Tara Brach - Path of Sacred Relatedness - Undoing the Blocks to Loving Presence

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Path of Sacred Relatedness - Undoing the Blocks to Loving Presence - We long for soul friends, and yet often engage with each other in reactive ways - caught inside the experience of a wanting, guarded, fearful self. This talk explores practices that release identification with these scales that confine us, so we can remember the sacredness living through ourselves and all beings.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. Over these last few weeks, we've been focusing a lot on relationships, really on honesty and intimacy, evolving our capacity for love and understanding. And the underlying theme is that all healing and all freedom come from remembering our belonging, really belonging to our own beingness, belonging to each other, to this living world. And so we're going to continue in this session to just look at our potential, our potential for

sacred relatedness. And to mention that those who are interested in taking a deeper dive into this domain. I'm doing a six-week program this fall on Conscious Loving. You can find more about it on the home page. I'll begin with a brief story where a woman goes to see a fortune teller and she wants to find a way to contact her husband who passed away recently and she's got much sorrow and a real longing for some precious moments with him. So after some incantations and whatever, the fortune teller says, okay, I'm getting your dear departed husband. Then there's this long pause. He says he can't believe you paid $45 for this.

And so I'm aware that there's a very limp joke and it leads into considering in our own lives, how many moments are we with others? really connecting, we get caught in some old pattern of reactivity or we're simply on autopilot and we're not remembering how precious it is to have moments of presence of spontaneity, of authenticity, you know, real loving togetherness. You know, I was very struck by something that John O'Donohue poet Mystic said. He said, I am lonesome. for all the conversations we never had. And lonesome for all the conversations we never had.

And maybe for you like me, it just strikes a chord that we can sense in our lives the connecting that was missed, especially when there's been limited time, which is actually always the case in some way, you know, with parents or with children who are going to be leaving for school, visiting with friends, to we rarely see, you know, looking back on our encounters, our engagements, and saying, you know, was I really there? Was I living from my whole being? Was I connecting?

A friend recently shared about having been distant his whole life from his father, and then in the last few months of his father's life, that fell away, as it sometimes does, not always. but during those months, he was intentional. They could look into each other's eyes, just being quiet together. There was real presence and they could express love. And he felt both a sadness for those missed moments, the conversations they never had and also a real cherishing.

So what I'd like to do is reflect together on the deep kind of connecting, sometimes called soul connecting. The Celtic word, Anamkara, soul friend. In the Buddhist tradition, in the Pali script, the word Kali Anamita, spiritual friend. And it's in Sanskrit, Hindu tradition, Namaste, seeing the light that shines through each other. It's what Jewish philosopher Martin Buber points to when he says that,

I, thou relationship. and then the ancient Greeks philia. So many traditions just pointing to this potential for sacred relationship. Again, John O'Donohue writes about how in everyone's life there's a great need for soul friends, for Anamkara. He says, in this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. the superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, and you can be as you really are. I love that.

He goes on to describe how the Anamkara experience illuminates the mystery and kindness of the divine. So my sense is that many of us have this longing to relate in that soulful way, the I-vow. and often the longing's not conscious because life wounds can make the possibility seem so distant. My friend that I just described, he didn't assume or imagine that kind of connection was possible. So as we'll be doing, we'll be exploring some of the habitual blocks that get in the way of that kind of soul connecting and the practices of presence, the contemplative reflections that can create the grounds of sacred relationship. And I'd like to share a story. Somebody might remember it. I've read it a few times that I think is really a useful one. And this is Scandinavian story where Princess's parents had

fallen on hard times, financial troubles. And so they raised money from the Dragons Horde. And he asked a small thing in return, their daughter. You might have heard these stories before. They went to the princess and said, well, dear, we've decided on the proper betrothal for you and you are, you're going to be married to the dragon. Okay, so she's a resourceful princess and she's frightened and all that, but she goes immediately to the village wise woman who lives at the edge of the marketplace, finds her surrounded by her dozen or two children and her grandchildren, and she pours out her story. And the wise woman says, well, you want to marry this dragon? The girl says, absolutely not. Then the older woman says, well, I think there's a way for you to do it

that can work out well for you. Here's what you have to do on your wedding night. And so she whispers for a while in her ear and sends her home. First thing you have to do is get a number of wedding gowns, 10 in fact. That was the main. That was the gist. Okay, so here goes. The wedding day comes. All the people are in the court, it's a big celebration, a little tough, but it was finished and they retired to the bridal chambers. And the dragon turns to the princess and says, well, isn't it time to consummate our wedding? And the princess responds, yes, my dear husband, but for me to do so, I must remove my wedding gowns. Is that not so? Absolutely, my dear, joyfully.

