Tara Brach - Part 3: A Forgiving Heart

Episode Date: February 28, 2014

2014-02-26 - Part 3 - A Forgiving Heart - Anger is an intelligent emotion, a natural part of our evolutionary design that lets us know when we are endangered or impeded in our progress. But when it locks into ongoing resentment and blame, our heart becomes armored and we lose access to a wholeness of being. This talk explores forgiving as a process of relaxing our armoring and awakening a healing compassion for ourselves and others.

This is the third talk in a series on the facets of universal love of the awakening heart. And we started with loving kindness, which is the response of the heart when we see the beauty and the mystery and the goodness that's here. And then the second was on compassion, and we really emphasize self-compassion when we can really get the suffering within our own beings, the response of tenderness and care. So tonight we're going to be exploring forgiveness, which is the compassion that arises when we have put up some sort of armoring of the heart and the heart starts to melt when we begin

to see the suffering in others. We forgive others when we begin to let ourselves feel the vulnerability that's there. So it's an all-important process in our evolution. and it's a universal one for all of us because our nervous systems are designed when we feel wounded and we all get wounded to tense up and create some sort of an armoring. So we're designed to do that. We're designed to be angry and we're designed to try to protect ourselves from further hurt. It's all natural. And we also have this gift of having this awareness that can be.

and see how we're armoring and see where it's causing harm and begin to soften and open and let go. So forgiving is a part of our capacity. And really to fully wake up, to wake up beyond the separate defended egoic self, it's something that each of us is in some way exploring. And in the Buddhist... The Buddhist tradition forgiveness is considered the precursor to loving kindness, that your

heart just can't be open and flowing with love if you're blaming and resentful and holding against others. So for that reason, I reflect on it often in my own life. I've created a lot of personal practices that have to do with sensing where I'm judging and creating separation. And I try to have it as a theme, you know, as I'm sharing the practices. with others. There's an anonymous quote I like a lot,

which is, who is it that's unhappy? One that finds fault. And we know it. When we're in that fault-finding mode, we're not in a particularly upbeat space. I got an email last year that somebody described watching an improv group and how they were really wowed by

how funny and spontaneous they were. And after the performance, they were able to meet the cast in the background. They're kind of a family group. I mean, they had that kind of family feeling. They really knew each other well. And they talked to people about the secret of their craft of doing this improv.

And that many of them mentioned that the key method was to, no matter what, got thrown at them, to accept what was happening. So in other words, whatever another actor was saying or doing, no matter how wacky or confusing or left field or just off it felt, the trick was, you know, instead of getting irritated or evaluating it or opposing it in some way, which is kind of a rigid reaction, it's by really opening to it and going with it that they could respond in a way that was creative or funny or interesting or whatever.

So the message was really simple. It's that when stuff comes at us, we can either get rigid and we're not going to have a very creative or intelligent response, or we can in some way yield, as with that breath that we just did where we kind of just let it move through us

and then we find a way to move with it that really draws on our heart and our humor and our intelligence. So I like that. I liked hearing about that because it's so easy for most of us to lock into the role, because we're all actors in a play, the role of the victim or the judge. I mean, I don't know many that don't know a flavor of that. I sometimes, somebody years ago sent me a bunch of dear Abbees, and these are

the ones that she admitted she was at a loss to answer. So I just thought I'd share a few of them with you. Dear Abby, I'm a 23-year-old liberated woman who's been on the pill for two years. It's getting expensive and I'm angry that my boyfriend hasn't been sharing the cost. I want to talk to him about it, but I don't know him will enough to discuss money with him. Dear Abby, I've suspected that my husband's been fooling around and when confronted with the evidence, he denied everything and said it would never happen again. Dear Abby, my mother is mean and short-tempered. I think she's going through mental pause. Just one more.

Dear Abby, I have a man I can't trust. He cheats so much. I'm not even sure the baby I'm carrying is his. That's a sleeper, right? So if we're honest with ourselves, the beginning, I think, sometimes of mindfulness, and I've seen this at retreats, is getting almost astonished

and not in a good way at the degree of time we spend judging. Like how many moments in some way are flavored by and really contracted by judgment. It's just part of our daily trance that others are either an irritant or an obstacle in some way to what we want or a disappointment in some way or a threat. So often it's more subtle than that. Often there's just some sense that somebody's falling short, not meeting our standard. And it happens at work and it happens with our closest people, happens in spiritual communities.

