Tara Brach - Part 2 - Relating Wisely with Fear

Episode Date: June 2, 2010

2010-06-02 - While fear is essential to survival, it can also strangle our capacity to live fully and awaken spiritually. These two talks explore how fear takes over our lives, and the ways we can train our attention to free ourselves from its grip.

So for tonight's talk, what I'd like to do is continue a reflection I began last week, and it was on how to work with fear. And very specifically, not full-blown trauma, that's a little different, but how to work with the kind of fear that we're not always aware we're walking around with, and yet it keeps us from living fully. So that's the theme, and I describe it as a trance of fear, just because so much of our fear is unconsciously driving a huge portion of our lives. Einstein once famously said that the most important question facing humanity is,

is this universe a friendly place? It's one that I want to invite you to reflect on, not just tonight, but just encourage you to consider it and see what comes up for you because he's talking about a most profound sense of is reality benign? And certainly it's really easy to look around and go, no way.

You know, you look around and sense, you know, if this was a benign universe, how could certain things happen? How could there be cruelty and torture and suffering? How could humans be so blind as to let what happened, this heartbreak in the Gulf happen? How could what's going on in the Middle East happen? We can just name thing after thing after thing and say a friendly place?

Uh-uh. And there's no question that there's aggression and greed and ignorance. But there's a deeper inquiry. Is there some fundamental goodness that's possible and can be manifest? that when we relax some, relax when we step out of some of our fears, is there a basic goodness or spirit that shines through? And I find with this inquiry

that if you try to go at it mentally or academically, you'll land in either confusion or with a strong opinion. But if you go at it more through experience, through meditation, what's actually happening moment to moment, it becomes an inquiry that's really revealing. Check in right now, if you will, and just sense, if you turn your attention inward, do you detect fear? Can you feel fear in your body or heart? Just check it out. Is there an uneasiness? It can be anywhere from uneasy to a real squeeze of fear. And if you're not too shy to do so, how many of you notice fear when you check in? How many of you feel fear-free?

Too good a meditation tonight, right? Okay. What I find is that our conditioning is pretty strong to have some hum of fear. The limbic system keeps presenting us with a world that we have to watch out about. And we're somewhat afraid of each other to different. degrees. It doesn't mean we don't love each other, but there's some nervousness about do I belong? Am I acceptable? Am I going to be suffocated? Am I going to be, you know, okay? There's something in there. And last week I described what I call the body of fear, which is how this undercurrent, this hum, which can sometimes be, you know, an explosion of fear, but how the body of fear manifests so that

we have what I really think of as a kind of permanent armoring. The children don't have. Children have a kind of fluidity. But as we encounter scary experiences repeatedly, our bodies take certain shapes in protecting themselves. You know, the shoulders come forward, you know, the neck juts some, a clench of the jaw. So we tense.

And then we're so familiar with our body. so as not to sense that this is armoring. We're tensing against an unreliable existence. And then the body of fear also includes the mind, which if we start watching it, it's always, you know, scurrying around trying to figure out what's next or trying to plan things or worrying about things.

One of my friends describes it like we've got an over-caffeinated squirrel in our mind, you know. So, you know, our minds are speeding around, again, trying to protect against what can go wrong. And under all the fears is some sense of the fragility of life, that we really can't trust life. And if we think about it, we can't trust life if trusting means that life is not supposed to hurt. And if trusting means that we're not going to get old and sick and die, or if trusting means that we're not going to get old and sick and die, or if trusting means we're not going to lose those beings that are most precious to us. We can't trust life.

But the question is on a spiritual path is there's something deeper that we can trust that lets it be okay that there's living and dying the way there is. For most of us, the habit is to fixate on a separate self and things are going to go wrong. basically I'm a separate self and around the corner my very life is at risk I like the way Steve Wright puts it he says you know I was hitchhide hiking the other day and a hearse stopped I said no thanks

I'm not going that far so we we feel unsafe and then much of our life energy gets organized around what I most weeks describe as false refuges We're pretty much putting our life energies into whatever will help us feel more comfortable or safer. Check it out. How many moments in some way you're trying to get more comfortable.

