Tara Brach - Retreat Talk - Loving Yourself into Freedom

Episode Date: April 26, 2015

2015-04-20 - Retreat Talk - Loving Yourself into Freedom - The most basic truths we forget, and one is this: if we don't love ourselves, we can't love life.  In the most basic way, attending to and embracing our inner life reveals the nature of reality. This talk looks at the genesis of self-aversions and several pathways that open us to the loving presence that is our source.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Good evening and namaste. On opening night, I mentioned our statue here, our leaning Buddha, and I'm wondering how many of you checked it out to see if it really was leaning. Anyone? Yeah, I thought so. Well, we got it. A friend of mine from our community in Washington and I found it,

and we were really happy with the look of it and brought it to the Wednesday night class, and we kind of unveiled it. And I remember after class, seeing people standing in front of it, and they were all kind of going like this. So it was a surprise, and at first, you know, I thought, oh, no, I can't believe I got a bad Buddha.

But, you know, for some of us, we were thinking of renaming IMCW to the Song of the, leaning Buddhas or something, because, I mean, think of it. You know, this, it's quite symbolic to have this mold that's just not perfect. And still, so what? It's just, you know, the spirit shines through. And so this is pretty much pointing to the theme of tonight, which is that when we suffer, it's because in some way we're making the mold, the conditioning, the weather that's moving through us wrong, that we've got in our body and in our mind a sense

that I shouldn't be like this and life shouldn't be like this. In other words, it's described as we're kind of at war with reality. It's not okay the way it is. I remember in Washington Post offers these awards for different T-shirt titles. And one year was the T-shirt of the year was, I have occasional delusions of adequacy. And there's this cartoon with a dog at the psychiatrist's office and he's saying, it's always good dog this and good dog that,

is it ever great dog? So you get the idea. So there's this sense of something's wrong. I was very moved some years ago, a story that Sylvia Borstein shared about the power of the practice of Meta, of being able to see past the mask and see the goodness. And she described the experience of a young man named Phil, a Buddhist practitioner who was in the streets of New York,

and he was accosted by someone, by a mugger, and disheveled man, scraggly beard, etc. And Phil gave him $600. It was in his wallet, but the mugger was shaking his gun, and he was obviously really a distraught guy kind of dazed and high on some drug or whatever. And he demanded more. He said, I'm going to shoot you.

And Phil said, no, no, no, wait, don't shoot. Here's my watch. And he gave him really nice watch. He said, it's an expensive one. Guy's still really disoriented, did and he's still shaking his gun saying, I'm going to shoot you. So Phil mustered up all the loving kindness he could. He said, look, you did really good. You got $600. You got a really expensive watch. You did really good. And the guy kind of put his arms there. I said, I did good. And he's kind of

walked off half days. He goes, I did good. I did good. I found that touching on a number, of fronts. I think one of the greatest gifts we can ever offer each other is to, in some way, mirror back that goodness that's there, because we forget. And we all need reminders. So just that power of reminding, but also the sense and this mugger, you know, it's like he's an extreme leaning Buddha in the moment. But that Deep down in him, he wanted to feel his goodness. How much it matters to us to trust that there's some purity, goodness, consciousness, heart, that there's some beauty in us.

We all have that longing. And the longing comes from what's truly pure and good. It's kind of calling us home. So in Buddhism, there's a kind of parental, wisdom teaching, that is that our Buddha nature, that this loving awareness that lives through each of us, it is our essence and it's no further from us than waves or from the ocean. It's here. And yet, we suffer because it's obscured.

We suffer because we fixate on the particular shape of a particular pattern. of waves that we call self, and we forget that luminous, wakeful, tender spirit. We forget. I think sometimes some of the most basic truths are the ones we forget most regularly, and one of them is if we can't love the life that's here, we're not going to be able to embrace others in our world. It just doesn't happen that way. The Buddha said, the moment moment you see how important it is to love yourself, you will stop making others suffer. So I'm titling tonight's talk, loving ourselves into freedom. It's a kind of a lens of Dharma. Each night you've been getting in different ways how to bring rain. We've been using

rain as a model, but it's really, what rain is. Very, very fundamentally is these two wings of noticing and allowing, deepening that noticing, having the allowing turn to love. Understanding and love. And so we'll be bringing that to that deep-rooted sense so many of us have right at the core that something's not okay. I have so many dog cartoons. Here's another one. This time the dog's the therapist. I'm just going to wag my tail and lick your face until you feel good about yourself again. So anyway, we're activating our inner dog, you know, the one that can do that. But just to say that this isn't like kind of the soft side of Buddhism, kind of the feel-good

therapeutic side, to understand that self-aversion is the glue that actually holds that self-sense together. You could explore that by sensing if you were no longer judging yourself, if you really didn't believe anything's wrong, who would you be? Okay, so we're going to circle back to that one. But that's just tossing it out there. So the premise here is that the self-sense, the kind of solid self-sense and self-aversion co-arise.

the more we're identified with an egoic self-sense, the more there's going to be with that a sense of something's wrong with me. And I'm not, I'm clearly not to take my word for it, just check that out. I'm putting that out there. And one of the ways of understanding it is that we, all creatures incarnate, have the perception of separation,

we're designed to experience separation, we're designed to have a nervous system that out of that feeling of separation pursues things to become more complete and defends out of fear what might threaten us. So we're this wanting, fearing self. That's the identity.