There's a story of three monks, three Swiss monks, of the Benedictine order and they're meditating in the high Alps and suddenly a milk cow walks by. The first monk says, hmm, this is Fritz's cow. I'm telling you, it's Fritz's cow. Two hours later, the second monk says, hmm, no really that was Kurt's cow, I'm quite sure. Another two hours passed, and the third Swiss monk stands up, I'm going away, he's angry. I can't stand you guys having an argument around me

when I'm trying to meditate. So we'll do a few reflections, and just so we can have a chance to make this a living practice, my intention always is for myself that I come away from a reflection with some more intentionality about noticing where judgment is creating separation from others.

And so I want to invite you into that. And first you might close your eyes and just take a moment to just do a scan and see if you can do it with curiosity versus another level of judgment. You might sense the people of your life. Sometimes we think of it as concentric circles or whatever, but just maybe those closest in. and just let yourself, it's almost like you're letting your body review it, just sense where you are carrying in some way a layer of judgment or resentment or blame.

You might include as you're scanning those you work with or see very regularly, and you'll be able to feel it, see if you as you scan, you can sense it, it's kind of a felt sense in the body of contraction, of distant, you can feel kind of distance. a pulling away from, a hardening, perhaps extended family, friends. And you might extend it to perhaps those you don't know. Consider some of those that are in the political realm. And since what happens when somebody disagrees, somebody has a really different worldview, somebody in power with a different worldview.

There's a trance-like quality, a very habitual reflex when it comes to judging, just to sense how quickly there's a storyline and we lock into who we are and who others are. So it's an integral part of the spiritual path for each of us to be having this inquiry of how do I create separation? Just to recognize. Now, if you'd like to open your eyes, please feel free. So forgiving is difficult. And the more injury, the more intense the injury, the more challenging it is. Because as I mentioned, it's very natural to build the armoring up, and there's a lot of fear of if we put down our armoring, we'll get hurt.

And so I like very early on to say that, again, that the armoring and the anger that comes up in us is intelligent. It's part of our survival equipment. that the message here is not that getting angry is bad and is going to interfere with your spiritual unfolding. We have to know when we're endangered. We have to know when our needs are obstructed. And so it's like all animals. Anger physically mobilizes us to act.

It immobilizes us to draw wise boundaries and to leave unhealthy relationships, distance ourselves, to leave the jobs that aren't. that are in some way violating our ethics or our sense of who we are. In political and social consciousness, it leads us to act, to protect the earth and to protect those that are getting abused or treated unjustly. So anger is an intelligent emotion. And when people have been violated or raped, feeling the sense of that anger and even a grudge for a war,

while is actually a necessary way to restore a sense of well-being. In other words, we need to kind of strengthen our egoic self before we can really free ourselves and when we've been violated, anger serves. And what happens when it just keeps going and going? This is the whole key point. It's the same with all the forms of stress, the fight, flight, freeze. It's like there's a purposefulness and an intelligence. and yet if it becomes our habit, so that we're always going around in that sense of fight and anger, so it's just like triggered all the time, then the stories that are moving through our mind and the biochemistry that's flowing through our body is all going to be of the nature

to contract us and close our hearts. So rather than a signal to take a signal to take a care. It just becomes a chronic habit. There's a, in one psychology journal, there was a picture of a dog with seeing his therapist, who's lying on the couch, and he goes, I bark at everything. You can't go wrong that way. It's kind of like that. So what motivates us to move towards forgiveness? And most people I know value the idea of forgiveness. You know, there's that statement that everybody thinks forgiveness is a good idea until they actually have something to forgive, you know. But most people value it because we intuit in a very deep way.

There's an inner wisdom that recognizes that the habit of blame, the habit of intolerance, a habit of aggression, hurts our body, it confines and narrows our mind, and it really keeps us unfree. Our spirit is unfree. So it's the same wisdom that sees the cycle of wars on our planet Earth and gets that we need dialogue and we need to kind of stay with what's really going on and we need to seek understanding. Well, we get that on a personal level until we're really caught in the clutches

of feeling in some way injured, dised, abused. So this is like a very hot subject right now in the world. There are forgiveness labs at major universities across the planet. And there's a lot of science on it now that forgiving is linked to reduced blood pressure, stress hormone levels, less pain, less depression, fewer relapses and substance abuse, greater sense of energy, resilience. So there's all this kind of correlation between well-being and forgiving. And I think perhaps for me and for us tonight the most basic is our sense of identity.