I was reminded of this little reading. My sister is about to go hiking in the Rockies, so I shared this with her, and some of you might remember it that the National Parks advising hikers, hunters, fishers, golfers, to take extra precautions and keep alert for bears. They advise people to wear noise-producing devices such as little bells on their clothing to alert but not startle the bears unexpectedly. They also advise the carrying of pepper spray

in case of an encounter with a bear. It's also a good idea to watch refresh signs of bear activity. People should recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear droppings. Black bear droppings are smaller and contain berries and possible squirrel fur. Grizzly bear droppings have little bills in them and smell like pepper spray. So we know deep down that our efforts can't protect us from what we're most afraid of,

but we continue day by day to have these habits of trying to feel better. And so we latch on to whether it's soothing our anxiety by achieving yet something else are crossing something else off the list because productivity helps us feel like we're on our way somewhere. We're doing better. We're protecting ourselves from criticism. And of course we take refuge in controlling others to try to make them act certain ways

so we can feel good about ourselves. We do that. We take refuge in food and drugs and sleep. And some, you know, out of fear, take refuge in straight out aggression. I know Rita Rudner writes this. She says my grandmother was a very tough woman.

She buried three husbands. Two of them were just napping. So one of the ways that we take refuge that I find really interesting is by lying. And sometimes it's just exaggerating. We're just presenting ourselves in some way

a situation and we just shape it a little to get a certain response, basically to look good and to not look bad. That's what we do. But this is, you can look through the animal kingdom and it's one of the most basic strategies right through the animal kingdom is deception. It's one of the most basic ways to defend and to win in certain ways. And then, of course, you see it in our animal, whether it's in politics or relating to government. Somebody sent me a long time ago. This is relating to the bureaucracy of insurance companies.

These are some insurance claims, and you can see the shaping here. Coming home, people were asked to summarize the details of an accident, and in the fewest possible words. Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and glided with a tree I don't have. I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way. The guy was all over the road. I had a swerve a number of times before I hit him. In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.

I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident. My car was legally parked as it backed into another vehicle. An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished. I was thrown from my... These are true. I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows. And then last one I'll read.

pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment. So, false refuges, we shaped truth. And then, of course, on a much more somber note, we take refuge in violence and war. It's easier to be angry. It's easier to blame, and it's easier to lash out than to sit with fear. So we do that. And then, of course, we see that in our personal lives. So the point is not that fear is wrong. Last week I described it as nature's protector. If we didn't have fear, we would be brain dead. We absolutely need that hum in our limbic system

to keep us sorting for what's going on and protecting ourselves. But we go overboard and become hurtful to ourselves and others. In fact, the ways we react to fear in our daily life actually block us from the very life that we want to live. That's the sad piece. So our evolutionary hope, and this is really, the Buddha was going against our conditioning. He was basically said, okay, we've got all this conditioning to be afraid and to react. And the evolutionary hope is that we can pause. And in that pause, and this is where, in a pause there's more awareness.

We can have the intelligence and compassion to choose what is going to make the most sense. In that pause, does it help to lash out, to blame? Does it help to drink that, you know, third beer? If we can pause and have the courage to feel what's there, we have more chance at making a wise decision. So while the affect of fear is a built-in evolutionary response to survive, the body of fear is a learned response. We have become habituated to certain reactions. And every single one of us here, every one of us has a kind of repertoire of our strategies for getting away from fear.

We're trying to modulate fear. Every one of us. there's in neuroscience and understanding that our emotions, if they're in their natural wave like duration, take about 1.5 minutes as an average. But then there's what we tell ourselves. And if you're telling yourself stories about what's going to go wrong,

you can keep the emotion of fear cooking constantly. And what happens, as we know, is that we are, we have internalized, messages about how we are, what the world is, that keep us in kind of a chronic state of, I'm going to fail, you're going to fail, you're going to fail me, something's wrong. So the body of fear gets amplified as we take false refuge.