And then what gets added on to it is I don't like this wanting, fearing self. There's something wrong with this self. This is sometimes called the second arrow. That we sense the animal in us. Pat has a languishing of limbic lovers. A part of us that's trying to survive and make it doing the best it can by pursuing, grasping, defending.

We behold that, but we consider that's me. We own it and then don't like ourselves for it. Elaine Pagel's is a scholar, a Christian scholar. She studies original sin. Because this is the parallel, right? That something's fundamentally wrong. And here's what she writes. She says there's a human tendency to accept personal blame for suffering.

In other words, we'd rather feel something's wrong with me and feel guilty and ashamed and self-hating and deficient then feel powerless and helpless. It's a sense of control. At least if I know that something's wrong with me, then there's something, we can at least have an illusion of control. And this phenomenon is most glaring

with those that are suffering from societal oppression or trauma, abuse. So many rounds, of working with people who are suffering from an addiction and it's my fault or have been sexually abused and somehow rather they think it's their fault.

We know that. How does that happen? We own it. So self-aversion and self-distrust are stronger in some people than others. The more that we've

have unmet needs, the more we've been violated, the stronger it's going to be. We can see it so clearly with those that have been oppressed in a societal way, in a cultural way, those that deviate from the standards set by the culture, and this is most obvious when those in the non-dominant categories, non-dominant race, sexual orientation, gender orientation, society has its standards. people that are not part of the dominant culture get the message of, you're not good enough, you're not as good. And it comes over and over again.

It's institutionalized, the message we don't always get that that's what's happening, but it's happening. I have a black friend in medical school in the middle northwest part of the country. He's way, way, in the minority in the school, and then in the population, you barely see any African-Americans, in that area. And what he described when he was visiting last month is that wherever he goes, people are afraid of him. And then the message back to him, is there something wrong with you

that's creating this fear? And even though he's very, very aware of all the strata of racism in his heart of hearts, it's exhausting to try to keep, keep on trying to let people know, hey, I'm okay, I'm a good-hearted person, I'm not going to hurt you. Can you imagine that message over and over again? I fear you. There's something wrong with you. So we get it from the culture. The message is that you don't in some way meet the standard. But the family for many of us is the domain where we come to feel in some way something is wrong with me. And we get the message that you need to be different to be loved or respected.

You need to be, you need to look different. You need to have a different type of intelligence. Don't be so needy. Don't be so stubborn. You know, in some way, don't be so loud, so bossy. And then we internalize it. We don't need anybody else to tell it. We really don't need any messages later on because there's,

right there in us. Story I heard a woman walks by a pet store and there's a parrot cage out front and right when she's just as she's walking right in front of the store the parrot goes, ock, o'k, you're ugly and you're stupid. She goes, ooh, that's strange. Well, a parrot must have heard that somewhere. Next day she's walking to work again right past the same pet store

and once again, o'c, o'c, you're ugly and you're stupid. it. So she looks inside, the owner's busy, but the next day when it happens again, she's angry. She goes inside and tells him, and he's abjectly apologetic. He says it will not happen again. He's going to do some training with the parrot,

et cetera, et cetera. He really feels bad about it. So the next day, he takes deep rest. She rounds the corner. She's walking in front of the store, and the parrot goes, o'c, o'c, you know. So we do. So let me ask you to,

Let's do a short reflection together, because we're talking about the messages that end up creating this sense of not okay. So let's examine in our own lives just for a few moments. As you pause, you might bring to mind a typical childhood scene with caregivers. And you might be at the family dinner table, or you might be in another room of the house that you, were together in a lot or outside in a yard or in a porch or in a car. But have the scenes so you can actually see their faces. And if you could freeze a scene and just look at their face and sense, well, what's the message that you get from that face, from those eyes?

How did they, and you can pick one or the other or both, how did they want you to be? Who did they want you to be? What were the standards invisible or not invisible that in some way they communicated? How didn't they want you to be? What was the message of what they didn't want? How much did they notice who you really were and are? The message that in some way I should be different is communicated very early. usually we start picking up the energy of it before we verbalize

and the sense that we don't meet the standard brings up a lot of fear it's very dangerous we are pack animals to not be okay to whatever degree to not fit in to feel ignored invisible rejected, not seen, betrayed. That's life-threatening. So what that means is that our system has to do stuff to take care of itself.

