Tara Brach - Practicing Meditation: "Getting Out of Your Own Way"

Episode Date: June 1, 2013

2013-05-29 - Practicing Meditation: "Getting Out Of Your Own Way" - The depth and vitality of a meditation practice depends on our sincerity, and an attitude of curiosity and friendliness.  With this as the grounds, our practice will cultivate the clear seeing and openheartedness that expresses our deepest nature. This talk covers basic ingredients in a meditation practice, and includes a half hour of questions and responses. 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!

Tonight's a little bit different than our regular classes. A couple of times a year, I like to make some space for whatever questions are in the room. And tonight's one of those nights where we'll have a mic. And any questions you might have percolating about your practice or anything you've been hearing in here, you're invited to ask that. I thought I'd start. I'll speak for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. just to set a context for this.

And I'd like to speak a bit about the art and science of our practice. So as many of you know, the science of meditation, what it does, its effect is getting a lot more attention in the press, and it's particularly because of science, you know, the research community. I think it's been over 10,000 studies in the last 10 years or something. It's just huge. Like on every campus, students are scrambling to do mindfulness research. So we put up on Facebook last week what I thought was one of really wonderful TEDx.

It was done by Judson Brewer, who's a Yale researcher and also a meditator. And his title was, you're already awesome. Just get out of your own way. So in honor of Judd and tonight's little mini-eat, talk is called, just get out of your own way. And really, it's quite a profound Dharma teaching. I mean, they have shown in brain scans what happens when we're no longer distracted and there's a quality of presence and how the parts of the brain that light up are correlated to positive emotions, to intuition, to empathy. In other words, parts of the left frontal cortex light up.

So we're finding out more and more, and this to me is the good news of the spiritual paths, that we all have, the Buddhists call it Buddha nature, we all have this natural intelligence and open-heartedness, this capacity for really loving without holding back. It's in us all. And it gets blocked when we get caught in kind of reactive spins of thoughts and emotions. emotions, but it's already there. So the trick is to learn to train our minds so we don't get trapped in that looping that keeps us stumbling over ourselves. And there's all this beautiful this evidence of how when we're not getting in our own way, we really enter a flow state

where our intuition is really operative. And now this is becoming really used a lot in sports, They know that if they can train athletes to not think their way through something, their bodies and their bodies' intelligence will enable them to operate with maximum ability. So it's good for sports. It's good for dating. If we get in our own, we stumble over things when we're anxious and we're spinning and we're rehearsing. So I was thinking it's good for sports, it's good for dating. And then one of my friends always calls dating a combat sport.

So we put it all together. So, mindfulness gives us access to our deepest resources by quieting some of that spinning, tumbling into the future reactivity. Now, of course, not everybody agrees with that. I have a little reading I got somebody sent me from the onion. And if you don't know the onion, this is grain of salt. A study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the test subjects were capable of fully resolving their anxiety by thinking about it very intensely.

The study followed 1,200 adults suffering from mild unease to chronic anxiety and confirmed that focusing continuously and exclusively on one of its own specific sources of distress to the point that once mental and physical health began to suffer was associated with complete elimination of anxiety and it goes on. It appears that incessantly agonizing over the source of your stress is all the that's required and then it describes one study participant April Willis 41 praised the research for resolving deep-seated insecurities about her appearance and competence citing in particular the effectiveness of a technique in which

she mentally replays her most anxiety-inducing thoughts and memories over and over and over quote after years of struggling with anxiety I found that cure was as simple as mentally torturing myself over every last shred of disquiet on my life until I became so riddled with doubt unease that I was unable to eat or sleep. Once I obsessively worried to a point that I was effectively debilitated and felt I could barely even go on,

then poof, the anxiety went away for good. So now when I sense any anxiety, no matter how minor, I just allow my intrusive, anxious thoughts to take over. If I can do it, so can you. So what I'm most noticing is that, that much like exercise, you know, that it's entered into the culture in a way that people get that, you know, we need exercise to be healthy, we need this mental exercise or mental training and heart training to really access our full potential.

