Tara Brach - Practical Dharma for Stressful Times

Episode Date: November 7, 2012

2012-11-07 - Practical Dharma for Stressful Times - When we are caught in a stress reaction, we are in a trance that cuts us off from our creativity, full intelligence and capacity to be loving. This talk explores the flags of the stress-trance and three meditative strategies for shifting from fight/flight to attend/befriend. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

It was interesting reflecting on, well, what do I want to talk about tonight being the date that it is right after a major election and not knowing what emotion would be up, whether it would be grief or relief or whatever it was, you know, I wasn't sure. It's interesting a couple of weeks ago we had a post reporter here who interviewed a number of people that were here at this class and myself. And his big conclusion was, this is the grand conclusion from all the interviews, is that, meditators are stressed like everybody else about the season, you know, about what's going on. And, you know, if you add sandy and the weather extremes and that this part of the year is always that very intense speeding up on the way to the holidays, it's stressful. So no matter what state of mind we are in post-election, there's still something about sensing the undercurrents and the speed and the intensity of the season that's really caught my attention.

So I was thinking about Gandhi, who was asked what he thought of Western civilization, and his response was, it would be a good idea. And, yeah, it feels like these are intense times. And when we're caught inside the feeling of being stressed, whether it's excited, stressed or anxious, stressed, that intensity, which will be the theme tonight. We're going to be exploring our stress reaction. When we're in the thick of it,

what we most value, whether we call it kindness or service or creativity or full aliveness, we're cut off some from that. When we're in stress, we're in some form of a fight-flight response that does not let us have access to the dimensions of our being that are really our full potential.

So I'm aware that the word stress is so overused that we forget that when we're in a stress reaction, it's actually a trance state. And by trance, I mean, we're in a trance when wherever our minds are narrowed and confined and we're forgetting a larger reality. And we're so familiar with being busy and pressured and trying to get something done and being tense and being short, it's so familiar that we don't realize that we're living in a very limited part of our being. We don't realize how cut off we are. I think for me the insidious thing about stress is it because it's so familiar we kind of take it for granted it's almost like we frame oh well I'm stressed out right now and I just have to get through the day

and I'll go meditate on the weekend or I'll make it up to so-and-so at some other time it's almost I'm not saying that we excuse it in a good way because I'm all up for acceptance and forgiveness but it's in a way we write it off we kind of just come compartmentalize and go, oh, that's just how it is. And what happens is there's kind of a resignation to a lifestyle that really doesn't allow us to be aligned with what we cherish. There's kind of a resignation. It's the shadow side of acceptance. So similarly, a stress society is in fight-flight. And that's where we see the violence of it. And we saw it in these campaigns,

the aggression, and I think about the unprecedented money spent. You know, here we are, six billion plus later. Was there a real dialogue? Was there any truth-telling? You know, I'm saying this because it's very clear to me that when a society is planning, out from stress, from fear, from fight-flight, it can't take care of those in need and it can't respond in a way that moves our world towards peace. And when we're in stress and fight-flight, we can't take care of our bodies and our hearts and each other. So it becomes a very, a real and powerful place to pay attention to say, well, huge swaths of my life are really caught up in that kind of a cycle.

What would happen if I deepen my attention and started to begin to interrupt some of that reactivity in a healthy way? That's our inquiry. We'll look at it. I'd like to call this Dharma for stressful times, but simple Dharma, not complex, Dharma meaning the path or practices or truth.

It brought to mind as I was reflecting on this a story I heard probably at my first meditation class or something like that where a woman decided that she wanted to go to India to visit the guru. And her travel agent was a little impatient. She said, why don't just go to Florida like you normally do? Because booking flights to India, you get fly across,

and then they had to take this train, and then, you know, it just buses. And it was very far to get into this little mountain site where the guru had his encampment. But she did it. And she, you know, she flew over and she was on the train. And some people knew the guru she wanted to see. And he said, you know, when you get there, you can only say three words. She said, I know, I know, it's okay. She gets on the bus.

