Tara Brach - Question and Response

Episode Date: May 16, 2014

2014-05-14 - Question and Response - Tara explores a range of questions that include working with unworthiness, recognizing aspiration, stepping out of the story and understanding the selfless quality of experience.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. So again, welcome here. Tonight, as mentioned, opening it to any questions you might have about your practice or the teachings that you've been hearing. Try to keep the questions succinct and will we enjoy hearing from each other. What I thought I'd do is begin with one question that, came in through online and just to get us going and then invite we'll go from there and this person says is there benefit from firmly telling yourself to

move on from a thought that triggers strong emotion during meditation or does this hinder the practice of nurturing a heart that's ready for anything okay and so So just to say that there's definitely times we know that a charged thought is going to lead to possession. We just know. We know the story. We know that it's going to get into something to do with blaming or something we're planning for that we're afraid of and we just know we're going to be off and running.

And it can be useful to, at those times, to redirect the mind, especially if it gets you really activated, redirect the mind somewhere that you know. is a place that can help you settle. And it may be that that places, that it's a phrase of meta that you repeat to yourself, saying, you know, it's okay, sweetheart, or may I accept myself just as I am, or it may be, you know, may all beings be happy,

whatever the phrase is that for you helps you to find some more ease or well-being. And it may be that you engage in a kind of breathing that relaxes you. The idea being that if the thought is agitating, you want something that's going to get the parasympathetic nervous system going so that you have a little more balance and ease to be with your experience. So that can be useful. However, here's the yes but. If there's a charge thought, that means there's a charge, right? And if there's a charge, what's going to happen? Just going to keep on revving up the

thoughts until you deal with the charge, right? That makes sense? So I want to just say this. This is a little bit of a story that there was a hermit that was known for his wisdom in guiding people and he lived miles and miles in the wilderness. So those that wanted to seek his guidance had to go trekking for quite a while through very difficult circumstances. They really had to put out and sweat. To get to see his guidance, they had to get him. to him. But once they got to him, he'd sit them down and then he'd say, you have to swear, you're not going to tell anybody, absolutely anybody, these instructions. They'd swear to their, to secrecy. Then he'd have them sit quietly a bit more, and then he'd pose a question.

What are you not willing to pay attention to? What are you not willing to pay attention to? You understand? That whatever we're not willing to experience what's going on in our body or our heart, that's going to keep on sending that charge to those thoughts, we're going to keep on obsessing, we're going to keep on feeling like around the corner something's going to go terribly wrong. So that's the inquiry, and the basic principle is if there's a repeating charged energy, we're going to get lost in the stories, and until

we come into the body where the emotions live, we're not going to bring any healing. Now I'm going to read you the second part of this person's question. She says, I enjoy meditating, but sometimes I get so embroiled and intertwined with the stories that the last thing I want to do is go inside. It feels like the most painful thing to do. I know that I needed for true refuge. I just wonder, are there any techniques to use when I hit that wall? So this is the question that we have that, yeah, okay, there's something we're running from.

How do we begin to go inside in a way that allows us to really connect with a healing attention? And the first thing to say is that probably the most powerful skill, that you can learn in this training and this mindfulness training is to recognize, even say to yourself, okay, charge thought, or charge story, if you even get that that's going on, you're not quite as identified, you know, you're not quite as lost inside it. So if you can in some way note it, like put a little label on it. It can be, you name them one of your top ten, you know, you might call it the inner tyrant or the judge or you might call it, you know, the fear of performance or whatever.

Just you can put a little name on it because by naming it, again, you step out a little. Because this is the deal. If you can begin to notice the stories but step out a bit, you can begin to gently start exploring where they're rooted in your body. So that's the first step. In some way you name them, you can even say thank you to them. Thank you but not now. now. Communicate with them. You know, I often use the phrase real but not true. I'll notice

all the thoughts going around, the thoughts that are judging me or judging others or anticipating what can go wrong. And I'll say, okay, real thoughts and a real experience, but this isn't truth. This is just the virtual reality that's being generated out of habit. It's a powerful phrase to cut through the trance. Real. but not true. So you in some way say real but not true or thank you very much or you name it and then you come into the body and you come into the body with as much gentleness and curiosity as possible. In other words, take some moments and let your intention be, you know, that you're going to befriend what's here. Okay, another little story by example. And this is the

Tibetan Yogi Milarepa. who was living in isolation in a mountain cave and as part of his spiritual practice he began to see the contents of his mind as visible projections but they were really intense and they got really frightened by them and they were the demons of lust

and of passion and aversion and all the different fears and they'd appear as these wrathful monsters and so he was trying to do the practice so he would kind of sing out it's wonderful that you came today you should come again tomorrow.

