Tara Brach - Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit (Part 2) - Addictions of all levels of intensity arise from disconnection and are spiking globally. Humans are experiencing epidemic levels of loneliness, and this combined with engineered products and substances that are highly addictive leads to great suffering. In these two talks, we explore how we get hooked on behaviors that we know cause harm, and how mindfulness and self-compassion can serve our freedom. Key to this process is reconnecting

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. So this talk is part two of the series on unhooking from unhealthy habits. And last week we started exploring the suffering of these habits, how when we're compulsively snacking or buying lottery tickets or constantly checking our iPhones, you know, the average person is I think 100 times a day. When this is going on, we're disconnected from our bodies, from our hearts, really from our full awareness. And at these times, our survival brain is more in control.

So we're cut off from what's described as our executive functioning. And one of the consequences is we're not as rational and honest with ourselves. We're not honest with others about being hooked. You know, we rationalize what we're doing. Classic example is a guy who's at a bar and he orders a drink and he puts it aside. He then orders another drink. He drinks it. The bartender gets curious and says, well, why are you just wasting the drink? And the man said, because the first drink is the one that leads to all the problems. In AA, 12-step programs, they call that stinking thinking. But we know this, how we tell ourselves, well, I'll have just one more cookie, you know,

or one more level in this video game, or, you know, I'll sleep for just 15 minutes. And it's described as being in a trance. We're driven to seek out relief or seek out pleasure and we're not fully here. And the Zen master Reh Khan shared advice that I spoke of last week, which is, if you want to find the freedom, stop chasing after so many things. So a friend in the last week sent me a cartoon and it has a dog in a business suit walking along with his human associate, and he says to the guy, well, I got into this human realm to find purpose, but this whole thing is just an elaborate version of fetch.

And so it is, you know. And I really think that one of the most basic understandings of a path of healing and a path of freedom is that we're releasing the habits, the physical, mental, behavioral habits that keep us from presence, from being right here, fully right here. We're releasing the habits that keep us from our full capacity to love, our full awareness. So there are a whole range of helpful approaches that we can't possibly cover in these talks, you know, cognitive behavioral therapies and somatic therapies and the variety of different addiction programs and behavioral trainings. But what we're addressing here is how arousing

mindfulness and compassion is essential to any approach we take in unhooking from unhealthy habits. And so in that spirit, I've invited those of you that are interested to use these weeks, to use this time to choose a habit you'd like to unhook from. and deepen attention to it. And I suggested ideally to do this with a friend or a group of friends, and I wanted to just take a few moments on why that matters. Addiction, as we're going to be exploring, is driven by the pain of disconnection. So an essential element in healing is our relationships with each other.

And there's research on AA, a 12-step program, on what makes relationships so helpful. And I want to share because these findings extend to any group that's dedicated to honest, authentic sharing and compassionate support in trying to free ourselves. So one piece is that being in the company of others, people realize, well, what's going on is not a personal flaw. You know, we're in it together. There's less shame. The second healing that comes in being with others is that we witness other people recovering, getting better, and it gives us hope that it's possible for us. And we need that hope.

We also start recognizing it's less about willfulness and it's more about a really sincere dedication to healing and freedom. And the last piece is that in the company of others, we feel part of something larger. We feel a sense of fellowship. And that itself gives us a kind of, that belonging gives us a wisdom and a freedom that helps us in choosing as we move through our life. We're in such an individualistic society. I talked about the epidemic of loneliness.

We need ways of healing and of awakening together. And this hit me so strongly a number of years ago, about five years ago now, that I co-founded with Jack Cornfield, my friend and colleague and fellow teacher, Cloud Sunga. And Cloud Sanga offers small mindful friends groups. And they're theme-based. You know, you can join a mindful friends group on how to cultivate loving kindness or deal with anxiety or parenting, and more recently, how to work with unhealthy habits. If you're interested in Cloud, you can find it on my home page. So many people report the healing that

comes when there is that intimacy, that fellowship, that spiritual fellowship of waking up together. So that's one possibility you can explore, as mentioned last week, connecting with your own friends in an intentional way. Or it may be a 12-step programmer, some other group that's consciousness-based, that's a fit. Okay, so in these two talks, I'm describing harmful habits broadly as addictions. And by that, I mean habits that we know are not good for us, but are hard to stop. And just to name natural. there's great range of degrees of harm, say from compulsively reading romance novels to regularly taking cocaine.

