Tara Brach - Responding to Change with a Wise Heart (2018-04-25)

Episode Date: April 27, 2018

Responding to Change with a Wise Heart (2018-04-25) - An intrinsic part of spiritual life is facing the truth of impermanence. When we open to the changing flow without resistance, we naturally cherish this passing life, and realize the timeless, changeless awareness that is our true home. Yet we are conditioned to grasp on to the passing pleasures (and all that we love) and resist the inevitable arising of stress and unpleasant experience. This talk includes teachings and guided reflections that help us identify the ways we are reacting to major changes in our life. We explore how to shift from reacting to meeting impermanence with an allowing presence, and then responding to our circumstances with wisdom and compassion. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. I'd like to begin this talk sharing one of the great thrills of the season for me. We had a family of Fox that set up shop right under our gazebo, and there are five cubs, and they've been cavorting around wildly in these last handful of days. Of course, and I can see them right from my office window. I have these binoculars, and I watch them. And there's so much better than anything that comes on my screen.

I'm mesmerized by them. And I'm really aware that they'll be there probably for another week or two. And then what Fox do, they're really tight with their little family, and the father keeps bringing food and trying to get the mom back to normal size and feed the kids. Then they disperse, and then they go live alone for the rest of their life. go back into creating family, but they live alone most of the time. So I'm really aware of how short-lived. And of course, this is right here in the D.C. area.

We're in our Redbud Dogwood period, which is so gorgeous. And I'm right by the river where the bluebells are just past peak right now. So that's like all this really beautiful stuff that I love having there. and at the same time I have several friends and one quite young actually facing serious illness. So it's all the, you know, I'm witnessing the holding on to the good stuff and resisting the stuff that feels hard and noticing when I really can open it to it all. It's just a cherishing of this life. I took a friend of mine a few days ago, Dana Faults, who's a really dear friend.

and also a poet some of you may have heard of her. And I took her on a sunrise bluebell walk, right, when everything was peaking and the light was exquisite, it was perfect, and we were talking about how beautiful and short-lived it was. So she wrote me a blue-bell poem, and I'm just going to read you her last verse. I try to find the balance between opening to wonder and letting go as the moment passes by, allowing joy and a hint of sadness to coexist side by side. My own life, probably one of the most profound realizations that keeps coming back in deeper and deeper ways,

is that the more I open to the truth of mortality and loss that everything's going, the more my heart opens in an unconditional way to love. and that it's absolutely hand in hand. I can't be open to love if I'm in some way resisting or holding on. So this is really a basic teaching on the spiritual path that in permanence, like really getting it, not getting it intellectually,

but in our bodies getting it, is the key to cherishing this life, to really realizing who we are beyond the, changing forms to being awake. So this will be our theme for this talk and we'll look at how we resist change. The invitation for each of us will be to pay closer attention to the ways that we navigate change because for most of us the deep conditioning is to try to control things rather than open to how it is.

And to be present, really present, means we have to open to the changing flow. We can't be managing things. As John O'Donohue puts it, he says, we manage our lives as strongly so as to miss out on the great mystery that's here. You might consider as we explore charge places in your life where something's going on, some change, because there's always change, that you know is creating reactivity. Now, our evolutionary predicament is that we're constantly in a flux of feeling either pleasantness, unpleasantness, or neutrality, but it's constantly changing, and that we

are geared, we're biologically geared when it's unpleasant to in some way push it away or contract. And that's our, you know, you can see in the most small cellular creatures if you touch them, you know, like that. And we're also geared when it's pleasant and depending on how much we have unmet needs, this happens more and more strongly. But when something's pleasant, we try to hold it, we try to keep it, we try to get more of it, we try to stop it from going away. So what that means is, and it's really interesting, if you start watching yourself through the day, you'll notice how in the background there's a constant controlling through the day of trying to have more of the pleasure and less of the pain. And when it's

neutral, by the way, we tend to glaze over and not pay attention. So each of those reactions takes us from presence. We get it, this impermanence thing, we get it mentally. I mean, we get that subatomic physics, that everything is appearing and dissolving moment by moment on some subatomic level. And we get that the galaxies are wheeling through this universe, just moving, moving, moving,

and the universe itself is expanding, expanding. and we kind of hear about how our skin regenerates every seven days completely, replaces itself. And all our new cells are replacing old cells millions of times a second, which means just during that sentence you had 50 million cells replacing themselves. Think of it, you know. It's all amazing, but we kind of know this stuff, we know that the seasons are changing, you know, and we know that our children are growing up and we know that we have to replace our cars and then replace our hips and, you know, it goes

on and on. So change, even reincarnation, if you believe in, that everything is changing. Baptist minister was giving a children's sermon, and during the sermon, he asked the children if they knew what the resurrection was. And one of the children raised their hand. He was going to explain it. And the pastor called them and he said, I know that if you have a resurrection that lasts more than four hours, you're supposed to call the doctor.

