Tara Brach - Part 2 - Trusting Your Basic Goodness

Episode Date: January 18, 2012

2012-01-18 - Part 2 - Trusting Your Basic Goodness - Einstein says the most important question we will ever ask ourselves is, "Is this universe a friendly place?" Do we trust that there is something essentially benevolent or good about this universe? That we are essentially good? These two talks explore what it means to trust basic goodness, and how this trust naturally emerges through cultivating a meditative presence. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

So last week we began a two-part series on what I'm calling trusting our natural goodness. And the inquiry really is what would our life be like for each of us if we had a deeper trust in a sense of basic goodness within us. That's the inquiry. And I began last week with one of the, I think, very kind of profound offerings from Albert Einstein, which was he said the most important question that any of us could ever ask is, is this universe a friendly place? Is this universe a friendly place? And it's interesting because if you think about it,

if our perception is no, it's unfriendly. It's dangerous. There's some badness. Then you start sensing what happens in our body and our mind. if that's our experience. And that's the cause of a kind of perpetual fight-flight reactivity. We get tense and defended, and we move through the day as if something bad is around the corner. So that's the perception if it's unfriendly.

And so our lives are organized around aggression and defense. And you can see that what Albert Einstein said, if that's our perception, it amounts to walls and weapons. And you can see it in a societal way that if there's a perception of there's not basic goodness in us or in other people, if there's mistrust, where do we put our energy and our money?

It's into drones and military aggression. And in contrast, if the world is a friendly place, if there's a basic potential within beings, to love and be loved, where do we put our energy then? If I take the example of drones and aggression, military aggression, it's to putting into social services, into education, into health. We try to help. So most of us have touched within our own beings a sense of innocence or wonder, of love, of wisdom, of compassion. Most of us have touched that,

and there is in some way a sense that there is goodness here, and by extension it exists in our universe. I'm not saying we believe it 24-7, but we've touched it. And when I talk about basic goodness, what I'm talking about is those moments when we touch a sense

that there is a wakefulness, an openness, a tenderness in our being that exists in beings. Another way to say it in the Buddhist tradition is trusting in Buddha nature. That we're trusting that there's some innate intelligence, awareness, love within us. So this inquiry that we're exploring last week and this week isn't some purely psychological let's affirm ourselves and remember that we're good. It's a profound and radical inquiry. Can we begin to perceive and trust that Buddha nature, this awareness that's radiant and loving,

is awakening through our being. That's how deep this inquiry is. That it's awakening through all beings, through life. When our perception is friendly, friendly universe, that this potentials in all of us, instead of walls and weapons, we really emphasize what I sometimes like to call tend and be friend. It's not my term, but I think it goes nicely together, tend and be friend. That's really our inclination. I want to share a story.

Some of you might remember. This is first heard it through somebody I love colleague Sylvia Borsstein who's a Buddhist teacher. And she talks about a man named Phil who is a Buddhist practitioner in New York who describes being mugged at gunpoint. And I'll read you the description. Phil had worked with loving kindness practice for years and then one evening on a small side street in Soho. A disheveled man with a scraggly beard and dirty blonde hair costed him and demand. demanded his money. Phil gave him over $600 that he carried in his wallet. The mugger shook his gun and demanded more. Stalling for time, Phil handed him his credit cards in his whole wallet.

Looking days and high on some drug, the mugger said, I'm going to shoot you. Phil responded, no, wait, here's my watch. It's an expensive one. Disoriented, the mugger took the watch, waved the gun and said again, I'm going to shoot you. Somehow Phil managed to look. look at him with love and kindness and said, you don't have to shoot me. You did really good. I mean, look, look, he said you got nearly $700. You got credit cards, an expensive watch. You don't have to shoot me. You did good. The mugger confused, lowered the gun slowly. I did good, he half asked. You did really good. Now go and tell your friends, you did good. days the mugger wandered off saying softly to himself I did good so would this always work

no probably not right but there's something we can sense in this story in wanting to do good to be good to belong there's some inherent part of us often really buried under our need to prove or aggress or compete or whatever but some deep place that not only wants to be good, that want comes from a sense of goodness itself. We wouldn't want it unless we knew about it. Now, even if we have doubts about our own goodness, our own Buddha nature, we have a longing to trust it. Most people I know, and it's very conscious, have a longing to trust themselves more, to