So then we start looking at the habits that keep us from presence and start recognizing that there is a certain practicality with training. that it's recognized in pretty much all the different religious traditions, the contemplative side of every religious tradition in some way saying, okay, our tendencies to get off and there's ways to train the mind to come back. From the Christian Desert Fathers, this is a quote, is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened? The response, as little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning? Question, then what of use

are these spiritual exercises you prescribe? Response. To make sure you're not asleep when the sun begins to rise. And again, many of us know from the Sufi poet Rumi, he says, do you make regular visits to yourself? Which just says it all.

Do you make regular visits to yourself? So we get it. Most of us that are here, that are listening, get it, that there's a value, and yet it's pretty tough we find to actually practice. We hear the instructions, and usually there's this word just. It goes, just relax, just let go of your thoughts, just come back to the present moment.

Just is a really, very kind of dicey little word there. And it goes against this deeply wired conditioning of our mind. We have this default network many of us have heard about now that's designed when we don't have a particular task to go off in the future and in the past to keep on resurrecting some orientation of self and what our lives are doing just to keep us stable. So we're designed to get distracted.

And then what happens is that we transfer our ego habit of our attitudes into spiritual practice, and we get judgmental of ourselves. So, you know, you can ask yourself, what really is my relationship to meditation practice? And often, the elephant in the room is that for most people, there's some sense of, I don't do it enough, or I don't do it at all, or I don't do it right.

How many of you fit into that category? For those listening, we've got about 90, percent of that. But I ask in a way because, yeah, that's our conditioning is usually to feel like we're, we have a standard that we're not quite meeting. Do you know what I mean? That's just our conditioning. So we transfer our ego attitudes that we should meditate. It becomes another task for our self-improvement project. Okay? And that we have the idea of what of good meditations like, which is crystal rainbows of light and a completely silent mind and expansive heart. And you know, we have all these ideas of how it could or should be.

When we're the one person in the room that's planning dinner or rehearsing what we're going to say tomorrow to somebody at work or whatever it is. So all this to say, it's really helpful to remember that we will not take on a regular meditation practice. if we don't end up enjoying it. On some level, it doesn't mean it has to be easier that it's always pleasant, but on some level there has to be a feeling of gratification. And if we're shitting ourselves and if we're judging ourselves, it'll end up being a very contracted experience.

It's more part of our ego self-improvement project than something that really frees us up to come home to who's really here. It'll be co-opted by the ego. So not to judge. You know, we think so often we are advised to come back from thoughts and come home to the moment and so on, but so many of us we have this feeling like, I was just gone and thoughts the whole time. I really am not doing this right.

So I think of Julia Childs because she has a line that applies. She says, if you drop this, the lamb, just pick it up. Who will know? Who will know? You get the idea. So I'm spending a little time on attitude because I think attitude makes all the difference. I mean, I have, it's now been, somebody asked me how many years, it's almost 40 years now that I've been meditating. And I've watched many people take on the practice and either stop or plateau or keep on unfolding. And the big difference of somebody that drops at our plateaus and those that keep having a kind of fresh opening and opening is not the particular style of practice.

It's not that it's Qigong versus Zen or this versus that. It doesn't have to be vipassana. It doesn't have to do with the style of practice. It's the attitude. If your attitude is one where there's really sincerity. Like you're sincere, like it matters to you to know truth. You're more interested in truth than the old patterns. If your attitude is one that it matters to you that your heart be free, that it's worth being uncomfortable and vulnerable for the sake of your heart being able to really include others. That sincerity will carry you. So let me just, the last piece I want to name and cover

a bit are the basic ingredients of the practices that we do. And I think that this really applies to most kind of forms of meditation. And my favorite way of doing this is a very short story that I found always reminds me of the ingredients. And it's about a monk who lived in northern India. He was known as a brother of mercy. He was a healer. And he would breathe with people and touch their hearts in a way that allowed them space,

that they could hold their sorrows and hold their lives and heal. So he really was, he had a lot of compassion and acceptance. And so that was his teaching. It was really how to touch into that space and that quality of openness. heart. He did it for a lot of years, but then he actually lost his energy. He became kind of dispirited and exhausted. And he heard about a great teacher in the South who lived hundreds of miles away whose reputation had spread far and wide. And she was a Buddhist nun. She had