What this means is that in the moments that we're reacting, we are not arriving in the very presence, in the intuitive presence or the heart that can actually help us to choose otherwise. I like the way Lily Tomlin put it. She said, the trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. You know, so we're in this kind of habitual mode

of trying to chill out our fears, but actually they keep them going, they fuel them. So William James put it this way. this way he said that the beginning of all religions and spiritual traditions is the cry help that in some way we feel separate we have an apprehension about what's going to go wrong and we're looking for help and then we do all these false refuges to get help but William James also said something else that I think's really interesting which was that the training

of attention, in other words, meditation, is the education par excellence, the real response to this cry we have. He also went on to say, he lamented that we don't have any practical ways of doing that. But here we are, and we do. So we begin to explore, how do we move, and this is the basic inquiry,

how do we move from that reflects to take false refuge when we're scared, scared to true refuge. How do we move from all of our habits of over-consuming or trying to prove ourselves or in some way numbing or shutting down? How do we shift from that to this willingness to pause and contact the presence that can free us? How do we make that shift? There's a wonderful story in the Tibetan tradition about a yogini

who's an adept her name was Machig and in this story she and this story is told in the book Feeding Your Demons by Sultramalioni

Machig is deeply meditating and somehow rather in the depth of the meditation she kind of flows through the clay walls of her temple and she floats out to this tree above a pond and she kind of rests in that tree meditating. Now this pond is a place of the Naga's and the Naga's are frightful spirits and people were so afraid of the head Naga of that pond that they wouldn't even look in the direction of that pond. But here's Machig, you know, just meditating away. So this frightful spirit this Naga was really really pissed off that this woman thought she could just meditate like she was meditating so he rallies all the most frightening spirits in the in the in the hood so to speak and

this isn't quite the way the Tibetans tell it but so so she he rallies the local demons and and they attack her and she just faces them and not only does she face him she offers her body as food okay And they not only did they back off, but they became her protectors. So this is an arctypal process that's being described. It's summarized with the words, when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone. When we're not fighting the fear, reacting to the fear, trying to get away from it, run from it, then the fear loses its power.

A woman I was working with recently had an experience that really illustrated this archetypal principle that I found in a powerful way. She was very, very anxious, and she was so anxious she was losing sleep, which is very, very common. The amount of sleep disorders we have in our culture is way high. Very hardworking, very performance driven. and she had this repeating nightmare that she was being chased by a demon and she'd run and run it would be about to get her and then she'd wake up.

So when I asked her what it looked like, she didn't know. But when we did a session together, she got in touch with her anxiety and it really was about work, about in some way not meeting the schedule, blowing it, being criticized, you know, a sense that everyone

that she was with was going to feel she wasn't holding thing up her own end and so that was the anxiety that was the storyline so she began to let go of the story itself and just feel how it was living in her

body and when she did that I asked her when she could feel the grip of fear I asked her what form was appearing what she was aware of and she said that the demon was a wolf and I asked her what it looked like and she said, it's got yellow eyes and they're burning through me.

And then she said, it's trying to destroy me. So I asked her to sense and ask that demon what it wanted. And what it wanted was acceptance. Okay, just accept that I'm here. So then she kept on investigating. And the question was, well, if she accepted the demon, what would that give it? What did it most need? the response, it most needed to feel loved.

So we explored together what it would mean for her to, and this is using the same principle with Machik, of kind of dissolving yourself into love, like you become the food for the demon. And by the way, this process is called Chode in the Tibetan tradition, and if you're interested in it, that's the word. So that you find out what the demon inside needs, and you give it what it needs.

In fact, you let your whole body dissolve into that love and feed it. You feed yourself to the demon. But what happened to her was that it was really hard to do it. She was tensing against being able to do that. So she called on her grandmother to help her. Now, her grandmother is the one person. Her grandmother is no longer alive, but her grandmother was the one person who had no interest in her achievement.

but totally adored her and thought she was wonderful, but she didn't matter to her when her grandmother's alive, how well she was doing in school, or whether she got into graduate school or whatever. So she calls on her grandmother, and as a team, her grandmother's love and her own love, she was able to kind of relax more and imagine feeding that wolf with the yellow burning eyes love.

