Tara Brach - "Play a Greater Part" - Bodhisattva for Our Times - Pt1 (2016-11-16)

Episode Date: November 18, 2016

"Play a Greater Part" - Bodhisattva for Our Times - Pt1 (2016-11-16) - During scary and uncertain times, the habitual reflex is to try to find ground by creating stories about what's happening and hardening into us-them blame. This only perpetuates the aggression and violence that is so prevalent in our societies. These two talks are a reflection on how we as awakening bodhisattvas can evolve our consciousness in a way that serves authentic societal healing and transformation.  "There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." - Margaret Wheatley "From bitter searching of the heart, Quickened with passion and with pain We rise to play a greater part. ..." ~ Leonard Cohen Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara  

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. I saw a New Yorker cartoon a while back, and Tarzan basically is stepping out of the hut, and he says to Jane, sure is a jungle out there. And it's what keeps coming to mind to me that for so many these current times it feels jungly out there and in here. And I'm wondering how many of you can relate to that just before I keep going. Okay, just don't like being alone in these things. But yeah, to acknowledge right from the start

that many more than maybe normally in a collective way are living with a level of uncertainty and fear and upset and distress that is very palpable. And the tendency when we get stirred up, and this is for all humans, is that we actually go into what you might think of as a habitual jungle mentality, which is our stress reflex, which basically is to, we get anxious or upset, we start fixating on the future. That's one big one.

We try to sense where we can throw blame as to what's wrong. And there's a kind of polarizing that goes on. And it's happening now. I mean, it's just we're in jungle mentality. And even the New York Times today said, you know, basically posed it as two Americas. Mostly what we're doing when we're in stress reactivity is we're trying to find certainty. We're trying to find some ground again. And everybody, in every article, everything is going on on some level is trying to frame things.

So we have a stable ground, something that we can say, oh, here's what's going on. Because that's what creatures do to get more certainty and security as they try to name what's going on. It gives an illusion of control, right? Many of you are familiar that if you go into Wikipedia and you Google the funniest joke in the world, this is what you'll get. It says, two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing in his eyes.

eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his cell phone calls the emergency services. He gasps. My friend is dead. What can I do? The operator says, calm down. I can help. Okay, first, let's make sure he's dead. There's a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Guy gets back on the phone. Okay, now what? And, okay, so there's real broad appeal to that joke. And the actual truth is, we do a lot, including narrow our lens and get very small and tight in order to have some certainty. We really do a lot for that. It's very hard to tolerate not knowing.

And we're in a time of not knowing. We always are in a time of not knowing. It's just a particular time of not knowing. So, writer Charles Eisenstein put it this way. says we're in a time where the normal is coming unhinged. So the story we've been living in, the kind of society we're in, some of that story is beginning to shatter. And as a society we're entering, again,

this is Charles Eisenstein calls the space between stories. Because when we don't know, we don't yet have a firm story to go into, so we're in that space between stories. And I think that that's a really important understanding because there's all sorts of ways we deal with that. And if we grab onto the next story and act from that, then we don't wake up. Now, we need to act always.

And when I say act, I mean act in our families to take care of our loved ones and we need to act at work and we need to act in terms of our social consciousness to move towards healing and change. We need to act. But the big question is this, from what consciousness that really is the question? From what consciousness are we acting? And we need to really watch because there's such a tendency to act from the habitual old states of mind where we respond to what we perceive as hatred with blame aversion and hatred. So we need to watch. Because do we want to keep the whole game on the same level?

I mean, that's the question. It's like do we want to rearrange the deck furniture or do we, you know, as they say, on the Titanic, do we want to rearrange the deck furniture, do we want to have a real paradigm shift and wake up consciousness? So we need to act and action needs to come from a more evolved consciousness and this is where what we're all here doing, mindfulness training. It evolves the brain. Compassion training, it evolves the brain. You know if we don't know how to pause and deepen attention in the space between stories. We won't connect with the very presence and compassion that can inform intelligent action. That's the challenge. So it means to, we need to pause and

be able to feel what's here. And it's not so easy, you know. One man described going to a retreat because his therapist said, you know, you'll feel better. So he goes to the retreat and it's an amazing roller coaster. Sometimes he has some calm. and pleasant moments. But, you know, he gets caught in the grip of his, he feels the grip of, gripping of fear and he feels the heat and explosiveness of his anger and he's out and he's sobbing with his grieving. So he comes back and he kind of confronts his therapist and he said, you know, you said I would feel better. The therapist nods sage and says, yes, and you're feeling your anger better and you're feeling your fear better and you're feeling your grief better, you know.