And again, she runs into other people. They remind her, three words. She's, it's okay. She's finally standing, she's in the encampment, and there's a tent where the guru's holding court and, you know, a long line of people that are coming for the wisdom. And she's in line and she gets to the front of the line. And the attendance, again, reminder, when you go in, you can only say three words. She goes into the tent and there he is with his saffron robes and his wispy beard. And she looks him in the eye and she says, Sheldon, come home. Now, when I first heard this one, the reason the teacher was telling us it was you don't have to do all this extravagant hoopla to have a profound spiritual experience. You don't have to go to India. You don't have to have a guru, et cetera, et cetera. And to me, it's still really valuable because we have such deep conditioning to feel that if we really want to change, if we really want to transform. how we relate to our life circumstances, no matter what they are, that it's down the road.

It's going to happen only if we have some major intervention from the outside. It happens to other people, but not me. We don't trust our own innate capacity to awaken and really be free, touch real realization. There's some sense that it happened to the Buddha maybe 2500 years ago, but it's this extraordinarily rare thing that beings really discover that unconditional love and that radiance. And it's not like we have to wait and it's not like it's outside of us.

In fact, the only way will ever be free is if we realize it's only right here and it's only right now, like that fullness of arriving. So I like that story for that reason because there's some simplicity to coming home. We're not escaping stress by transcending and going into some wild altered state.

There's actually a very simple homecoming that's possible for every single one of us that's here, for all of us. It's possible when we're caught up to in a very simple way remember the aliveness and the tenderness and the awakeness and the space that's right here. That's possible. Just to take a look at, okay, so what is this trance that we call stress?

I think of it most simply as a chain reaction of thoughts and feelings, a kind of looping that goes on and we get caught in this looping like a whirlpool. we'll have a fear kind of thought and that fear thought of this is something we need to do and we're afraid we're not going to do it right and we're going to miss the deadline sets off fear in the body,

the biochemistry of fear, which generates more fear thoughts that then triggers off more and we are just looping in the thoughts and feelings that have that anxious undertone and they periodically lead to a behavior

that of course gets us in trouble in some way that we judge and then feel more bad about sets off more fear of how I'm going to fail, more thoughts about how it's going to happen, and we loop more. Does that make sense? It's kind of a wildly oversimplified, okay, for now. So the interesting thing is you can interrupt this chain of reactivity. It doesn't matter whether it's triggered from an outside event. You know, we hear a storm is coming and we're afraid we're going to lose power and what's that going to mean? It doesn't matter whether it comes from the outside. Or we start feeling we're getting a sore throat and, oh no, I'm going to come down

with such and such and I miss work and starts from the inside. You can interrupt at any stage of the chain reaction. It could be because you feel the feelings in your body of anxiety and you go, okay, in the stress reaction, going into trance. Or it could be because you start noticing the proliferating thoughts, the obsession, okay, in the fight-flight reaction in my mind. Or you can watch yourself do one of the behaviors you know is coming from a smaller, more driven part of yourself. So you can interrupt at any moment. So there's some key features that alert us to being in trance. Because as I mentioned, it's so familiar. We're so often just uptight you know that's what we call it well yeah I'm just uptight right

now is a lot going on it's so familiar we lose sight of the fact that we're living from just a sliver of our capacity you might for a moment pick a recent time you were stressed like perhaps an hour ago or a day or but sometime when it just you noticed it okay so just think about that in your mind and then I'd like to describe some of the features that really reflect the trans-like quality. So just pick something. And as you think about this time, just see if some of these elements are apparent to you. That when you are in the clutches, when you're caught up in stress, you had a perception of a self who was on her way

somewhere or on his way somewhere. You're trying to get towards something. William James put it this way. He said that we're, and this was what a hundred and sixty years ago, something like that. He said that we live in a perpetual frenzy. It's a ceaseless frenzy, always thinking we should be doing something else. Does that resonate to some of you? They feel like I'm doing this, but I really need to get onto this, always something else, always tumbling forward into the future. So that's one of the pieces that I call it trance because this perception of being on our way somewhere rather than a sense of what's right here. It's narrow, it's tunneled, it's object focused. Okay. Then another facet that's more familiar to most of us is that when we are under stress,