a very deep meditation practice and really guided people, very directive and how to penetrate the nature of reality. Wisdom teachings, how to really investigate. So she's strengthened She strengthened people with their capacity to move beyond themselves with these teachings. So he felt a need for her wisdom. And he decided he was going to travel and walk barefoot across the country and meet with her. He walked halfway and one night into his journey about a week in, he found a shelter in a temple where pilgrims stay. And he encountered an old nun and he told her a story

how he'd spent years trying to help but became dispirited. and really was seeking the guidance of this well-known teacher. So the old nun offered to guide him to where she taught. And they arrived at the edge of a bustling village and are warmly received because it turns out that the old nun was none other than the great teacher he was seeking. Over the year, she taught him how to empower others by investigating and discovering their own nature and inner capacity.

So many years later, as she lay there dying, she called him to her side, and he said, there's something I never told you. That day that we met, I too had lost heart. I was headed north seeking a great healer I had heard about. And she smiled and squeezed his hand and peacefully passed away. So what is it that we get from this story? What does it tell us? Now, when I first heard it, it was so clear to me

that they each represented absolutely essential parts of the path and that one without the other was incomplete, not full. And that the monk represented this allowing quality, this space of heart and compassion, that kind of sense of letting be. Let this life be. Hold it with space. And the nun was more of this inquiry and investigation and make the effort and notice what's going on.

She had more of a directive quality. And so it is with our practice that if we are to really wake up to this wholeness of being, we need both the quality of this wisdom factor that really notices and also this heart that has space. We need both. So when we begin to cultivate one of the metaphors is that of a garden and that at the beginning we need with the nun offers, which is some effort, not striving, but some intentionality

where we say, okay, I get it, I'm in a trance a lot. And then we use these practices to kind of wake up out of the trance so there's more moments where we're actually here. And that takes a little effort because we have to kind of decondition that trance. So, what do we do? We say, okay, I'll let the breath be my home base and I'll just keep coming back till I find there's a little bit, it's a little quieter and I'm able to start noticing that

between the thoughts there's a bit of space, there's a bit of sense of resting or light or presence. So we begin to train ourselves to come back. Okay? And we begin to notice the more we come back of how much when we are off in thoughts and we're lost, we're living in a very sense. small world. I think of that cartoon where you have this guy that's driving and he's about to enter a desert and there's a sign that says, you and your own tedious thoughts next 200 miles.

We know it. One of my friends, Wes Nisker, who's a teacher on the West Coast, says this about his relationship with his own mind. He says, we're still friends and we still live together, but I'm no longer codependent. So how do we practice? Well, we begin to come back and name thoughts. We go, okay, thinking, thinking, and notice that thoughts are going on, but we're not our thoughts. And we don't have to believe our thoughts. They're just sound bites and images.

They're not reality. They certainly whip up a frenzy in our body. They get us all worried about things. But you know, Mark Twain put it, he says, the worst things in my life never actually happened, right? So we live in this virtual reality. that's pretty fear-based, a lot of worrying, a lot of planning out of anxiety, a lot of judgment. And we can have a choice to say, come back, notice these are thoughts, don't have to believe it, and begin to find a presence that we can trust that's bigger than the storyline and the thoughts.

That's the beginning of the training. Then what happens is we begin to come back and start practicing what, I sometimes call learning to stay. And that's a phrase I took on from Pema Chowdh, because I think it's perfect. There's a cord with a little dog bone on it. It's a necklace. And it says, sit, stay, heal. That's what we're learning to do, you know?

Stay. So come back and then being here. We learn to stay some. And this is where the two wings unfurl. in the moments that we start learning to stay, or we start noticing the different weather systems moving through, we're both recognizing them. Oh, okay, fear, hurt, anger, whatever, we're recognizing the weather, but we're also creating space for it. So there's two questions. You can just keep these as a kind of way to hold, really, this whole talk, which is the question

of what is going on right now inside me? It's like the nun. She's saying, what's happening, really looking? And you can just check that out right now. Just what is going on inside me right now? This is the wing of recognizing, of understanding, of seeing clearly, of wisdom. And then the second question, can I let this be? Or can I just be with this? This is like the monk that's holding a space of compassion. It's like saying yes, which really means that we're just agreeing to reality. We're not fighting reality. What is going on inside me right now?

