Tara Brach - Part 2: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

Episode Date: March 30, 2011

2011-03-30 - Part 2: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion - Learning to hold our own lives with a gentle compassion is a key element in all emotional healing and spiritual awakening. This two part series explores the suffering of being at war with ourselves and the pathway to freeing our hearts. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

This is the second week. I'm doing a two-part series, as I sometimes do on self-compassion. And if you didn't hear the first, it's available. You can download it, get it on podcast. It's really how to free ourselves from this trance of unworthiness, of not okay, and in a very deep way, find healing. And I wanted to share with you an article I ran into New York Times, Science Times, that asked the question, what is it that allowed humans to evolve in a way that kind of separated from apes and chimps to be what we are for better and for worse, but mostly for better in this particular case? And biologists, you know, they come up with all these different things that, okay, we make tools, we do this, we do this, we do that. But the one element that has been really standing out to anthropologists and biologists

is that our success is due to our sociality, that our capacity to cooperate is what makes the difference. Our capacity to cooperate. It says in this article, the ability to cooperate to make individuals subordinate their strong sense of self-interest to the needs of the group. lies at the root of human achievement. And the understanding is that a large social network can generate knowledge and adopt innovations far more easily than a cluster of small hostile groups constantly at war with each other.

So in evolution, what seemed to have happened for us is that we recognize in-laws, we recognize wider groups as part of us. and this capacity to widen our sense of belonging and cooperate makes it possible then to cultivate whether it's agriculture, our art, other parts of culture, and in spiritual life. I mean, what allows us to keep on waking up

is that we gather, that we care about each other, that we support each other, that we trade insights. The sense of belonging is at the root. So in human evolution we develop this large brain and the biggest part of the brain that makes a difference is the social brain which is the part of the brain that has these mirror neurons

and these networks that lets us feel empathy and compassion. That's what makes the difference. So we can give care and we can receive care. It's part of our hard wiring and this has every thing to do is self-compassion because in order to give and receive care with each other, it's grounded in this sense of being able to attune to our inner life. If we can hold our own being with some sense of kindness, we can be available and more attuned to other people.

And when we're at war with ourselves, conversely, we get cut off from our sense of belonging to others. So that cooperation that gives us that evolutionary advantage is not there. So tonight I'm focusing again on self-compassion because until we stop making war on ourselves, we've kind of put a ceiling on the evolution of our own consciousness. Does that make sense? That if we're at war with ourselves, we can't keep waking up. We are fragmented. We're not able to sense that innate belonging and oneness that really is our freedom. So the pathway home, pathway to that sense of belonging is to start noticing the subtler and subtler ways that we turn on ourselves. I mean, for some people, it's really obvious, you know, that we're just trashing ourselves. But it can get

very, very subtle and quiet, just a very subtle sense of not enough, that this kind of push that I have to do something more to be okay. And then there's a tendency when things don't go as we want them to. Even when we're not in a mood we think is the mood we want to blame ourselves. The pathway home start noticing it and have the intention to be kind. Have the intention to not blame. So one mom shared a story. She heard this crash and she walks into the room where her sons or young boy have been playing and this large vase was knocked off the window cell and completely shattered and before she could say anything her older boys eight years old says so mom rather than play the blame game don't you think we should focus on how to

clean up this mess so there's hope in a way you know it's like not locking into blaming others are ourselves so last week the key that I mentioned really is intention that if as you look at your own life and you sense the possibility of freedom are even a little more committed to being kind to yourself and a little more committed to training yourself to have compassion for yourself that's going to open the door it's an it has to do with intention that you get conscious or purposeful about training and self-compassion. Because I've seen

over and over again how people that are suffering will get to a certain point and there's this kind of aha where there's this sense of, wow, I spend a lot of my living moments really not feeling good about myself. And it's not just a mental aha.