trust some basic goodness. And to trust that that goodness pervades this universe, that there's some presence in this universe that's benevolent. And I don't mean a presence that's other than us, although for many of us that's a very comforting feeling, but that what we are is benevolence. And what we are is that energy or spirit that pervades this universe. So there's a longing to trust that. And I was having an interesting conversation with my mom, who's part of our Sangha here, was we were driving home last week. And we were talking about how perhaps if we're trusting in some benevolent spirit or awareness, that it's because we want it to be there, and that our longing for it is actually creating it to be there. And are we deluding ourselves?

And so the way I understand that inquiry is there's no way to know, maybe, maybe not. But there's actually something more pragmatic that's more important is what happens when we are touching and trusting Buddha nature? And what's it like when we're really doubting ourselves? Just that in a pragmatic way really deepens all. our wisdom. So I'd like to invite you just to explore that for a moment. Those of you that are here, please close your eyes. If you're listening to this and you're driving, I sometimes think about that. Don't close your eyes. But you can begin this reflection, which is starts with to bring to mind a situation in your life that somewhat regularly makes you doubt yourself or doubt your goodness or

your okayness and it may be in some way that you feel like you've hurt others or you continue to in some way hurt another person maybe some addictive pattern that you feel really caught in food or alcohol it may be some way you feel that you're failing it just feels unforgivable and it comes from some flawed feeling inside you or some way that you get gripped and angry or fear, it just makes you not trust really who you are. Just reflect and sense when you're caught in that, when you're caught in this not okay self, self that feels in some way flawed or not enough. What's it like?

What's the feeling like in your body? How's your heart feel? What's it like when you're with others? What's your capacity for presence, open-heartedness with others? you can just flash on what's true for you. How do you perceive others? When you're feeling bad about yourself, how do others appear to you? Do you see their goodness?

Do they seem trustworthy? And the deepest say, what's your sense of who you are? Move your attention into a different situation, different way of thinking about yourself, where you bring to mind something that does help you to trust your goodness, to trust your capacity to love, to trust your honesty, to trust your connectedness. Some situation it might be when you're with a certain person or a certain spiritual practice that

helps you, certain experience in a certain setting. That's deeper than an ego goodness. It's really a deep sense of your inherent benevolence, you're alive, your consciousness, that there's presence here, that your deep intention is to wake up, to love well. And when you get in touch with that, when you get in touch with the goodness of your aspiration, of who you are, what's that feel like in your body? When you know you want to love and be loved, when you sense your innocence, your purity, your goodness, what's it like in your body and in your heart?

What's your capacity for presence with others when you're with them, when you're feeling good about yourself in a deep way? How do you perceive others? What's the lens you're looking through? In the deepest way, what's your sense of who you are? What happens when you ask that question, who am I? Again, you might ask yourself, how would my life change if I dedicated myself to pursue? perceiving and trusting this Buddha nature, this basic goodness, this loving presence within. How might my life change? Just take a nice full breath and come on back.

So I find it helpful to reflect on two primary pathways that cultivate this kind of trust in who we are. and by extension in the spirit that lives through all beings, because they're not separated, really. And the first pathway is the kind of start where you are a pathway, which is where we might start with feeling doubt or feeling reactive or whatever, and how do we find our way home to trusting when we're caught up in that kind of suffering.

And the second pathway is intentionally directing our attention to goodness, looking for it, bring our attention to it, because our habit is to fixate on what's not okay. So it helps to widen the lens and include more fullness of what's true when we intentionally look for goodness. Okay, so start where you are and attending to goodness. Those are the two ways. And we're just going to review them one at a time, do a little practice with them and see how that goes. The first way, if we just looked around for goodness, we'd end up kind of avoiding and not really contacting the layers of self-doubt. And that's really necessary because most of us, to the degree that we're having a hard time, to that degree, it comes because we don't realize who we are, because we live in a limiting self-story that's telling us, something's wrong with me.

I'm falling short, I'm not okay. To the degree we're suffering, it's coming from in some deep way a self-doubt, an illusion about ourselves. And there's a fear, and it's an illusion about others too. It's an illusion that others are inherently going to cheat us or be dangerous in some ways. And you can think of it with others.