It took the congregation about ten minutes to settle down. Dean Inja says, when our first parents are driven out of paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve, my dear, we live in an age of transition, you know. So we get it. We get it on that level. But the question is, are we able to, in a very direct way, since right now, everything's moving

and changing? Because if we really get it, then we won't try to hold on because it has to change. And we won't push away because things just have to unfold themselves. So that wisdom, when it's a deep, intuitive, felt wisdom really guides us in our lives. And yet in the Bahagavita, this is where Arjuna is talking with Lord Krishna, he says, what's the most amazing thing you've created on earth? And the response is the most amazing thing is that human beings can see people all around them aging and dying and they think it won't happen to them.

And then when we start getting it, we react. We get offended by aging. I mean, it's like this insult that we're kind of trying to hold off. And we get freaked out by, of course, by death and loss. And so what do we do? We bargain, we blame all the stages we know about. We deny in some way. We put spins around them cognitively so we don't have to really face them.

somebody sent me this, maybe we'll post it at some point so you can see it, but it's a motivational speaker's cemetery. And so here's what are on some of their tombstones. Some see death as an obstacle. I see it as an opportunity. Another one, putting the eye and die. Just to read a couple more. Not deceased, dimensionally challenged.

One more. I'm not dead. I've awakened the dead person within me. So it's important when we are exploring and again each of us in our lives, okay, how am I navigating change? You know, am I reacting? In which case if we're reacting and resisting, we're pulling out of the flow. We're not going to be able to live and love in a full-bodied, full-hearted way? Am I reacting? And that's as distinct from responding. And I just want to make that clear, because when we talk about change, we're not talking about becoming an inanimate object that just gets blown around in the winds. We're talking about experiencing change and responding wisely to what's going on. So I'll give you an example that if someone you trust

betrays you. To react would be to get into a rage and lash back, to be locked into blame in some ongoing way, or to deny your own hurt and cut off from your feelings, to prematurely forgive. Those are all ways of reacting, because by the way, there is premature forgiveness. It means we haven't really allowed what's here to move through. responding, we take the time to be with what's actually going on in our heart and our body. Time to feel the anger, but feel it, not act out of it. Time to feel the hurt that might be under it. Feel the fears.

And if we're present with what's going on, then we can respond from presence. That's navigating change wisely. So, if you have something in mind, we're going to revisit this a few times where you're at one of those, okay, this is a big change, something's medically going on with you that's really scary or with someone you love or something to do with your job or relationship that something's morphing in a way that's difficult. You might start sensing, well, what would it really mean to respond, not react? Just start sensing that in the background. So the given is,

we have this evolutionary conditioning, all of us, to first be inclined to react. That's our default. So every one of us, something happens and the first thing is, I don't like this, try to fix it, get rid of it. I always say when people ask me about how I've changed over the now, like 40 years or so that I've been practicing, one of the things that's really clear is that I still react. Like, you know, something happens, I feel criticized, some part of me gets defensive or whatever it is. But the lag time is less between saying, oh, okay, this is the whole limbic system reacting, and pause. What's really going on?

Give it space. Come back. That's the shift. So the first step is, if you want to begin to explore how to navigate change wisely, is start learning to see what are your typical ways of reacting? What's your habitual resistance? You can catch it. Because if you catch that you're in reactivity,

that you're in that trance of conditioned limbic reaction, if you can notice it, you're a little bit above the line. Remember, unconscious below the line, conscious. So you're a little bit more above the line, so you can begin to have more choice. So the next piece of this talk is, okay, how do we recognize we're in that reactivity? And think of it in terms of when pleasantness arises, we tend to grasp and hold on. And I love the metaphor of, okay, life is completely always changing.