And many have found the word addiction really useful saying, okay, I'm addicted to this, whatever the harmful behavior is because it allows them to really acknowledge, wow, I'm not able right now to choose differently. I'm drawn to exploring this with you because addiction is skyrocketing, you know, and when we're hooked, it feels so personal. It feels like my fault, my flaw, and it's not. It's a societal suffering. It's a societal suffering that's driven by pervasive feelings of disconnection. That is the real disease. As we really consider it, connection, it's our deepest source of pleasure. All wanting, all desire, is for the pleasure of some experience of connection, whether it's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.

And in Buddhism, the teachings really are about how to relate wisely to desire to wanting when it arises. It's described as the middle path. Many of you are familiar, that when desire arises the idea is to meet it with a mindful awareness that you're not grasping, you're not avoiding, just that presence. And this is what allows us to then respond in a way that furthers connecting and loving life, furthers well-being, not suffering. I love the cartooning. image where there's a dog and it's dreaming and it says Zen dog dreaming of a medium-sized bone. And that's what you say, a medium-sized bone. And as we know, when our version of the bone appears, you know, my latest bone is chocolate,

truffle, cashew-based ice cream. And the portion is not always a modest. And I hope I haven't ruined anybody's abstinence by mentioning it. It is a pretty seductive sweet. So, okay, another story of a man goes to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist says, well, what brings you here? And the man says, well, I like pancakes. Psychiatrist says, that's not a problem. I like pancakes.

and then the guy gives him a real conspiratorial look and he says, really, come on over to my place. I have a whole closet full. So what is it that makes the middle way, you know, wise relating with wanting so difficult? I mean, how come we get hijacked by craving, grasping, mindfulness going out the window? I mentioned last week the trance of the hungry ghost. So, bottom line is we get susceptible when we feel disconnected. Again, it's helpful to consider that we experience connection when we feel nourished, when we feel safe, when we feel loved, when we feel valued.

These are all dimensions of feeling belonging to life connected. and when we're unable to meet these basic needs, to be nervous, save, love, valued, when we're unable to meet them, that stress, that anxiety, it drives us to substitute rewards. If we don't feel loved, we go for love in a different form. And when it's repeated over and over again, we get hooked, we get addicted to the substitute. So there's nothing wrong with liking our bone. The trouble only arises when it's become a substitute for a deeper need. You know, there's that mem that, you know, when women get anxious, they eat or shop.

And when men get anxious, they attack another country. So we run into trouble when we go for substitutes. and the greater the stress of disconnection, the more susceptibility to addiction. And we're going to spend some time with that. For one person I worked with some years back, names Fran. Her mother was an alcoholic and also bipolar. And very early years, her mother was quite abusive and neglectful. and then left the marriage, left completely, you know, just abandoned them.

Fran was grew up, raised by her father. Deep stress of disconnection there. And Fran started overeating very young to soothe and overtime became quite a harmful eating disorder. So I'm going to return to her story with you. But I started because it's so common, this very deep correlation between childhood trauma and addiction. And we see the correlation, this vulnerability to addiction with populations that experience trauma from poverty, from racial and other forms of societal violence, from the erosion of societal status. I mean, think of the experience of rural white men in the United States and the opiate epidemic.

which is everywhere now but was very starting and focused in those rural areas. Speaking broadly, any of the wounds of disconnection, whether it's coming from not feeling seen and understood, feeling neglected, feeling judged, feeling controlled, feeling suffocated, any of the wounds of disconnection charge up our wanting that then gets fixated on substitutes. harmful habits. There's a professor Peter Cohen who writes, If we can't connect with each other, we will connect with anything we find. The whir of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about addiction altogether and instead call it bonding. A heroin addict has bonded with heroin

because she couldn't bond as fully with anything else. It's not just humans who need to bond and seek substitutes. There's been a lot of research on other forms of life. Fruit flies are an interesting example. Research shows that male fruit flies who were rejected by females because the females had already mated, drank significantly more alcohol than those who were able to mate freely. I just shared this with a single friend who said, oh, great, every time I late night snack,

I'm going to see myself as a fruit fly. So to continue on the side to do with research, it shows that when we do have major stress, that stress of disconnection, it creates biological changes in the brain. And the key one is fewer dopamine receptors. Now, dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter involved with reward pathways. So fewer receptors, that means we're more driven to seek substitute rewards to compensate. The drive is stronger to increase pleasure and reduce pain. So I want to slow down here for a moment.