There's this fear, like, what will happen if I put down my defenses, if I put down all the controls, strategies, and the fears I'll get hurt. I'll get stepped on. In relationships, we know it, the sense that, well, if I open up and expose what's really here, I'm really honest about my vulnerability. If I express love and, you know,

just go ahead and let others know how much I love them, what's going to happen. I remember some years ago, there's this really big kind of cartooner. It had two snails that were sitting, at a bar talking. And, you know, one snail said, so I built up my courage with her. You know, it was a romantic setting. Things were going pretty good. So I said, all right, I'm going to go for it. And I got out of my shell and she looked at me and said, ew, gross. You're a snail. You know, slimy. So he

exposed himself and that's what happens, right? So that's our fears. That's going to happen. So are we supposed to then let everyone know our neurotic undercurrents that are day in, day out there? Are we supposed to let people know that? Are we supposed to blog about it? Are we supposed to put our passwords onto Facebook? You know, are we supposed to let everybody into our lives? So these are kind of things. We have these doubts and fears. The world will hurt us. And in a similar way, we're afraid of trusting ourselves because what will happen if I go ahead and try to see the goodness then will I get really indulgent

will I really end up becoming a worse person than I am right now you know will I become careless and narcissistic and take advantage of other people even more so there's this fear that if we don't keep judging ourselves that we'll lose our motivation to change does that make sense

sense? Some of you might remember the story about a CEO of a large company who's greatly admired for his energy and his drive, but he had one embarrassing weakness, and that was each time he'd enter the president's office to give his report, he would end up wetting his pants. So, kindly president asked him to see a urologist at the company's expense, but when he appeared before the president the following month, his pants were again. wet. And so the president said, well, didn't you go see the urologist? And the response was, no, he was out, but I was at a meditation class and I'm cured. The executive replied, I no longer feel embarrassed about it. So that could bring up more fear. It's like, okay, are we going to, you know, make peace

with all our imperfections and not do anything about them, so to speak. So I want to take this moment to say that trusting our basic goodness. does not mean that we trust others won't hurt us. You know, it doesn't mean that we trust we won't hurt ourselves. We each have the basic conditioning towards aggressiveness and defensiveness. And we have conditioning towards delusion that we misunderstand ourselves and each other. And out of that conditioning, it plays out in ways that we can and do cause harm. So trust doesn't mean we think, oh, okay, I can trust myself or another person not to be living inside their delusions and aggressions and causing harm.

We can't trust that. So the response to the question, well, what can I trust? I like the Islamic saying, praise Allah and tie your camel to the post, you know. And another way to say it is that we bring a tremendous mindfulness and compassion to the realm of conditioning, to that ego realm. A tremendous mindfulness and compassion. And hand in hand, we remember, this is conditioning. It doesn't define me. This aggressiveness, this defensiveness, these addictive patterns, they don't define me.

They're conditioning. There's something more, something deeper. This is Choghim Trunpa. It's a Tibetan teacher. He says, according to the wisdom of the Buddha, we are basically good. We possess what is known as basic goodness. Then we develop an overlay of tricks

to shield ourselves from being embarrassed or from feeling too painful or naked, grasping aversion, all the weather system. So we develop this overlay of tricks and these are habitual tendencies but they are not fundamental. We each have this conditioning, every one of us, and we have something more fundamental, which we touch, which is this awareness, this capacity to love, this awakeness that's here, presence. To the extent that we identify with our conditioning we suffer and to the extent that we identify with our conditioning we suffer and to the extent that we that we can remember and perceive and trust this fundamental loving awareness that's here, we're free. So I'd like to say that it all really does come down to identity. It's not about

pretending the conditioning it's not here, it's just remembering who we are. And I heard a beautiful example of this from a friend of mine, a teacher who teaches six-year-olds. And as you know, six-year-old space out and they don't listen and they act wild and crazy and so on. They're not designed to do what we try to make them do sometimes in school settings. And he found that early in his career he'd get impatient and he'd get critical and he'd raise his voice and he'd get controlling. But then he did a kind of process with himself and he asked himself, well, what is it that is really my intention with these children? And his intention, what he found, was really to contact who's there.