It's like this emotional aha of how, How sad. I mean, how many moments of my life have I sacrificed or given up or not been there for because in some way I was thinking I wasn't enough that something was wrong. When there's that aha, then the commitment kicks in. Right? And when you really get, wow, this life isn't that long. And how much have I spent of it thinking I should be different or better rather than being there for the moment and having an adventure, you know, really being able to be with another person. There's some, instead of that sinking sense of not enough, the spontaneity that's

possible. And in the most deep way, not holding back our love. Because when we feel bad about ourselves, we hold back the tenderness of our heart. So that aha, it takes a certain amount of kind of registering. Wow. I've been, I've been, I've been. really at war until we get committed. Now when we get committed, we start sensing, okay, so how do we bring care, compassion? And I think it's helpful to sense if a child is having a hard time,

what is it that he or she needs? In other words, if you're with a child and they're scared about the thunder outside, or, you know, if they've been hurt by a bully and they come home from school and they're just really freaked out about going back the next day or have felt excluded because they didn't make the sports team. You know, it's like, what does that child need? And if we sense it, it's in some way that child needs what I often call the two wings of presence. And they need both wings. They need both that we get, oh, you're hurting.

I see that you're hurting. not trying to say oh the thunders that's nothing it's like i get it okay recognizing it and the embrace in some way feeling held by care so this is what a child needs and this is what we all need we all need in some way whether it's offered by another person or what i often call spiritual reparenting or we start learning to offer to ourselves that seeing and that caring. So let's take a moment to reflect together. Let me ask you to check in and just ask yourself to let your mind come up with a time recently that you felt emotionally stuck in some way, whether you got caught in feeling anxious or angry or confused or maybe embarrassed or you felt hurt.

but some recent time when things were difficult. Let yourself go to that time in your mind just to see what was going on and remember if other people were involved, what they were saying or how they looked. And if you could pause in the midst of that experience and just check your own attitude towards yourself, how are you relating to yourself?

What was the attitude? Were you mindful of suffering? I mean, in some level did you notice, oh, ouch, I'm hurting. This is hard without any judgment.

Is there just mindfulness? That's one of the wings. Was there any quality of kindness? Usually when we're stuck, we're aware to some degree that we're having a hard time.

But we're not present in a non-judging way. In other words, it's like this is a hard time, but we're very quickly reacting to the hard time. We don't pause with it. In other words, on the heels of our distress, we're usually trying to get rid of it, or else trying to ignore it, or else we're trying to, in some way, figure out what's going on. And in a deep way, we're often adding

what I call the second arrow, which is we're blaming ourselves for what's going on. So this is what I call proliferation. And if you'd like to open your eyes, you can. First step is to see, okay, so how do we normally relate to ourselves? And what we find is when we're having a hard time, rather than pause and in some way regard ourselves with mindfulness and compassion, we tumble into what's next. We tumble into fixing or ignoring or blaming. That's called proliferation. Our in the polyword, which I love, is papon. Isn't that a great word? Papancha?

You can roll it rolls right off your lips. Papancha. So we've, it proliferates. We don't pause and say, ouch, and this hurts and extend care usually. And the way it proliferates, your particular form of proliferation is very much like the way your parents

treated you when you were young and hurting, usually. I don't like making unilaterals, but it's often some, you take usually the worst of both parents, not always, but we can take in some way the modeling. And so if your parents, you know, found you and having a difficult time, and for some of them, it may have been that, you know, they were very too busy and they just tried to fix it and make it go away. And for others, they might have felt inadequate and gotten anxious and kind of in some way blamed you for what you were feeling. And for some parents, there's a sense of get over it. Maybe they were afraid that you weren't going to be strong

and make it in this world and, you know, stiff upper lip it, right? And then for some it might have been that they perceived us as needy and demanding, and there was some disgust or a shaming that went on. We get the range. The point is, start noticing how you're relating to your own pain. Do you dismiss yourself? Oh, other people have it worse? There's one cartoon here that I brought in.

It's got a little boy standing on a ladder, and he's wearing this mask, and he's got goggles, and he's got this blowtorch, and he's blowtorching into the wall, I need love. And his mother and her friend are sitting having coffee, and the mother's saying to her friend, oh, he's just doing that to get attention. So I talk about the second arrow a lot.

