Tara Brach - Part 2: Relating to the Fearsome Deities

Episode Date: August 30, 2013

2013-08-28 - Part 2: Relating to the Fearsome Deities - Whenever Mara--the shadow side--appeared during the Buddha's life, his response was simple and liberating: "I see you Mara," and,"Please, come��let's have tea." In that spirit, this talk explores three approaches to relating to fear with a mindful and compassionate presence. The flute meditation at the end of the talk is given by Akal Dev. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

Many of you are familiar with one of the arctuple teachings in the Buddha's story, and it's how the Buddha responded to his shadow side. And the shadow side, the name of the shadow side is Mara, the god Mara, the god of greed and hatred and delusion and fear and all the different things we struggle with. So through the decades, as the story goes, Mara would appear randomly at gatherings where the Buddha was teaching. And when Mara would appear, the Buddha's closest devotee and disciple Ananda would kind of freak out and go, oh no, Mara is here and get really upset.

But the Buddha would, and it's a little colloquial, but he'd say, chill out, Ananda, it's okay. Then he'd address Mara directly. He'd say, I see you, Mara. come, let's have tea. That was his response. So in a way, I think of this as

one of the most remarkable expressions of the evolution of consciousness that our habitual way of dealing with the shadow side when we're operating in a more reflexive mode is to fight it, to suppress it, to totally disconnect from it or to act out of it. And so as a pioneer in evolutionary consciousness, the Buddha is basically

saying, no, I see you, Mara, come, let's have tea. Okay, so this is the great shift. And it's the two wings of awareness. I see you, Mara, is the wing of mindfulness, noticing what's happening right here. Come, let's have tea, is that wing of compassion or heart that says, whatever's here, I'm going to open my heart in my response to it. Today, and this is to really honor a contemporary or more contemporary spiritual hero, we commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's speech here in Washington. And I'm curious how many of you here were in some way part of the activities. Can I see by hands? Wonderful. I love it. Okay. Great. So what really strikes me is that Martin Luther King responded to the suffering of racial oppression

with these same two wings of consciousness. That the movement that he was really bringing to life was a spiritual movement and it was grounded in inner transformation. In fact, there was a... a really wonderful editorial by yesterday's Washington Post that by David Brooks that described the civil rights movement as one that was dedicated to inner transformation as the very grounds to transforming society and that dedication meant the kind of presence does not react with hatred to hatred but with love so with Martin

Luther King, the two wings. He had the courage and the lucidity to name it, to name the suffering for what it was, how it divided people. And that's the first wing, I see you Mara, and come let's have tea. His commitment was to soul force, to the power of heart. And it was out of that that he had the willingness and the dedication to act. So to me, the message of of it really is to awaken these wings of awareness and keep marching. Inner transformation, outer transformation. And what we've been doing here, the last class that we had, was we talked about the two wings bringing that inner transformation to the shadow of fear.

And I'd like to continue that and see if we can deepen that inquiry of how, when we face fear, how do we wake up, recognize that it's here, and how do we call on that soul force, that quality of heart, so that rather than acting out of fear, we can actually include and embrace and transform fear. Okay, so that's the overview. One of my friends says that when fear arises, it's like a part of the brain lights up going, about to grow. And it seems so true. You know, when we are in the grip of fear,

when there's any of the expressions of Mara of the shadow side, it's really a flag that we are caught inside a sense of a separate, small self. In other words, we've lost touch with the truth and the wholeness and the vastness and the tenderness of our being. And we've gotten small. That's what it's a sign of. Anytime you're suffering, it means that you're thinking

that who you are is less than who you really are. Check it out. I mean, don't take my word for it, but there's something about our identity contracting. What happens when we're in fear and our identities as a small, separate self, is everybody else is out there and they become unreal others.

They become a person that might help us feel better, or they become an enemy in some way that's part of the threat. So waking up out of fear is really waking up out of a contraction of small self. Now the good news is that if we're willing to deepen our attention, which means pausing when we notice fear, in that pause there's a space to choose a different way of being. We can wake up to something larger. So we start paying closer attention.