It's like a moving rope. And when we grasp, we're holding on to a moving rope. And what happens? Get rope burn, right? So grasping really doesn't work. But examples of what are some typical ways that we hold on? Well, it may be on the more purely gross level of pleasure, meaning sense pleasures. Let's say you eat something but you really like it and you want to keep having that taste

so then you eat way more than as healthy for your body. Are the same thing with drugs, overusing drugs, or sex. are shopping or whatever video games. My son talks about the dopamine burst to get some video games and how it just keeps them going and going. It's not being able to let go, okay? The more, sometimes the other level that is really important to look at when we get reactive is the change that goes on with the people in our lives.

the given is that we really get attached to the approval, the safety, whatever we get from others. And so when others change, and they're either not available to us, or they're in a mood that they get critical, or a relationship falls apart, are they get sick, or whatever happens when they change, because inevitably they do, do we respond from people? presence, are do we in some way hold on that causes suffering? There's a little saying that a man marries a woman expects she will not change, she does. A woman marries a man expects him to change. He doesn't. There's also something, it says, 86% of all statistics are made up. So the point here is

that people change, how do we work with that? Relationships change. We change. You know, what happens if you're attached to being healthy or attached to having a mind that remembers things? Bad attachment. Attached to being a good mood, being clear thinking, being open-hearted, all these things. And inevitably, you're not always that way. Or maybe you're attached to doing things right. And yet our inner capacity... capacities keep changing. It's like one reporter was interviewing a bank president. He said, sir, what's the secret of your success? And the response was two words. And sir, what are they? Right decisions. But how do you make right decisions? One word. And what sir is that? Experience.

And how do you get experience? Two words. And sir, what are they? Wrong decisions. which is cute and we also know it's true. I mean, how do children learn to walk, they stumble. And if we can, instead of the frame of something's wrong and resisting change, get that if we know how to Tai Chi and flex and respond, it wakes us up. The Dalai Lama, one of his most beautiful teachings to, the teachers ask what should we bring back to the, Students in the West, this is in the early days when there was first this communication

really with Western teachers and the Dalai Lama. And he said to trust the power of heart and awareness to awaken through all the changing circumstances. We can do that. So this is a place to pause and I'd like to invite you to check in and we're going to just examine how do you navigate when you're attached to something pleasant and you might be losing it. So this is a time to close your eyes and maybe take a few full breaths, let yourself

really tune in inside. You might scan your life and sense really what you're attached to having or keeping, where there might be some grasping around a particular person staying in your life, being a certain way with you, treating you a certain way, grasping. grasping around getting others' approval or respect, maybe somebody in particular, maybe there's some grasping around another's well-being around your own health or capacities. Just see if you can sense an area where there's some chart where you know you really want something to be a certain way. And it's something you know you can't control and let you're trying by holding on in some way.

maybe holding on to your reputation, how other people see you. And see if you can go right to where that's most illustrated in your life. Like pick a person or a situation where you sense that you're really holding on, something you really want. And now even as your eyes are closed, let your body even take the posture of wanting and play with it a little. Give yourself permission. Maybe that you clench your fists or that you lean forward some.

You might even say, I want it to be this way. Let the wanting be as much as it is for things to be a certain way. And just notice when you're in wanting mode, grasping, holding on, how aware in those moments you might be of other people's experience or of gratitude, or of the space of awareness or the mystery that's here, or even what you most deeply love, just notice you're in a trance, just become familiar with. This is the trance of the wanting, grasping cell. And you might let yourself come back to the sense of aliveness right here and now, just feel your breath, feel your body, if it helps to shift your posture

little and sense that you can just hold with compassion the wanting self, the grasping. You're a witness to it. It's more the truth of who you are to witness and see it than be inside the trance. And you might even sense if you could be more awake, how you might respond instead of react to these circumstances. How might you shift from the reacting, the controlling to responding? When you're ready, you can open your eyes or if you prefer to listen with your eyes closed, that's fine too.

So one of the ways change happens is that there's pleasure. We're trying to hold on. The other big one, and we'll spend a little more time with this, is something's going on that feels like it's wrong, bad, you don't want it. And you can start getting in mind something in your life that you might. wish wasn't happening. It's not wanting. And typically we relate to things going on, the changes that we don't want to happen with fight or flight. Sometimes if they're traumatizing, we freeze. Most of the time we're fighting them or we're fleeing them. And fighting means we're judging

what's happening, we're blaming, we're attacking, we're acting out. So it's towards the perceived cause of whatever's bad. If a person's rejecting us in a relationship and that's the change, then fighting means that in some way we're blaming, angry, and trying to lash back, get back, hurt them. If they're firing us from a job, or same thing. Sometimes we're the perceived cause a lot of the time that we're reacting to ourselves, I screwed up.