When we're in the stress reaction, there's judgment going on, and it's usually a verse of judgment. There's some complaint about how it is, some oppressiveness, something's usually wrong with me or you or life. Okay? How many of you notice that one? Is that familiar? Yeah. Okay, thank you. So, not only are we judging, there's a standard behind our judgment.

There's an idea of how things should be. and we are clearly it's perfectionistic on some level and we are somebody else or something else is not making it our mind isn't working right our body's not working right the traffic is too much

but mostly it's this idea of how we should be we have an idea of how we should be have you noticed how often we have in some way in our mind how we should be behaving how we should be acting how we should be thinking, how will we should be performing. It's always in the background. There's a church that had this sign up and said, sermon in the morning, Jesus walks on water.

Sermon this evening, searching for Jesus. I was thinking about how there's implicit in our judgments at some sense when we're very stressed out of falling short. It's just there. there's a sense of deficiency whenever we're stressed and I was thinking about I'd seen a cartoon at some point and it went something like it was in heaven and God was

somebody was meeting with God in the afterlife and God was looking very sad saying oh no no that's not a sin either my goodness you must have worried yourself to death

you know so as we say there's a when we're in that stress trance we're on our way somewhere we're not here there's a judgment about how things are going, usually about us. There's a sense of falling short, a sense of deficiency.

And so we're in this whole movie, and it's kind of starring self, right? Most of us go around with this little home movie, always running. And the star, our self, swings between being a victim, like kind of oppressed by the stuff that's going on. It's, you know, it's wrong, it's difficult, it's difficult to experience it. It's happening to me. And then between being the doer, the one who's controlling, the one who's figuring, the one who's actually responsible and to blame for what's going on. Does that make sense? The swing, victim, and doer. And the doer is, it's really amazing how much the doer feels like it's my fault. It's really, it's really big. I have one friend whose mother says that she can only be as happy as

or unhappiest child. You know, that feeling of we're responsible. It's my fault. Okay, so a rabbi has lost his father's watch, a priceless heirloom of great sentimental value to him. He's looked everywhere and then looked everywhere again, and now he's beside himself. So he finally sits down at the kitchen table,

and he prays intently. Dear God, I've been your faithful servant for years. I've done my best to live a good life according to, your commandments. If it's not too much to ask, could you please help me find my father's watch? At which point the watch falls from the sky into the rabbi's lap and the rabbi exclaimed, never mind, I found it. So sometimes blame, sometimes praise, you know. So the core delusion, what I'm really describing are the kind of self delusions. We have this home movie and here's the self who's on her way or his way and doing it and falling short and either a victim or really

either the doer and the core illusion is that the self that this beingness that we are is a self and it's separate from all other beings it's the on my own feeling the separate deficient self and out of that comes all the emotions that are so difficult loneliness and deep fear I mean, all deep fear is that separation, that feeling of being separate. So loneliness, fear, depression, it can never work out. That feeling, shame, something's intrinsically wrong, flawed.

The more separate we feel, the more fear, the more shame. And the challenge is when we have this kind of existential anxiety, when we're caught in that on-the-way, busy, deficient self-sense, is that no matter, matter what we do in our stressed out activity to make it go away, no matter what we do, the anxiety keeps finding a new target. So it's like this free-floating anxiety that's just like a heat-seeking missile wanting to land on something. So even if we check something off the list that's really been causing trouble, vop goes to something else, what somebody else is thinking

about what we did another day. It just keeps finding places to land, which is why, as we continue to explore tonight, we're not going to explore the stress that comes from deep trauma. I'd like just to explore the stress that's kind of more of our habitual feeling of stress and sense how if we can begin to create, interrupt it some, and create some senses of being at home, we can really, from the roots, unpack that deep sense of a fearful separate self. Because it keeps being fueled day in and day out by the way we react to stress. So, as I mentioned, we can interrupt it at any point along the way. So as you reflect tonight, Because as I often do, I'll be asking you to choose places where you find you get caught up in a more regular way.