He was befriending. He was welcoming the way we try to be with our inner guests, right? We call them the weather systems and we welcome them. Well, he had learned that suffering only comes when you try to fight or resist the demons. So he was doing what we trained to do here, not to resist what's going on. And it turned out in one particular time,

Milarapa's cave was filled with these demons and he did his thing, he welcomed them all and they all disappeared except for the one most persistent domineering demon of them all. We all have that final one that's really a bugger. You know, it's really hard to work with. You know, it's like we might work with this and this and this, but there's one that's really hard. It might be the part that can't forgive or something like that, but there's one. So here's what he did. he made the most brilliant move in all these mythologies,

he put his head in the demon's mouth. He put his head in the demon's mouth. And in that moment of full surrender, the demons all vanished, the final one vanished. And all that remained was the brilliant light of awareness. For most of us, the hardest thing, as this person says, is to want to go inside when it's difficult. but if there can be some intuitive wise place in us that knows that that's where the freedom is,

to somehow rather breathe with what's there and just let ourselves start feeling our body from the inside out and where those energies live, when there's zero resistance, there's zero suffering. Pema Chodron puts it this way. She says, when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone. So I wanted to begin with this question and a bit of reflection on it because I felt that it was a really powerful one and very much like so many of us. We do get lost in the stories, we don't want to feel what's there and yet that is the path of freedom and it's compassionate to do it only at a pace that we can because if it

feels too overwhelming we can re-traumatize ourselves. So we take our time and we learn to build our resources and we learn how to build up some sense of love or safety or ease so that when we go in we can be with those demons and really, really put down our resistance. Okay. So that was the first question. I'm now going to kind of open it and see what might be in the room here in Bethesda, Maryland on this day.

We have... Glenn, if you turn around, there's a question behind you. Yeah, hi. Could you relate that same thinking toward one's own and other people's prejudices, homophobia, racism, et cetera, et cetera? So when we encounter, let's say, we'll just use homophobia or racism, an example, and that is a so-called shadow side that's coming up. How do we work with that? Is that the inquiry? Well, when you said if a person names it, it goes away. But there could be a false side. false naming like so in naming but it's looking inside and seeing the shadow but naming it outward so let's say what I encounter you might hold on to the mic in case I don't get it right so let's say what I encounter is the racism in my own mind that I am in some way putting another

down for their race and I see that and I name it I say oh racism as and I name it no that doesn't mean that it's going to go away what it means is is that I've named the story, the blaming or the disparaging story, but then I go into my body and feel where that aversiveness lives. I feel into the roots of it, the place in me that is the energy behind the story of some people are worse than others. So the idea of naming the demon isn't that the demon goes away just because you've named it, It's that it gives you then the possibility of coming out of the storyline

into where actually the fear and the grasping and aversion lives in your body. And that's where we start releasing the identification when we come into the energy in our bodies. And I guess my overall question would be, has instructions been set up to help people who aren't into mindfulness training, but as a way to address the prejudice. So how might this practice affect other people's prejudices who aren't doing this practice? Can this be taught without going to a Buddhist?

Absolutely. Okay, so the question is, can these same strategies be brought into the culture in a more systematic way? And yes, whether we call it mindfulness or we call it skillful attention our enhancing awareness. All over the world now, there are processes by which people are taking a look at their stories

that are creating others into a bad other and are telling their stories to each other and experiencing each other's vulnerability and seeing behind the mask and discovering what's true behind the story. So there are processes that are helping to wake us up out of the trance that don't have to in any way be labeled by a particular religious faith. Yeah. Attentional training is happening all over the world.