You know, I think of Fran, addicted to overeating, hating herself for it. I think of how many of us humans grow up with either generational trauma or poverty, racial violations, different types of abuse. So have these unmet needs for connection, have altered brains that lead us to fixate and depend on substitutes, and then are condemned and punished by society, through our own self-hatred, and further isolated. more disconnection. It's a very tragic cycle. And here's the main point of it. You know, as you think of your own and others' unhealthy habits, it's not a matter of personal fault. It's a misguided attempt at connection. If it helps to think of the fruit fly, think of the

fruit fly. And then it gets deepened, more completely locked in with, self-aversion and blame. This includes the socially condoned addictive behaviors that arise when we don't feel seen or loved or valued. You know, the ones that, you know, other people aren't going to condemn like getting fixated on approval or accomplishment or overwork or winning, you know, codependent relationships, addiction to money, possessions, power. It's not our fault. It's driven by that experience of disconnection. And yet as we know, when hooked on substitutes, even those that are condone, because they

cause us harm, there's a deep sense, something's wrong with me for this, the shame. So I'm spending time with this because in healing addiction and healing unhealthy habits, the key necessary starting place is forgiving ourselves, self-compassion. I've definitely seen this with myself, whether it's been for overeating or under-eating or overworking or obsessing and more. I could name all sorts of different levels of addictions. I've seen it with countless students and family and friends. The beginning of healing is relating to our inner life with acceptance, with kindness, with compassion.

So let me move forward on Fran's story. First months in Over-Eaters Anonymous, a 12-step program, really helpful, the support of others. She felt like I'm not alone. But when she'd hit a really strong stressor, she'd go into a binge. And then afterwards hate herself. She just felt weak. She used words like gross, disgusting, shame. we met after one of those binges and we started doing some practice together.

And I had her remember the moments before the binge when she felt most compelled. And I asked her where she just couldn't stop, she couldn't choose differently. And I said, what were those moments like? Because she was more aware of those moments. I mean, she had an intention not to binge. And she said the feelings was, it's too much. This is intolerable. I'm anxious. I have to get away from it. There was no sense of choice. It was kind of powerless or helpless to do otherwise. And then I had her bring to mind someone she knew

loved her. And I said it can be your most loving, awake, high self, or could be somebody else. and she chose her older cousin who had been a mentor for many years for her and a friend. And I said, okay, so have your cousin witness this, just witness this, just witness the whole thing, witness you right before the binge, how painful and intolerable the feelings that you just wanted to get away from them. And have your cousin witness, you seeking relief, and then witness afterwards the feeling of such profound shame. And what would your cousin want you to know? How would she respond? And so Fran just imagined her cousin there, imagine her cousin witnessing everything and offering her care. And her cousin's way of offering care was to say to her,

sweetie, you're hurting and this is not your fault." And she said it again, you're hurting, this is not your fault. And it was with that at that point that something really cracked and Fran started weeping those words, it's not your fault. And I'm sure many of you can just imagine in some way if we really can sense, wow, it's not my fault. They just went in very, very deeply. And they basically shaped herself compassion practice because after that, when she'd become

conscious of going into self-aversion, she would imagine her cousin and hear those words, it's not your fault, it's not your fault. And it would soften her heart. There was some compassion there. We'll explore this further. I'm going to come back to Fran. It didn't just say, oh, it's not your fault, just keep doing it. That's the fear we have. Oh, if it's not my fault, then I'm not responsible, then I'll just keep doing it far, far from that. It actually made possible healing. But I want to pause here so you can ground in your own experience. And so wherever you are, if you're in a situation where you can bring your attention inside, please do so and take a few moments to feel your breath and intentionally

invite yourself right here, right now. And you might bring to mind the unhealthy habit you'd like to have more freedom around where you get stuck either overeating food or taking too much of another substance. Maybe it's online shopping or video games or romance novels or too much sleep. Maybe it's that you stay up too late at night, seeking approval, whatever it is. Just bring to mind the behavior and bring to mind a recent time when it took over and you couldn't choose otherwise. And as you bring that to mind, see the place you're in and what's going on. Slow down the moving in your mind so that you can sense right before you actually engage in the behavior, just the strength of the drive, how the