And sense, well, where might you be able to intervene? And for some of you, as I mentioned, it might be that you'll notice the thoughts, the worry thoughts. And others, you'll feel like, okay, the grip of anxiety, that's familiar. And for others, it'll be when certain behavior really grabs your attention, you're dropping. driving too fast or you start shouting insults to colleagues. You know, it's like when the refrigerator falls on your head, then you start really getting it. But the point is that once we're flagged,

it's possible to stop and step out. And many of you are familiar with the Victor Frankel quote that I probably bring into every other class that I teach because I like it so much. She said that between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. And in that space is your power and your freedom. Now, there's a stimulus every moment that we're reacting. So whether it's the anxious thought or the clutch in the chest

or the insult that just flew out of our mouth, each one of them is the stimulus for the next part of the chain that we're exploring. You can interrupt the chain. at any moment between the stimulus and the response there is a space. Okay? So the first step in intervening with our habitual stress reaction is the pause. That's the first step. So we're going to take a pause right now. Just take a pause. and in the pause, I'd like to read you a poem called Clearing. This is by Martha Postal Wait.

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently until the song that is your life falls into your own copped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue. Do not try to save the whole world

or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently until a song that is your life falls into your own copped hands and you recognize and greet it. So this is the beginning of transforming our stress reaction from fight-flight to attend and befriend. To me this is an evolutionary process that if we can begin to do this with the places that were caught up in reactivity in our daily lives, we're actually contributing to the evolution of consciousness in the world.

So we're in fight-flight, we catch it somewhere along that chain that we've been exploring, and we go, okay, pause. In this moment, I'm going to create a clearing. Now, you can create a clearing. Some of you may create a clearing by taking a month off and doing a sabbatical, and some may create a clearing by coming. And a bunch of us just had a week-long retreat. There are different kind of scopes to what I mean by create a clear.

and they're all really important. But we'll look at right now creating a clearing in just the moment. You can in any moment stop and just create a little clearing right there as a way to come home. It's like children are not the only ones that need time out. Really, you know, we all need time out. We need to get outside of time. It's totally to nourish our self.

to nourish our sanity. Time out is essential. So if we think about science, you know, we have this compulsive thinking going on and the more we keep having those thoughts and having the feelings that go with them, you know, it's the whole understanding that neurons that fire together, wire together, the more we have these neural pathways that are there. So what we're really doing is we're creating a new network. And the first step is that this pause. And there's been an interesting finding in the last bunch of years, and I think it was, the name is researcher Benjamin Libet, discovered that the part of the brain responsible for movement activates a quarter of a second before we become aware of our intention to move. So the part of

the brain that's responsible for movement gets activated before we're aware of our attention to move. And then there's another quarter of a second before the movement begins. Okay, so what does this mean? First, it casts an interesting light on what we mean by free will, right? If the brain's already activated before we even have an awareness of our intention to move, who's in charge, right? Does that make, okay, so that one's there. That's an interesting one. Just we won't go into that one today. But secondly, it offers us an opportunity because what it's saying is there's still a quarter-second space between the intention and the movement. For instance, you've been obsessing about having a cigarette. During the space between the impulse, I need a cigarette and the action, reaching for the

pack, there's room for choice. That is that space that gives us some freedom. And some of you might know of Tara Bennett Goldman, who's an author, and she called this the magic quarter second. and it really is that way that mindfulness enables us to take advantage of it that you can have a thought and something in you can say wait before I say that thing

that will only create distance wait wait before I reach for the refrigerator door just pause wait wait wait it doesn't mean you won't eventually reach for the refrigerator door or say that thing but there's more chance that more of your heart and intelligence can come to the fore and have some influence.