And she says, then I would be asking a small favor from you in return. Since I must remove my gowns to be pleasing to you, would you not remove a layer of your own so you could be pleasing to me? So she takes off a wedding gown and he has a few good decorative things on his dragon body. He takes them off. Fine. But to a surprise, he notices she has another wedding gown on, the second of ten. She takes that off.

and the dragons are so used to taking off their scales, you know, reptiles have to shed once a while, he peels a thin layer off. Yes, dear, here we go, and oops, she has another, and as she takes off each layer of the wedding gowns, you know, fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the dragon claws have to dig deeper and deeper into his own flesh and skin to peel off another layer. And then on the eighth wedding gown, she took off, the dragon was taking off parts of himself that were stuck and his form began to change. And on the ninth, it changed more remarkably. And as she took off the tenth gown, by that time, the dragon had pulled off so much dragoness

that what was left, as is often true in such stories, was a handsome prince. And then she took the advice of the old woman from far beyond the marketplace that had the dozens of children and grandchildren and continued a night of wedded bliss. Okay, so I like this story because it's such a metaphor for how meditation transforms us, how paying attention transforms us, that we all have scales. You know, we have ways that we get identified with and possessed by cravings and fears and shame and anger. You know, we all have that scale. and when we're identified with the scales, with those energies, we forget who's behind the

appearances of the dragonists. We forget our, you know, me goodness and awareness and heart. I like this because it's such a vivid metaphor for how meditation transforms us, how paying attention transforms us. We all have scales and we all have ways that we get identified with or possessed by our wants and our fears and our shame and our anger. And when we're possessed, when we're identified, we forget who's behind the appearance of the dragon. We forget our innate goodness and our sincerity and our tenderness and our awareness. So the spiritual path, the practice really is to keep facing the layers of scales. And we're And in the light of awareness, with mindfulness, with compassion, their power, which is really

our identification with them, falls away. And we're more and more resting as who we are, as the awareness and the aliveness and the love that's here. And in our relationships, as we're resting in that wholeness, the brightness, goodness of our hearts shine through so we can have a shared heart space, a shared relatedness. Let's take a closer look at the actual scales that hook us and how we get unhooked. Basic element of all scaliness is this universal perception that we're a separate self. It's the core self-centeredness.

We all have that conditioning. And then the scales form around that, the scales of the grasping to promote that self and the scales of aversion to protect and defend that cell. and the more identified we are with that protecting and defending and grasping, the more disconnection from others, the more we become very solidified scale, drag himself, and others become an unreal other. One of my favorite illustrations is this guy who's sitting at home and he hears a knock at the door and he opens the door and sees a snail on the porch.

and he picks up the snail and he throws it as far as he can. Goes back to what he's doing. Three years later, there's a knock at the door, and he opens it and sees the same snail. And the snail says, what the heck was that all about? So caught in our self-centeredness, our preoccupations, our grasping, our aversion, others become unreal others. And that expression really helps me.

just to sense, because you can kind of use it as a filter, how real is this being to me? And we can sense the more we're caught in our wants or our fears, the less real others are. Okay, so if we take them one at a time, there's the scaliness of our wanting self. And when wanting self is taking over, when we're identified, our view narrows, our perceptions narrow. The example I often share is when a tick pocket sees a saint, they see the saint's pocket. The dragon sees his new wife as an object of desire. When we want something from another person, we're contracted from our wholeness. We're living in our scaliness and we can't see the other's wholeness. One of the stories I like because it matches the ages of

my grandchildren who are three and five. The mother's preparing pancakes for her two sons, the boys, five, Kevin, and then Ryan three. And they begin to argue over who gets the first pancake. Okay, grasping, grasping. And their mom sees an opportunity for a moral lesson. And she says, well, if Jesus were sitting here, he would say, let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait. So Kevin, the older one, turns to his little brother and says, Ryan. you can be the first to be Jesus. You know, we know it. Grasping greed totally natural.