And just to remind you, the Buddha taught that the first arrow is inevitable, that we all get into places where we get emotionally stuck or hurting. There's anger, there's fear, there's difficult situations. That just happens. That's the nature of stress and life. The second arrow is what we add to it. It's the proliferation that says, I'm wrong, I'm bad, that this fear or sadness or guilt or shame is because I really am a bad person. That's the second error.

And so I like the way Jules Fiverr does it. He says, I grew up to have my father's way of speaking, my father's way of walking, my father's posture, my father's taste, and my mother's distaste for my father. It's actually my mother's disdain for my father, which is even worse. But one person put it this way, he said, feelings of inadequacy are common amongst the inadequate. And I bring that in because we have this culture where, you know, we believe that there's things wrong with us, but it's not just a mental idea.

The feeling of inadequacy is very much in our body. So we can't talk ourselves out of it so easily, which is why this training and self-compassion is so revolutionary. I mean, to admit yourself, it's to go right at the root of what I think holds the sense of separate self together. Another way to put it is that there's insecurity in all of us.

And the ego kind of collects around that insecurity and tries to defend and protect and make a go of being on the planet. And we don't like the insecure ego. And yet we all have an ego. So as long as we're identified as a self, we're gonna not like that self. If we remember a deeper sense of wholeness and belonging, you know, if we can remember the awareness

that's here and the heart that's here, then that ego can do its thing, but we're not identified so we don't turn on ourselves so deeply. In fact, the ego is a necessary, we need to operate, but we can operate with a light touch and with humor and our natural spontaneity can still be there because we're not identified with what I sometimes call the space suit self. So another reflection for you then as we explore self-compassion. If you will, close your eyes

again. Let yourself consider some situation or part of your life where you do get down on yourself. And it might be in the way you are relating in a an intimate relationship, or it might be parenting, or it might be the way you are with friends, or it might be a struggle with an addiction or something at work, job, finances. But somewhere that you turn on yourself, that you do get on your own case, that for some, it may be deep, it may be you really can't forgive yourself or something. And the question I'd like you to ask yourself is, what is it that? it stops me from holding myself with compassion. What stops me from bringing compassion to myself? Would there be something wrong with holding myself with compassion? With this simple,

what I call these two wings of just noticing what's going on and regarding it with tenderness, with heart. What stops me? So you can continue to to reflect and if you'd like you can find open your eyes when I do the radical acceptance workshops which have a lot to do with self-compassion and I ask this question the answer that most people find really rings true for them the what stops them is they're afraid that if they're kind to themselves they'll never change how many of you found that you just look that if I'm kind to myself, I'll stay the same.

I won't change. Let me see my hands again, just a second look around. Okay. Some of them feel that if I hold that with compassion, I'll actually have to feel more fully even what a failure I am. Anybody have that one? Some of them say that if I really open to myself with compassion, I wouldn't even know who I was anymore.

Did anyone touch into that? That's just my whole sense of who I am will be shaken up. A few people. The most basic way, as soon as we start bringing compassion to what's there, there can be a sense that we no longer are controlling things. It's almost like we control ourselves with our judgment. We control ourselves with our blame. There's a sense that if I stay on my own case,

maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to kind of strong arm might into being the person I want to be. So then we have Carl Rogers who really taught about unconditional positive regard, who very famously said the great paradox was it wasn't until I accepted myself as I was that I was free to change. In other words, this quality of acceptance and compassion

is the precondition to authentic transformation. That's a very big sense. very big statement that in order for us to evolve, and I come back to what I described about human evolution and cooperation, if we're at war within ourselves, with parts of ourselves, we're not free to keep evolving. It's not until there's that cooperation, that care, that giving of care, that we actually can learn what we need to learn from the parts of ourselves that are in trouble, give ourselves what we need, and keep on unfolding. So then the inquiry is, so how do we do that?

I mean, how when we're turned on ourselves, do we move from that place of self-aversion and this kind of tight-fisted something's wrong and I hate myself to a place of tenderness? How does that shift happen? And I last week began exploring using rain, the acronym rain, as a way of waking up compassion. And rain starts, the R of Rain starts with recognized.