And even though because the Buddhists have been very articulate and systematic in describing those trainings, they've been drawn on a lot. But the trainings are universal. We all are learning how to wake up our attention in some way when we get purposeful. and it's happening and it's applied to, I'm about to go to a conference tomorrow

where it's in collaborative law and how it's being applied to people who are divorcing and how to take the violence that happens in a divorce that has such a horrific effect on children, and how do you begin to bring some forgiveness and reconciliation between people that naturally are triggered in such a difficult time of their children? life. And again, it's not Buddhist practices per se. It's how to train our attention to become

more present. So thank you for that. Yeah. I've been experimenting with this idea about inner power versus outer power, like power in the outer world. There was this person in my life who's kind of like what I'd say is like a bully. And I've been working with how to have compassion but not give this person permission to treat me or others a certain way. The only place that I can get to is like I understand that that person's in pain and that this behavior is coming from pain. But when they come around me, I start to feel afraid, right? Afraid. And mostly I feel like I'm energetically giving up some of my inner power. And I don't quite know how to go from there. You know what I mean? Like I can understand that person, but I can't seem to get away from internalizing that I'm not safe,

even when it's a situation where that person isn't being aggressive or something. Yeah. So from what I'm hearing is that whether the person's being aggressive or not, they have the capacity to bring out of you a sense of being unsafe. And you kind of go into a fight-flight freeze, even though you want to be compassionate and see their woundedness and just come from inner power, you kind of go into a more defended place. So for me, there's always a wisdom just to start right where I am.

So if the reaction I have to somebody is I feel threatened, regardless of whether I should or shouldn't doesn't matter, then that's the place, rather than trying to wake up your compassion to that person. Spend some time with a place in you that feels afraid and defended. So that you get really, so it's almost like rather than you're identified inside that place, you become the awareness that's attending to it, befriending it. So you sense a presence with yourself because your power will come from you becoming intimate with that place.

Because then you become larger. As soon as your identity shifts, from being the defended person to being that mindful awareness that's with your inner experience, you will tap in that expanded identity, the sense of your own flexibility and your own power. Then when you look at that other person, you'll see their vulnerability. Your heart will be open, but you'll feel really at home with yourself in creating the boundaries you need to. Does that resonate? Does.

Yeah. Just start with yourself first. Yeah, and it's a really important question. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Okay. Hi. So I'm one of these people that I feel like I have a suffering that I can't feel at all all at once.

And I was using prayer to get through deadlines at the end of the semester out of your radical acceptance book, and I found it to be incredibly helpful. I was actually setting a timer and praying every 15 minutes to be able to write these papers at the end of the semester. And it really worked. And then I was like, okay, so I guess maybe I have a solution to all my problems, but I'm feeling that since my basic problem is I don't feel worthy, how can I be worthy of praying? Like how can I be worthy of asking for assistance from outside of me? me if I don't feel worthy on the inside.

So that's my question. Okay, so what I'm hearing is that you were practicing prayer for different things, and it actually opened you and gave you a sense of connection. It was good. But then you hit a kind of wall because you started getting into a loop of saying, well, if I'm not worthy, then how can I even be worthy to pray and ask for help, right? Right. Okay.

So here's a question. for you. What happens when you go into that sense of unworthiness? What do you notice? Isolation. Okay, so you feel isolated and when you feel isolated, what other emotions come up for you? What's the worst part about the unworthiness piece? Smallness. I mean, I just feel very small. Okay, very small and isolated. And how, how, you know, I just feel very small? And how long for you would you say that you've been aware of that, of going into that small, isolated place, for you like a whole life type thing?

Yeah. So first I want to say if we did a hand raise, we could. How many have noticed the unworthiness thing through your whole life? Okay, for those that aren't seeing a video, because we don't have a video, that was like 99.999. Thank you. So you're not alone. So here's the thing.