And as she did it, she could sense that there was, this wolf transforming until there was really just energy with a yellow glow of the eyes. And she did it over and over again. She did it with me and then she did it on her own. Whenever she'd feel fear, she'd see the image of this demon, and she'd call on her grandmother and together they'd feed the demon love, and it would shift into just energy with this kind of yellow glow until she began to sense the yellow glow as a lot. liveliness and clarity. And it became her protector to help her remember what really mattered. It's message you don't need to strive so much. Who you are as you are is enough. It was that

clarity that helped her to shift from this fear-driven person that was afraid she was going to be criticized for making a mistake to that kind of clarity that said, wait a minute, I'm okay. It became her protector. So again, what we see here is an archetypal principle of how to work with fear. Instead of resisting, sense what that fearful place needs. This is Rilka, who expresses this. deep understanding of the demons and dragons we all face. He says, how could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons, that at the last

moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is in its deepest essence something helpless that wants our love. So the teaching is that if we have that willingness to pause instead of taking false refuge, running away from the fear, you know, blaming ourselves, blaming someone else, to stop and sense what that part of us needs. Most of the time when I work with people that place in us, that's afraid first and foremost needs to be accepted, that in some way we just let it be there.

For this woman, the more she could feed this wolf demon love, the more she found herself just resting in being itself. When we're resisting fear, we are identified with a fearful self. That's who we are. when we stop resisting we relax open into what's called a being state

we relax open into our basic true nature which is open intelligent tender so this is the shift from identified with fear

to beingness so let's just look again on what freed her what helped her and one piece was was what I call refuge in the Dharma, which is instead of the virtual reality of I'm going to blow it at work, people are going to criticize me, she came into the vulnerability itself, the what's happening right here in this body. That is the primary step of coming into presence. Notice the

thinking, come into your body. Not easy to do. We really want to leave our body at those times, but that was the first step. The other thing is she called on love. Sometimes we can't just be with the vulnerability. Sometimes we need to feel more of a sense of belonging and connection in order to be with fear. So she called on love. So these are in the Buddhist tradition,

two of the three refuges. Taking refuge in the Dharma is to contact fearful experience directly, the demon. To take refuge in Sanga is feeling our connectedness somewhere. For her it was with her grandmother. So there was room to be able to be in relationship with the fear in a healing way. So I want to kind of take these apart a little more. Taking refuge in Dharma, that's this wholehearted presence right with what's here. And if we take the acronym Rane We can begin to sense, well, what would it mean

if when I realized I was afraid, whatever, afraid in a relationship, afraid that something bad is going to happen to someone we love, afraid that my own health is going, what would it mean to pause and deepen presence? So rain is kind of a guide, and the reason I like this acronym is because when we're freaked out,

we forget how to be present. present. So rain is a kind of a simple way to remember. Rain starts our recognize what's happening. Okay, I'm afraid, just recognize it. And then A, allow it. So if we take just those two pieces, with fear, it helps to even whisper mentally, oh, fear, afraid. The shaman say that to name a fear helps to free you of its power. Now how come? Interestingly, recent research at UCLA, recent meaning about two years ago now,

they explored what happens when people note or name their experience and it activates the left prefrontal cortex. And in the moments of naming an experience, rather than being totally under the sway of the limbic system, the amygdala, there's a little more activity in the frontal cortex. So we're not as identified. Just by naming. There's a little less identification.

So rain, recognize and allow them. We begin by naming what's going on, noticing it. And then the allowing is saying yes. it's like with the Buddha when Mara which was Mara was the expression of the shadow side when Mara would you know come to the Buddha periodically through his life and show up

Buddha's followers would think oh we got to get rid of him in fact his closest follower Ananda kind of kind of gave the cross and he said get rid of the demon you know but Buddha would say no no Ananda let's invite him to tea okay this is the most kind of one of the most well-known metaphors is inviting mara to tea Thoreau put it in a similar way he said if a dog runs at you whistle for it

and one Zen master when he was asked how do you relate with fear he said I agree I agree I said I think of it as leaning in when there's fear our reflex pull away What would happen if we paused and just relaxed a little with it? Just leaned in a little bit. Again, we're not talking about traumatic fear because we can get retramatized with that. But if it's our normal worry, our normal fluster, our tightness, leaning in. So the beginning of rain, recognize, okay, fear, anxious, worried, allow it, say yes. Okay?