mind narrows, the feeling of pressure inside, the urge towards how the mind completely just organizes around doing the thing you want to do, shuts out. of the objections, just sense how little choice there is, and then sense how afterwards, or maybe it's now looking back, how you're relating to the self that got caught, and to the degree that you can see that, the judgment, maybe, the aversion, maybe the belief, I'm so weak or I'm flawed, or I should be able to do it differently, and just sense the pain of that, being at war with yourself, how that hurts. And take a few full breaths so you can shift and witness some, either from your own most loving, wise awareness or through the eyes of

someone who really loves you, cares about you deeply. And just witness through those eyes what you were just reflecting on. You might put your hand on your heart as you do so. Just acknowledging the strength of the drivenness, the strength of the urge, and seeing the pain of being down on yourself, how that affects you, to be living with a sense of falling short, of failing,

of being weak, and just offer the message from that wise witnessing place that will most serve you. It might be, it's not your fault. It might be, this hurts, and I care about this suffering. In some way, just sending that message of kindness inwardly, let the intention be to receive, to let it in. And notice what happens.

If you really let in, it's not your fault. There's caring here. letting it in. As you're ready, you might take a few full breaths and sense the possibility of as you move forward in these days and weeks of turning more and more in the direction of self-compassion. When we're caught in unhealthy habits, we're in a trance and it cuts us off from our hearts and it cuts us off from our wisdom. Last week I talked about the circle of awareness you might remember that big circle with the line going through it and everything that's below the line is outside of our conscious awareness, everything that's above the line is in awareness.

And what we don't see, what we haven't seen and felt actually controls us. It controls us. So we need to bring above the line the feelings of self-judgment and often the beliefs that are going with it, which is we have. have a belief, we should be able to control this. Just check inside. Some might remember the Bob Newhart skit, real famous one where a woman goes to a therapist and her harmful habit that she's bringing to the therapist is this obsessive repeating thought. She has this fear of being buried alive in a box. So he's the therapist and he asked her a bunch of questions about her

problem and he says, okay, I have a path of healing for you. And she's, she's really eager and grateful to hear it because she's been suffering. And he looks at her and then he screams at her, just stop it. And she says, what? And really aggressively, he says, stop it. Just stop it. You know, like get alive. Just stop doing that thing.

And it's so clear, you know, you might have a really good amount of wellpower in other areas. There's so much science that shows that well, power doesn't work with strong habits, with addictions. And you might swear every day I'm not going to eat those cookies or smoke or take this drug, you know, and you might hold out a bit. But then the resistance gets exhausted because it takes energy not to do. The barriers crash and often we do more than before. You know, I can speak for myself that I'm pretty wellful when well as possible. But I will never forget being in my late teens and binging regularly and afterwards swearing, okay, tomorrow is going to be different. Swearing to myself. And how many

rounds that intention collapsed and how deep that belief that I should be able to control this and something is really, really wrong with me. As I shared gradually the binging subsided and it wasn't because of wellpower. As with Fran, it started with self-compassion, really in some deep way putting my hand on my heart and bringing kindness to the huge suffering that surrounded the addiction. And that then allowed me to deepen mindfulness and shift my relationship with my inner life. But here's the thing. Once there's self-compassion, we can begin to bring above the line the unmet needs that have been driving us and most need our attention. I'm going to say that again. Once there's self-compassion, then we're able to bring those needs

above the line in a way that really can be healing. It takes some time to open to the core needs, to the core wants. You might remember that quote from D.H. Lawrence, it's, not what the self wants, it's what the deepest self wants, and it takes some diving. And yet as we do that diving, the path to healing opens. William Moyers was speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at a conference, and there's this room full of scientists and addiction researchers, and they're obsessed with the intricacies of the human brain. and here's what he said. He said, I have an illness with origins in the brain, but I also suffer with the other component of this illness. I was born with what I like to call a hole in my soul,

a pain that came from the reality that I just wasn't good enough, that I wasn't deserving enough, that you weren't paying attention to me all the time and that meant you didn't like me enough. So the conference room was totally quiet. He said, for us addicts, recovery is more than just taking a pill or maybe getting a shot. Recovery is also about the spirit, about dealing with that hole in the soul. So I share this because to heal, we need to respond to that hole in the soul, to the core needs for connection that haven't been met. It's the only pathway to a full awareness, aliveness, and sense of spirit. And so here I'd like to come back to Fran.