That when we're not forgiving, when there's resentment and blame, we're living in a very confined and small-minded and narrow sense of who we are. we don't really like ourselves. And we can't feel connected to other people. Because when the heart is closed in one direction towards one person, you can't turn around and be with your other good friend and all of a sudden be wide open and available and tender and vulnerable. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Okay. Well, let's reflect again. Let's take a moment, if you will. As you close your eyes, let it be a real pause. And so you're coming back at the knack of saying, okay, right here, this breath, this moment. And you might sense, scan around and sense if there's one person in particular that you have a very regular sense of resentment towards, where you just find you're kind of chronically angry or annoyed or disappointed or judging and investigate it a little.

You might even sense something that typically triggers you what that person's doing, saying, how they're acting. And to help you get in touch, kind of exaggerate maybe, and exaggerate in your mind what your mind is saying or thinking or feeling about that person. And sense how it is in your body. When you're in that stance of resentment or judgment, feel your throat, your chest, your belly. See if you can let your face assume the look, feel it from the inside out of you when you're judging. Feel what your mind feels like. Just notice your sense of yourself. What's it like? Can you sense that it's just like one fragment of your being that you're kind of locked in? Can you sense connection with other people when you're in this, when you're fully in it?

Are you also judging yourself at the same time? Just notice that. Is there self-average? conversion going on at the same time in some way. So just to take a few breaths and you might listen to sound, feel sensations in your hands, soften your face, relax your heart a little, come back, so you're shifting states on purpose. The word trance, it's a good word, because it really, it's what happens. When we get into a reactive state, where there's certain kinds of thoughts and a certain biochemical cocktail that we're living from, in those moments, we're living from a fragment of who we are. We're in a trance state.

We're in a kind of dreamlike, narrowed, contracted version of who we are, and we're forgetting the larger reality in those moments. We are not connected with our creativity. We're not connected with the full flow of aliveness. we're certainly not connected with our tenderness, we are cut off from wholeness. It's a trance. And when we look out from that place,

when we're in that egoic, resentful place, what we see out there are other egos. We can just see the mask. We can't see behind it because our perceptiveness is cut off. If you think of it in terms of the brain, we are cut off from the compassion. network in the brain. We're in fight, flight, freeze. So when we're confined to that place, we don't have access to these facets of heart that we've been exploring these weeks. And next

week we're going to be exploring the freedom of joy. This is Charlotte Joko Beck. And she says, our failure to know joy is directly linked to our inability to forgive. Our failure to no joy. Our failure to no joy, and you can say also to know compassion or to know loving kindness, is directly linked to our inability to forgive. And again, by forgiving, I don't mean that some major violation has happened, a major abuse, and there's this anger that we've kind of let go, let go. But all the little ways we move through life and have our little judgments that keep us in some way apart from and superior to or putting down another.

That's part of the armoring too. The process of forgiving is the movement of the heart to reopen, to relax that boundary and barrier and to not shut off our caring.

So I want to look more closely at the process of forgiving and just say that there's a few key pieces. And the first key piece is that there's some intention, that there's some willingness towards presence. And in that that we say,

okay, so I'm running this story of blame. I have this narrative of how another person's doing it wrong. We start noticing, let's say you just let your focus be on one person in your life right now. Maybe you'll leave this class, and you'll have one person you want to see if you can step out of the transatl, of blame a little, you start noticing how often you're running the story. And the first step is to be able to step out of the story and feel what's underneath it in your body. Okay, if I'm not going to be running this story of blame, what is it that I'm, what, what

is the feelings underneath that actually keep fueling the story? That is the first big step. So I'd like to, again, we'll reflect together and practice as we go. So again, you get to to close your eyes. And this time, as you pause, I'm going to invite you to pick someone where there's some distance and that you can sense the judgment and blame that comes,

and in particular not to pick somebody where there's some trauma involved because it won't serve you right now in this setting to work on some trauma. It's somewhere that you get triggered, irritated, resentful, perhaps a place that's kind of chronic that you're aware of regularly. And let yourself take some moments to sense the how come,

what is it that triggers you? And now if you are going to say, okay, I'm going to put aside the narrative of you're wrong, you're letting me down, you're bad, I'm going to put that aside, what do you have to feel that's difficult when you put aside the blaming thoughts. If you had to let go of that whole narrative,

what would you be stuck kind of having to feel? You can keep sensing into that. What's there that's unpleasant you'd have to feel if you drop the blaming? But you can open your eyes and just hear from a few people if you raise your hands and speak loudly, what do you notice? Just let's hear it in the room, a little popcorn style.