So, for me in some deep way, I feel like the trouble, you know, the shadow exists because we have not yet really learned to feel our feelings in an awake way. One of my very dear friends teaching colleague Ruth King writes this, and this is from last week, maybe Wednesday or Thursday, she writes, devastated, heavy-hearted, weary, bruised. What is happening requires that we look, feel, understand, and respond. But don't get too far ahead of now. Don't get too far ahead of now.

Now is enough to digest. Let grief transform you. then make a conscious choice to be a light. To me that really resonated. For a long time I've heard the story about Gandhi, who was known to take a day each week for prayer and meditation, and he said, I need to make sure that my actions come from the deepest, most awake part of my heart.

A day a week. So, in this class and in the next, what I'd like to do is explore how we can really live with uncertainty and insecurity. Individually? It's always individually and societally. You know, how can we really bring a presence to what's going on between the story so we can see the future that we really long for? with awareness, with consciousness, with love, with justice.

But it's how we are now that we'll see the future. Many of you know that Leonard Cohen died last week. So I thought I'd, in honor of him, he writes this. From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain, we rise to play a greater part. from bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain, we rise to play a greater part. You know, in Buddhism, the greater part we rise to play a greater part is really describing the bodhisattva path.

That whatever goes on, whatever happens in our lives, the diagnosis of a malignancy or the divorce and the custody, everything goes south, the loss of the job. whatever happens is considered may this serve awakening may in some way this help me rise to play a greater part may this in some way bring more compassion and wisdom and so in a way if we think about the current times that's the calling is to have it evolve consciousness like can it allow us to manifest our potential, really. And that means can we respond, not react? From an evolutionary perspective which I find for me keeps on helping me, so I share it a lot, the core suffering always is fear of separation. What's going on now where we're feeling, you know, palpably so much distress? There's a fear of separation of being

cut off. There's a fear for the earth, that the earth's aliveness will be cut off. There's a fear for those that are most vulnerable, the danger there in. There's a fear for the heart of our society. I hear from many, many people and there's this fear for, you know, the very fiber, ethical and heart fiber of our society. This fear of separation is in all of us. It's in those that we agree with and those we don't agree with. This is all of us are afraid of separation and loss. And so there's different ways that we respond to it. And the most primitive level response when we get scared, when we feel threatened, and this is the reptilian brain, the limbic system, is to either grasp on to try to accumulate to get more greed. It's how greed

shows up, comes out of that primitive brain stem and limbic system, are aggression. Those are the main ways, hate, anger. This is part of individual selection. This is evolutionary part of fight-flight freeze, that when we're triggered and think something's wrong, that's what we do to survive, to be the fittest. Then the more evolved, before I go to the more evolved, this just showed up recently. at a neuroscience conference today and tomorrow neuroscience. And the person standing up asking our question is actually a huge reptile.

And he's saying, with all due respects, I find your disparaging remarks about the reptilian brain unnecessary. I just thought that was cute. That's the primitive response when we get scared. You know, greed and aggression, anger, hatred. The more evolved response is from group selection And from group selection, it's attend and be friend. It comes from the part of the brain that's saying,

wait a minute, we're going to do better if we collaborate. Collaboration takes us further than fighting. So this is a thing about more inner cohesion and more strength of the group. But it's not all the way evolved because with group selection, you're strengthening your group to then beat out another group. So there's more identity with a larger, wider population, but it's still your group. So it leads, of course, to triumphalism, to the God-Bless America, but the hell with the rest of the world kind of mentality, right?

But it's still more evolved because you're still, you know, you're developing a part of the brain and empathy within your group. The most evolved in terms of, you know, our evolutionary potential in the bodhisopath is when attend and befriend widens and windens. The circles widen to be all inclusive of all living beings. The circles widened so we sense this interconnectedness that nothing's outside of. And I think one of the best expressions of this possibility is from Einstein

who writes, A human being is a part of the whole called by us, by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself as thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures in the whole of nature in its beauty.

So evolution is a widening sense of our identity until it's edgeless and inclusive. but importantly to know, that doesn't mean that we vanquish our more primitive brain. We still feel the cravings and the fears and we still know how to take care of ourselves. It's just that we remember the vastness of our belonging so we can act out of concern for all of us. Now, one of the ways to think about it, I like thinking of the trying brain that we're moving around and we have this potential of vast, inclusive belonging to sense that. And we also have every day the impulses from our brain stem.