If only I had done it differently, and that the fight, we're fighting ourselves at war with ourselves. We also flee when things are unpleasant, when things are out of control, when we don't like how things are going. Let's say a relationship's gone south, medical problems, a loved one's struggling. We flee. How do we flee? We get lost in obsessing thinking.

We leave ourselves that way. Or we distract ourselves at work. Or we numb out with drugs or food or substance, other substances. In other words, we leave our body, which is the site of the agitation. By the way, every form of reaction, we leave our body in some way and leave presence. So I want you to reflect again, if you will, just checking this one out. As you let yourself go inside, identify some change that's going on in your life that's unpleasant and you wish it wasn't happening.

It might be a loss of your own health or mental capacities, a loss of another person, a potential failure in some way, something you want to avoid or stop or not experience. And notice how you are reacting. What's your way of resisting? Are you judging yourself or someone else blaming? Are you obsessing, staying busy, taking drugs or food in a way that's numbing? let yourself connect with the mind state of not liking or resisting what's happening. In other words, bring some immediate sense of the what's happening right in front of you,

whatever that loss might be about, sense how come you don't like it. What's the worst part of it? As you did before, you might even let your body take the posture that shows how you're reacting to this. It might be slumping, it might again be clenching a jar or fists, but just let your body feel it. And then as if you could float into that witness, notice this is the reactive self in a trance. This is when you've pulled away from presence in reaction and sense that you could more and more inhabit the witness with compassion. compassion, just witnessing how you're some way resisting, not liking, with kindness. The more you can witness the trance, the less you're in it. The more you can choose,

how do you want to respond instead of react to this? What might serve healing, freedom? And sensing your intention towards that, the more we can see. see how when we're in reactivity, we're in a trance, kind of on automatic. We're moving through life but missing out on life because we're really reacting in the moments. Perhaps you can sense us a little in this poem by Billy Collins called The Parade and you know, I just taken the words with your eyes closed. How exhilarating it was to march along the great boulevards and the sunflash of trumpets and under all the weight of the weight of the the flag of ambition, the flag of love, so many of us streaming along all of humanity,

really, moving in perfect step, yet each lost in the room of a private dream. How stimulating the scenery of the world, the rows of roadside trees, the huge curtain of the sky, how endless it seemed until we veered off the broad turnpike into a pasture of high grass, headed towards the dizzying cliffs, of mortality. Generation after generation, we keep shouldering forward until we step off the lip into space.

And I should not have to remind you that little time is given here to rest on a wayside bench, to stop and bend to the wildflowers or to study a bird on a branch. Not when the young are always shoving from behind, not when the old keep tugging us forward, pulling on our arms with all their feeble strength. So we can begin to sense that when we're reacting to the changes in our life, we're in that

trance like parade. And it's only when we come into presence that we can choose to pause on a bench and enjoy the wildflowers and our connection with each other to sense the mystery that's here. Okay, so if you'd like to open your eyes, please feel free. What we'll do now is look together more at how, when we're in that reactivity and trance, how we can wake up from it in the moment. Just to build on the reflections the first and major way, and this is the training, the awareness training we do together,

is when you get some sort of an alert, okay, I'm reacting, the intention is to make that you turn and bring mindfulness and heartfulness to what's going on inside you. Just in that moment, you turn rather than continuing the reactivity, what's going on inside me right now? And it takes an intention.

You have to pre-intent. Like you've already identified some places you're reacting, is your reactive, know that when you experience that again, when it comes up, you're going to try to pause and say, oh, what's going on inside me right now? Because that pause, that you turn, is where you have some freedom. So you can ask yourself, what am I running from, what am I unwilling to feel, what's happening here? And you might find that whatever it is, because I find in myself, when I'm reacting, I sometimes

my way of doing it is to get busier and try to do more and move faster at speed. You know, that's one of my reactions. If I pause in the midst of that and it's excruciating at first, because you know when you're on a roll you're on a roll, like just to stop. It's like everything's vibrating and restless and anxious. But if you go deep down there really is this undercurrent of vulnerability, like something bad is going to happen around the corner. I need to do more.

But if you can stay, when I stay, with that vulnerability, the space of presence opens up and it becomes clear I was in a trance. And now that I'm here more, I have the choice to be in the world in a way that's a lot richer, you know. So I'll share a story of one guy's experience with getting caught in a reactive trance to change and how he came out. And this is several years ago. a man I know was trying very hard to hold his marriage together

and then he found out his wife was having an affair and he was devastated, he knew they had a split, he knew that this is real change, this is where the landscape of our life totally gets shattered and so he was facing that impermanence directly. And so he went into, his reactivity is, this feels wrong, she shouldn't have, we shouldn't have, this is bad. There was a lot of blame, and he was throwing it in both directions.