And can I be with this? The final piece I'll say is that sometimes what's going on inside us feels really, really challenging. So then we have to really cultivate those two wings. And the question some people have is when it's really bad, why stay? not go and watch a movie or why not, you know, go party or why not, you know, take drugs or do something, why stay? And one of my favorite responses is another necklace that says no mud, no lotus.

It's just that. That we have to go through the intense weather with presence to discover the quality of compassion and deep wisdom that's here. So we learn to stay and it takes some courage. We learn to really investigate and say, what's really going on here and feel the different energies in our body? We learn to stay in our bodies and we learn in a very deep way to regard what's there with kindness and the gesture I often use is putting a hand on a cheek or hand on your heart. That whatever's going on we begin to to offer kindness to it. And if you can offer kindness to what's going on, your relationship

has changed with your experience. You're no longer a victim. You're no longer the small self or the scared self or the angry self. You've become that presence, that compassionate presence that really is true nature. So we're going to take us to a couple of moments to practice again and then I'm going to invite questions. In the sense, we're going to take us to spirit of the story of the monk and the noun, we're just going to explore these two wings of presence. And we begin with intention, just even for this short, three-minute or whatever it's going to be, meditation. Start by feeling your own sincerity, your willingness to open and explore and be here, to learn, to wake up. Take a moment to scan through your body.

body and relax any places where there's real obvious tension or holding. So you might re-soften the shoulders, but the hands rest in an easy, effortless way. Softening the belly, perhaps a slight smile at the mouth. And then noticing the sensations of the breath, the inflow, the outflow, seeing if it's possible to relax just a bit more by relaxing open as the breath comes in, like a balloon expanding, and then releasing, letting go as a breath goes out, letting your senses be awake. See you're aware of the aliveness that's right here, this breath, these sounds, this world

of sensation, this quality of heerness, the next few moments of silence, just noticing whatever arises and is predominant. It helps you to note it, to name it, that's fine. Notice what happens when in some way you allow it to be just as it is. You might mentally whisper yes, what is happening? Can I let this be just as it is? When you drift just coming back with a relaxed attention, with curiosity, what is happening right here inside me?

Can I let this be? You might experiment and sense how do you. deep and full your yes can be. Okay, so if anyone would like to begin, if you have a question, we've got our mic ready and available

for you. I have a question that's partly from a psychological point of view, which is I struggle with indecisiveness a lot, and I've been trying to use indecisiveness. And so if you have a practice of observing

how much your feelings can change, and you don't have a good habit of tuning into your gut and the decisions you're making aren't necessarily ones with clear ethical boundaries or something that's more objective like that. How do you approach making decisions about what to do if you're not just following pleasure or how to avoid feeling bad?

So I just want to make sure I hear you properly that it's about indecision and I'm imagining that indecision means that your mind is spinning through a sight. that it doesn't break out of. The question is, how do you begin to decide from a deeper place? How do you access a place in you, that which knows, the intuition, that kind of thing? So, here's a principle.

This is not going to directly give you a link, but it gives you a starting place, which is the more that you can quiet your habitual thoughts and be really awake in your body, really awaken your body, the more you will step out of the thinking pattern that you're looping in and have access to more truth, more creativity, more intuition. But that takes a certain amount of trust. The reason that we loop and that we stay in our anxious patterns is that we're kind of addicted. It's kind of an addiction to worry thoughts and to racing mind. So it takes a kind of... boldness to postpone and say, okay, I'm not going to try to figure it out. To literally take

the whole figuring out process, put it aside and say, instead, my only intention right now is to be awake and inhabiting my body. And to do that enough so that you're actually, you shift your locus from a self that's a mental self to a more embodied quality. And I I can guarantee you that what will come out of that will have a different feeling tone and a different tenor than what was in the circling of the mind. So I hope that's helpful. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

You made a comment about labeling our thoughts. So the way I understood it was that that was a way of separating from identifying with the thoughts, identification with the thoughts. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? Yeah. So one of the skillful strategies in mindfulness training is called mental noting. And it's not just thoughts. You can actually note with a little mental whisper anything that's going on.