So you notice that and when you sense that, when you sense that, when you're not, you know, you're When you look through kind of the landscape of your life, how has it affected your life? What is it taken from you? What is it done? What are some of the things you know? I know you're speaking for a lot of us, by the way. It just makes everything so much more painful. Like I end up writing papers overnight at the end of the semester because I was avoiding fear. Like, that's just one example.

but that's why it's in and that's why I have the I mean I really identify with repeated cycle repeated cycle repeated cycle of procrastination so one thing that feeling unworthy is done is you you've avoided fear but then you procrastinated on work and and I'm sure it's affected relationships yeah yeah with people and it affects in any given moment I mean we know this that when we're feeling bad about ourselves or down on ourselves, it's really hard to enjoy the moment. It's hard to enjoy the beauty of spring. So it takes away life. And I guess I'm asking you this and anyone else says you reflect, what comes up for you when you really let

yourself register the pain of being in that grip of unworthiness? What's the feeling that comes up? It's sadness. It's... sadness and loss. Okay, so let's keep slow. And if you just close your eyes for a moment, stay where you are, and just sense, okay, sadness is here and loss. And what do you wish for yourself when you feel that sadness and loss?

What's your deepest wish? Well, I wish that I could give myself a better childhood. And if you couldn't give yourself, something historically what do you wish you could give yourself now compassion to hold all of that and compassion acceptance and recognition and appreciation like appreciation to recognize how i've continued forward and everything that i've accomplished and to be satisfied with myself as not focusing on everything that I don't have. Okay, so that's a beautiful...

What you did was you just almost in a way describe what it means to spiritually reparent yourself, you know, to give yourself that understanding, that appreciation, that compassion. And you can, if you keep remembering that that's what you really, really intend and want to do. So what you've just done, and you did it beautifully, And I want to just honor you because to be able to stay with yourself in a group this size

and have the integrity to stay with yourself tells me that you actually have a lot of capacity to stay connected. I mean, you're really on the path beautifully. And what you did was you came around to prayer in a different way. You came around a prayer through presence. You stayed present with, okay, what's unworthiness really feel like? And how is it living in me? And how does it affect me?

And what comes up when I touch that? Oh, sadness. What's the wish? You came right through presence, which is why even if you feel unworthy, prayer comes from a deeper place. And you can feel unworthy and still feel that longing and still intend to be kind. And that is what will flower if you keep on paying attention in this way. retraining very old, very conditioned pathways. Now the old story is I'm undeserving, I can't

do something and a kind of giving up and a procrastinating. The new way is to see all that and say, okay, what's that feel like? Can I be with it? What does it need? Oh, I want to be compassionate. That's the flowering. So thank you and a big bow to you, dear. Yeah. You talked a few minutes ago about fear and about grasping, which has always, for me, led to the question, who is it that's fearing, who is it that's grasping? Who is it that's worried? Which is also, I guess, runs to the age-old question of,

who are we? Do we have a soul? Do we have an ego? Is there a core immutable essence to all of us? I think a lot of, particularly Western religions, rest on that notion that there is that. Could you talk about that a little bit in the context of Buddhism and meditation? Because I suspect, I've never heard you say this, but I suspect that the very idea of a self is maybe real, but not true. I don't know.

But it's really the basis of whatever it is that's doing the fearing, that's doing the grasping, this doing the worrying, is maybe that in itself is something that pure awareness has created. And I'd just love to hear you talk about that. Sure. Well, it's a wonderful question. And I agree with you that the notion of a self is real but not true. And it feels so damn real that if you say that and you say, therefore, there's no self that's fearing and da-da-da-da. It's actually, it kind of takes us off into a bit of a delusion. So the pathway into, like if I felt, if I sensed a kind of fearing and I said, well, who's fearing? And I said, well, there's no self in there. I would be bypassing the

fearing. So the pathway that will reveal what sometimes described as the emptiness of self is by bringing a lot of courage and honesty to just contacting the realness that fear or experiencing fear. And here's where the magic comes in. To the degree that you bring a very full, non-resisting presence to the fear, really opening and not resisting it, the self-sense dissolves. So when you say that the demons are gone, it's not the demons are gone, It's the identity of a self that's even at war or experiencing anything dissolves.