So it's what I mentioned earlier, that we have to first recognize, oh, okay, having a hard time. Last week I told the story, the last class of the woman at a retreat who was really struggling. And as soon as she could remember to pause and say, okay, duca, duca, duca, and duca means suffering. It means discontent or dissatisfaction. If she could even do that, it created some space. And if she could say, I'm not alone. Others experience this too. She could just let the pain be there

in a mindful way without trying to fix it or ignore it or blame herself. That's recognizing and allowing. So the beginning of self-compassion, if you want to do this training, when you find yourself emotionally stuck, is to recognize what's happening. Okay, fear, shame, sadness. anger to recognize it.

It helps to name it. If you want, you can name doca duca, because it's kind of fun. That's kind of a nice language. You can say, this is suffering. And then allow. Can you pause and just let it be there? Just not do anything right away.

Because in the space of a pause, that's where the freedom is possible. Okay? In the space of a pause, you can remember your intention to be kind. If you tumble into a reaction, you won't remember. Does that make sense? Okay.

So with rain, we recognize, allow, create a space. And then with the eye is where we begin to investigate and bring an intimate attention, a compassionate presence. The eye is where we arrive. So I'm going to give you an example of how one woman did that because it's through the intimate presence that we free ourselves. And this is a woman I worked with a good number of years ago. She had divorced when her daughter was four years old, had custody,

and then lived for the next 10 years with her partner. And she was an attorney, and this one was a very busy professional who ended up getting in that tug of war that so many people have of how to balance time, keep moving on a career track and have time with those that we love. and when her daughter was in her early teens that that began where she started going on a wild streak and grade started dropping very very young earlier than many teens she started skipping classes she started smoking pot she just kind of went went wild in her own way very angry at her mother her mother this woman that I worked with was very angry back you know angry that her daughter was very angry that her daughter wasn't cooperating and they couldn't talk to each other without lashing out. They couldn't have a conversation. There's a lot of distance. So when she came to work with me, the first thing I did was what I often do is just had her kind of start naming all the different elements of what was going on and asking her

what the whole experience felt like to her. So she named anger. You know, I'm angry. She's hurting herself and she's making me feel bad about myself. And then she said, okay, and I feel bad about myself. I'm afraid for her. And I'm ashamed. I'm just ashamed of how the turn this is taken, you know, bad motherhood. And bad motherhood's a very deep kind of shame. So this is, so when I asked her the next question, you know, can you just, this is the recognize and allow just name, okay, this is painful. And can you just let this be here? In other words, can you create a space to just sit with this. And she felt like she could do this.

It's a suffering. And then when she started to investigate, I said, what's really the strongest feeling? It was shame. That she felt a deep sense of shame that she was failing her daughter. And the belief, and I often ask this,

when somebody's really struggling, I'll say, well, what are you believing right now? And what are you believing? because always there's a belief in there. Now, this isn't like an analytic process of what are you believing? And, well, I believe my mother treated me this way and that created this attitude.

And then I played it out with these people. It's not that kind of believing. It's a core kind of believing. What are you believing? Well, for her, the belief was, I always let people down. I'm a disappointment. I'm a disgrace.

I let down my daughter. let down my partner. So it's a sense of failing everybody. When we find out what we're believing, the important thing is to then feel it in our bodies. There are a lot of people that spend a lot of time on their thoughts and beliefs, but if you don't come back to your body, you won't go to where the transformation happens.

So for her, I said, how is it in your body when you're believing that? This is all a part of the investigation, the eye of rain. She said it's this deep, not okay place, this kind of hollow, fearful hole. It's in my heart. So I encourage her to kind of just let it be. Allow it, allow it. And I asked her how long she had been living with that,

that sense of failure, that hollowness. And when I asked her that, that's when she began weeping. Because she said, as long as I can remember, I've always felt that I was letting people down. I've always felt that kind of hollowness. that something's wrong feeling.