Now the purpose of mental noting is so that rather than being identified or lost in what's going on or reactive to it, you're resting in a larger space of awareness that's simply noticing it. So it does disidentify. It's not to push it away. it away. So if I notice fear and I go, oh, fear, fear, it's not fear, fear, it's fear so that I can more clearly contact it without being lost inside it. Similarly, if you notice thinking, or you can even say, oh, worrying, or planning, or fantasizing, what happens is that you're not trying to get rid of it as much as open into a larger space so that you're not hooked into it. So the mental

noting gives you more space. The trick is a tiny little whisper. You're not trying to interfere with the flow of reality, just a little whisper that you're naming. And if it gets clutsy, drop it. Because some people try to note, note, note, note, and becomes another project. So if it gives you some space and clarity, use it, you know, just discriminatingly. And if it feels like it's bogging you down, then drop it. Is that pretty much? Yeah. I think you may a comment in one of your previous podcasts, and this really clarifies it, and that is that, oh, I'm feeling fear. And so that was helpful to me because I felt fear around food, because when I grew up,

didn't have a whole lot. And so now I feel fear around food. And so I'm careful, especially if I'm sharing with somebody else, the fear arises. By naming it, it helped me feel more relaxed around that. That's exactly right. And now, of course, back to science, there was a brain scanning project. at Stanford that showed that with the process of mental noting, there was more ease around what was going on.

So, yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah. A while back there was a guest teacher with you. I think his name is Frank from San Francisco, and he talked about this idea of not waiting. And I've noticed that I'm aware that I'm in a waiting way for something to change. And I'm wondering if you can talk more about how to,

be aware and then, you know, shift the relationship to that kind of space of being, waiting for something. So I want to make sure I understand. So if you find in your life that in some way you're in a kind of zone where you're waiting for something, and is there actually an action, is there a way for you to be engaged right now that's there, but you're postponing, but you're... I think what I'm... It's making me feel dissatisfied with the now. And I don't, you know, I think it's going to take a while for this change that I want to occur.

Is it a change inside you or a change in a relationship? No, it's changing my circumstances. I'm sorry? Changing my circumstances. So while I'm waiting for that, I don't want to be waiting, I want to be living. Okay, so let me ask you a question. Once those circumstances are changed, what do you imagine or hope will be different inside you? more meaning

I want to be in work that's more meaningful work that's more meaningful because then what if it's more meaningful what is it you want to feel like I'm contributing okay so what about if you found every single day some way that felt meaningful to contribute

it doesn't have to be in some big formal but some way that you touch another person or some way that you write something creative or some way that you plant a flower, but that you make your practice just now structure just to get in the mode, that every day you're going to in some way have a meaningful kind of contribution or engagement. So you don't feel like you're waiting for anything. Because truthfully, and I've seen this with people that are in prison and people in bodies that can't do things. We have an idea of how the circumstances need to be different for our life to be meaningful and full, but there's nothing missing right today if we really pay attention to the ways that

we can connect or engage or bring our heart to another person. So don't wait. Yeah. And thank you for bringing that in because it's a beautiful reminder for all of us. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going through a time of pretty extreme anxiety and uncertainty, and my seated practice has been very difficult, even though I'm keeping it up. The quality of my mind is very unsettled. And I don't know if you have any suggestions for maybe deepening my practice or improving my seated practice during times like this.

So let me ask you a question. So you're sitting and how are you practicing? What actually, what's the technique you're doing right now? I'm doing a couple of different things. And sometimes I'm trying to come into my body on my own. And then sometimes following my breath, but more frequently opening to sounds because I find one in my mind's really racing, that helps me a little more. And then on days where it's just really impossible,

I'm using a lot of your guided meditations from your website. So the guided meditations help? They do. They help a lot, actually. and I think in part because you do spend so much time kind of getting into the somatic piece which I want to just gloss over so in a way you just answered your own question I'm a genius

which is great which is great but here if we were to keep exploring on what I would say is so and what else helps you when else do you have a spot of relief or sense of ease or appreciation what else during your day

your life. Honestly, at this point, distraction. What kind of distraction? Pleasant distraction. Having lunch with a friend, going to a movie, watching the dog, you know, rolling the grass in ecstasy. Okay, so then two parts.