In a moment of full presence, and when I say full presence, I mean open, unresisting, tender beingness, you won't find any solid center. You won't find anything that's opposing anything. So how do we open into that by just starting in this moment with what's right here? If we try to leap and say, well, nobody's here, it's actually a subtle way of aversion. So your instincts are absolutely right on. The emptiness of self is revealed through the practice of presence. Now as things get quieter, if you're meditating and there's not a lot of the charge, and

there's just a thought coming and going or a sound or this or that, then the inquiry, who's listening right now or who's feeling this becomes very powerful because it turns the attention to awareness itself and what do you find? Well the Tibetans say the supreme seeing is the seeing of no thing. There's no you can't find anywhere to land. Then the mind will scramble and it'll come up with something. Why me of course? But if you say well who's listening to that or where did that come from or who's aware of that and you again just turn the attention and just glance back into awareness. It's formless presence. There's nowhere to land and again you then the teaching is just let go into what is just be that awareness. So you can't

see the no-selfness you can just be that formless presence. So this was a two-part response. One being when we're living in the kind of relative world where there's a real sense of self, even though we might intuitive it's not what we think it is, stay with what's arising most strongly and bring an integrity of presence to that, and in that presence, it'll reveal what's true. And when it's quieter, you can look directly and see what's there. Is that helpful? Great question. Appreciate it. Yeah. I struggle with guilt about following a precept or something, even if I know that that precept really isn't right for the time,

isn't really right for me to follow, because you have to be honest with yourself. From a Buddhist context, like, well, there are some ways to deal with guilt that maybe has come from other spiritual traditions that you have been around, you know, growing up, And then you just get to a place where it's like that guilt carries over with you. So I just wondered about that. Let me ask you thus far.

And the question for those that might not have heard is with guilt when it comes up and when it's not a guilt that you actually think is a wise guilt. Some guilt is like a message with, you know, pay attention to your behavior. It's causing harm or something. But it's not what you think of as a wise guilt, more it's a habit. And so the question is, how do you work with that? Yeah? And my question to you is, how have you tried working with it thus far?

Well, noticing it, and like you were saying before, trying to be with it sort of, I think sometimes where I get caught is where I try to, too hard to figure, it out. You know, like, it's too hard to figure out where it comes from, and it gets to the point where then that makes me feel guilty. So it's kind of a vicious cycle. But, yeah, I try to notice it and go into myself, and, you know, that's what I do. Okay, so what, and that is, so that's one primary way, which is you just notice it again

if you name it and you just name it really clearly so you're not in that trance of kind of part of it as much as okay, guilt is happening, you know. So you just name it. It's almost like you're putting a frame around it so that you're no longer inside it and then you know breathe with it and feel how it's living in your body that kind of squeeze or pressure or whatever. That's one way that you can begin to loosen your identity from the guilty person. you can add on to that the loving kindness practice or compassion practice.

If you know that guilt, it's kind of like the unworthiness, you know that it's kind of been a, it's gripped you and made you smaller than you are. Guilt has us believe in a self that's much smaller than the truth of our being. I mean, it's a very small identity. And so if you sense that and you sense that, and you sense it's living, you can in some way direct energy saying, you know, like some message, like if you think of the wisest, most loving being you know, and sense if they watched you getting caught in guilt, what they'd want you to remember.

What would they want you to, in some way, reflect on? What would a message be? And just send that really kindly and repeat it and repeat it like a cool stream just flowing through that wherever that guilt is coagulated and just let the water of that stream kind of help to dissolve it and loosen it some. This is a case where META can be really helpful. It's not like you're pulling away or avoiding,

but it just adds a real deep quality of kindness. Thank you for your question, hon. Hi, thank you for allowing us to have a conversation tonight. I've been on this journey with you for a little over two years. and in the beginning of the sitting meditations there typically is something to examine internally what your intention is and I have a very hard time with that I generally come up blank and I don't really understand what that is or how to work it to go through it or get around it or whatever it is that I need to do but I think it's a real block

