a sense of resilience and balance. And then if there is more stability, more perspective, more humor, more balance, then begin to dip back into where the energies are strong. Ultimately, we can develop the capacity to bring mindfulness directly to the strongest emotions. And there's an understanding that we can actually lean into what's there. Our yes can be a kind of a surrendering and opening into. And that in the moments that there's no resistance, it said,

when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone. it's our resisting difficult emotions that actually keeps us locked in the sense of a victimized self a self that can't handle it and there's something in the Tibetan tradition called the Lions Roar which is this wonderful sense of confidence that comes when we discover that we actually have the capacity of heart and awareness to be with what arises

we have as one friend describes it a heart that can be ready for anything? And there's more happiness and more peace in knowing that we can find a mindful presence in the midst of the heavy weather systems than there is if we're constantly controlling things so that we can avoid difficult states. So I began tonight with the story of the monk and nun on purpose that both qualities of heart, mind are essential in being free. We have to be able to learn to recognize what's here, to be able to pause, and as the man with Alzheimer's did, be able to say, okay, fear, or okay,

right now, confusion. And we need to be able to pause and acknowledge it. And we need to be able to have that heart that can bow and open and allow what's here, that heart they can actually just with that way I described with that touch can actually offer kindness to our experience. It's truly not what's happening in your life that causes suffering.

It's how you're relating. And when I first began to really understand what that meant, when I really caught it, to me it was the most hope-giving, kind of liberating understanding. Because when you recognize that,

you get that you can shift how you relate to your experience. You can begin to train your heart and mind to regard the moments with a deep quality of attention and kindness. And as you do, your whole sense of who you are shifts. You're no longer the spacesuit self that is trying to control experience and get somewhere and avoid something.

You become that ocean of kindness. you become that luminous awareness that really expresses your source. It expresses who you really are. So with that, we'll take just a few minutes to sit quietly together, short meditation to end. Taking these moments to allow yourself to feel the aliveness in your body, the pleasant, unpleasant sensations, just receiving what's here in a moment.

awareness, to be aware of the state of your heart right now, whatever you notice, and just exploring this most simple and powerful way of paying attention, of just noticing how it is, and in some way saying yes, allowing the life that's here to be just as it is. Thank you and Namaste. 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.