Now this is what I call kind of the ouch moment where we really get it. For her, it's kind of a soul sadness, the landscape of her life, of having just always live feeling she was letting people down and that hollowness inside her and how much that stopped her from living.

And when she started sensing that ouch place, then grief became the predominant experience. You see, it's layered. As we begin to pay attention, our emotional life unlayers itself. And so when she got in touch with that grief and we said, so what does that place really need and what that place needed was a sense of being held?

And for her, she began to hug herself and began rocking. And she used a mantra or kind of, of words that I've spoken of often. I first heard it from a Hawaiian healer who said that any time he caught himself or anyone in suffering, he would say, I'm sorry and I love you. Those words. And I use that a lot for myself. So this is what she was practicing. She would say, so she just hugged herself and just those words, I'm sorry and I love you over and over and over again. This is the eye of rain. Investigate and then this intimate, intimate presence, offering what's needed.

And when I asked her what she was experiencing after she kind of quieted and put her hands down and just sat and meditated, she said, you know, I feel like I am the holder. I'm the one that's caring and holding the places in me that are hurting. In other words, her identity, her sense of felt identity had shifted. She was no longer the ashamed bad parent, the one that was failing, she was no longer the one angry at her daughter, she was the field or the space of compassionate presence. And this shift is the awakening that the Buddha talks about.

When he says, if you bring mindful presence to whatever's happening, you wake up out of a trance of small self into who you are. So she had come home into a larger belonging. She had stopped the war and arrived again more in a sense of wholeness. The end of rain is sometimes understood as not identified,

not identified as that small failing self. It can also be said more positively that she was back to her natural wholeness or awareness. So let's look. What is the alchemy of compassion? It begins with this willingness to just recognize and be with what's here, this wing of mindfulness,

without judging it. It's like, out, okay, this hurts. Just let it be. And then the second wing, offering kindness, offering care. Now for this woman that I've been describing, in a way I'm kind of describing her embracing her inner life,

that kind of cooperation or caregiving internally, it freed her up to then bring a kind of understanding and presence with her daughter that she couldn't have before. And she was able to listen more. And she was able to, in a very deep way, communicate her fears and concerns for her daughter without a blaming kind of an attack because that always

all that happens when we get angry and attack other people as they defend themselves, right? So she could say what you're doing is causing you suffering and I'm afraid for you but with such sincerity and presence and able to listen that there was a space for them

to begin to connect again. So I asked you what stops us and I think we have a fear like for this woman what stopped her from saying oh I'm being a bad parent okay self-compassion what stopped her initially was

she thought that's not going to help me be a better parent we're afraid that self-compassion's a way of condoning or a way of indulging a way of letting ourselves get away with something so I want to just

speak to that for a moment. In the Tibetan tradition, there's something called idiot compassion, which is, I think, is really a great term because there is a kind of compassion that's not authentic or mature compassion, which is a kind of anything goes. It's like no boundaries, and hey, do what you want.

There's, I read somewhere, this basketball coach at Texas A&M recounted, what he had told a player who receive four Fs and one D. Son, looks to me like you're spending too much time on one subject. So real compassion, actually to get to a real place of compassion with ourselves, we have to actually be with the suffering. It's not a very quick, oh, okay, fine, go do that.

It's like we have to actually contact what's going on inside us. And if we're mindful of suffering, if we're mindful of the suffering of addiction or the suffering of our anger or the suffering of avoiding intimacy of our preoccupation if we're aware of that suffering then there's this discriminating wisdom

that comes that wants to take care that wants to align with our hearts that doesn't want to keep doing things that cause injury now another challenge to self-compassion. One thing that stops us, as I mentioned,

is that we feel like we're going to get away with something. Another is that we just don't feel like we can offer it to ourselves. And there are times that we're so contracted that there's so much of a sense of shame or fear or hurt that we're identified with a young place and there's not the space in our hearts to offer anything to ourselves. We're too young in that moment, to regress. And at those times, it's really important to know that we can bring to mind

whoever we imagine to have the quality of heart and care that can offer it to us. And I'm not just speaking to those of us that have been traumatized. Everyone I know gets small at times. And it really helps to have others in our awareness that can offer us the care, the forgiveness, or the compassion that we can't offer in that moment, either in real time or in our mind's eye. And the latter works. I mean, there have been research studies that show that when someone else hugs us for 20 seconds, the oxytocin released in our body actually shifts our chemistry dramatically.