That sums up allowing. the eye is investigate a little more like this woman did when she had this sense of being chased by a demon she began to investigate what does it look like what does it feel like where do you feel it in your body when I ask you to check in

and you can check in right now and just sense well is there any fear in there like where do you feel fear and what does it feel like And if right now there's not a lot of fear active, which, you know, I'm hoping there's not a whole lot. I'm hoping you've kind of settled and there's some peacefulness. But if there's a lot of fear active, you know, to then investigate a bit more and send, what does this fear really want? What does it need?

How does it want me to be with it? Okay. So these are some inquiry or some ways of investigating. The other part of rain, the eye of rain, it's not just investigating. It's investigating with an intimate attention. You know, you can investigate, but in some way it's like you're pushing away what you're looking at. It's like, okay, I'm looking at this, but you're holding it at arm's length, right? But when you investigate rain, with rain, if there's a quality of gentleness, of kindness,

then the investigation is very penetrating. So not only do we sense, well, what do you need, but we begin to offer to our experience a kind of caring presence. Sometimes with people, I'll just say if all you can do is put your hand on your heart as you feel the fear and just breathe and feel your own hand on your heart, of just that, there is some contact, some intimate contact, that helps shift us from being a separate self caught in fear to being that awareness that's feeling care.

There's a shift right there. The N of rain, not identified. The suffering of fear is that we're totally identified inside it. I am the fearful self. In the moments that you're relating with awareness to the fear, you're not so caught.

There's not. the same suffering. Just listen for a moment to the words of Wendelberry. I go among the trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet. Around me like circles on water, my tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle. Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves it. It sings. and I hear its song. Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear and it leaves it and the fear of it leaves me. It sings and I hear its song. So we're coming into relationship with fear. Rather than reacting from fear, we're relating to fear. This is taking refuge in the Dharma, in the presence with what's

actually happening. Now, as I mentioned, often we need also refuge in Sanga in our relationship with others and with loving presence in order to have the space for fear. Fear is this basic mistrust that says, I am alone. There's a world out there, a self in here, I can't handle it. Sanga helps to show us our belonging. When we really feel loving presence with others, we sense the potential of really belonging to life. We sense that this universe may well be a benevolent place. So Sanga, how do we awaken that?

I'll give you my own story of getting caught in fear that. I remember really really, I remember really well because it happened when I was on my way to a conference called the Fearlessness Conference. And I was supposed to give a talk on how to work with fear. And so I had one of my fears is of getting lost. And I was driving to Union Station. And for some reason, every time I've driven to Union Station, I've made a mistake somehow or other going down GW. Park and getting over 395.

Just keep making mistakes. So there I was, and I got myself onto 395, all right, but Pennsylvania Avenue is gridlocked, and I ended up going the wrong way, and I ended up in anacostia, you know, totally, totally mixed up. So my heart was racing, and my chest felt squeezed, and I had 17 minutes until the train was going to pull out. This to me is like hell.

Like, that's hell, you know. So I stopped the first gas station I could find And the first woman that I see She had just paid for a gas And I kind of went up to her frantic And she goes, oh honey, I'm not going that way But just follow me I'll get you over there to Mass Ave

And so part of me went Somebody cares They're going to help me And then another guy walks over Because he could see my agitation goes And he says you know you're having a problem And then he hears what he goes oh easy I'll take care of her and he walks me through it and just as he

began to tell me it was almost like somebody knew they were taking care of me I could feel my body settling down it was amazing to caring people wanting to help it was bombed to the nervous system the um then I could be present enough I was able to drive myself there I made the train and I could be present I was still anxious but there was enough enough of me in a space that was larger, that I wasn't caught inside the fearful self, there was kind of a presence that was aware of fear. That's a big shift.