Does that make sense? Magic quarter second. Pretty cool. So the practice then is we start noticing the thoughts or we notice the agitated feelings or we notice that we're just speeding up a lot. And the first step, and this is a three-step process tonight, of being able to intervene and create new neural networking when we're in stress,

is to just slow down or stop completely. In other words, you seize doing things and become still. And that creates space. Now, keep in mind that intrinsic to trance is I'm on my way somewhere. So in the moments that you slow down or stop, you are beginning to dissolve that trance. You're no longer the self.

on the way, and that's a powerful piece. But the challenge, and here's the challenge to this first step, is that when we're stressed out and in fight, flight, everything in us wants to keep going. Have you noticed that when you're on the move, you don't want to stop? I mean, it's like stopping is almost torturous at times, especially if you feel offended or angry or anxious. You want to get rid of that feeling. So it takes a real commitment, a willingness, when the survival brain is saying, do something, to have some wiser part of the brain saying, wait a minute, your training is just stop.

Just stop. Sometimes it takes something in our life that's really dramatic to convince us that we don't want to spend the rest of our lives in this kind of busy trance that keeps us on the surface of our lives, speeding along but not really arriving. steaming towards the destination, the end point, which is death, but not really living the moment. Something has to happen sometimes for us to realize I want to retire from that kind of living. For one woman that I written about described her experience with getting cancer and not knowing if she had even more than a year.

with a very young child, I think her daughter was two, and her mantra became, there's no time to rush. There's no time to rush. She could create a clearing for her daughter because she didn't know how many moments she was going to have with her daughter. And we don't know how many moments we're going to have with anyone that's close to us. We don't know how many times we'll get to be walking in the woods or being by the river or looking at a night sky, we don't know. So to live this life and be willing to pause

when we find we're speeding across the surface and some ways say, hey, there's not time to rush. Just arrive again. To invite herself is the beginning of this first step. And I've taken an awful long time on the first step. So let's see if I can get raced through to the second and third. Here I am, a woman on her way somewhere. So, yeah, let's just practice this one for a moment.

It feels like if we never get beyond it, if we could just pause a little more, what a gift. You might imagine your stressful situation, and it can be one where you don't have much time, so you know you can't take a long break, and that's okay. Because when I talk about clearing a space, it could be one minute. Okay?

It can be one minute. One minute can entirely change your biochemistry. So you might sense, okay, you're in the middle of that situation and imagine it. You're at work or you're in a stressful home situation or whatever it is. And maybe the beginning of creating a clearing is just to name to yourself what's currently occupying all the space. you know, worried about an upcoming event or feeling bad about that conversation or need to get X, Y, Z done.

Just kind of note what's occupying the field. But as you do it, just become physically still. So clearing a space, you notice what's in the space, you name it, bow to it, become physically still. And just find you can use your breath a little to slow and arrive. So it's like you're inviting yourself home. You're just clearing some space to be here.

And you might even notice a space between thoughts. That there's a lot of thoughts, but there's space between them. And it might just be a few moments where you're clearing a space. And again, I'll invite you to listen to the words of David Wagoner in his poem Lost He says, Stand still The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost

Wherever you are It's called here And you must treat it as a powerful stranger Must ask permission to know it and be known The forest breathes Listen It answers I have made this place around you

If you leave it you may come back again saying here. No two trees are the same to raven, no two branches are the same to ren. If what a tree or a branch does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. The first step then, and continue to meditate right here. You've just cleared a space. The first step is to clear the space, which takes you into the second step and this is where you just settle for another few moments. This is called be here now. And for these next few moments, step two is to simply notice what's happening with your senses awake. Be aware of what the eyes are seeing even if the eyes are closed.