And this is sometimes described as the big squeeze and every one of us is living with it. I mean, every one of us has this brain with the reptilian brain stem and also this part of the brain that actually correlates to mindfulness, compassion, empathy. So, you might reflect for a moment because I think it's really interesting and if it helps you to close your eyes as you do it, please do. You might reflect at first by just pausing and inviting yourself right here into the moment, that kind of remembrance of what's right here, the aliveness and presence. Maybe take a moment to sense when recently you felt very present.

and you sensed your capacity for maybe wonder. Maybe there was something beautiful like a full moon that was close by. Or maybe you sensed that goodness of caring for another person like real tenderness. Or maybe there was a sense of gratitude. Some expression of your evolved being. Maybe you were very, very honest with yourself. you had some quietness and just felt your breath and said, ah, I'm here.

So just remind yourself of some moments where you were inhabiting your evolutionary potential of presence, what sometimes I call the future self, which is really the evolved consciousness, it's always here and that we're learning to manifest. Were you cared? Where you were tender? Where you felt a sense of purity or ineffects?

And then take a few breaths and sense also how maybe even today you got caught up in some moments of feeling really self-centered or selfish, judgmental, maybe aggressive, blaming. And if it wasn't today yesterday or three weeks ago, but we're in some way your limbic predominant. and you were caught. Sometimes maybe behaving in ways we really don't like. Let yourself be aware of both of the dimensions you've just reflected on. Just sense it how that lives in your body and your heart that this capacity for wonder and tenderness

coexist with these tendencies to be greedy or selfish or aggressive and that that's just the deal, that's our predicament. And it's so not personal that everyone else that's sitting here and all those of you listening, we all are living with the same predicament, this incredibly beautiful potential of our heart and our awareness and the conditioning that's just plain how it is that plays out. And it's also in the culture. We can see the currents of generosity to those in need, the movement to try to heal the earth, those that are really, I've got many friends that are

going out to Standing Rock, they're being allies and allies to other vulnerable groups, the movement for restorative justice, black lives matter, mindfulness that's percolating now in schools and businesses, there's a lot of consciousness waking up. And we know the limbic forces that are at work that oppress the most vulnerable, consolidate power and privilege, And for many there's an awareness of how we're in a time of limbic hijack. We're in a time of limbic hijack and it's characterized by aggression and addiction and fear and dividedness. That's what it's in the foreground of our attention. And that this isn't new.

It's always been here. It's been here for a long, long time but it's more revealed right now. Especially for those that are more dominant culture and privilege, we've been somewhat buffered from some of the kinds of ongoing. oppression experienced by non-dominic cultures, but it's just more in our awareness. So here's the inquiry and if you haven't opened your eyes, please feel free. Yeah, okay. What evolves us when we're caught in a hijack?

When there's a wave of the limbic of the aggression or fear, the greed taking over, in our own body, hearts and mind, in our personal life and culturally, what really really helps us to evolve in those moments. And I'm going to explore with you two layers, two levels. First, primarily this class and the second we'll open it out to. And the first is that there needs to be a deepened commitment to contact what's been below the line unconscious. And by that I mean some of you are familiar with...

Joseph Campbell has the sense of awareness as this giant, circle and a line going right through it and everything below the line is what we're not conscious of, it's unconscious. Everything above the line is conscious. And it's the unconscious stuff when we're not aware of it that grabs our sense of identity and ends up controlling our lives both individually and societally. So the practice is to wake up and bring consciousness. consciousness to what's below the line. Okay? Second piece is, once we do that, how to sense our caring and respond and act out of caring. How to respond and act out of caring.

First part is really mindfulness and compassion. How do we bring it to what's going on right here? And by the way, when I say what's going, I mean for all of us. This is not about what view you have or how you vote. This is about what's going on inside your body, heart and mind that can be distressing. How for all of us do we wake up out of the grip? A couple of months ago I shared about a healing ritual in Zambia that has been really on my mind this week.

So I thought I'd share it with you again. I heard about this from Michael Mead, who's a renowned storyteller and teacher, and he tells about this ritual whereby if a member of the tribe gets ill, emotionally, physically ill, the belief is, this is their understanding that an ancestor's tooth has lodged itself within the person and is responsible for the sickness. all the members of the tribe are connected with each other, the suffering of one affects the others and all become involved with the healing. So it's never one person that's sick.