Well, what's the signal when we're in fear? For some of us it's very bodily. Some of us really get it. We can feel the way our throats contract or feel the way our hearts get heavy and tense or sore or our heart starts racing. We can sense that vulnerability. One of the big ways that we,

this is really part of understanding the body of fear, of fear, which is really the physical body as well as the thoughts, as well as the behaviors. One thing that many of us might notice when we get afraid is we actually leave our bodies. So some people get stuck in their body and really get possessed by the feeling of tightness and fear. Some leave their body and go into the fear mind. And most of us do both. We just take turns.

So we leave our body, we take refuge in our mind and then what goes on? What's the fear of mind? It's full of judgment, right? As soon as we're afraid, we begin hyping up on who's wrong, I'm wrong, you're wrong, life's wrong. So there's all these judgments that go on about what's wrong. And there's a lot of planning and rehearsing and obsessing about where there might be some failure. How are we going to in some way mess up? Are we making the right decision? There's an example of this. This is the wisdom from our own culture,

whereby a reporter asks a bank president who's very well known in the business world, Sir, what's the secret of your success? And his response was two words. Well, what's that? Right decisions. And how do you make the right decisions? One word.

And what, sir, is that experience? And how do you get experience? Two words. Answer, what are they? Wrong decisions. And you understand. It's like in Zen tradition, they say life is just really this tumbling of one mistake after another.

We just find that we're not aligned, and that not alignment says, oh, lean to the left, lean to the right. But the trick is to be without anxiety. about perfection and when we're in the body of fear we're anxious about imperfection. That's a main kind of descriptor. You know, Julia Child's meditation instruction, she says, if you drop the lamb, just pick it up, who will know?

So for us, when we're in the body of fear, we're afraid of making mistakes, and when we make mistakes, then we spiral into more... to more judgment, more fear. Then we also find our behaviors when we're in the body of fear. There's a restlessness and you've probably noticed it that when you're anxious it's very hard to slow down. It's very hard, we get ADD, we can't settle our attention with anything. We kind of keep have to move around.

It's like surfing on the TV set. There's one woman that describes her husband sitting in the living room. And he said to her, if I ever get into a vegetative state, please, you know, just pull the cord. At which point she goes to the TV set and she pulls the cord. So we get lost. We try to leave ourselves because we're uncomfortable. And actually watching TV, listening to the radio, being on the Internet, in some way takes us out of the looping of our own. thoughts and our own fear biochemistry, we actually get a break. So it's understandable why

we distract ourselves. But that's the sign of the body of fear. So what I'm trying to do right now is just give you a little, a few of the flags. There's the flag of that we find that with others in some way we're presenting something, we're putting out what we think will look good and we're covering up what we think will look bad. It's like the guy in the parking he's pulling out and he sideswips another car, parks, writes a note, puts it on the windshield, the note says, the onlookers think I'm leaving you my contact information, I'm not. But the fear of punishment of what people think is really, really big. And then the other thing we notice with the body of fear in terms of behaviors, very controlling.

And you can see it in your own life. I can see it in mind when I get tight and anxious, how much more I'm controlling of my day, my time, how other people are being, my own self. You know, we get a bit more manipulative when we're afraid of others, they're not going to cooperate with what we want. We get manipulative. In some way, some of you might remember this story of 11 people hanging tight to a rope that's dangling from a helicopter.

10 are men, one is a woman. They agree someone needs to drop off or the rope will break and all be killed. So there's a lot of anxiety there and finally the woman says, okay, I'll do it. She goes on to say this is what women do. We sacrifice ourselves for others and we do what we can to ensure that everyone else is taken care of and of course we come last and when she was done all the men started clapping. So it's fun, but the point being, when we're anxious and insecure,

Or then our behaviors become contrived to be what will get approval and avoid disapproval. We're not spontaneous, we're not natural. Recognizing the body of fear is the first step of being able to say, I see you, Mara. To be able to move through our day and in some way pause enough to say, oh, okay, bodies clutched. Or these are the kind of thoughts going on, are this behavior's type, just to begin to name it. It's the beginning of that clarity and courage. It says, I see you, Mara. Okay, it's also the space that gives us the possibility of inviting Mara to tea.