Now there is a lot of research out. There's a study where if a person's afraid of an electrical current and they're even holding the hand of a stranger, the blood flow and the brain shifts and there's less activity in the limbic system, parts related to fear, just holding someone's hand. We're social creatures. We long to feel belonging. We long to feel belonging. You know, in the face of danger, all primates, this is true for all primates will seek contact with others and in some way feel better with the contact.

if a chimp is abandoned early they will become pathologically attached to others and when we're really feeling the deepest danger of the end of our lives no matter what happens we want contact this is a story during the atrocities that accompanied the Bolshevik revolution in Russia

thousands of bewildered suspects were randomly arrested rounded up, stripped naked, and shot one by one in the back of the head. So one eyewitness account captures the depth of our need to feel joined and described it this way. Most of the victims usually requested a chance to say goodbye, and because there was no one else, they embraced and kissed their executioners. It is very, very deep in our being to,

seek contact. And in a way, I read a story about a little boy who had this kind of sensitivity to his environment that he spent most of his years as a young child in a bubble to protect him from germs that would kill him if he

was exposed to the world. And when it became clear, he wasn't going to make it, he insisted on reaching through the bubble and holding hands with his dad even though that would mean certain death. More than our fear of death is this longing to belong. Our false refuges are in some way to try to find a way to quell the fear. The true refuge is when we feel truly the belonging to loving

presence. So the Buddha knew this and in the in his day, one of the great stories that I've heard is of how the monks would gather every year. And right before, this would be right before the three-month rains retreat, they would gather and get teachings from the Buddha, and then they'd go off and find some beautiful spot, you know, somewhere and settle in and spend the three months, you know, meditating. Well, as it happened in one year, group of monks go off and they found this beautiful spot at the foothills of the Himalayas.

It's an idyllic forest grove with huge majestic trees and a clean spring of water and so on. And they considered it the perfect place to retreat and they each chose a tree to meditate under. And then commenced practicing their long hours, day and night. But what they didn't realize was that the trees were inhabited by tree deities. And these deities felt dispossessed and became infested. infuriated with the monks because, you know, they'd taken their territory. So the spirits decide to frighten the monks away and they created these terrifying illusions of monsters and ghosts and demons, making dreadful shrieks and moans and

creating a kind of sickening stench. And the monks soon became pale and shaky and unable to concentrate on their breath. They couldn't, they didn't have any mindfulness at all. They were completely rattled. So encouraged the tree deities became even more aggressive and just scared the living daylight. out of these monks and the monks just scattered and they went they didn't scatter they actually together race back to where the Buddha was and pleaded with him to let them go somewhere else instead of the haunted jungle but um he refused he said they had to go back so this is the okay you have to face the fear right but he he sent them back but before he sent them back he taught

them the meta meditation and the meta meditation is really a meditation that connects us with loving presence, that shows us that beyond all our ideas about things, it reveals the truth of our heart's connection. And classically, it comes in the form of repeating phrases over and over again that in some way are offering love to yourself and to others that just softens and opens your heart. There are many, many ways of anything that opens your hearts of meta meditation, by the way. So anyway, he taught them this, and they go back to the woods that they had come from, and as they neared the forest, they really immersed themselves in the meditation,

and they sent currents of unconditional loving kindness to themselves, and then outwards and outwards in all directions. And the hearts of the tree spirits became infighteous, fused with these warm feelings of goodwill. So the tree spirits then materialized in human form and served the monk's food and water and basically invited them to continue their retreat without fear. And for the remainder of the time,

the monks stayed in the grove. The tree spirits basked in the monk's aura of loving presence. And in return, they ensured that the grove was free of noise and distractions. In other words, they became protectors. And as the story goes, by the end of the three-month range retreat, through their practice of mindfulness and loving kindness, each of the monks achieved the pinnacle of spiritual realization. All the stories end like that.

But that's the way the story goes. But the point is this, that when caught in fear, one of our pathways is just the purity of our world. presence, just that courage, it's that willingness to not run away. But hand in hand with that is calling on love. Because when we're afraid, that connection with love is shut down. So there's a kind of wise reaching towards love. There are many ways, as I mentioned, that we can reach towards love. I know that in one story, a man who was very, very afraid, went to the Dalai Lama and said, you know, can you give me a good meditation for fear?