It's like the understanding is that it's all woven together. And here's how the ritual goes. Their perception is the tooth will come out as the truth comes out. Okay? Tooth comes out as the truth comes out. And so the sick person reveals all the rage or hatred or lust that they're experiencing. for the full truth revealed, but also every other person in the tribe expresses their own buried hurts and fears and anger and disappointment.

And as Michael Meade describes it, the release happens only when everything comes out in the midst of dancing and singing and drumming. The whole village gets cleansed by the release of the tooth through the release of these difficult truths. Okay? So, for me, when I think about it, the ancestor's tooth is really the suffering of the shadow's side. It's when in some way the fear and anger that's been unfaced takes over.

It's the primitive brain and it's impersonal because it's in all of us. Remember that big squeeze, we've all got it and we all get triggered. So healing happens when we start recognizing, oh. okay, I'm in distress, I'm angry or afraid because something's going on that I haven't paid attention to, that needs to be seen, felt, named. And it can be done in the space of our own mindful presence and it can be done in a collective space. But either way, the process is to experience it fully.

Not to react from it, but to experience it from it. fully first. That's how the brain evolves. Last week I was on a retreat with a hundred people up in a very pretty part of rural Maryland. And anyone here that was on the retreat with us? Can I see by hands? See a couple of hands, yeah. So it was a very powerful place to be when there was a collective shaking in the psyche. You know, it was there we were. everybody's on silence, most everybody had sacrificed their cell phones. We collected everybody's cell phones so they were completely just there they were. And so Tuesday night comes and goes and we were going to just leave out a place, a piece of paper

that anybody that wanted to know the results of the election could. But given what people were experiencing and there was a lot of activiating, activation and distress, we changed the format a bit and for half a morning and people were sitting a lot with many, many hours of silence with their experience but for one half a morning we got into small groups and there were containers where people would just name into the group much like this tribe without the drumming and the singing and the dancing, a slight little difference, would be naming and anything that was named, just it was how is this practice helping you to be with what's right here? What's right here and what's going on? I was in one group

that was very profound for all of us that one woman was expressing fear about what would happen to her Muslim friends and another was telling us that, was telling us that, about her nightmares because Trump is like her abusive father to her. And another person was saying how marginalized he felt because he had voted for Trump and felt that he was being in some way isolated or put down. It was so important to have all the voices. These are all naming the truths so the tooth can come out. Do you know what I mean?

a space that was being held in, and it was held in compassion. It wasn't the content. It was that we were just sharing whatever was true for each person. And that space enlarged us. There was a shift in identity from individually feeling, you know, kind of assaulted and caught in feelings to a sense that there was a place for them. And of course people continue to be practicing on their own. And I think the ongoing process I've been watching for so many is very much like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross describes it. How many of you have kind of noticed that?

Let me say a little more that she describes the stages of grief and they're non-linear by the way but they do have sometimes a sequence of denial like you know nothing's wrong or nothing bad's going to happen to anger to bargaining. okay, how can we work this out, to a depression, and then to acceptance. And when I say acceptance, I don't mean like a passivity, I mean like a brave acknowledgement of, oh, this is how it is. And then we can move into responding in an intelligent way. In that process of being with what's going on for us, there's one particular place of

big developmental arrest where we can get stuck for days and for decades individually and as a society and that's the anger blame self-other bad other dividedness place. So first to say when there's anger and there's anger all over it has an intelligence. It's our most primary survival system saying, yo, there's something going on that could really get in the way of us meeting our deeper needs. It's a call to energize. It needs to be attended to.

And if we get habituated into it and it proliferates into making enemies and we don't keep going, we don't evolve out of, anger, then we don't evolve to awake awareness. We never get to the consciousness that can actually change things. We're just in a place that's going to recreate the cycle and the pattern. One coup takes over, then there's another coup and another. Is there really a big difference? Anger is intelligent and to keep evolving we need to touch into what it's covering over because there's a wonderful saying from a fictional tribe,

but it's a profound truth which is, vengeance is a lazy form of grief. Vengeance is a lazy form of grief. And we have to grieve. Pema Chodren describes how when we get that developmental arrest, we're covering over the soft spot. We're not willing to be where we need to be to really wake up. This is Charles Eisenstein again who I mentioned.

He says, something hurts in there. Can you feel it? He's talking about going under the reactivity, under the reactivity that makes others bad when we're angry. He says, something hurts in there. Can you feel it? We are all in this together. earth, one tribe, one people. We've entertained teachings like these long enough in our spiritual

retreats, meditations and prayers. Can we take them now into the political world and create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex? It is time to do it, time to up our game. It is time to stop feeding hate. Next time you post online, check your words to see, if they smuggle in some form of hate, dehumanization, snark, belittling, derision, some invitation to us versus them. Notice how it feels kind of good to do that like getting a fix. And notice what hurts underneath and how it doesn't feel good, not really.