One, keep doing the guided and keep doing the embodied. Keep doing your distractions and take time to pause in them and actually savor where they feel good. So you're being mindful, in the middle of your distractions.

Because to me, they don't actually sound like distractions. They sound like wholesome ways that you're balancing out your life. Thank you. Yeah, but enjoy them. Make it more purposeful. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Our practice really is about going within,

but I find more and more that the meditation is really facilitated for me by being in certain external spaces, particularly spiritual spaces like here, or I stop by a chapel twice a week, and I just sit there, and it's like this instant, like there's something about the energy of that space, and that it's energy that's external to me, but I'm able to really take it.

I wonder if you could comment on that. Sure. So this is a question about if our practices, you know, really we're saying, can we be no matter what's happening in any moment, can we touch into that inner refuge of peace and so on. And you're saying, but there's some external settings that really help me. And I think that's great and beautiful because in a way this internal external is a false division.

You belong to the earth, you know, and you belong to other people. And we belong to these settings that we call external. So to me it's wise to find what brings you alive and draw on that. And it doesn't mean that you wouldn't also practice the no matter what can I in this moment, you know, come home. But take advantage of beautiful environments. I mean, I practice every day. I go on a walk in nature every day and I find, you know, beyond any religion, my religion is nature. You know, I love being by the river.

So, you know, and if I didn't have the river, I'd still find a way to be in love with life. But that happens to be there. So you take advantage of what's there. Yeah. Enjoy. My question is about grieving. I was reading your book about, you know, starting from the anger. The one lady, she was started from anger,

and then she got to a deeper place, to a deeper place where she finally accessed, that she was very sad. Something happened to me in my meditations where I saw there was like a shell of me out here and there was like the real me here and there was this kind of grieving for not being full somehow

that came. And I guess my question is, when does it end? You know, I mean, in the sense of, you know, there will be a time. I know that. I'm not sure actually of the question that, but there's something

that you said that found really important and beautiful. which is, and I think it happens to all of us, that we get these kind of wake-ups along the way where we realize we're really not living from the fullness of what we are. And that's why I often talk about that regret of the dying as being, you know, I didn't live true to myself. I lived according to other people's expectations.

I lived according to shoulds. I lived according to my own internal, you know, messages. And it splits us. And that lack of authenticity brings up grief because we all have this really deep longing to inhabit our fullness and to live from that fullness. I think of that kind of sadness that you described as a soul sadness. And it's actually something to honor and respect deeply because it's actually, I feel like it's your spirit calling you home.

saying, hey, you know, you've been in these patterns of forgetting, come home, come home. And to just bow and listen and honor that is great. So, again, I'm a namaste for that. Yeah. My question is more or less, you said no mud, no lotus. Why? I mean, I just, I don't want to be sad. I'm not good at it.

And I understand that things hurt, and you're supposed to recognize that and be open to it. But I also feel like society almost tells me, oh, there has to be something wrong in this situation. So I'm looking, you know, what's wrong when I, maybe I'm just happy? I don't know. So if that is what's happening, if you're noticing that, that is a real gift. If you're noticing it's called the negative bias, and we have this. I mean, it's a survival bias, but what you're naming is actually a really good observation, that we get fixated on what, looking through the lens of something's going to go wrong,

just to be vigilant and cover all our bases. So that's not the point of no mud, no lotus. In my mind, mud is not bad. I mean, mud is earth, mud is body, mud is emotions, mud is life. And it's like basically saying if we're not willing to go and be in this, body with its pleasantness and its unpleasantness and its passions and its fears, then we're not going to be fully alive. So it's basically saying whatever arises open to it.