Let me just ask you a couple questions. Sure. You've been coming for a couple of years? Yeah. What keeps you coming? I think I really, the year before I found this group, I was the worst year of my adult life. And I think it was a point at which I could no longer avoid feeling like the me that the world saw and the me that I experienced myself to be were a,

a chasm apart and that I had finally just gotten to a point where I couldn't live my life around that anymore. And that was all in the context of having some very prominent people in my life feeling like they were really aggressively trying to break me down. And I just decided I wasn't going to let them do that. And I had to come up with some new strategies to figure out how to do that better. And in very, very demonstrable defined ways, I feel like I'm a really different person than the person that came here two and a half years ago. But I struggle with the formal sitting practice. And I think because that is just so internally focused. So for whatever the struggle is, what I'm hearing that you're valuing and that I'm imagining you want to continue, it's

becoming more and more really who you are. Yeah, and I think there's a lot to this that empowers me that way. So you're feeling more and more empowered to, and when I say the words who you are, what's your language for really what you sense yourself unfolding into? What is it you're valuing? What capacity, what quality? I think what it's really given me in the day-to-day as I interact with people and the more informal side is an ability to see those dynamics in a more objective kind of way.

And I think one of the things that really kind of turned my viewpoint was the idea of sort of having that aggression put upon me was more about weakness than strength, and that my strength in that interaction was not reacting to it. So it sounds like you've become a lot more aware of what's true for others and you're more in touch with yourself. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I'm asking you all this because it helps me to understand what you brought up at the

very beginning is what your intention is. And it sounds like your broader current of intention is to really manifest your potential, to feel your own power and to really understand who you are. and live from that. And so when I asked that question at the very beginning of class, some people might even whisper that to themselves, you know, may I really be all that I am? May I not live in a limited way? May I express my full heart? My, you know, that's the idea and it's fine if when I ask that question that's not what comes to mind. But for some people, remembering what it is that really matters to them,

actually helps that to unfold more fully, the more conscious we are of what matters. Like if in any moment you say, well, right now what really, really is important? And I'm not doing an as-if, if we do it right now. And if some place in me when I do that, it's to be real, to be connected, to feel that heart-to-heart, just by being aware of it, it actually unfolds, a more visceral way. So that's the power of reflecting on aspiration and it's one of the core parts of the Buddhist path is to just bring that into consciousness but it's a practice. So be curious about it which is what you are. You know, don't force anything and often what

people find is they're actually more able to contact their aspiration after they've sat quietly because there's actually a lot of the debris is settled and there's more contact. So you might just, you know, breathe and just feel yourself. And then at the very end of the sitting sense, okay, what matters? And practice it then, too. Yeah, and thank you for your question. It's a really good one. Hello.

My question is about how acknowledging and accepting the charged content of your life plays out over the long run. And specifically, I'm thinking about cases. where you might successfully confront some person or memory or feature that's bothering you and successfully apply your techniques of acceptance and acknowledgement and arrive at a state of real peace. And then, of course, you have to go back to your daily life and a week or two, a month passes. And you think that this thing that you've finally set aside your negative feelings about comes back and you discover, okay, maybe I wasn't as successful after all, or maybe I was, but not permanently. So what happens in the long run?

Is that, is the bad stuff that's out there there to stay? Is it always the same, or does it get weaker as time goes on? And what's the, what's the, what's the, solution? Is your only hope to maintain a constant high level of practice so that whenever it comes back, you can just deal with it the same way? Okay, so I get your question, and I love it. You're kind of saying, what can we hope for here? Because it's true that the deep currents of greed, hatred, and delusion, They're very, very deeply wired. And even when in particular situations we manage to bring a lot of attention and not so much

identification, other situations can trigger them again and it's not like they've been uprooted fully. So in the myth-thology of the Buddha, Mara was the personification of what you're talking about, the challenging energies. And Mara, even after the Buddha, was fully. enlightened. He'd be holding forth and, you know, a big crowd and Mara would be kind of around the edges of the crowd and the Buddha's closest disciple, Ananda, would see him and go, oh my God, Mara is here and he'd be, you know, doing this. But the Buddha would say,

no, no, no, it's okay. And he'd look at Mara and say, I see you, Mara, come, let's have tea. And this is, you know, attending and befriending. So he would, so the good news is it happened to the Buddha, through his whole life, even after he was enlightened, that these energies would reappear. But there was no suffering. In fact, the way Ram Dass describes it, most of you've heard of Ram Dass. He says, you know, I was struggling with pride and greed and, you know, all these jealousy and this and that. And then I practiced and I practiced for decades. And I did this practice and that and this. And now I still have greed and the same stuff, but they're like little schmooze. They just come and they go. Our relationship changes to them and that makes the