Maybe it's time to stop. So, to me, this is... a really huge and necessary challenge to up our game, to play a greater part. Every one of us is going to have to work on this. I can certainly say personally, I remember about eight years ago when I committed myself, when I caught myself judging to pause and to practice rain on blame, to really rain meaning mindfulness and compassion, and ask what's going on inside me.

And I now call it this U-turn where whenever I'm feeling in some way and it's usually pretty subtle, lowering another person. It doesn't mean that there's not a wise discrimination of how other people cause suffering. I'm not talking about dropping wise discrimination. I'm talking about dropping hatred, about not dropping it as much as investigating it so we don't live out of it. Okay? So we make a U-turn when we realize, oh, we're belittling, we're doing that snarky thing, which how many of us do? I don't want to ask a hand raise here.

You know, I know, I know, we know. To make a U-turn and pause, and if we did it once every three times we'd start to change the consciousness of the world truly. We have to up the game, really. And it's really for freeing our own hearts to live from a moment. more awake place. I know for myself when Tuesday night I had a hard time sleeping I periodically did use my

iPhone to check in and I went through the night in some kind of semi-conscious mode with my brain red-blue polarization going on in my brain and I'm just naming truth from what I noticed. I noticed the good bad going on,

the anger, the fear, the looking ahead. 5 a.m. comes around And so it was raining, I kind of put on my raincoat and went for a very long walk. And at first I was in this kind of grimness. I don't know another way to say it, just like completely tight. So all I knew to do was to keep staying and staying because that is the invitation and mindfulness. Don't leave. Don't leave into the thoughts of the future.

Don't leave into the planning. don't leave in the blame and keep making the U-turn. So I kept staying until I'd say for the second half of the walk which was probably about two miles, I was sobbing deeply. And it didn't even have thoughts with it. It was just my body registering kind of the suffering to sobbing. So it was deep grief. And then finally that prayer, please may this serve to awaken.

Please may this serve to awaken. of us. So I'm still in process. I try not to take in too much news just enough so I'm with the world. It doesn't serve, gets me too agitated and then when I do get agitated and I notice the habitual way my brain's framing things of bad other. Again, I'm not saying to put aside why just a sermon, I'm saying to watch the heart when it gets tight. I'm just making the U-turn over and over. I'm still in process. But the prayer there is strong. And I invite you just for a moment, if you will, just to close your eyes and take a moment as we're quieting just to sense what's been living in you. Witness in this moment, honestly,

the ways your thoughts have been going, the emotions. And you might ask that question, how might this serve to awaken? You, how might this serve to awaken? Are you might frame it as a prayer, please may this serve to awaken this heart and mind, please may this consciousness awaken. And just notice what happens when, this is the bodhisatt for prayer. What happens when that's holding your experience? May this serve to awaken, all that's going on.

It's not even what you'd call hope, it's just the prayer. It's like a flower wanting to bloom. Please may whatever comes my way, may this serve to awaken. This is the ground level of evolving consciousness, of not reacting and keeping it on the same game and this world needs us to keep waking up. So this is the first part and I'm going to be kind of wrapping it up pretty soon, which is honestly opening to the suffering,

within us and around us. And the reason is because if you're willing and courageous enough to stay, to keep making the U-turn, there's a natural caring that will wake up that you'll then be able to act from and that's the next part. Can we then live from our caring? Can we play that bigger part and respond from care? Margaret Wheatley writes this. She says, there is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about. If we stay in that mentality of red blue to Americas, blame, we don't get down to the caring place. This is where we have to find the space between our stories. I remember when the United States was on its way to attacking Iraq. And I remember being part of a number of people that were doing everything we could,

you know, in terms of not having it go that direction. And every time I would read the paper, I would get so agitated and raged. And I fixed all my blame. There were several very powerful males in the administration than white males that I really felt hatred towards because I felt like they were driving us into a war that would then create ripple of violence that I could see no end to. So I was really angry and then I started this meditation when I was reading the paper whereby I'd sense all that agitation and I'd say okay stay, stay, feel it, breathe with it and then under it I'd find oh, under this anger is fear I'm really afraid for our world. Okay, fear, fear, this is mindfulness, being with it, naming it, being very kind and gentle

with it, and then underneath the fear there was this huge grieving. It was like I was grieving the losses that already were happening, the losses that were going to happen. It was just a brokenheartedness, this layering. And when I opened to the grieving and let that happen, then there was this tenderness of just caring. I just cared. And I remember that after we,

the war started as part of an interfaith protest, a lot of different religious leaders in this D.C. area and a number of Nobel Peace Prize winners and so on were there. And it was not a anti-war protest with, you know, the flailing fists in anger. It was more of a pro-peace where a lot of children were there and the placards were showing care for everybody, for the Iraqi men, women, and children, the American service people that would come over, etc.