And in that openness, you'll find a peace and a freedom and an aliveness that's really being whole. If in the moment you're experiencing pleasantness, no reason to go track for something else, just open to that. And I love that that's what you're noticing. Keep noticing it and see if you can invite yourself to really savor. Savor what's really good. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Hi. First of all, I just wanted to say, you know, thank you. It's wonderful to watch your journey and to share your practice. I'd love to be able to share my practice with people who I'm close to. It's often difficult to share unless they would. want to come in. Right now I've got a couple of loved ones, one who has suffered multiple mini strokes from this meningitis horrible thing that's gone around last year and also horrible

acute chronic pain. I've been looking through your talks. I've found a guy names in, but I'm trying to give her some audio practice because I believe that this work is very powerful for some healing around that. It's hard because you can't sit comfortably. That pain is not going to go away. You need to be with it. But I am curious as to whether or not there is something that you've worked on or there are some talks that you've had

that I could point her to. So the question I'm hearing is really when somebody's facing really deep suffering of physical pain and loss of perhaps life, you know, facing the real big ones, how do they find refuge? What's going to be helpful to that person? Is that the question? The pain is going to be there. That's right. It's not going to go away. So it's how you deal with it. I understand that. You've got somebody who's an acute suffering. How do you open this opportunity for them and give

them that chance? So there's a few different layers in this one, because one is, your relationship with that person? It might not be that you're in a position to say, well, here's a way to relate to your pain that will give you more freedom. It might be that all you can do is offer your absolute accepting, loving presence. You know, it's not like there's teachable moments, there's more moments where there's opportunities for deepened presence. And sometimes that's all we can do. If a person is wanting and interested in how can I pay attention that's going to give me a little more space or freedom, then you're

right on the money that the basic principles are not what's happening. It's how are we regarding it. And there are many ways of opening our attention so we can find a place where we can, pain can be going on, but there's some sense of resting in something larger. There's some sense of being held in love that makes it so that the pain is manageable. When one dear friend was dying, I remember so much how this Sangha, this community, really showed up and it was really the sense of being held in a loving community that allowed him to work with really intense, intense pain. So there are refuges, but your presence is really going to be.

the most direct offering for that. I can tell you you know that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I have a question about reading Dharma books. They're telling me how to be mindful, but I'm distracted reading a Dharma book. I want to put it down and meditate, but I mean I want to be reading the book too.

How do you connect those two? Yeah. Well, it sounds like for you, you might want to listen to an audio instead of reading a book. But, you know, every one of us is different. How, what inspires us. And for some people, a certain amount of reading, it's not, it's not abstract and conceptual. It actually, there's some transmission that comes through it that really inspires us about what's possible, and that's worthy. Other times reading becomes more conceptual and it actually separates us from the juice. So for you, let there be a filter, an inquiry of, is this serving, waking up and is this serving freedom in some way? And if you sense that it's serving, if you sense that it's in some way informing, guiding, inspiring, then a certain amount. But the bottom line is the only way that we will be for,

free is if we learn how to pay attention to the hearts and minds that are right here. So the reading is just a matter of finding out for you what serves best. So given this final comment I made, I'd like to close in that way with taking just a pause again. There is a power to pausing that goes beyond words. So give yourself the gift, even if you're just a pause again. something in you is already feeling like you're on your way, you're tumbling into the future. Explore the possibility of really reentering the moment.

Just close your eyes and perhaps take a few full breaths. Notice what's happening inside you, letting be at the heart of this practice in the moments of mindful awareness. We're getting out of our own way. There's simply a flow. It's changing dance, a sound, and sensation, let go even more. Just be the flow. As Dana Falls says, she says, trust the energy that courses through you. Trust, then take surrender even deeper. Be the energy.

Don't push anything away. Follow each sensation back to its source in vastness and pure presence. Mird so new so fresh that you don't know who you are. Welcome in the season of monsoons. Be the bridge across the flooded river and the surging torrent underneath. Be unafraid of consummate wonder. Be the energy and blaze a trail across the clear sky. Be the energy and blaze a trail across the clear night sky like lightning.

dare to be your own illumination. Namaste and thank you. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org.

Thank you very much.