And as we evolve, as we wake up, and as we bring it into the light of awareness, we start sensing how much it separates us. How when we're in that wanting, grasping, greedy self, we don't like ourselves and we feel distant from others. And we also see, as we pay attention more deeply, that there's something deeper than the grasping. There's a longing for a connection and the grasping, the fixating, actually gets in the way. Let me just invite you to, we'll pause here, and do a brief reflection, because we're looking at the scaliness, what stops us from inhabiting our wholeness and being in sacred relationships.

with each other. And so I invite you to bring to mind someone in your life who's an important person to you. And what's it like when you have an agenda with them? In other words, you're wanting them to give something to you. You're wanting to get something from them. So this is an important person in your life and you're wanting either their attention or you're wanting to their approval, you're wanting their affection, you're wanting their cooperation, that's a big one, you're wanting them to do something your way. So just bring that to mind. Check in on what your body and your heart and mind is like when you have an agenda. Just a sense of perhaps being smaller, tighter, less resting in your wholeness. And also,

So, get a sense of what you're seeing in the other, what you might be missing about them, just how it narrows the focus when you have an agenda, small ways and big ways. It blocks in those moments the possibility of true presence and relatedness. And it's the same thing when it's the scales of aversion. When we feel fear, dislike, anger, when we get identified, when we get possessed, they armor our hearts. We know that. They stop us from being fully intelligent, inhabiting our intelligence. And of course, they block honest, authentic communicating.

And often it's in the shape of turning against ourselves, the aversion, and often in the shape of turning against others, the judgment of others. and sometimes it's both. I remember one story. A mom told me about being with her children after this long, hard day at work. She was already stressed and brousaled and she hadn't had a chance to prepare a meal for the family. So she checks to see what they have

and all that's there is frozen pizza. And she's feeling guilty that she's not really showing up as a mom and she should be making, you know, homemade, organic food, whatever. But she announced it to her children. She says, you know, okay, we're having frozen pizzas tonight and immediately the younger son says, I don't want frozen pizza. And then as children sometimes

do, he started repeating it and repeating it, getting more and more upset. So there she is. She turned against herself, guilty mom, bad mom, and she's angry at herself. And she's also, and she's telling herself, it's my fault. How did I spoil them this way? How did I raise these entitled brats? But she's also angry at her son for acting out. Then she cout. Then she catches herself, okay, breathe, breathe, breathe. And she tries to calm herself down and she says in a very, very steady, gentle voice, honey, we're having frozen pizza tonight. I'm tired and that's what we have. It'll be okay. Then her young son with a tear streak face response, okay, mama, but can we at least heat it up? And we know it how much when we're caught up, when we're. When we're

on our own case or on others, we just get small and others get less real and we miss a lot. We're not living from our wholeness. We miss how others might be feeling vulnerable. We miss our own vulnerability. Our heart's not so available. So again, I invite you to reflect just to take a moment and if it helps to take a few breaths and bring yourself right here. You're looking at the scaliness that separates us from others, this time to bring to mind someone that you're judging a lot. Somebody that matters to you, but you're caught in judgment. And take a moment to bring a situation to mind close in so you can sense what it's like

to be with them and be judging them in some way ofversive, critical, blaming, maybe you bring mindfulness to what it's like inside your body and mind and heart when you're in judgment mode, when that scaliness is there. Sense if you're liking yourself. Sense what you are seeing about the other when you're judging, how the mind is fixated and narrowed, just what you're attending to so that as you do you might sense into what you're missing. more is there that you might be missing. Just sense what judging does to the experience of being

connected. So, my friends, we're really emphasizing when we get identified with the scales, when we get reactive, grasping aversion, how it blocks us from inhabiting our own wholeness and being in a heart-to-heart close connection with others. I want to name one other provis. habit that keeps us from sacred relatedness, that keeps us scaly and self-centered. And that's distraction. We might not be directly reacting to the other person, but just distraction. And we're in such a distracting society. And how often do we see people and ourselves looking at screens and airports, restaurants? There's a story of a couple that are in their living room and he's saying, you know, if I ever get into a vegetative state, if I'm ever

dependent on a machine, please pull the plug, at which point she goes over to the TV set and pulls the plug. We, in any moment that we're fixated on a screen, when we're going down those rabbit holes of texting and gaming and emailing and more, We're disconnected from our wholeness and we cannot meet another. There's no potential for that I-vow. We know it how our restlessness and our anxiety, our FOMO, fear of missing out, hooks us. And then the scales of distraction make us unreachable. Again, we're looking at these scales to keep us trapped in a separate cell

and relating to the other more as an object. in contrast to thou, in a contrast to namaste, intimate presence. And you might be sensing for yourself what are the energies that most fully fuel that identification with the scales, you know, that most keep you from wholeness. And we'll be practicing in a bit. But just to begin to sense that, and we'll just start looking at how our practice, practices can open us past the scales. In the story, the dragon was motivated to start peeling off scales even when it was painful.