Now, sometimes we'll notice the fear a lot of the time, and we'll plunge right back into our habitual false refuges, which, as many of you know, are the ways we use just. distract ourselves or to in some way temporarily comfort ourselves so we don't have to live with that anxiety. But with practice when we say, I see you, Mara, something in us gets interested and gets a kind of intuition that there's other possibilities, that this is where we can open into something larger. And at those moments, if there's a way that we can soften our contact our heart, remember connection with others, in some way remember love, regard the fear with friendliness, have a little bit more space for it, that's when the magic

happens. So, for the remainder of this talk I'd like to explore with you three different ways that when we've paused and we said I see you Mara, we can find the heart space that allows us to relate with a caring presence versus going back into our habitual reaction. Okay? What I'm really talking about is how when we're facing the shadow do we invoke that soul force? How do we not do the more primitive reactions of fight-flight freeze?

Okay. So the first way that we access that soul force, the first way that we access that soul force, the first way that we awaken the heart some when we say, I see you, Mara, is in some way to offer a message inwardly, some gesture inwardly of care. And even if we don't feel it at the moment, in other words, even if we're not feeling kindly towards the fear, just by in some way offering kindness inwardly, we actually reconnect with our hearts. Now, that should be a gesture inward is a matter of degree. And you can't totally fake it. So initially, when we first sense the fear is there, the most we might be able to do is just say, okay,

I'm going to allow this to be here for a few moments. There's just a willingness to say, okay, just for a bit, I'm going to hang out. I'll have tea for like two minutes, you know. I'm allowing the fear to be here. So allowing in the most basic level, it's just a agreeing, it's like one Zen master responded that way. What do you do when fear arises? I agree, I agree. And then there's the stories of, you know, when fear arises it's like a dog running at you,

well, go towards it with a treat, you know, which is when it starts deepening. So we begin by allowing. And if that's all you do is just say, okay, I'm going to wait a little bit longer and allow it to be as it is, you've already radically interrupted the chain of conditioning that you're habituated to. You're already uprooting the old habit of fight-flight freeze.

So don't underestimate noticing fears here and being willing just to hang out for a short time. That's the beginning of the second wing of love, of having tea. Okay, is that clear? Just this pause matters. Then the allowing can become more filled with presence where you actually are saying yes, it's really okay. It's like this is reality, this is how it is right now. You're really truly, your allowing is becoming more full-bodied and embodied is the point

that you're in a cellular way agreeing to let what's there be there, letting life be as it is. That's when your degree of the second wing of love is beginning to wake up more. Then you can begin to send a message, okay, I care about this suffering. And that's what opens it to the full flowering of love and presence. So you start right where you are. And the simple intention is, I see you, Mara, can we be with for a bit? and then you begin the different strategies. I mentioned in the last class that for myself

when I was in the hospital and really caught putting my hand on my heart and saying, it's okay, sweetheart, that even just the words, even though at first I wasn't feeling it, reminded me of the love that's here. It helped me soften and open to feeling the fear. So each of us has to find our own strategy

For some of you it's going to be words, some of you touch, some of you just a simple intention, be kind, be open to what's here. Sometimes the words, this too, whatever comes up, just this too, begins to make that space for allowing, for yes, for love. Ultimately, when allowing is filled with presence, it is love. And I invite you to explore that. When you're noticing what's happening and the allowing is filled with presence, it is love. So I was giving some teachings on these two wings, how, and the basic question is, well, how do they really work?

I mean, how does it happen that things change when we say, I see tomorrow, let's have tea? And what I'd like to say as a summary of that is that when you in some way recognize what's going on and then you allow it, you open up that space of tenderness, you realize that that's what you are. You are that open awareness, that tender awareness, and that becomes more true than any story you are living in of a scared self. So I'm just going to say that once more, that when we offer these two wings, I see you, I'm allowing, ultimately I'm loving, you become the seeing and the loving. You become that timeless loving presence that's really your true home.

And the more times you do it, the more times you wake up these two wings and realize, oh, loving presence feels really like truth, the less you're identified with the character and the story that felt so threatened. Does that make sense? That's the power of the two wings, and it goes for anything that comes up, anything, whether it's grief, whether it's fear, whether it's shame, whether it's physical pain. When you off the two wings, rather than being the suffering self, you become the presence. that has space for it. The classic metaphor

is that when you have a sink and you put dye in it, it gets very colored with dye, but when you have a lake and you put some dye in it, the lake still has its integrity of water being clear. And so it is that

when we offer these two wings, we open into inhabiting the truth of who we are, there's room for the fear, there's room for the pain, there's room for whatever the hurt is. So I was sharing this and one man heard this podcast about it and he wrote to me, his name is Eduardo Okubaru. He said, thank you once more.