He wanted to make contact with who is there. So he came up with a new strategy, which was when somebody was going kind of wild, he'd sit with them. And he'd sit with them for a while until he finally got eye contact. And in that moment, he'd say, oh, there you are. And amazingly, with the eye contact. him kind of acknowledging, oh, there you are, you know, he saw them. He saw the consciousness there. They'd begin to cooperate. Something deeper than their conditioning had been contacted. Do you understand? That that's what we can do. We can, oh, there you are to our own presence, our own loving nature.

Oh, there you are. To the one we're with. Not necessarily in words, but it's what we're looking towards and we're seeing. and we're bringing out. This is the possibility of this path of trusting basic goodness. So there's suffering when we can't make contact with that presence within our own being, when we can't see beyond the conditioning. And the more that in our early history,

with family, with significant caregivers, and in this culture, the more that there was severed belonging, in other words, the more there was a lack of love and affirmation and understanding, the more we get identified with our conditioning and lose contact with that beingness. And to me this is a kind of critical thing to understand.

It's a real natural cause and effect. If we felt cut off, if our needs were not met, we end up identifying with the fears and the wantings that circle around those unmet needs. that becomes the source of our sense of identity. More than that, we identify not just with the fears and the wants, but with all the strategies that help us try to get what we want. That becomes the very compelling center of ourselves.

We forget who we really are. I sometimes talk about the second arrow because it's so much a part of this that think of the sequence, severed belonging, unmet needs. So here we are very young and wanting to feel understood and wanting to feel loved.

And then we come up with these strategies to try to feel better. And what are our strategies like? You know, I mentioned some last week for myself that my feelings of not enough. I moved into an ashram and found that I was a kind of competitive yogi trying to prove myself,

trying to be, you know, the most spiritual, trying to get approval from others and then realizing, I hate myself for my strategies. That's the second arrow. We feel the unmet needs. We try to take care of ourselves through ways that don't look so well to us,

and then we hate ourselves for the ways we try to take care of ourselves. One of the ways we begin to wake up out of this is to understand that the, conditioning we have to try to feel better, to try to win over other people, to beat other people, to get people's approval, to try to feel good about ourselves. It's universal conditioning for fight-flight. It's universal.

The challenge is we take it personally. We take our aggressiveness personally, our anger personally, our lust personally, our defensiveness personally, like it's our particular problem. for a number of years I had a up in my office when I was very active as a clinician if you want to see it after class you're welcome to look it has a little mouse in a mouse hole and he's a psychotherapist okay it has this big cat outside the mess hole kind of leaning against the wall the really sad look he's the patient he's kind of lying down the therapist is saying don't worry fantasies about devouring the doctor are perfectly normal

But think of it. I mean, every creature on earth is killing other life forms to survive. I mean, it's built into what we are. Every creature is busy trying to defend itself. So there's an on-the-spot training that when we find that we are caught in suffering that can be helpful, which is to first say, okay, I'm suffering, I'm feeling bad about myself, things are going off. and second to say other people feel this too other people feel this too

just try saying it and trying to get that it's true this is not so personal and then may I be kind and then may we all be kind because the more you remember all of us the less it's going to feel personal and the less she'll be caught in trance this is suffering

other people feel it too may i be kind may we all be kind there's a a magazine that i love called the sun magazine i if you haven't read it or read from it it's beautiful it's a lot of insights into human nature and one of my favorite stories i shared with some that were here last year is really illustrates this this process well of i'm how we're trying on some level to take care of our own needs and how we turn on ourselves for it. This woman writes, My mother always assured me that unspeakable punishments were bound to befall any child as naughty as I was. If I were used, she'd say, I'd be afraid to go to sleep at night for fear God would strike me dead.

She would speak these words softly, regretfully, as though saddened by her errant daughter's fate. I thought myself unloved and unlovable, not only by my own mother, but by God himself. In addition to threatening me with thoughts of eternal damnation, mother also gave me a fear of strangers, germs, disease, and food poisoning. A precocious and imaginative trial added to the list some bizarre fears of my own, rare ailments learned from medical dictionaries, falling into the wrong dimension, spontaneous human combustion. When I was suspended from my private girl school at the age of 15 for a harmless prank, the headmistress referred to my behavior as damnable. This was no big news to my mother or me.