Just the spots of black and light. Be aware of what the ears are here and be aware of the sensations in the body and be aware of the breath. So it's clear of space and be here now. And it doesn't have to be longer than this. Okay, opening your eyes. So just to say, again, that you can find yourself in the middle of anything

and say, okay, clear a space. Now you pause, you just notice what's going on, be here now, Now, again, the challenge is that stress feeds itself on thoughts. So your mind is going to want to keep going. It feeds itself on a narrative. And the whole nature of stress is this default network in the brain that keeps presenting an idea of a self who's trying to get things done. So to step out of the story, just keep your senses right in the foreground. Just keep. coming back to your senses again and again. Now the support system for everything

we're talking about tonight is a daily practice. If you clear a space every day at some point when you're not as much in the thick of stress, then when the rubber hits the road you're going to be able to go, oh pause, just clear a space, be here now, and then you'll be able to re-enter. Daily practice really helps. You know how Robert Thurman put it, he said, Buddhists, all they do is talk about practice. Practice, practice, practice. What I want to know is when is the performance? So maybe a way to put it is that we're practicing living real life, being here for it, and there is no performance. But if you practice and live that real life at moments

when it's not so challenging, when you get stressed, the muscles are more toned and you'll be able to clear the space and be here now. Okay? Now there's a third piece. The third piece,

once you've cleared the space and you've gotten here now, is love the one you're with. Right? Open the heart to what's right here. There needs to be some opening of the heart because stress, heart is tight. We're disconnected.

We're separate. and we're usually down on ourself. It needs to be a little softening to be able to reenter with kind of the new pathways activated in the brain. Does that make sense? A little bit of heart there?

Okay, so let's explore that third piece which is, Love the one you're with. It has to start with ourselves in the moment. When we're stressed, we're not feeling connected to others, but we really are not relating

in a wise or kind way to ourself. And so if you think about it, any time you are stressed, underneath that, there's going to be a sense of a deficient self. Now, how come? When you're stressed, there's a squeeze, there's unpleasant feelings.

And we perceive the self as the owner of those unpleasant feelings, as responsible for those unpleasant feelings. So anytime we're stressed and we're living in that unpleasantness, we're in some way thinking of the self as deficient. The self is in some way falling short. There's some fear in there. Check it out. Don't take my word for it. Check it out. Stop in the middle of stress and say, am I liking myself right now? See if you're liking yourself in the middle of feeling stressed. It's just interesting. So if you're not liking yourself, love love you're not liking yourself,

love the one you're with is the absolute necessary remedy. How do we do it? To be realistic if you're in a biochemistry of fight-flight being kind yourself is not

an easy natural next step. We're in fight-flate and we're kind of hardened. So how do you begin to gentle in towards yourself? And the response is through your intention. If you know that you are in training right now to rearrange your kind of reactivity to stress

and that it's got three steps and that the first step is you're going to clear a space you can arrive and that the second step is that you're going to be here, you know your intention is for the third step to soften. And even though one part of your brain is in fight-flight, there's a deeper part of our wisdom that knows that any healing, any happiness, any peace requires self-compassion and requires being gentle. So that's what we're calling on. And you can intend in advance.

You can intend, you can say, when I get stressed, my intention is to do this, to pause, to come into the moment, and to be gentle to myself. That's going to take different flavors. There's going to be sometimes that, for me, I'll be moving along and I'll catch myself and being kind of down on myself and busy and pressured. And if I just say it's okay a few times, or this too, just those words, this too, in a way that's a gesture towards myself. It's kind of, I'm in some way in communication with myself in a more gentle way.

So this too, it's okay. If there's active self-blame, try forgiving yourself. Have the intention to forgive yourself. Just say forgiven, forgiven. See what happens. It's amazing. Just the intention opens the door. If you like this gesture, I often do putting your hand on your heart.