It was kind of like he was bribed, you know, take him off for no sex. But in a deeper way in order to draw meaning from the fable, he was motivated by longing for communion. So he was willing to start taking off the scales. moves us to take off our protective coverings because they're often feel protective, is that we have a deep yearning to love and be loved, a deep yearning to be love, to be what we are. So if you want to go deeper into sacred relatedness, keep reflecting on that deep aspiration, because that's what energizes and guides us, that compass of the heart, especially when the habit is to stay more comfortable. Okay? So in the story, he had to peel off parts of himself that were stuck and his form began to

change. That's what's possible. And for us, it's not that we're actually getting rid of something. You're not releasing craving or releasing aversion, but you're releasing your identification with them. our wants, our judgments, our anger, this is the metaphor that helps me, they're waves that are there, they belong, they're part of us. But what we're doing is we're opening into the sea of awareness and that relaxes the identification or fixation on the waves. We remember who we really are. And then we can relate and regard the ways with tenderness, with presence.

and that experience of non-identification, of resting in the sea of awareness and having the different waves come through, that's the scales falling away, that there's a sense of lightness, a spaciousness, of an open, undefended heart. So let me ground this a little in a story of how scales can fall off. Recently, I was working with a student who had resentment towards a lifelong friend and that person was not creating any time, any real time for being together. And, you know, even after this person I was working with lost a parent and was going through long COVID still in no real time and it felt hurtful and that person, this person felt rejected. So the scales were very aversive, a lot of scales of blame and a lot of identification with it.

hardened heart and a fixation on what the other's doing wrong. So it was difficult to communicate for her without a kind of passive aggressive guilting. She even couldn't sign emails love. You know, she just wasn't feeling it. And she knew that her vibe was keeping her friend away. She said she actually felt like this pathetic fire breathing dragon who couldn't help herself. you know, she was in her reptilian self and armored. And I think most of us know that experience when we're stuck and imprisoned in a part of ourselves, but we just can't help it. So we worked together and first began with her intention.

You know, I often will frame it at the end of your life looking back what matters about this and what mattered was that to reconnect, to feel the loving. And so then we began to pay attention. You'll sense the flow of rain, recognize, allow, investigate, nurture here, really pay attention to the beliefs that she had, this person couldn't possibly care, I'm not valued, the feelings of hurt, the squeeze of the heart, bringing, you know, putting her hand on her heart, offering care, offering presence, and sensing really deep, very old, way older than this relationship, the ways of hurt. And I asked her a question as she was feeling that hurt. Where's the eye

that's aware of this? Where's the energetic sense of the me that this is all happening to? And she could kind of sense this space behind her eyes, this felt sense of a self, it's like a dense cloud that was the subject of experience. Then I said, okay, now let's call on the sea of awareness, the awareness that's in and through the body, in and through space, that sea of awareness. It's naturally tender, naturally awake. And just begin including the waves. And there was this natural invitation to that eye that was there to open and relax into the the sea of awareness and an invitation to the waves, the hurt places, the upset places, to open and relax into the sea of awareness. And gradually, she was resting more and more in the sea of

awareness, the presence that was aware and holding the waves. She was less identified. And this is the whole piece that she was in that sea of awareness. And there's just more transparency of the waves. more of the light and love of her being could shine through. She had to do a number of rounds, many rounds of this, every time she'd feel triggered and hurt in relating to her friend. But each time she was more stable, more established in that true sense of her being, not the dragon cell. And she was gradually able to view her friend from a larger art space

and to then in actual talking to communicate without blame, which is really the deal. In other words, to name her own vulnerability, which allowed her friend to be more undefended and sharing about her own vulnerability and having to protect her time. So it's like the Princess and the Dragon, each unlayering, there was less and less identification, more capacity for her naturalness, her intelligence, her heart to shine through. So, the ground level training in cultivating sacred relationship is to see the scales that imprison that keep us feeling like we're a small separate cell, to not add more scales of judgment to that, but to see with kindness, to see what's here, to sense

the eye, the phantom self behind it that thinks that something's happening to it, that it's doing something wrong, to relate from the sea of awareness to the waves of experience. I'd like to take a moment, a few moments, to explore this. And this brief reflection is really on opening into intimate presence. and you might choose one relationship where you sense you're either caught in grasping in some way or pushing away, judging. It may be the same relationship as before where you felt that you were judging somebody. Take some moments.