What was news was that I had the highest IQ and the lowest grades in the entire student body. I took pride in the fact that although I was a dysfunctional underachiever, at least I wasn't stupid. The most devastating words my mother ever spoke came when I asked her if she loved me. I'd just been escorted home by the police after one of my many attempts to run away, so it was bad timing on my part. She answered, how could anyone ever love you? It took me almost 50 years to heal the damage from all her ugly remarks. Recently discussing my eating disorder with my therapist, I related a childhood ritual of mine, intending it to be an amusing anecdote to illustrate how far back my problems went.

I even laughed as I spoke poking gentle fun at myself. It was only when I noticed that my therapist was watching me with sympathy rather than amusement that I became aware of the tears on my own cheeks. This is what I told her. From the age of five or six until I was well into my teens, whenever I had trouble sleeping, I would slip out from under my covers and steal into the kitchen for a bit of bread or cheese, which I would carry back to bed with me.

There, I'd pretend my hands belonged to someone. else, a comforting, reassuring being without a name, an angel perhaps. My right hand would feed me little bites of cheese or bread as the left hand stroked my cheeks and hair. My eyes closed. I would whisper softly to myself, they're there, go to sleep. You're safe now. Everything will be all right. I love you. Can you hear in that story this unfolding, this kind of of karmic unfolding of having that severed belonging, then trying in some way to soothe or comfort, the one that feels unloved. And then, of course, she spent decades being disgusted with herself for eating too much. And yet that eating was this way of trying to soothe and comfort.

That's the second arrow, this way that we hate ourselves for the imperfect but of a way of at least that was the best we could do at the time strategies. What I found in working both with myself and with others, because that wake-up I had when I realized how much I didn't trust myself when I was back in my 20s, is that when we can start seeing that everything we do that we have turned on that looks so bad, all the behaviors, all the emotional reactions and so on, is coming from an unmet need.

coming from some sense of severed belonging, some sense of deep not okayness. If we can track it like that, if we have the wisdom to just really look, then our response is compassion and presence, not an added level of aggression, the second arrow. If we can see that, then we have contact. We can see past and see, oh, there you are. See the one inside that's longing for love. And underneath that longing that is love, we can see. Now, you might wonder, you know, how will it help if I'm down to myself, if I've been failing in some way, caught in an addiction,

how will it help to contact basic goodness to remember that I'm okay deep down? I actually got an email from one person that said, you know, I haven't had a job for a few years. I've lost the last few jobs I've had. How does contacting basic goodness help with that? I still don't have a job. So what I really like to remind us is that the alternative, punishing ourselves, believing that we're little or bad or flawed or not enough only causes more pain.

Punishing ourselves, I've never seen it that punishing ourselves makes us anything but less responsive. to the people around us. In contrast, in the moments that there's compassion, in the moments that there's some remembrance of who I really am, I'm not this conditioning, we actually regain access to our innate intelligence and creativity. I've seen again and again

how when people start catching on to self-compassion, to seeing who they are, they get access to these universal energies of love and of wisdom. And so does it get us a job? Probably makes us more available in some way. Does it heal an addiction? I haven't seen it heal addictions immediately, but I've seen over time that there's no other way to heal addictions

than to recognize the goodness that's in us and stop the war. So I'd like to explore in a few moments of practice. that is when we're caught, how do we start coming home to realizing this goodness? And I'm going to ask you, and you can begin to reflect on this now, just to bring to mind an imperfection, something that you know causes you or another person harm. It could be a way of thinking or acting or feeling. I'm going to ask you to get in touch with that.

And to consider that whatever it is that you really, really don't like about yourself that blocks you from feeling your goodness, whatever it is. And it might be a nastiness, it might be a selfishness, whatever it is, that in some way, underneath it is an unmet need. I'd like to read you the words of Srinar Sargata, Nasaradata. he writes all you need is already within you only you must approach yourself

with love with reverence he says self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself all I plead with you is this make love of yourself perfect

deny yourself nothing give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them you are beyond your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself what he's saying is our strategies whatever our strategy is an addiction that seems harmful

anger proving ourselves it's a sign of love it's just a very immature and misdirected way of trying to get what we want. So he says, make love of yourself perfect. In other words, let it be an awakened love. Let it be an awakened love. See the unmet need.