She had been spending months emphasizing self-compassion, and that did set her up to go deeper, to tend to the core wounds with mindfulness and compassion. And we use rain because rain is such a valuable tool for applying mindfulness and compassion to particular areas of challenge. Rain is recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. And that brings together the basic components of mindfulness and compassion. And we started by recalling a recent relapse.

It happened. She was anxious about her father and stepmother visit. visiting. And while she was cleaning the house to prepare for them, she had this extended binge on cereal and ice cream. And so we went right to the moments before she started that. And the R of Rain recognized was recognizing anxiety. She's really anxious. The A of Rain is allowing that anxiety to be there. The I of Rain, I asked her, what were you believing in those moments? she said, well, they'll compare me to my siblings and not like being here. You know, my pull-out's not comfortable. I can't cook. And we went deeper. This is investigate, really finding out what's

there. And under the anxiety, there was hurt. And she could feel this tightening in her throat. Nobody ever really wants to be around me. I'm too sensitive. She said, she's hurt waiting to happen, the words from her older brother. And then she went on investigating, I don't want to be with me, who wants to be with that feeling of a scared, weak, vulnerable person. And so I invited her to continue investigating and get very close in with the part that felt that way. And she had tears and said from that part, I'm utterly alone, I'm helpless, I've been abandoned, I'm terrified. This is the whole and the soul, the disconnection. And so I invite her to breathe and to feel it, to allow it, and just to find out from that abandoned young self, you know, just ask, how do you want me to be with you? What do you need?

And she said, this place wants me to know it's hurting. It wants me to care and to not leave. that moved us to nurture the end of rain and you know i invited her you know to just sense her kindest wisest inner being and said well how do you want to respond to that abandoned part so she sat taller she took some a few breaths to really inhabit that loving witness and she said, I want to assure the part that I care. And she just said to her in her life, I care. I just can't stay with the feelings for too long. I may leave, but I'll do the best I can.

And we checked in with that inner part and that young place received that honest caring, something softened. and she was able to report that she felt more of a kind of a ease, a tenderness, not hurting so much. She felt enlarged, she was the holder and the held. She was that larger part that was saying, I'm staying, and also the part that said, you know, that could feel it. And it really helped that it was an honest exchange, not like I'll always do it and I'll always do it perfectly. it's that I care and I'll do the best I can. She was establishing a relationship with that hole in the soul, that wounded place.

So over the months, Fran did this regularly, becoming increasingly familiar with the place that felt abandoned, that unmet need for belonging, contacting the whole in the soul and being able to be the holder in the held. And still, there were times strong urge for a binge. She might delay for a bit, but then the urge would take over. There was a major shift after one particular experience I'll tell you about, which is that after one OA meeting, friends went on an outing and she hadn't been invited. And typically she'd gone, she'd go home and stuffed that inner child with food and instead decided, okay, just a little bit of

rain first. So she curled up in bed and she was sobbing and alone and feeling abandoned, really feeling it acutely and witnessing it. And with the end of rain, her heart really open to that young child and she started whispering to herself, I want to be with you. I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. And then it wasn't her whispering. It was her whole spirit. You know, it was like some very full light-filled presence that was embracing her small self. It was who she was beyond the little me, beyond the small self. And when all the emotions finally settled after a while, she just felt herself glowing. By way of follow-up on Fran months after, there were still binges but they became less and less and less. And what increased was trust that she could respond to

to the needs of that younger part of her. And, you know, she needed her friends in O.A. She needed her own spirit in holding that space. But she could respond. And she realized, she felt a larger belonging. She said, the way she put it is, I have addictive behaviors, but I'm not an addict. I am so much more. So this reminds me of a poem from Rumi that I want to share with you. This is how a human being can change. There's a worm addicted to eating grape leaves. Suddenly he wakes up, call it grace, whatever. Something wakes him and he's no longer a worm.