What's under there that you'd have to feel? Fear. That's not good enough. enough, your own feeling of deficiency, yeah. Sadness. Lack of control. So kind of powerlessness, exactly. By the way, there's no wrong answer.

These are all expressions of our vulnerability, but anything else that jumps out. Lost. Lost time, which is a loss. Yeah. Stuck. Rejection. Yeah. Rejection. Disrespected.

And that feels what? Does that feel like hurt or feel defeated, failure, unseen, abandoned? So, okay, we get the sense. So blame, this is good. This is like you named some good ones. So here we have it, that there's all this vulnerability under there and our blame actually helps us to not sink down into it. to not touch it. It's like it's easier to stay in blame, anger, and resentment than to say,

okay, what's right here? And yet, it's by putting aside the thoughts. There's this thing of, don't believe your thoughts, and don't believe your thoughts, and don't believe your thoughts, and don't believe your thoughts. If you can just say, okay, that's just the narrative that you're wrong, you're bad, put it aside, and what's really there, if we have the courage to you that, That is the portal to actually healing and freeing our hearts. Okay. Now, I want to just say that it's really natural to hold on to our aversion because it's difficult to feel that and because the aversion gives us a temporary feeling of control

and power. And we know that. It's like it's some way we have a sense of efficacy. It doesn't really work. And some of you might remember Bradshaw, who was kind of the one most famous for unpacking shame. And in one cartoon, you have a safari-type guy strung up to tree branches. It's him. Lions are circling around assessing the situation.

The caption. He says his name is Bradshaw, that he understands that as cubs we were brought up in single-parent prides and we're acting from deprivation and shame. I say we eat him. So you can be compassionate, you can be forgiving, and the other might still bite, you know, and it's easier to stick around with resentment. Most people keep carrying it around.

And so it's important to understand a few things. One is that this process of forgiving, of softening and loosening the armor does not mean we put aside wide discrimination. In other words, it doesn't mean I forgive you and therefore you can step all over me. In fact, when we really forgive, we get a certain kind of clarity that forgives

and knows that we need to take care of ourselves and others. You can forgive and yet be absolutely committed to never letting that harm happen again to yourself or in a political way. You can be forgiving of certain people in power, but absolutely dedicate yourself to the change believe in. Forgiving is a movement of the heart to let go of the hatred, of the armoring that really keeps us from our wholeness. So let's look a little bit further. We've gotten

to the step of you, kind of let go of some of the narrative and you open, and maybe sharing a story of one woman I worked with some years back now that really, really touched me because she had found out that her husband had had repeated affairs and she was in a rage, she felt kind of like a murderous rage, and this lying bastard, how could he do it to me, how could he do it to the kids? And then she basically asked me,

how am I supposed to let go of my anger and forgive him? And my first response was, don't even try. In fact, the anger is a starting place, honor it, respect the anger. Now that doesn't mean that you spend the next 10 years believing the angry thoughts because that is hell. That's prison. But you let the anger be a place of attention.

So that's where we started in working together of bringing her attention to the anger and really basically said feel it as fully as you want to feel it. Just let it rip, you know, just let it be there. And she let it be as big as it was and it kind of filled the room. room and I was in Bethesda then, that's where I had my office in, filling the room, filling Bethesda and it kind of spread across the East Coast like this wildfire, you know, and then across all the continents until it was like, you know, it's huge rage, really, really big. You know, many of you know the experience of feeling betrayed. It's huge. She let it be as huge as it was.

And then as she started feeling the hugeness, she could feel underneath it's something else. because when we let something be just as it is and we really are present with it, it unfolds itself when we sense what's under it. And under that rage was fear. It was very deep fear. And it was a fear that something's wrong with me, that I'm not attractive, I'm not lovable,

I'm rejectable, and then underneath that fear layered into it with shame, that I'm bad, I'm fundamentally bad. And with that a loneliness, you know, that I'm going to be alone. And I'm imagining that many people can relate to this layering, because it's in a lot of us, that fear of being not okay and that we're rejectable and that we're going to land up alone or we are really alone.