Just in the midst of it, you've cleared the space, you've come to here and now. Just sit there with your hand on your heart and breathe. for another 30 seconds. It has an effect. You know, we know that a 20-second hug stimulates oxytocin, feelings of connection, well-being, undoes stress. This touch, putting your hand, the warmth, the touch on this neural network that's right here in the heart area, which is really active, it has an effect. So experiment, be creative in just a minute or two minutes, if you can pause, you can shift a lot around. So that's one piece of love the one you're with. But then we extend it outward if we happen to have an extra minute or two,

which we often do. And extending it outward, there is tons and tons of science that says, in the moments that we have a generous thought, in the moments that we're helping someone, in the moments that we're offering compassion to someone, the parts of our brain that are associated with happiness are activated. In other words, we've shifted from fight-flight to attend and be friend. So part of the practice is you bring care to yourself and then you just include others. Albert Schweitzer said that only those of you who learn how to serve will be happy.

When we're in our home movie and the protagonist is moa, as either the victim or the doer, we're not really happy. We're just not. It's not until that movie includes all of us and nature and earth and the fact that we're all part of each other that we get truly happy. So we need to widen the movie out a little bit. We need to widen the movie. You know, there's, in de-stressing,

when we're in stress, there's a sense of separation. Check it out. Anytime you're feeling stressed, it's usually me here and the world's way, way out there. Okay? Now, you can deliberately reverse that. And some of you might know, I remember a school teacher friend of mine

telling me how they give the children these Chinese fire trap finger traps do you know them that you put two fingers in the either end and if you try to pull away your two fingers it gets tighter and tighter you know those and if you go together there's all of a sudden space and opening and freedom so it's like the more we pull away from others the more we create distance are from ourselves the more tension the more tight the more stress the more we come close, okay, it's okay, it's okay, or widen the movie you're part of me. What happens? In that space, we find our power and our freedom. We start reconnecting. So one of the ways scientifically it's described is that they, for many years, they studied the stress reaction only in men

and found that it was, you know, as we've been talking about, fight, flight, freeze. But recently they started really researching women and how they responded to stress, and it was actually more adaptive. That's where the language of Tandembe Friend came about. And it's seen that actually more and more males are learning to use that. It's just a more, it's the more recently evolved brain. Tend and befriend is the more recently. evolved brain. So we can consciously cultivate that. That's the shift we're talking about

tonight. I think the meditation practice that for me has most directly explores how you take that home movie and widen it out is Tonglin, which is a Tibetan practice of compassion, where you might sense your own suffering. You might feel the fear you're having about your own loss of capacity. Maybe as I felt for a number of years with physically with being sick or if you're losing mental capacities or if you've lost someone you love or through a breakup or through somebody dying. So you feel that pain but then you remember everyone else. in the field who might be experiencing that same thing. I'm not the only one that's got a body that gets sick. I'm not the only one that's got a mind that starts to lose

some of its sharpness and memory. I'm not the only one that knows what it's like to lose someone who's that dies or through a breakup. It's like we realize, oh, and then we start thinking about those others and letting our heart and our care include those two and something profound shifts. It's not my pain, it's the pain, and there's room for it. Instead of pulling away the fingers, being alone and by myself, I've come together into the field. It relieves stress. There's a reason women through many centuries in almost every culture I know about have found ways to gather in small groups of other. other women to kind of soothe each other and comfort, they come together to relieve stress.

Tend and befriend. I read about a Hasidic rabbi who questioned his students about sunrise, as this is the time for holy prayers. He said, how can you tell when night has ended and the day has begun? One responded, it might be when you can see an animal in the distance and can tell whether it's a sheep or a dog. Another suggestion might be when you could look at a faraway tree and know it's a fig or a pear tree. With these responses and others, the rabbi shook his head. Confused, the students asked for the answer.

It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman, he told them gently, and see that they are your sister or your brother. Until then, it is still night. Okay, so love the one you're with. Now this is where we start saying, well, what if the one we're with is a real difficult one? So I thought I'd read you an interesting account of a police officer who puts it into perspective. He says there are two theories about crime and how to deal with it.