He is the entire vineyard and the orchard too. The fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy that does not need to devour. The grace Rumi talks about is awareness. It's the awareness that's our source and lives through all of us. That's what heals. It's not willpower. It's awareness. Some of you might be listening, thinking, well, when I think of my version of being addicted

to eating grape leaves, I don't have much access to that awareness. I just feel completely caught and very far from that grace. So I want to share one more story before we close of a different way that grace appears, but still is awareness. I was working with a lobbyist many years ago, David, and the president of his association confronted him about his use of cocaine and how it was undermining and impacting his performance and his relationships with colleagues and clients. similar at the same time his wife wanted therapy unless he stopped cocaine he agreed he figured he

could do it on his own tried a few times said he'd quit he had some arrogance some self-delusion there it didn't work but he continued in secret and then problems worsened and his boss said threatened to fire him and his wife asked for a divorce so he had kind of hit a wall so some of it was coming above the line, that he was ruining his marriage. The harm of what he was doing was coming into awareness and it was hard for him to rationalize or dilute himself. There'd be a lot of reward if he could change and he wanted to change. So he entered narcotics anonymous. I'm giving you a lot of 12-step examples today. And he worked with me doing mindfulness-based therapy. And the background for him, childhood abuse, his father had shamed him when he was very young.

His older brother bullied him to toughen him up. So he grew up in this unsafe environment, feeling unworthy, unloved. This is severed belonging. And he turned to substitutes. He turned to lying to protect himself. He bullied smaller kids to give him a sense of power. He started using drugs early and his favorite was cocaine because it helped him feel good about himself and invincible and in control. That was the reward. So with the support of

Narcotics Anonymous and our work, he began this process of bringing into awareness the childhood wounds, the unmet needs, recognizing some deep beliefs like I'm flawed, I'm weak, I have to prove my strength to a hostile world, I can't trust anybody, I'm not lovable, and a huge amount of shame. And he could, so he was very in touch with that young part of him that needed to feel safe and lovable. And I want to make a comment here, which is to the degree that we get in touch with the whole in the soul, the real pain or wound of disconnect, to that degree we can actually heal. You know, what heals separateness is bringing the light and warmth of loving awareness to the whole and the soul. An image that helps me is just imagine an ice cube floating in

water. If it's got direct contact with the sun, it'll melt so it knows it's belonging to the water, but it needs full contact. Otherwise, it'll continue to feel separate, have the edginess of an ice cube. So for David, over the first month, he was working with things and he could feel the edginess of the ice cube and how much it still continued to exert a huge, compelling, daily, painful force on him, feeling he was absent, but it was feeling deeply anxious and insecure, and it kept, you know, obsessing on how just how good he'd feel with just one line of cocaine as his reward. And after about a month of abstaining, he figured he could control it. Then he, as you were imagining, had another relapse and it was shattering.

how quickly he became the person he most hated, lying, mean, spirited, ashamed, unlovable. The mistrust became like real paranoia. He was utterly isolated. So this relapse was a bottom. The pain and humiliation drove him to really, really yearned for healing. And he went to a friend's cabin for a weekend and it was there in anguish that he finally realized the truth and it came like this, he said to himself, he just heard his voice saying, I can't do this. I can't hold myself. I can't heal myself. I can't get out of this addiction. His ego couldn't do it. And then I need help. And it was really out of facing reality, the small self can't do it. That

things started shifting. There was this prayer in him, please help me. He didn't have an idea about God, but he simply knew his small self couldn't do it. And there was something larger and he just repeated it over and over again, this voice and plea, the prayer really of a very young child saying, please help me. And with that some tightly clenched fist of ego started opening. There was a surrendering. And in the space that opened up, there could be the flow and unfolding of warmth and light. He really, he had a kind of relaxing in peace he hadn't ever touched, belonging to something larger, a larger field of radiance, something very tender and infinitely sweet.

And he knew that this is what I've always wanted. This is what he had always wanted. this is what the substitutes are trying to get him. And he started saying as Mena Montre had heard in a program with others, not my will, my heart's will. Not my will, my will, my heart's will. It's like that shift from the ego thinking it can do things to a kind of surrendering to what the spiritual heart really yearns for. And that's what he kept repeating in the days and weeks to come and kept practicing, bringing that raw pain of separation into awareness and praying. Prayer.