For her, this was the place for bringing that self-compassion we explored in the last week where she just had to keep feeling that the rawness and the pain of lonely, not okay, and kept on putting her hand on her heart and offering, you know, I have different words that I offer myself. She found some words that for her were helpful. And I can say honestly there were months and months that that's pretty much what the process was, was finding that kind of caring presence with herself and having friends helped to hold. that. So it was really after those months of being with that, that she could begin from that

heart space of self-compassion to then look out at her husband through clear her eyes. So she broke the trance by stepping out of the blame, feeling the anger, feeling the fear, feeling the shame, being with herself. Then she could, include her, including, include him in that heart space and she could see what she hadn't seen before. And that was really his own fears of aging and his loneliness and feeling his sense of not being appreciated and that his life was over and, you know, his pain, his suffering. And she was able to be forgiving and she divorced him and they were not bitter because it It wasn't coming from a hating and angry place.

It was just coming from that the trust was broken and she couldn't reenter the intimacy, but she could still care about them. Now I share that and in that case she could create a distance. For many of us we might be thinking, yeah, but it's not like I can divorce my child and my child's where I'm feeling resentful or my parent or maybe we're in a situation at work where we can't leave our job, but there's the resentment. And so I want to say that forgiving is not a one-shot. It's like what will happen is that we'll get offended or feel victimized or judgmental

and the armory and go up, and we'll find, again, that sense of where we feel heard or afraid, be with ourselves, open up, be able to let go of some of the feelings of being armored and tight, and then it'll happen again. And not to look at that like, oh, therefore it's not working or I'm in prison on this one, but to trust that every time you have the courage to put aside the narrative of blame and to touch into where your own vulnerability is, each time you are beginning to become more and more familiar with that compassionate presence that's more who you are. In other words, your identity is shifting.

The more moments we replay are resentment, the more we're actually feeding those neuropathways that keep us in an egoic state. Every time you soften and feel that sense of including another, you're actually waking up into a more whole experience of who you are. Gradually, that experience is something you trust and rest in more than the victim and the judge. And that's freedom. A few more comments on this. For many of us, when there's a wounding that's really strong, we might think forgiveness is really what we want,

but our hearts are so tight and so hurt that it's just not in the car. when we want it. We can't will ourselves. And what I found though is that if there's an intention there, if that wise part of us knows that's where we want to go, we want to be able to let go and open, that intention opens the door. You're already on the pathway of forgiveness just by intending it. Does that make sense? Share my own story on that one. that when I was 27, I was in a spiritual community, and the person I considered really my first teacher was very emotionally abusive to me,

and I've written about it. This isn't a secret, very manipulative. It wasn't just with me. It was with many, many people, where he just misused his power. But for me, it was a major jarring shock because I had never had that happen. I did not have an abusive childhood.

And so to have somebody treat me in an abusive way was really quite the wake-up. But first, I was in reaction. He basically, I had a miscarriage, and he accused me, he said, in front of other people, he told me that my ego had caused the miscarriage, and that was like two days after the miscarriage, and it was abusive.

And so I went through different phases. First I went through a feeling of my own deficiency. I didn't believe them, but a part of me, there was a hook, something, and me felt like I did something wrong. Then I went into, you know, he's bad and he's wrong. And then I'd go back into feeling hurt, like how could that happen? And then into anger. And I, it was reinforced because others were also being abused by him and there were lawsuits and so on. But for a couple of years, the feeling like the victim and then the judge, that kind of swinging,

was very strong in me. And I had the belief that I should be able to forgive. I shouldn't be caught in this. It was like I had a timeline. It was okay to be angry and upset for a while. But then it was enough. But my body and my heart weren't cooperating. It was like anytime I'd think of him, I would feel this surge of anger and want him to get back in some way,

want him ruined from the lawsuits and so on. And it became very clear. I remember one morning in particular that I kind of was praying to forgive. And it became very clear when I felt that same clutching that I could not will it and that it really was this body and emotions are an organic process. I couldn't will it. But I could feel in that sincerity of my intention, it let me deepen my attention.