Offer what it needs to your own being. And discover you are beyond. You are not this ego, not this conditioning, not this fearful self. not this wanting self. You're the beloved. You are that awareness. So in your own process right now, you might sense, well, what is that need?

Underneath whatever it is that feels imperfect, underneath my anxiety or insecurity, my tendency towards addictive behavior, what's the need? Is that part of you needing love? Is it needing understanding? Is it needing acceptance? Is it needing safety?

Is it needing a feeling of belonging? Of meaning? What's it needing? Right this moment, what would that place in you most want? And can you imagine, can you imagine as if your awareness could expand and feel its natural tenderness being able to offer inward? to hold kindly this part of you and offer kindness inwardly.

Sometimes just the phrase that I like so much, I'm sorry and I love you. And if you put your hand on your heart and this is something, if you haven't done to experiment with, just to feel the touch of your own hand, communicating this care to that place that has an unmet need can be so powerful and beautiful. even a gesture of kindness, a gesture, begins to shift your relationship from being the ego self

to being the one who's loving, who's aware, to experimenting, just seeing what happens when you offer kindness or understanding, acceptance inwardly, and what happens with any gesture of kindness to your own being. Can you sense that the sense of who you are shifts? You become larger, more open, more awake. This is how Rumi puts it. He says, 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. Okay, so taking a nice full breath and opening your eyes coming back. So this is the first pathway. This is the pathway of starting where we are and directly sensing, okay, so this is the suffering, this is the feeling of

being flawed or not enough, and bringing our attention to the vulnerability under it and offering compassion. And in that process, there's a shift of identity, which is the key piece. Now the second pathway is intentionally looking towards the goodness. And I think of this in terms of the word namaste, that fantastic namaste, I see the divine in you. That's the meaning of namaste. Namaste is that capacity you see past the mass, see past the ego conditioning to the spirit, that light in each of us. And we offer namaste to our own being and to all beings. This is kind of my way of summing up seeing the goodness. And I think of it, you know, in every relationship,

how it's possible. I sometimes spend the most time thinking of parenting because parents become such an essential mirror of their children. And when we focus on what we're worried about for them, what is that mirror to them? And they start worrying about their ego self, their conditioned self.

But if we can in some way say, oh, there you are, then we bring it out. And I thought of that when there was a story, a woman I know from, you know, years ago told me, as she described what it was like when her daughter in her early 20s was having such a hard time finding her niche. You know, she had a pretty severe learning disability, and she was just so worried that her daughter wouldn't find some meaningful work and way of really having a life that she felt good about. And whenever they were together, she'd be tense and she'd be problem.

solving with her and so on. And she asked me, you know, what should I do? Do you think I should pray and just imagine her surrounded by white light and strength and support in that way? And I actually, you know, and I believe in prayer, but I actually suggested that instead she just practice every day spending some moments reflecting on her daughter's goodness, on her daughter's Buddha nature just on the light that was already in her daughter and shining through her daughter. Her daughter was very, very artistic and entertaining. She had a great sense of humor and she had all these beautiful, beautiful qualities. I said, just reflect on her Buddha nature. And she told, and she did that. She took that as her practice every day. And their relationship changed dramatically.

Primarily it became a lot more playful. You know, they didn't, they weren't, they weren't problem solving but there was something in her seeing that in her daughter that her daughter relaxed and she has found her way she's found her way and working with art and with children it's beautiful but I see I bring that up because I see that so much in myself I see how you know my biological controlling mother energy you know it's just I want my son to be a certain way so he'll be happy you know and the difference between that and when I'm just really sensing this brightness and goodness of his being,

it's a really huge thing. So this is really our practice in seeing the goodness, and it's part of the classical meta, our loving kindness meditation, where we reflect with our own being and other beings, including beings we don't know so well. and even difficult people, we really train ourselves to see past the presentation, past what Choggyam Trangpo described as the tricks that we've used to protect ourselves. Oh, there you are to see them. So because the key element, and we're going to, the last few minutes of this will be, on being able to see that within our own being, for many, it's really,