You might feel your intention. Just to explore this with curiosity, mindfulness, kindness. Let yourself see the scales, bringing one interaction into mind where you're really aware that you're caught in the aversiveness or the grasping and just notice the thoughts and the behaviors. And most important, the sensations, the feelings. Feel your heart. Feel your throat, your belly. And if it helps, put your hand on your heart. And just offer kindness.

seeing what's here and often kindness, breathing with it, sensing where the real vulnerability is, and aware of the sensations and feelings of the vulnerability. Find the eye who's aware of this, the me that senses this is happening. Just sense where that eye is, even if you're not sure, just guess, locating it and what it's like, maybe behind the eyes or up behind the head or like a field around the head or maybe deep interior in the heart and throat area, just sense where that eye is and the sense of maybe pressure or fluffiness or warmth or density or coolness, whatever the sensation is. And now widen the attention to sense the awareness that's here. just noticing in and through the body awareness, in and through space awareness, that which is

noticing, awake, intrinsically tender, and from the awareness that you are, invite the eye to open and relax and sense what happens. Invite the eye to open and relax in and as the fullness of that awareness. What happens when the eyes invited to relax in and as the fullness of awareness is all around and throughout? Just let happen whatever happens regarding with kindness, resting in presence. Perhaps you can sense resting in and as that sea of awareness and just notice the feelings of whatever waves are there, perhaps what's left of the grasping, the judging. Perhaps you can sense it's not possessing your sense of being as much, that there's less identification with the scales, that you're more inhabiting wholeness

from that place, since the other, sense how much more you might perceive when you're perceiving from wholeness and sense the possibility of meeting from wholeness finding your way to sacred relatedness if your eyes are closed please open them just coming back feeling yourself right here we can't connect from wholeness unless we're inhabiting our wholeness so this is the first step loosening the scales the identification with the scales so we're resting in a larger presence more in the sea of awareness that is able to be with the waves. I want to close the last part of our time here with a related practice, which is once there's more presence, to directly contemplate the light, the spirit, the soul of another, to sense what

it means really to say namaste and see the light shining through, are to say thou and really sense that sacredness or Anamkara. And I often talk about seeing basic goodness. And I want to say that it's truly an active practice, an intentional practice, because our habit is to see the surface of things, to fixate on the surface. So it's having an intentional way and time and intention to look more deeply. is incredibly powerful. And there may be words.

I mean, you might inwardly whisper, namaste. I sometimes say, we are friends are just looking for the gold. I often use the word thou. I've talked about it more recently, Boover's I thou.

And I want to name that for some word might resonate at all. It might feel old-fashioned or poetic or religious for me it's powerful maybe because I didn't grow up in a traditional religious household. So I'm not sure, but for me, when I bring a person to mine or with a person and I mentally contemplate thou, it really evokes a sense of that, the divine that's living through that life form. It has a sense of holy presence. My invitation

to you is to find the languages, the images, the way of paying attention that helps you open to a sense of a sacred, whatever it is. And it's an inquiry. It's an exploration. I'll give you an example of how it can work. This morning I was meditating and I was bringing my son to mind and I had some images of a recent conversation and a feeling of remorse because I had been distracted. And so the first part of the practice, because that's a scaleliness to be down to myself or being distracted, was to loosen that identification, self-forgiving. It's okay.

It's okay. And that loosened it. So I was more resting in the sea of awareness. and the remorse was a wave in there. That let me deepen my presence in contemplating him and who he is. And I just saw him and I kind of looked at his eyes in my mind's eye and sensed, you know, who is looking out through those eyes? What is looking out through those eyes?

And just sensed eye. It's so poignant, that beingness, that sentient. and I whispered thou and separateness dissolved. There just wasn't a separate me or him. And in its place that mysterious field of tender presence, sacred relatedness. So it's not just my son and not just during deep meditations that I practice, that we can practice. All beings can be thou. We can sense namaste with all beings.