And he had listened to it and then he read the book, Radical Acceptance. He said, your book helped me a lot to cope with pain some days ago when I had terrible renal colics due to a kidney stone. Once I expel it, I will name the stone after you. It was the highest praise I've ever gotten. There's a kidney stone out there named after me. This is the first of the three ways offering inwardly. We'll just do a taste of it here just to get you kind of embodied and then we'll move on to part two.

So if it helps to adjust how you're sitting, please do so. So as you come into stillness, take a moment to feel your breath, to feel the sensations in your body as you sit here. and then just scanning a bit your life and today, the last few days, and just sensing where you've encountered Mara, the shadow side, where you've been aware of becoming reactive, feeling anxious or afraid,

and if it's not fear, where you may be felt some hurt or some embarrassment, or in some way you feel, felt caught in a small self-sense. You knew you weren't really living from the whole or the truth of who you were. It might have been in an interaction with a child, a friend, or a partner, might have been in some addictive behavior, something at work. And see if you can put yourself right in that situation as best as as possible just to explore a little right now, sensing what you might have been in those

moments, what was, what were you really wanting or fearing, what was going on in your mind. So perhaps you can feel a little bit of that smallness, the vulnerability, the tightness, in some way sensing that first wing of just, I see you, Mara, I see, okay, so this is the trance, this is the shadow trance where you're... sense of being gets small. Just an honest recognition. Just seeing it. It's actually courageous to see the truth.

We all shrink from our beingness into this kind of egoic self at times, sometimes more dramatically than others. So just to see it, I see you, Mara. And then you might in some way offer inwardly some message of kindness. And for many, it's very interesting and helpful to just explore what happens

if you put your hand on your cheek or your heart, just as you would a child perhaps, you know, just kind of the tenderness when you touch a child's cheek, that same kind of gentleness to yourself. Whatever message inwardly expresses love, a caring, warmth. And just notice what happens. The poet Hafiz says, how did the rose ever open its heart

and give to this world all its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being. Otherwise, we all remain too frightened, offering inward this encouragement of light. It's okay, sweetheart, in some version. letting the heart relax a little, and sensing you are that awareness and kindness that's extending itself inward. That's more true about you than being the egoic self. Okay, so that is the first way of having tea with Mara is to offer inwardly when we're caught the kindness.

The second way is in some way to reach out. You know, many of you are aware of the science that describes what happens when a loved one holds hands with someone who's experiencing fear and the fear is diminished and you can see it on the MRIs. We know that with hugs oxytocin and comes up and it deactivates fear in different ways, that contact with others helps to soothe our nervous system. And it's the same thing when we imagine and intuit into our connections with each other. When we're afraid and we remember something about our belonging,

it helps to enlarge our sense of who we are, like we become that lake again. You can do it with imagery, with using words to remind you, with gestures to find that belonging. I remember hearing one man came to the Dalai Lama, he was filled with fear and he said, please give me a meditation that'll help me deal with this fear.

And the Dalai Lama's response was to imagine you're being held in the arms of the Buddha. I thought that was so beautiful. Instead of saying, okay, you're gonna meditate your way through it, it's just imagine you're being held and what happens. Well, as soon as we remember, we sense ourselves being held, there's some dissolving, some opening, some relaxing, so we have room for the fear. One of my favorite teachings is if you trust you're the ocean, you're not afraid of the waves.

If you trust that belonging, if you trust that connectedness, your beingness, the who you are in large is there's room for the waves. Not only is there a room, as the ocean cradles these waves on its surface, there's a ten. tenderness, a kindness. I remember working some years ago with one vet who'd come back from Iraq and had a pretty much trauma in a system. And when we explored and I said, you know, what is it that helps you feel a sense of belonging? And he said, just to know I belong to God. And so his prayer was, please, may I feel my belonging to God. Please God, may I feel my belonging to you? and he'd just pray and pray.