difficult to reflect. If I said each day, take some minutes to reflect on your own Buddha nature, it seems difficult. And so I just want to share a few things of what work for me. And the first is that when I'm feeling, when I'm caught in a sense of smallness, it's not just a belief, oh, something's wrong with me. There's a feeling in the body of contraction, a kind of sinking feeling, a sour feeling. So if I start to reflect on, well, what is it that I really want? What do I long for? And if I really stay with that, if I trace that back, like what really matters? What matters and how I'm relating to myself in this moment? What matters when I'm here with you? What matters when I'm with those that I love with my mom, my family? What matters? And if I stay, I stay, I'm

with that inquiry I come to a place of sincerity where I know that if I was at the last few seconds of my life, what would matter was loving presence, coming home to embody that presence, that true belonging that we all have. And when I even say the words right now, I can feel in my body a kind of a vulnerable, tender realness. And I trust myself more in those moments than when I'm in any story. So the way out of the story and back home and to trust is to remember what you long for. Because in that longing,

you'll feel the source of that longing, which is love itself. Longing is calling us home to love. So you come home to yourself by remembering what matters to you. So these two pathways, looking towards the goodness, and when we're really having a hard time bringing self-compassion begins to wake us up to a sense of the presence and the tenderness

that is deeper, more fundamental, as Trunkus said, than any of the waves of conditioning. And I often use that metaphor, that the waves exist in all of us, and if we can remember that oceaness, we're not afraid of the waves, and our identity is not limited to the waves. Sridor Sardata put it this way.

He said, upon realization, you can't really say what happened. All you can really say is nothing is wrong with me anymore. What happens when you say that to yourself? Just what happens right now? There's no need to wait. Nothing is wrong with me. What if you didn't believe that anything was wrong anymore? What if you just stop believing that?

Can you get a glimpse for a moment of what opens up when our realities not crowded by the thoughts of something wrong? The universe opens up. What if you dedicated yourself to trusting more the truth of this presence and this love? What would happen? This is from Song of the Open Road, Walt Whitman. He says, I inhale great droughts of space,

the east and the west are mine, the north, the south are mine, I am larger, better than I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness. So no one owns the goodness. You know, if you get into trusting your Buddha nature and then there's something in you thinking you're owning that Buddha nature, then that's, you know, another form of what Trunfah called spiritual materialism. We don't own the goodness. It's just that goodness is a source of this entire life, including these bodies and these minds. This awareness is the source. So it's part of our evolution.

It's part of the evolution of consciousness to identify with the conditioning. We're designed to identify with the ego. And it's our evolutionary potential to wake up out of that and perceive and trust this awakeness and openness and tenderness that's the truth of who we are. So we'll close with just a very brief, practice in offering our namaste to the sacredness within ourselves and others. As you become still and let the attention go within, begin with this looking towards the

goodness of our own hearts and being. And you might, as I describe, just sense what your intention is, what your aspiration is tonight and this lifetime, just as we began the evening just to ask, well, what really matters to me? If you were in your last minutes or day of your life, what would matter to you? Sensing what you care about. And perhaps when you ask that question, you realize you care about knowing who you really are.

You care about expressing your being with love and creativity, experiencing your full aliveness, loving without holding back, being love. love, belonging to love. And just sense as you connect with what matters to you, the essential goodness in that, that you can feel the purity and light and tenderness of being that lives through you, that lives through all of us. Just explore what it's like just in some way,

namaste, just to honor this light, this inner radiance, and sensing somebody in your life that you care about that's very dear to you. And in the same way, sensing as if they're right here, the look in their eye when they're expressing love, the aliveness that lives through them, what it is in the depth of that being's heart that most matters. Does you sense the spirit that lives through that being, again, Namaste, just sense yourself in some way bowing or honoring,

loving the spirit and that being. I just feel that honoring and loving as a very vast space of loving presence that includes all those that are sitting here, sensing that each is this emanation of tenderness and openness and awareness, unique expressions of the same light, that all beings everywhere, so that you're holding in your heart all beings, and sensing our shared prayer that all beings everywhere

awakened to realize their deepest nature, this fundamental goodness, this loving presence, and that all beings everywhere may live their life, embodying loving presence, expressing loving presence. This might bring a healing and peace to this earth. a healing and peace everywhere. Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered.

If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.