And so I really started paying attention to the place that felt like the victim. And not trying to get rid of it, but just noticing, okay, so this is the story, these are the feelings of this victim, role. This is my act on earth right now. I'm playing in that role. And then I could feel the quality of the judge, just the way I asked you to, just how it filled to my body. And the more I just paid attention to that, to the feeling of the victim and the feeling of the judge, the more I found I was in this place of the compassionate witness. I was watching it. I was feeling it, but I was larger than those roles. And that was the beginning of the actual forgiveness,

that I started resting more and more in the one who was watching and observing and compassionate towards the judge and the victim and less in the roles themselves. And that's when I could start seeing him through different eyes. I could start seeing, you know, his shadow, underneath his arrogance, there was a kind of self-aversion, I think, that drove him. And, you know, he had a lot of charisma, and he also had a real need to have power over. There was insecurity. But when I could see him that way, I could appreciate where he was brilliant, where he was creative, where he had vision, where he inspired, and also know I would keep my distance, and I would help other people keep a distance when appropriate, and yet I could, you know, hold it all. And I share that

with you because it was really important for me to let it be okay that I couldn't forgive on any timetable, but I could intend to forgive. It really opened the door. The question I often get is, are we supposed to forgive those that really heinous crimes, master murderers and the like, those that cause huge massive suffering. And it's really the same thing. I mean, that those that cause suffering are suffering and our reaction of hatred and anger only creates more suffering in us. Forgiving doesn't mean you let off the hook. If forgiving doesn't mean that you put down your boundaries. It just means you free your own heart. It's like that saying from one, there was a movie where one of the lines was

vengeance is a lazy form of grief. It's a lazy form of grief. It's also a lazy form of fear. It's the easiest thing to do, but we can't heal until we put down the resentments. So I want to share a story with you on this theme, that women that actually Washington, D.C., and it was a story shared by a man who worked for the State Department and then ran a rehab program for juvenile offenders in D.C. And most of the youth he worked with had been in gangs and had committed a homicide. That was his job. So here's the story he tells. as one 14-year-old boy in the program shot and killed an innocent teenager to prove himself

to the gang. And at the trial, the victim's mother sat impassively silent until the end when the youth was convicted of the killing. And after the verdict was announced, she stood up and stood slowly, she stared at him and she stated, I'm going to kill you. And then the youth was taken away to serve several years. in a juvenile facility. So after the first half year, the mother of the slain child went to visit his Keller.

Now he'd been living on the streets before and she was the only visitor he'd had. And for time they talked and when she left, she gave him some money for snacks and the like. Then she started step by step to visit him more regularly to bring food, small gifts. And near the end of his three years, she asked him what he'd be doing when he got out. So he was confused and uncertain, so she offered to set him up with a job at a friend's company. Then she inquired about where he'd live, and since he had no family to return to, she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her home.

For eight months he lived there, he ate her food, worked at the job. And then one evening she called him into the living room to talk and sat down opposite of him and waited. And then she asked, do you remember in the courtroom when I said, said I was going to kill you. He said, I sure do. Well, I did she went on. I did not want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. So that's why I started to visit you and bring you things. And that's why I got you the job and let you live here in my house. And that's how I said about changing you. And that old boy, he's gone.

So now what I want to ask you, since my son is gone and that killer's gone, is if you'll stay here. I've got room and I'd like to adopt you if you'll let me. So she became the mother of her son's killer, the mother he had never had. When I share that, it's not that we all should be like that, or I don't know how I could possibly react if somebody killed my son. So it's not for that reason, it's more, who are we when we're causing harm? You know, we are suffering when we're causing harm.

And who are we when we're hating and blaming those that cause harm? It makes us smaller. And so this is an extraordinary example of someone not staying in the ego reactivity. and becoming larger and helping someone else become larger, more who they are too. And that's the possibility for every single one of us as our intention becomes deeper to wake up out of the judging trance, out of the blaming trance. That's the invitation.

So I do think of it, you know, I started telling you about that improv theater that every one of us has stuff that comes at us. And some of it is truly injurious. And so it's really important to honor that and to honor the anger and the hurt and all the emotions. And if we want the freedom, it's to honor that and to not stop there, not lock in. Keep going. Keep being willing to touch what's under there. To offer yourself kindness, it has to happen first.

not forgive another until you bring that kindness inward. And then you'll find that there is more softness and more space, there's more room, there's more clarity to see past the mask of the other. Rumi puts it this way. He says, very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground, be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. You've been stony for too many years. Try something different.