And then I asked him what it was like when he actually felt it. And he felt himself surrounded by light, you know, just the same as Hafe's poem. And that became his practice. I didn't, again, I didn't say, concentrate on your breath or, you know, whatever it is. It was just let, say that prayer and imagine and sense that light around you. And that's, he called out. Felt his belonging and that's what began to allow him. him to have room for the fear. That was key with the trauma. For some of you, this is a story

I wrote up in True Refuge. When Ram Dass, who many know from the 60s, Richard Alper, who was the Harvard professor who turned towards experimenting with psychedelics and then went to India and then meditation and really involved with Advaita and Buddhist and all the different forms of meditation, one of the great ones of our generation, you know, kind of pioneering the way for so many others. Well, about 10 years ago he got a stroke and it really leveled him. And he talks about lying there on this gurney and he's trying all his techniques. And he said, nothing worked.

He said, in fact, I flunked the test. And I think a lot of us that have a spiritual practice sense, well, is this practice going to hold up when this happens? He said, I flunk the test. But here's what happened. happened because he didn't really form the task was that he started meditating on a picture of his guru who had died many, many years earlier, who was the emanation of love. And he said he just, the more he meditated on the picture, the more he knew without any doubt

that he was absolutely held in love. And that, you know, none of the meditations worked, that's what worked, reaching out to his guru, seeing that picture. Now, I really, really like this poem by Rooming. I think it says it better than any words I've heard on this power of reaching out for help. He says, in times of sudden danger, most people call out, oh my God, why would they keep doing this if it didn't help? Only a fool keeps going back where nothing happens. The whole world lives within a safeguarding.

Fish inside waves, birds held in the sky, the elephant, the wolf, the lion as he hunts, the dragon, the ant, the waiting snake, even the ground, the air, the water, every spark floating up from the fire all subsist exists are held in the divine. All are held in the divine. Nothing is ever alone for a single moment. All giving comes from there. No matter who you think you put your open hand out toward, it's that which gives.

All are held in the divine. Nothing is ever alone for a single moment. All giving comes from there. No matter who you think you put your open hand out toward, it's that which gives. So a powerful, this is kind of the second path that we're talking about of coming to that heart space where we can befriend the fear, we can become the loving presence, is reaching out to loving presence.

And the requirement for this being a living prayer, not a mechanical prayer, is that we, I see you mara, we get it, we get the pain, we feel it, we don't size it, step it and it's from that longing for love that we reach out. That's the power of prayer. Now the truth is we have never left the ocean. The waves never leave the ocean, but there's some deluded impression that I'm a separate set of waves and I don't belong. So when we reach out, we're calling out to that source and it reminds us of our belonging.

It reminds us of the love that's always been there. So, in practicing this, we each have to experiment with the, it's like where are the tendrils of connection in our life? Where is it that in some way we feel a longing to belong in a sense that there's something there? And it might be that the easiest way to feel belonging is to sense our grandmother or to sense a child or a dog, many people a dog. For some it's the Buddha, for some it's Jesus, for some it's God, for some it's Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion, divine mother.

So we sense, where do we feel that sense of heart connection? And then we need to practice. And ideally we need to practice when we're not caught in the grip of fear. See when we're in fear, we're discontalienable. connected. Fear is separation. So when we're feeling fear is the hardest to remember connection. So if you practice when you're not fully in the grip feeling and meditating on that sense of belonging, it's more accessible to you. So a story on this. And this story again is in True Refuge. I took a bunch of this talk from True Refuge. One woman I was work with, she actually came to a class and then told me, she was,

She had a lot of fear when she meditated, a parole officer at a state prison. Her history, as she was molested at age 11, and then she, as happened, had a pattern of abusive relationships. And when she would get over one with fear, she said, I have no spiritual center, no soul. You know, I'm just a fearful, young person, powerless. So I did, as we're exploring here, I said, well, where do you feel connection? What could you call on and strengthen? So that would have some resource for you. And she had a friend where she felt a real trust

and her sister she felt it with, and then over the week she found it with me. So we became the three kind of spirit allies that she would call on, and she practiced a lot. Her prayer was, may I feel safe, may I feel loved. And what she do is she would meditate and imagine us kind of surrounding, surrounding her and she said it was like being in a warm bath that she could just kind of soak in

and take in that sense of being loved. So she practiced it a lot so it was like a very familiar you know she developed the neuro pathway she strengthened them to feeling that sense of being held in that way. So then she had the strength to break up with her current boyfriend with who was very emotionally abusive but she was petrified he'd be vengeful and her nervous system felt like she was going to be attacked at any moment. You described one night getting flooded by that, just feeling kind of cracked open by the fear. She said it was like hot broken glass tearing through her chest. That was the feeling of the fear. So she, you know, she said her words of prayer and she imagined bringing us in.