Oxytocin is the kind of love hormone that makes us feel bonded and makes us feel a sense of belonging and helps to ease our hearts. Well, if you imagine someone embracing you, it has the same effect. Take some practice, but that's the possibility. One man I worked with, his alcoholism had ruined his marriage and had a really big effect on his kids. And when we spoke, it was very hard for him to forgive himself for how he had hurt so many lives. and when we started exploring, well, can you put your hand on your heart? Can you offer some message to the place that you that feels so bad that might bring a tenderness softening? He couldn't.

He was so turned on himself. So I asked him, as I often do, well, whose wisdom, whose love do you trust? And he brought to mind the Dalai Lama. He said, well, the Dalai Lama, I can imagine, can forgive about anything. So he had the Dalai Lama in mind and so he practiced over and over again imagining the Dalai Lama looking at him and seeing who he was

and what the Dalai Lama would see when he could look through the Dalai Lama's eyes what he saw was a person who was incredibly anxious incredibly depressed incredibly lonely and had his addiction had come out of that he had grasped onto the effects of alcohol and then gotten chemically addicted.

But he could see through the Dalai Lama's eyes his vulnerability, that he was hurting. And that gave him more tenderness. He could see through the Dalai Lama's eyes that he didn't want it to be that way. He hadn't wanted to ruin lives. And it wasn't like that made him less responsible seeing that. It actually allowed him to then begin to respond to himself. that he had a basically good heart. So he put his hand on his heart

and he imagined the Dalai Lama's compassion coming through his hands into his heart and that's how he practiced for many, many months until gradually he told me Tara, I realized that it's my own compassion. But he needed that proxy. He needed to bring someone else to mine until he could enlarge his sense of belonging.

This is the evolution of consciousness, enlarging our sense of belonging. So when I work with people, I'll say, well, who do you trust? Who looks at you through eyes that you really think are understanding and caring? And sometimes it's somebody's grandmother, and sometimes it's a child, and sometimes their dog is very, very common. Sometimes it's Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion or Jesus. could be any figure current in their lives or a deity or embodiment of something holy.

And then to practice, it takes a while to let that pathway come alive of sensing that being there and imagining them and sensing yourself surrounded by care. And I use this gesture that I'm doing right now of hand on the heart because touch is so powerful. for that woman who was hugging ourselves and rocking, the feeling of touch actually wakes up the compassion pathways in our brain.

Read you a poem. This is called She Dreamed of Cows. I know a woman who washed her hair and bathed her body and put on the nightgown she had worn as a bride and laid down with a 38 in her right hand. Before she did the thing, she went over her life. She started at the beginning and recalled everything, all the shame, sorrow, regret, and loss. This took her a long time into the night, a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief

until sleep captured her and bore her down. She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree. She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood under the tree and the brown and white cows came slowly up from the pond and stood near her. Some butted her gently, and they looked her bare arms with their great coarse, drooling tongues. Their eyes wet as shining water regarded her.

They came closer. They began to press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed an almost unendurable joy came over her and lifted her like a warm wind, and she could fly. She flew over the tree, and she flew over the field, and she flew with the cows. When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror.

