Tara Brach - Question and Response: Heart Practices - (2016-11-05)

Episode Date: December 27, 2016

Question and Response: Heart Practices - (2016-11-05) - follow-up to the guided heart practice: Taking in the Goodness. Tara replies to questions from retreatants. ~ from the IMCW Fall retreat

To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. I wanted to leave a couple of minutes just in case anyone had questions about the heart practices and also to say that you can weave in as much of the mentor, loving kindness, compassion practices as will seem to be alive in your practice, whatever supports. So feel free to experiment and bring in through the day. Does anybody have any questions about the heart practices? The story that you told with the man holding the baby close to him, what's the practice that we would do as you feel you're hard sort of getting hard?

You mean instead of going out to a hospital nearby and holding an event, It's what you imagine. So you would imagine a being that you'd like to offer tenderness to somebody that you've seen that could really use that tenderness. Some people imagine a small child or an adult that is having trouble. And then just to imagine that you're in some way offering something that's comforting, soothing and helpful. And in the moment of offering comfort that's,

starts warming up our hearts. So you just do it in your mind. It found it very easy to speak to those that I love and that practice was really easy. But what I found afterwards were there were a couple of people that I feel like I have to heal my heart and I found them coming up. And that was surprising. And trying to feel how I'm going to fix it. So this is a really important inquiry, which is when the love is flowing and simple and uncomplex, it's not so hard to see the goodness and offer our care, but what happens when it's complex and when there's some woundedness in there? That's when sometimes the meta-practice can really be premature and try to override what

really needs attention, which is that there's still some hurt or wound that we need to be bringing our kindness to. And I often describe it as a kind of a you-turn rather than trying prematurely to either forgive somebody or see their goodness. We first have to attend to what's asking right here for our own kindness. And then you'll find that as you bring that inward, then the heart can include the other in a way that you can actually see more cruelly their goodness. Does that resonate for you? Yeah, thank you. It seems I'm less able to still my mind while I'm doing meta.

There's a fine edge of bringing someone into my consciousness that trips over into thinking about them. It's a really good observation because meta is really a skillful use of reflection. It's like often people say, well, aren't we ever supposed to think? Well, yeah, there are skillful ways. and if you can bring to mind a person and not go into the chain of thinking, but rather just enough to be able to then take in an energetic way what you're appreciating, to see a look.

That's why I often suggest imagine that person looking at you with affection, or imagine when they're happy, or imagine just enough to activate that place in you that's appreciating. And then if it trips into thinking, then you say, okay, thinking, thank you very much, and come back and do some more of whatever way of collecting and quieting your attention and mind works. So for you, Carol, it's going to be a balance of doing very non-conceptual presence, and then when you feel quiet enough, then dipping into bringing someone to mind and just in a very light touch just enough that you can energetically sense what you're appreciating.

I have found it helpful not to use the meta phrases, but to, like, have them in front of me and see what might come up spontaneously. That has been a little helpful, but then sometimes trips into dialogue. Some of the classic styles of teachings to repeat a set of phrases, which has its own use, and it can be more immediate and energetic if you are feeling your feelings, feelings of care and just sense what in this moment do you most want to wish. So it can go either way and it can trigger off things. Thank you for your questions, your presence and many blessings as you move to what's next. Thank you.