And the fear was really intense but it was just enough of a sense of being a accompanied that she could stay a little. So she was not at that place of offering love. She was at the place of, okay, I can hang in here a little. Okay, I want to make that clear. That was the beginning of that second wing. But she started, the more, she said the more I was surrounded by the presence that was caring, things could break apart. It was like the fear was breaking me apart. But gradually she said, I felt more space and more of me was resting, was sensing the loving presence and the fear was becoming more just playing itself. And she said, that's when I realized that the space of loving was bigger than my scared self.

And then she said, and that's when I realized also that my soul was back. Because it wasn't like others were loving her. It was like she was part of that loving presence. And that's the gift of reaching out. that when we reach out to loving presence in whatever form, what we discover is that presence is really the essence of who we are. We were just forgetting, and we needed to extend ourselves in some way.

So she continued to practice in this way with anxieties that would come up and got stronger and stronger in it. And I mentioned earlier that, you know, when I was talking about Martin Luther King, that this inner transformation, when we meet Mara in this way inwardly, then we can begin to meet our world that way. And she described a client that she had who was on parole who had missed his meetings and they had a phone, she called him on the phone and she had to confront him with missing his meeting and he got enraged and he started screaming at her that she was like all the

rest and she didn't give a shit and so on and so forth. And he was very violent in his rage. So So she, it tripped off a lot of fear in her and she had to do a lot of that, bringing in that image of reaching out to love and then finally remembering that she was love. Then they had an appointment the following week and so she had used the meditation a lot to really establish that larger sense of being and she started reflecting on him and imagining what it was like to be him and imagining, okay, I see you, Mara, seeing the fear of and the shame that he was gripped in, how deep the shame, and sensing, well, what does he need? And sensing just as she needed to feel that light and love coming in, he needed in some way

to feel safe, to feel like he mattered, to feel like he belonged. That was her intention when he came in. You know, he started on a tirade and, you know, the whole thing was pretty energetically intense, but she really held a presence. and by the end let's see if I have the words he said maybe I got you wrong

I'm really sorry for doing that thank you for being on my team now that's a big deal what had she done she had said I see you Mara I invite you to tea she had extended the field and done that with him

that was transforming let's take a moment we'll practice together this is a very simple just a simple experiment that you can continue it's one that I continue every day it has to be fresh each time so just see

just know that it's a life practice to be able to reach out to love it's a life practice and begin by just simply feeling yourself right here feeling your breath feeling your own presence

And you might sense where vulnerability lives in you. Where right now in your life you're feeling in some way disconnected, hurting, afraid, and just feel for yourself what you long for, the kind of love that you would find healing right now. What is the source in your life that could be most meaningful or powerful if you felt love coming towards you? Where does it happen the most easily for you that you can sense loving presence? Is it with a dog, a child, a friend, a teacher, a healer, a spiritual figure? Or is there some formless sense of loving presence that you have access to? Where does it shine through the most easily for you?

You might just experiment and invoking whoever, whatever, feels like a source of loving presence to you, safe, available, what you trust. And just feel that longing, the sincerity in you that just longs to feel love, to feel felt and seen and loved by this presence. and imagine and sense what it would be like to just really let in right now the love that's expressed by that being, whether it's letting yourself feel like you're bathing in it or soaking in it, surrounded, embrace, just having the courage to explore, what is it, what would it be like?

Can you imagine right this moment? Loving presence, showering on you, surrounding you, bathing you, soaking into you. And perhaps you can imagine really letting go into the space of loving present, just merging with it, resting as love. So this second way of accessing the awakening heart, this second wing, the befriending place, is to call out for love, to call out for it, to receive it, and then to dissolve into it and discover it is what you are in the deepest way. So I'd like to kind of briefly name the third way of connecting with this heart presence

and that is reaching out and extending our love to each other. And again, fears about separation. so anything, any activity that reminds us of our connection wakes us up. So during a meditation retreat a couple of years ago, I was leading one of the groups where we, you know, sharing what's going on and talking about how we can bring practice to it. And in that group, one woman was awaiting a biopsy result, so she had to wait through a long weekend and was very, very anxious.