She looked a long time at her living self. Then she went down to the kitchen, which the sun had made all yellow, and she made tea. She drank it at the table slowly, all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked. I started tonight talking about this evolution of consciousness

that it really has to do with enlarging our sense of who we are, our belonging. And in that process, we can either call on our highest self and just have that intention to offer kindness within. And that's this stopping the war. And we can call on our idea and sense of another being and have them and their compassion help us to stop the war so that we can relax back open into our natural wholeness, which is the gift of rain. So I'd like to practice tonight together. We're going to just do a guided meditation on bringing rain to self-compassion. So set yourself in a way of sitting that's comfortable. So you can sit upright enough so you're alert, relax. I might take a few full breaths and let the breath collect you. And you might sense

a situation in your life, perhaps one you already have connected with tonight, where you'd like to find more compassion for yourself. So this is a situation where you're, where you're, you're where you have turned on yourself. It may be in a more slight way of this kind of chronic not enough. Or you want to just pause and just let go a bit, give yourself a break. Or it might be where there's a very deep sense of failure. Where you're not able to forgive yourself

or something you've done to hurt another person. Where it's hard to accept or have compassion where you're caught in an addiction. Maybe it's hard to have self-compassion when you're dealing with physical illness or loss of cognitive capacities. Where do you want to have more compassion for yourself? You might let the situation,

whatever it is, where you turn on yourself or down on yourself, just bring it close in, enter it as if it's a movie that you're, it's right here. So you can go right to the scene where you get most caught, where you get most small,

at odds with yourself, caught in being the judge, or caught in feeling like a failure. And as you let yourself feel that stuckness, where you get caught, this is where rain begins just to recognize, okay, so this is the suffering. This is the fear or the shame or the anger or judgment. This is duca, suffering. Just to recognize it. See if you can allow it, just to agree to pause and love it.

let be. If you can stop the action and pause, this is Dukha, let me allow this and pause this, then you might be able to sense your intention towards compassion, just the intention. So then we begin the eye of rain to just start to investigate and sense, well, when I'm caught in this, what am I believing? Am I believing that I'll never be happy or that I'm ruining my own life, that I'm a failure, that others won't love me, that there's something really wrong with me. It might be that there's nothing that comes to mind. You don't have to go searching really deeply,

but there might be something that just comes up if you invite it. What am I believing? When I believe this or when I'm in this situation, what's it like in my body? If you feel your throat, your chest, your belly, what's it like to be down on yourself, turned on yourself, to have that something wrong feeling. You might let your face express how it feels

because if you let your face take the expression of the fear or hurt or anger or shame, then your body can know it in a more intimate way. This is investigating. Rumi says, don't turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandage place. That's where the light enters you. You sense how it feels to be at war, to believe that something's wrong and feel it,

and sense what that place in you that is hurting, that is afraid, that is at war, what it most needs. What is that place of vulnerability most need? I invite you as you inquire and sense what it most needs, you might experiment and put your hand on your heart or your hand on your cheek, or you might hug yourself, and just explore, you might rock a little, just sense what is the heart. that place need? You would know if it was a child in some way it needed to be seen, to be cared about, to have that be expressed. So I invite you to be experimental right now. And if you're putting your hand on your heart or your cheek, vary the pressure. So you feel, what does it like to actually offer a tender touch? Very powerful.

And if it's hard to sense you holding your own being with compassion, you might sense who you wish could hold you. Just an image of a being that's compassionate that can help you to channel love. Dalai Lama or Jesus, Buddha, the Bodhisattva of compassion, a sister, a friend, grandfather, the soulful look in the eyes of a dog. let the care bathe you.

The most powerful and beautiful part of awakening is to sense if you can receive to let the compassion in. Let it bathe you, let it fill you. So you can begin to be the holder

and the held. You're the space of compassion that's offering care. And you can feel that place in you that has been vulnerable for a long, long time, just receiving. You might ask yourself if you can just relax in that space of compassionate presence. Can I just be that compassionate presence? Can I see and feel this life through the eyes of love, through the heart of love? You might ask yourself, who would I be if I didn't believe that something was wrong with me?

Who would I be? What would my life be like if I didn't feel that something was wrong with me? And then let go into what you intuit, the who you really are. Bro me again. I've gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. the universe and the light of the stars come through me I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival

closing by offering yourself whatever prayer whatever blessing whatever wish most resonates in this moment offering a prayer to your own heart namaste thank you so I honor your presence and your participation

I could really feel the willingness and wish you all blessings that you really commit to the training because it can change your life in a profound way. 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. Thank you very much.