He was doing what I call arguing with reality. It was there, but he was saying, this is wrong. And then one point he said, Tara, I know that my anger is causing more suffering. I know that, but that's just what my mind's doing. And so my response was, waking up from trance doesn't mean getting rid of anger. It means actually, actually making the U-turn and being with exactly what's here, with consciousness, with kindness. So that's the way he started practicing. Every time he was saying, it should be different, you're bad, I'm bad, he started making

the U-turn and saying, oh, what am I running from? What's really here? And what he found was under that blaming anger was the grief of loss. He had thought they were in it for the long haul. this vision of his life was completely pulled apart. So there was that grief and then by doing this practice we do of saying yes to the grief, we keep saying yes to what's there, yes to the grieving, he would start to accept that things were changing and in that he started reconnecting with his own aliveness and his presence, his

wise heart he was more able to respond, navigate custody with. without having all that marbling of bitterness in it so much. And I share his particular story because he really was able to re-access his wise self because I have seen so much suffering when the change comes because relationships, so many of them don't work, they fall apart in some way.

And there's so much reactivity that what happens is that trance of reactive keeps people from finding that layering of grief and hurt and underneath that, the tenderness that lets them come back to life. As long as their energy is caught in that reactive blame to change, they can't do their healing. So this is one of the ways, what I call making the U-turn,

bringing those wings of mindfulness and heartfulness to what's going on in the moment. Okay, when you notice you're reacting, okay, what's here? Now there's another pathway that's synergistic which is when you're caught and reacting and it's really hard to be with what's under it, it's really hard to open to the pain of change. Then purposely remember where you feel connection and belonging because the Buddha describes that our fear is great but greater yet as the truth of our connectedness. And if we can remember where in life we're connected, it might be with nature and it might be with some sense

of the beloved in a formless way and it may be with our children and it may be with the best friend. It's like one of my friends that knew many in this community when he was dying, he described that what allowed him to open and let life move through him was that he felt held in a web of love. And the more he felt that holding, the more he could open to, this is real, this is happening. Like, be honest with the passing and loss of his life and leaving his 10-year-old daughter, but be able to stay open because there was something about the timeless love that was holding him. When we remember the heart's face that's here, we have room for the changes in a way that's really, really powerful and deep. I want to share a story. Richard Seltzer is a surgeon who also

is a really beautiful writer. And he writes a story about loss that has stayed with me for many years, I'm going to read it to you. I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth had been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek eye to cut the little nerve. Her young husband's in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to do well in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they? I asked myself, he and this rye mouth I have made who gaze at each other so generously.

The young woman speaks, will my mouth always be like this? she asked. Yes, I say it well. It's because the nerve was caught. She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. I like it, he said. It's kind of. of cute. All of a once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a God. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers to show her that their kiss still works. So this is the second pathway, is the power of loving, that if we remember where loving is, in our meditation and with each other, there's more space, there's a heart space that has room

for the changes living and dying in our life. A third way of working with change. And this is a training. This is a training. In Buddhism, there are what are called daily recollections, which are reflections, which are reflections that basically say, all that I am is destined to, to be gone, to be dust, all that you are. Everything I love is going and remembering that, really remembering that.

Ajun Shah, who is a Buddhist monk, teacher, he said he'd hold up his favorite glass and this isn't it, but he'd hold it up and he'd say, do you see this glass? And he'd say, I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. It says, when the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf

and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, of course. But when I understand that this glass is already broken every minute with it is precious. So that's the training, is to remember that everything is already gone. It's going to go. and then to cherish it. I do that with my dog. I'm utterly attached to my dog, like crazy for her, and I can't stop thinking about how, okay, now she's eight or nine,

and, you know, how long does she have? So I actually, I'll be walking with her on a trail and I'll disappear her and just say, okay, she's gone. And then there's something about doing that that just all of a sudden it's just utterly precious. And I was sharing this, I was walking by the river with a really good friend, and we both had our dogs and she couldn't believe it because she does the exact same thing and she's equally attached.