Another man in the group talked about his son being in an addiction facility and he had relapsed many times and he was afraid he'd die one of these times from an overdose. Another was talking about her husband who couldn't find work and what it was doing to him, the pain of that. Another young woman had an eating disorder. Now, it's not like every group has everybody in it's got huge things, but this group had a lot of intensity. and when they meditated they actually, you know, as a group, they held each other in their hearts.

And I heard reports in individual interviews afterward that having heard from each other, there was that realization that's so powerful that it's not my suffering, it's the suffering. That's becoming a lake. That's becoming a space that can be with the fear, with the pain. So often when I do a fear, a workshop on fear, I'll have people name their fears and they have the same experience. They'll name them and then we'll hold everybody's fear and our hearts together.

And it changes our relationship with fear when we realize we're not alone in it. That's really the power of the Tonglin meditation, which is a compassion practice where you breathe in and you let yourself touch the fear. You let yourself feel it. you let yourself contact it. In other words, you're willing to feel the pain. And then you breathe out, and in the breathing out, you're offering kindness. But then you do it for everyone that has that same pain.

So I'm not just breathing in for my fear. I'm breathing in for all of our fear. And in doing that, it shifts our sense of identity powerfully. Now, I started tonight talking about Martin Luther King and as a spiritual hero that he just, like, the Buddha was relating to the shadow in a way that could actually allow for a true transformation in our culture. Those two wings where he was naming the suffering, not just naming it, but willing to feel the pain and that courage and then that openness that says that insists

on loving. I want to read you one of my favorite quotes. from Martin Luther King. He says, To our most bitter opponents, we say, we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity

to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot, in all good conscience, obey your unjust laws, but be assured

that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win yours in the process. This is facing the shadow side with wisdom and love.

It's the grounds of all true healing on our earth. So we close with a brief meditation. And after the meditation, We will be moving into, you'll have the amazing good fortune tonight of being able to listen to very beautiful flute music for a few minutes. So make yourself comfortable. Stay awake. So we begin, as we've been for each of these little practices, just arriving, feeling the body

and feeling the breath, being aware of the breathing so that you're breathing in and as you breathe in feel what's right here. Feel the aliveness, pain, pleasure, whatever is right here in your body, in your heart. And as you breathe out, sense the space you're breathing into that you can let whatever's here be held in a larger space of being, contacting what's here with the in-breath, sensing the space around and within you that holds everything with the out-breath. Very intentionally as you breathe in, see if you can contact wherever there's vulnerability, fear, insecurity, uncertainty in your own being.

This is the willing to endure, the contact and courageously what's here, saying yes. And with the out breath, letting it be unfold, suspended, held in loving presence, the great space that's around and within you. breathing in and touching the fear, the vulnerability, breathing out, letting it float in something larger, a space of love of presence. You can even sense with the out breath a wish or a prayer, may you be free from suffering? May I be free from suffering from fear? May I realize and rest in loving presence, whatever prayer you'd like to offer.

So you breathe in and with integrity and honesty you touch what's here and you breathe out and offer a prayer, rest in love and then widening the field now to breathe in for all of us who feel fear, all those that are sitting here, all those that may be listening from around the world, all those beings everywhere, young and old. breathing in for all of us who feel fear, letting yourself be touched and knowing that as you breathe out it can be held in a vast space of love. You might sense as you breathe out that you're offering your prayer for all of us, may we all take refuge in loving presence.

May we all know loving presence as the truth of our being, trusting the ocean, not afraid of the waves. There is a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon.

Quiet ecstasy is there and a steady regal sense. regal sense of resting in a perfect spot. Once you know the way the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here, I am at home here. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here, I am at home here, resting and quietness, opening to the heart space as you listen to a call-dev and the beauty of the flute. Namaste and blessings, thank you.

This has been sort of a once-a-year thing though we missed last year and just a deep welcome and thank you, Okaldev. 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.