You know, I felt this recently. I was on a working Zoom call with my friend Regent. Bow, you know, the guy who's helping us replace our HVAC was really sincere and dedicated. With the red maple I love out front, the goldfish I saw this morning at the feeder, bow. So it's an intentional active exercise because what we practice gets started. stronger and it's both active and profoundly receptive, a real listening, a real openness. So we need ways of attending fresh and it's natural to start practicing with a couple of people close in and then with people more at a distance, plan to do an inner pause ahead of time in certain settings. It might be as a part of your meditation where when you're closing a conversation

with someone to slow down, or in a moment when there's spontaneous appreciation to pause, when you're feeling stuck to unpack it, and then thou, maybe before sleep to do some reflecting. But then widen it so that you're very intentionally bringing it to, you know, the clerk at the supermarket or someone on the subway or a person in the Zoom meeting, you know, those you see on the news that you don't know, those of difference, all species, all beings, thou, there's such an importance to cultivating sacred relatedness in our world, kinship with all beings, it's really the fate of our world depends on us doing it. You know, I think of some years ago, maybe five years ago, Amnesty International created a video

and it recorded an experiment. It was based on the theory that four minutes of uninterrupted eye contact can increase intimacy. So they paired refugees from Syria, Somalia, maybe another country, with people from Belgium, Italy, Germany, Poland, UK. And it's so powerful to watch this video. It's called Look Beyond Borders. I really invite you to check it out because I can't. watch it without crying and I watch it a lot because I like to cry because I like to see what's

possible. I like to see sacred relatedness emerge. So you watch this and you see people meeting for the first time and they're naturally awkward at first and the scales drop away. And by the end, they're so open and undefended and there's the soft words and the holding hands and the tears and the hugs and the laughter and the play, some younger children playing. Just so beautiful that the eyes can be the window of a soul and as you move through the day, it may not be four minutes of structured silence, but I think of that man with his father at the end of his life and they were okay being quiet and looking into each other's eyes. That's possible. And it can have to in really any moment we're paying attention and something in us looks to see thou, looks to see

the sacred. Serena Sargadata, one of my favorite teachers, he's passed. He says, when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it or you're afraid of it. When you know beyond all doubting that the same life awareness flows through all that is, and you are that life, you are that awareness. You will love all naturally and spontaneously. So let us close together. We will do a practice. This reflection is on nourishing sacred relationships. and a way to begin is to take a moment just to get here. Take a moment to relax any obvious tension in the body, see what wants to let go a little.

You might smile into your heart and feel your intention for an awake heart. And bring to mind a benefactor, and that's someone who's shown you a lot of kindness, helped you in some way, inspired you. someone who's easy to feel appreciation and gratitude towards. And just sense looking at them, quiet presence, looking at them, then looking at you, see who's behind the eyes. You might mentally whisper, thou, or namaste,

are we our friends, or whatever words might deepen that sense of what's here. and sense that relaxing open, the dissolving into the field, that mysterious field of sacred relationship, and including in that field now someone dear who's a member of your family or friend. And notice how this can happen spontaneously, that you bring them a little closer, and you sense looking into each other's eyes and the awareness behind the eyes. and just saying bow or namaste are we our friends and really sensing into the goodness of their being their longing to love and be love to be love and sense that spirit that shines through bow it's relaxing into that experience bring to mind someone more difficult

and you might take a few moments to sense your reactivity to that person and totally forgive it, because it's just your conditioning, your waves, reacting to their waves. It's forgive it. Forgiven, forgiven. From that larger sea of awareness, look to see. You might imagine them happy, feeling loved. Look behind their eyes. Who's there? Thou. Namaste. We are friends. Whatever serves. To sense. that basic light, spirit that shines through. Bring to mind a group of difference who you feel concerned for, those who are struggling in some way, vulnerable.

And imagine an individual in that group, sensing their aspiration like you, their longing to love and be loved, to live fully, thou, namaste, that shared few. of sacred relatedness, widening to include non-human animals. They may be wild animals or animal that's part of industrial farming, but choose an individual animal. In the sense, looking at the eyes of this being, life-loving life. This being is life-loving life, wanting to live.

the sentience behind those eyes. And notice what happens when you mentally whispered thou are from your heart, Namaste. We are friends so that you can open the attention wide now. Whatever form appears, human, non-human, sensing the same aliveness living through you, sensing the same basic awareness that you share when you know beyond all doubting that the same life, the same awareness flows through all that is

and you are that life, that awareness. You will love all naturally and spontaneously. Okay friends, again, if your eyes have been closed, please open. It's a joy to be with you and exploring these teachings and practices that can really open our hearts to true togetherness. So I wish you all blessings as you continue to explore and open on the path. Namaste.