entire difference. Because if Mara appears, and let's say Mara is a deep insecurity about unworthiness and we're inside that and identified, it's torment. We feel very small and disconnected. But if some of the patterning or remnants or flavor of unworthiness arises, and we see it and we say, oh, okay, unworthy, you know, it's kind of a current that's moving through, but we're resting in the ocean, there's just compassion. It's okay. So that's why the teachings really, it doesn't matter what's arising. It's all how we're relating to it. And as you get the knack, every time that you relate, and it seems to settle and then it comes back, it did settle some and you started discovering a larger sense of identity and it's not like you lose that. Increasingly, it'll be more familiar to rest

in a wakefulness and a tenderness and a presence than to be identified as that small limit itself. And that's the blessing. It's to rest in the truth of who you are and then the currents can come and go and it just is okay. Could you give a little preview of your talk on forgiveness? That is a hard question. We have like three minutes and so I would, but I'll tell you why I've spent a lot of time, a lot of talks to have that theme, because in some sense you can look at the whole of the spiritual path is really a process of forgiving.

What happens is that because we have such conditioning towards fight, flight, flight, free getting defended and protected, we're over and over again having to recognize how we kind of became small into a kind of limited self-sense and defended, and then relax the armoring. And forgiveness is really just relaxing the armoring that we keep on rebuilding moment to moment. So whether it's forgiving another person, we're really forgiving, we're relaxing the armoring and opening to the vulnerability in us, or whether we're forgiving our own body or forgiving pain in our body or forgiving an emotion, it's the same thing. We're letting go of resistance. The reason it feels so important to me is that it feels like an evolutionary capacity,

that we are unfolding and for many, many thousands, tens of thousands of years in tribal society, fight-flight-freeze and blaming and creating bad other and sometimes bad self was the way. And as we now have this more evolved frontal cortex and as we now have capacity for mindfulness and compassion, we're more and more able to see fight-flight-freeze, that tightening and that armoring, and go, oh, okay, that's happening, and then bring our attention to it in a way that helps to relax it. So in attending and befriending, we open to a larger sense of our being.

So I look at it as the vector of our evolution and as the hope for peace on earth that we learn to forgive. And we learn to do it within our own beings and we learn if each one of us left here tonight or who's listening with a little more intention when we feel a sense of separation from another person

to attend and befriend within our own being and then include that being in our hearts, we'd be actually acting towards real healing of the planet. So thank you for bringing that in. It's a nice way to be able to end the evening. Yeah, thank you. So we're going to close tonight with a brief meditation. And before we do it,

I have a question for you that I'd like to ask about this kind of a format. that how many of you, if we did this here, let's say, you know, once every couple of months, would like this kind of a shift to a question-answer format. Can I see you by hand-raise? How many of you would prefer not to do it very often, just rather have, listen to a talk and meditate? It's fine. I really understand there are preferences. That's why I'm asking. Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. Okay. So let's take a moment.

Let this be a pause where you really explore your capacity to just stop, to pause, just to sense those two basic questions what's happening inside me right now. Real honest, just gentle listening in. Can I let this be just as it is? Relaxing with whatever experience is unfolding. And if the experience is in some way difficult, difficult, you might sense that you can offer some gesture of kindness, noticing what happens when there is that offering of tenderness inward, taking some moments to offer whatever

wish, whatever blessing of metta, loving kindness you'd like that resonates for this moment. What do you wish for yourself? And sensing the heart and the heart space that's really the source of that wishing, that blessing, that sensing it is a space that's really edgeless that includes all of us here, all those you know and those you don't know. So we sense this shared heart space as infinite, boundless. We close by including all beings in our heart, offering our prayers to all beings that that all beings everywhere might realize the loving presence, that's the very essence of being,

that all beings everywhere might live from, loving presence, that this remembrance of loving presence will enable us to care for our beloved Mother Earth, our larger body, all beings everywhere might awaken and be free. Namaste and thank you. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.