It was very caring. And I remember when we got put in the paddy wagon, I remember we were arrested in front of the White House and put in paddy wagons, that the police were also very sympathetic, and one of them was joking about white-collar crime because so many of the people protesting were priests and so on. It was great.

But what struck me was the energy was one of it wasn't warlike, it was really modeling and expressing care. That's what makes change. There's no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about. And you wouldn't be here listening. exploring this stuff. You wouldn't be listening if you're listening to this podcast unless there was a real longing in you

to become all that you can be, to wake up your consciousness. You might have different ways of terming it. I want to be more peaceful. I want to deal with stress. I want to open my heart. We want to be all that we can be. We don't want to stop a developmental arrest. We really want to unfold our being.

And as Gandhi put it and described it, we have to take the time to be with what's right here. We have to commit ourselves to that, to keep making that U-turn so that in the space between the stories, we actually allow that space to be filled with awareness and tenderness. Rumi, there's a metaphor that's, I think, is really useful right here. and it's that often in spiritual descriptions of growth, it's like this mountain and you're climbing this mountain to greater levels of purity and so on. You're transcending.

But actually the truth is almost the opposite that we're going in and in and in. And it's like going down this deep will and finding these universal waters. Every one of us is going in through the personal to the universal. but we're going through all the layers of our collective hurts and fears and grieving to get to that very pure, timeless loving, that caring, that consciousness that we want to live out of.

And that's the bodhisattapath. That's what lets us have a greater part. This is Rumi. He talks about night travelers who turn towards the darkness and are willing to know their own fear. He says, sit with your friends, don't go back to sleep. Sit with your friends, don't go back to sleep. Life's waters flow from darkness. Search the darkness. Don't run from it. Night travelers are full of light and you are too. Don't leave this companionship. in this companionship, this is this bodhisattvapath, we're all on it, different levels of

self-awareness but we're all on it. Everyone wants to love and be loved. Everyone wants to live more fully. In this practice of presence you'll discover that light and connect to the deepest place of wisdom and caring. See, reminders are all over. It's a good moment to pause. We need to act and we will act but maybe it can be from a place of consciousness that really

creates change. So it's in that spirit, I'd like to do a final very brief reflection if you will just to move around. If you want to just take a moment even to stand and stretch you can, this will just be very short though. Yeah so you feel your body. That's mostly why I want to do to stand so you're here and all your your senses. Now, closing your eyes and take a few full breaths and feel the breath in its

natural rhythm. And as you did just a bit ago and as the night travelers do, check in and sense for yourself what might have been under the line and less conscious, what the strongest the darkest feelings have been this last week. And you might gently put your hand on your heart and as you let yourself scan kind of the emotional landscape, you might whisper what you're aware of. Just whisper it and let's feel ourselves collectively, just whispering the truth. the truth like that tribal ritual, perhaps you'll be naming fear, uncertainty, sadness, maybe joy, maybe energy, maybe faith. Just begin to whisper whatever you're aware of, give yourself the gift

of participating, including what's right here now, what's the strongest feeling. emotion, state of heart, mind, it's right here. Including and including, going in and in, sensing the possibility of letting that's touching the heart offer in such kindness to whatever's here, such acceptance. And if you're not comfortable touching your hand on your heart, just sensing that energy going inward, that whatever weather system is here belongs, just offering kindness. You might widen your mind to sense that you're sitting in a space with hundreds of people who are night travelers who are on this bodhisattva path and touching into the truth of

what's here and that you're linked through the cyber fields with many, many, many more, that we're in it together, naming the truth of what's here, holding it with kindness. And in that process, waking up these hearts and minds and as a way of closing you, I sense what you most care about. What's your prayer? What's your prayer for this life and for this world? Our prayers are needed. What is it you most care about?

no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about. You might just commit yourself to sharing your prayer with one or two people tonight, tomorrow and asking them what they care about underneath and beyond the reactivity. What do we care about? And can we act from that? Namaste and thank you for your your attention. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.