So it's a strategy. I do it with myself. I'll in some way have a reflection of, okay, I'm already dead. You know, this body, mind's gone. And then there's just an experiencing of whatever's here, but a sense of kind of an emptiness and a tenderness. It's very powerful to sense that already gone. The last way I'll mention of the last training,

and this is you can't do unless your mind's quieter. If you're meditating and you do start getting quiet, is let the object of your meditation be change itself. Just start noticing how everything is changing. And I'm not going to say more right now, because we're going to end our talk that with just a... It's called radical impermanence, directly contacting the movement of change itself, moment by moment.

When we go deeper on a spiritual path, this reflection, this broader reflection, on the truth of impermanence becomes increasingly central. The only way that we can really weigh up is by opening to the reality that it's all changing and then learning how to sense the trance of when we're pushing, holding, blaming, judging, obsessing, and learn how to come into presence. And there are incredible gifts as we begin to do it.

It sounds a little morbid to say, okay, reflect, all right, I'm dead, you know. It doesn't sound like, oh, what a party, you know, good meditation. some fun, you know. But it's actually amazing. It's the moment that we really get it, there is truly a falling in love that is absolutely open-hearted, absolutely open-hearted. Stephen Levine says, just imagine that you have three days to live. Who would you call and what would you say? And why aren't you doing that? You know? So it's not... not only a cherishing, we don't wait to let people know we love them if we get that we don't know how long we have. We don't wait. So that's one of the gifts, this open-hearted

cherishing. A second gift is we're able to wake up from the living story of who we think we are and really sense more of the formless dimension of our being. I have a friend who's no longer alive, who I met with often. We were really close and we'd share things that were going on. And she told me that she would look at someone she cares about and see how they are and then her vision would penetrate and she'd see them as a changing stream and see their dissolution if they were going to get sick and die. And everyone she looked at it was like they were decomposing in her eyes. And these precious forms going going.

And she says she wanted to kind of cup her hands around their dear faces and preserve them from that change, except there's nothing to cup because they're this stream of change. And so we would take turns, you know, holding a space for each other and doing what's called focusing and different kind of attending to each other's experience. And so when she said that about holding their face but seeing that they're just a stream of change, I'd said something like, you know, in your hands are a stream of change too. And when I said that, because she was just focusing on how they were changed, and she was

trying to preserve them, but her hands were changed. Something shifted. And as she put it, she saw her own form as transparent, a stream of change and that let the light flip through. She could relax into this field of light, this timeless awareness that was aware of the changing field of her hands and others. And that became her practice. And she had cancer when we were doing some of this work. And right to her death, her practice became to see the stream of changing everywhere, but then rest in that timeless loving awareness that was the source. that was beyond anything changing, but all the change was arising from.

That was her freedom. It's like Soyo Rumpashay, a Tibetan teacher says, if everything changes, what is true? It's timeless loving awareness. So these are the gifts, these gifts of recognizing who we are, cherishing the life around us. And what we'll do is explore this in a final meditation will be very short, but I think you'll appreciate it. So you might kind of set yourself, again, closing your eyes.

Just to frame this meditation, the deep understanding and gift of opening to this truth of change is that if you really open to the changing stream, including all the loss, you're You discover the awareness and love, the beauty and mystery that's our real home. This is the poet Mark Nipo. Everything is beautiful and I'm so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat.

The breeze makes the bird. move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I've lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we've lost face each other. It is there that I'm adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful. In the stillness, feel the aliveness of your body.

You might feel the tingling in your hands, vibrating, the pulsing, and then soften them and allow that aliveness to become even more present and awake, soft vibrating hands, feeling the tingling in your feet, vibrating in your feet. Let your legs be filled with awareness. So you can feel the energy in your legs, your arms, and deal your torso filled with awareness, shoulders and face. So you can sense this body as a field of aliveness. Is anything holding still? Can you notice how every part of your being, every cell, is alive, vibrating, moving. You might imagine points of light and night sky

just appearing and disappearing. Perhaps you can open and listen to the sounds that are here. Is anything holding still? Sensing with your eyes closed, the light and your lids. Notice if anything's holding still in your visual field. Light, sound, sensation. This opening and resting in that present. that can sense everything changing, moment to moment opening to that flow.

If you notice when you go off into thought, things become static again. But if you reopen to this living presence, letting sounds wash through you, letting this life live through you, it's becoming that tender, open heart space that's saying yes to the ever-changing flow of life, moment to moment, opening to the changing flow and realizing the heart space that's our true home. Timeless, loving awareness. Namaste and thank you for your attention. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email

list, please visit tarabrock.com.