And the Dalai Lama said, just imagine that you're being held in the heart of the Buddha. Just visualize that. Beautiful meditation. That's a love and kindness practice. For some people, it's remembering and feeling themselves bath in the love of someone that loves them,

their grandmother, this woman that I mentioned earlier. For some people, it's their dog. you know there's no better and worse all that matters is really having the heart remember belonging remember belonging the more you remember belonging the easier it is to be with fear so i'll give you one other example that a couple years ago i worked with a woman who had grown up with a lot of abuse and fear and so she did have some trauma and when she came to me she said basically tar i feel like i've lost my soul i'm going around in fear all the time and by that she meant no connection with a sense of real spirit with awareness with heart and and and

and she said i'm living in reaction she had a very obsessive mind and she was very defensive and so on and so we explored what would help her to feel more present and soft and able to work with the fear. And I asked her who she felt safe with. And she said that she felt safe with me and with her sister and with her best friend. So we were her allies. And she practiced for months where when she'd feel anxious,

she would call us to mind. And she imagined us kind of in a circle around her so that she was kind of held in this field of loving. And it allowed her to be increasingly present with fear. She found that fear would come in rather than going off to the races with obsessive thinking she could breathe and feel it she could put her hand on her heart and just stay there wasn't so much resistance and as she described it when it got really bad and she learned that she could stay she started feeling that there was some love in this universe that was holding her life

And then she realized it was her own spirit. This is sometimes described as soul retrieval, which means only that we've disconnected from a sense of our belonging, our spirit, from loving presence, and that by learning to be here and stay, by learning to call on where there is love, we reconnect with where it's really intrinsic to what we are. soul retrieval.

It is a basic part of the spiritual path for everyone I know this process of sensing how we take false refuge and in some way committing ourselves as well as we can to

staying and contacting the vulnerability. Last week I gave a kind of metaphor of being on a river kayaking and how you know basically you want to just be in the river carry let the currents carry you know live the life fully and there are times when it's really rough and wild and you need to take a wise kind of refuge in front of a rock because the rocks in the

river if you can just kind of slip in in in front of them there's a still kind of pool there and you can get replenished you can in a way come home to some quietness within yourself, to some more ease, to some more wisdom. And then when you re-enter the currents, there's more capacity to go with it, to be present. And so it is with fear. When you're in the trance of fear, if there's a willingness, there's some part of the brain, I mentioned this last week, they can go, hmm, about to grow. Like fear means you're about to grow. and in the moments of staying with fear and we each find our pathways

calling on love feeling the breath putting the hand on the heart whatever it is but in the moments of staying we start sensing a shift in identity rather than the fearful self we become a very caring presence

awareness there's a being state we've come kind of contact that's more who we are than the frightened self. So I'd like to close with a meditation, as we usually do. I began tonight with the inquiry, is this universe, is reality fundamentally benevolent? And the only way to really inquire is through our own moment-to-moment experience. If we step past the thoughts, the virtual reality,

if we entrust ourselves to the waves of our moment-to-moment experience, do we discover what's called true refuge and awareness that we can trust? We begin that inquiry by pausing, just as we are right now, and the invitation in daily life is to pause again and again to step out of the trance and come right here I've had so many people tell me that no matter how afraid they are if they can get really right here

there's nothing terrible or unworkable right here so we pause you might find your way to your breath right now and just begin with a very soft, gentle attention, receiving the in-breath and then riding the out-breath. Let your senses be awake so that you feel the breath in the foreground. You can also be aware of the sounds, relax with the sensations in the body, listening to the mood or emotions in the heart.

One of the pathways of working with fear is simply taking refuge in what's actually right here, this moment-to-moment experience, breathing with what's happening, feeling the life of the moment and saying yes. If you want to deepen that presence, just explore what it really means to say yes to what's right here, perhaps discovering that when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone. What does it mean in a cellular way to say yes? And if as you open to this kind of surround, rendering presence.

There is a sense of fear or difficulty to sense what it needs from you. For some it might be the simplicity of sending a message inward that it's accepting, that you're accepting what's here.

For others it might be a simple hand touching the heart. Just offering a kind presence to what's here. You might explore that right now. noticing the difference between being inside the fear, identified, and being this tender space of presence that's relating to the fear.

What I'm afraid of comes and I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it and the fear of it leaves me. It sings and I hear its song. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you would like to contact the Insight Meditation Community of Washington to make a donation or to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www.imcw.org.