It was the beginning of belonging that, you know, how John O'Donohue might says that I love this, which is that prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. It changed things. You know, his friendships with others in program more trust, marriage, more trust. So I shared his story because there grace expressed as awareness realizing the ego's powerlessness. That was the breakthrough. That if you're feeling stuck, the awareness realizing, oh, the small self can't unstuck itself is the beginning of surrender and opening to some deeper force of love, some deeper wisdom,

And for many people I've worked with, grace unfolds through prayer, through embodying that longing with awareness. Please love me, please hold me. That kind of surrendering and receptivity, it makes room for the loving awareness that was blocked. In a deep way, our longing and prayer is loving awareness calling us home. we've gotten stuck and we've left home in unhealthy behaviors and addictions. Prayer is loving awareness, calling us back to wholeness, to belonging.

So what I'd like to do as a way of ending is practice a bit together. We'll bring rain to a place we feel stuck that wants more healing and freedom. and just know that this is a short kind of version of rain and that with whatever you touch that you can promise yourself to come back and deepen when you have time. Okay, so taking some moments as we do to come into stillness, making any subtle adjustments so that you're sitting in a way that's upright, so you're at ease, taking a few full breaths and bringing to mind a behavior that feels unhealthy behavior that you feel stuck in repeating and bringing in particular a recent time in mind. You might notice the trigger, what set

you off and as you move through this let your intention be kindness and passion. So you're triggered, you're about to do a behavior that you know is unhealthy and the R of Raine is to recognize, well, what am I feeling? What's going on? Maybe what you're recognizing is craving or wanting or anxiousness or restlessness. What is it? that is most predominant and then allow, just allowing that to be there. Investigate. Investigating, well, what am I believing? What is it you're believing about yourself,

about what you need, about what will make you feel better, about how you should be, underneath the drive to have the substitute, what's the most challenging feeling? to feel. If you couldn't go pursue the substitute, what would you have to feel? What's the deeper need? What do you really want to experience? If you go right to the place of most vulnerability inside you, whether it's a place that feels abandoned or unseen or unloved, go inside it so that you can actually express what it needs. Maybe you can explore prayer, prayerful expression. Please love me.

Please hold me. Please accept me. Please take care of me. Please may I feel belonging. Just feel the need of that kind of what we've been calling whole in the soul, the deepest part of you. And if you can express from that expresses if you're addressing to a word of you. If you're addressing to a whatever you imagine as the true source of love in the universe, please love me, please help me, please hold me, please accept me, please take care of me, please may I feel belonging. So feeling that longing, the unmet need. And now as that we turn to nurturing, just imagine that you all receiving what you need since that wise loving part of you offering what's needed.

Are some other source in the universe, a friend, a spiritual deity, the natural world offering to you what's needed, the loving, the accepting, the company, the forgiveness, and let your intention be to receive to experience exact what you long for. If you haven't already, you might put your hand on your heart, let that deepen the presence, deepen the offering of care, deepen your capacity to receive. Just to imagine for some moments receiving exactly what you need. Perhaps it's a sense of being bathed in light, in warmth, like the sun that melts the ice cube. And maybe there is a sense of dissolving, relaxing into something larger, feeling you're the holder and the held.

The rain practice culminates in what's cold after the rain. We just rest in the presence that's here, noticing the difference between this presence right now and the driven self at the beginning. Just notice if there's more space, more tenderness, more awake. And you can trust that each time you come above the line, each time you attend to the drivenness and to the beliefs and most deeply to the whole and the soul, that deep wound, you're building the capacity to access your wise heart, to access more choice, more freedom. You can trust this. This is the grace, the power of awareness.

and it's always here, although it sometimes feels very blocked. This awareness is what allows us to become as Rumi writes, the entire vineyard and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy that does not need to devour. As we close friends, we close together with a kind of sense of prayerfulness, hands on our hearts, just reminding yourself of what you want to unhook from and in a very simple way feeling your aspiration, your heart's willingness, your sincere dedication to healing and freeing your spirit, feeling collectively, sensing each other, this field of aspiration that collectively, and this is the prayer, we might free ourselves, help free each other so that all beings everywhere

might in some way be able to more deeply feel that essence of awareness and love and have that guide us in this world. Thank you, friends. Thank you for your presence, for your care, for your company. Love to each.