Anti-crime guys say, you have to think like a criminal. And some police learn that so well they get a kind of criminal mentality themselves. How I'm working with it is pretty different. I'm a peace officer. I see that man is essentially pure and innocent and of one good nature. Now it's interesting how this works. When you're holding in thought a vision of our unity and good,

you frequently spot a criminal motive arising or evident in someone. It's a kind of spiritual radar. Crimes can be prevented that way. So I work not only to prevent crime, but to eliminate its causes. It's causes in fear and greed, not just the social causes,

everyone talks about, even when it gets to conflict. I had arrested a very angry Mexican-American man who singled me out for real animosity. When I had to take him to the patty wagon, he spat on my face, that was something, and he went after me with a chair. We handcuffed him and put him in the truck. Well, on the way, I just had to get past this picture of things, and again I affirmed to myself, this guy and I are brothers in love. When I got to the station, I was moved spontaneously to say, look, if I've done anything to offend you, I apologize. The paddy wagon driver looked at me as if I was totally nuts.

The next day, I had to take him from where he'd been housed overnight to criminal court. When I picked him up, I thought, well, if you trust this vision, you're not going to have to handcuff him. And I didn't. We got to a spot in the middle. middle of the corridor, which was the place where he'd have jumped me if he had that intention. And he stopped suddenly, so did I. Then he said, you know, I thought about what you said yesterday, and I want to apologize. I just felt this deep appreciation. Turned out on his rap sheet, he had done a

lot of time in a couple of bad prisons and had trouble with some harsh guards. I symbolized something, and I saw that turnaround, saw a kind of healing. So what really happens if you're going to explore whether or not this vision of our true nature really has power. Maybe people will say you're taking chances without any vision. Your vision is your protection. So the message of this is not love the one you're with means that if somebody's abusive to you, take a chance and be hurt. The message is,

love the one you're with means keep close your vision of that being's, their innate goodness, even though we know conditioning creates all sorts of tendencies in people to be harmful. Keep in mind the vision, Choghim Trunkpah puts it of the great eastern sun, the light that's in everyone. So as a way to close, I'd like to just practice again how you can shift from fight, flight, to 10 be friend.

Just practice it with the same with the same stress situation you thought of. And I'm just we'll be going over by a couple of minutes tonight, but just give you a chance to think again of it because if you rehearse it in advance

you're more likely to be able to find that space of freedom in the midst. So think of your situation. Again, not trauma as much. It's just some place where you speed up, get up tight. And imagine that you can choose to create a clearing to pause.

Imagine that in that holding still, you can just contact the here and now. You can be aware of your senses. Very specifically, listening, feeling in your body, your heart. Just be aware of what's here. And then again, with your intention, sense if there's a way you can love the one you're with, just in some way offer some kindness towards yourself.

It might be the simplicity of saying, it's okay. It might be forgiven, forgiven. It might be it's not your fault. Just whatever message, whatever gesture it might be touching your heart lightly. It doesn't have to take long. You're just doing a little shift that in a very deep way

can help you sense a larger sense of who you are. and then let it extend outward, sense who you're with in your life, who's around. Who are you around right now? Who can you include in this heart? Who else might be experiencing what you're experiencing that you can include in your heart? Take that whole movie and widen it out so that you sense all of us sitting here who are just like you wanting to not get caught in the trance so much. how might you love the one you're with, those that are around you?

Just to let yourself sense the possibility, how you right now feel, that you have the potential to wake up out of these swaths of moments that really can take up a lot of our life and touch into a creativity and an intelligent and a tenderness that really is part of what can transform our world. Just by clearing a space, be here now, loving the one you're with.

So as you reflect on that, you might enjoy a little bit of the music you're about to hear. Namaste. Blessings. May you love the one you're with. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.