Surrender. So we'll close tonight with a forgiveness meditation. If you're uncomfortable, take 20, 30 seconds. If you want to even stand, stretch or move, because I want to make sure you're sitting in a way that you feel some ease. And as you close your eyes, I'd like to ask you to begin with the same breath that we did with the guided meditation.

So you're breathing in and just feeling a sense of the breath opening, like even in a cellular way opening to receive, that you're kind of expanding, loosening, feeling the life and the energy in your body. And then with the out breath, just resting and settling and just sensing the space inside and around you,

stillness, resting. So you inhale and open, inflate, expand, yield, and exhale and just rest, sensing the space within and around you, letting everything float. You can even sense it if you just take a certain part of your body, like your hands, just inhaling and feel the joints loosen and open, the hands soften, and exhale and just let the sensations float in awareness. And you can feel it in the heart if you, inhale and just yield and open, just feeling the aliveness, the vulnerability that's there,

on the in-breath, and on the out-breath, just letting be, letting this life float in something larger. We begin the forgiveness practice by sensing where you might have caused harm to another person. Just taking a moment because we all have places in our life where we have injured others with our words, our reactivity, our neglect, our anger. You can imagine and sense that person and the hurt that's there. Staying right here, breathing, and just letting yourself feel the realness of another's pain. You might mentally whisper the person's name and just say,

I see and feel the pain I've caused you, and I ask your forgiveness. Please forgive me. Let yourself keep feeling that breath and staying in. in contact with your own vulnerability, whether it's remorse, sorrow, and again whispering the person's name, I see and feel the pain I've caused you. And I ask your forgiveness, please forgive me. Turning the attention to yourself, sensing if you're holding against yourself for hurting this person or for anything right now.

Just scan and sense if there's something unforgiven in yourself. just with the intention to forgive yourself. You might just put your hand on your heart and just offer some forgiven, forgiven, some words, it's okay. I like the words, forgiven, forgiven, because they're so simple.

And even the intention to let go, to not hold against your own being, not to push your own being out of your heart. Forgiven, forgiven. Then we widen our attention to sense where someone has caused injury to us that we feel a distance from, that we're holding resentment or blame towards, that we'd like to explore being more forgiving with. And again, not to pick someone where there's trauma, but it's just a relationship where you know

that you've been locked in in some way to blame. you felt hurt, irritated, anger, some obstacle. And take some moments to let yourself remember what this person does or has done that has caused the reaction in you, the armoring. What is it really that is so bothersome, upsetting? What does it mean to you when a person acts like that? What does it tell you? There's something you're believing about how this person's relating to you. Is it that they don't see you or they're not respecting you, that they don't care about you? What's the worst thing about the way that they're behaving? What brings up the fear or the hurt?

And as you inquire, bring your kindness to the place in you that gets upset. Very first step, bring it right to your own upset heart, whether it's the feeling of anger, are the feeling of fear, perhaps shame, frustration, just in some way offer a gesture. And again, the hand on the heart can be sometimes the most powerful because you're directly with touch communicating, I'm here with you, that you're with yourself, that you're behind yourself. So you might, again, feel that touch and just offer care. and if you feel like you need some help with it, imagine someone that you trust and love

helping you to offer care as if they're just beaming it in and bathing you the place in you that feels upset with a forgiving, loving, kind, caring energy. It's when you begin to feel that your own vulnerability and upset is held with kindness, that you can look out through clearer eyes. with a more open or soft heart at the other and see behind the mask. Can you see with the other the hurt or the fear or the pain or the suffering that might have that person behave in ways that are upsetting to you? As you reflect on the other person, you can sense your intention to include that person in

your heart. Just let it be your intention. And if you can forgive, sometimes the language, just whispering the person's name and saying, I see and feel the pain you've caused me, and I forgive you now, just mentally whispering that or I see and feel the pain you've caused me and it's my intention to forgive you. It's very powerful offering forgiveness or your intention to forgive. and then letting the sense of that other person kind of fade into the background. So we'll close right now just to feel your own heart.

And if there's any judgment about how you're doing the forgiving, see if you can very gently recognize it and let it go. Just to honor that this is a life process. Just to feel your intention to walk this path. and be very, very gentle as you go. We close with another short verse from Rumi. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field.

I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there and thank you.

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. much.