We have to in some way put on armor, get strategies to make it through. And so that's what we do. We all have a set of strategies to, in some way, try to prove that we are good and cover what seems bad. Covering our badness is, you know, really, really deep in our system. I mean, just think again, original sin. There is an assumption in the primary religion that influence hearts and minds over the centuries of something's wrong.

So we have to control our badness. We have to control our animal cells. So we have strategies, not to make mistakes. There's another story. There's a lot of stories of novices entering monasteries. But in this one, comes to the monastery, and all the monks are very diligently making copies

of these ancient manuscripts, and they're making copies and copies and copies. But what he sees is they're making their copies from copies. Okay? They're not copying from an... original manuscript. So it goes to the ab and it said, well, if there was a mistake somewhere along the line, we'd be learning from manuscripts that were actually really misguiding. So the ab said, you've got a really good point. So he went to the vaults way, way deep under the monastery to check out and

see, you know, well, what about that original manuscript? What did it say? And he was gone for hours. So the young novice guy said, you know, got worried and wondered what was going on. He went down to check on him, and he found him deep, deep in the cellars, you know, where the vault were banging his head against the wall and crying uncontrollably. So the young guy said, father, father, what's wrong? What's wrong? And in a choking voice, he responded, the word was celebrate. So it's fun. end, we cut off a lot of joy because of this idea that something's wrong and we really organize ourselves around something's wrong. We have many strategies and we try to impress and get

approval and achieve and we have strategies to numb ourselves from feeling the pain of something's wrong, overconsuming, obsessive thinking. But the point of the point of is this, that every moment that our life is involved with those habits of either trying to make up for something's wrong or cover it over, or that we're caught in that feeling, we are identified with a separate self that is not the truth of who we are. We're in a limited identity. and the more we pursue our control strategies, the more we're actually reinforcing that sense of separate self.

So the key here is that until we can see the self-aversion and the strategies we use to try to not feel it or in some way cover over, until we see that, we're still in that trance. we need to be able to see it and I can say that over the decades when I watch

and when people get I sometimes call it the trance of unworthiness it's a trance of in some way something's wrong with me when people get it then start seeing how pervasive it is and the effect of it just seeing that

wakes up this this care like this hurts it's almost like a soul sadness where you see the landscape of your life and you start getting how many moments have I sacrificed feeling connected or joyful

or okay to this sense of something's wrong how many moments and when we start getting that what that brings up is a commitment some dedication to waking up I remember at the beginning of radical acceptance,

the story I put in right at the beginning, because it struck me so much, was a woman who was with her mom when she was dying, and her mother came out of a coma, and she looked at her in the eyes and said, you know, all my life, I thought something was wrong with me. And then she closed her eyes, and that was it. That was the last thing she said.

And so for this woman, it was a gift because it just in some way that sense of it doesn't have to be that way if we can wake up and commit ourselves. So these are, this is the words of Srinar Sargata, who's no longer alive and a great Indian teacher. He says, all you need is already within you, only you must approach yourself with reverence and love, self-condemnation and self-distrust or grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this. Make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing, give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them. You are beyond. all I plead with you is this.

Make love of yourself perfect. So let's just take a moment to unpack this, because there's so much in that to me. I mean, first he's saying, you know, your flight from pain and your search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself. This thing we don't like about ourselves, the grasping and the aversion,

and we so much don't like it, and it's just our more primitive survival systems playing out. Then he says, okay, so that's playing out. All I'm asking is up-level that loving, evolve it, which we have the capacity to do. Our brains have the neurocircuitary to love from a place of really seeing our interconnectedness, of seeing past the mask of deep compassion and empathy. We have that capacity. So he's saying kind of, up-level, evolve that loving. And what does he mean by loving yourself?

There are some Buddhists who would say, wait a minute, loving yourself. Doesn't that like reaffirm a self? And in actual experience, any moment of feeling a sense of love, whether we're giving it or receiving it, softens and dissolves the edges of self. The solidity of self begins to loosen with any bit of loving. So to make love of yourself perfect means loving the life that's right here. You're not loving a narrative self, a story of self.

You're loving this feeling of a clench. And you're loving this yearning. And you're loving this sense of wanting and clinging. You're just loving the different weather systems that come up. You're loving the leaning Buddha in whatever particular position. Let me ask you, if you will, to reflect again for a moment. Okay? Just to close your eyes. Krishna-Murdi says,

the most basic expression of love is paying attention. So we begin with that. And the invitation just for a few moments is to explore for yourself what it means. means, what does it mean to make love of yourself perfect in this moment? So you might be noticing what gets in the way of feeling loving right this moment, or you might notice the ways of paying attention that help you. And both of those ways of noticing are useful. We're going to come back, we're going to revisit this reflection again. But the rest of really this talk is about

the pathway to really bringing that loving presence to the life that's right here. And just to say that it can be really difficult because if we're caught in self-aversion, we're in a certain biochemistry that's not real conducive to loving. It's almost like being asked to do meta when you're angry and everything in your system's tight and, you know, dark and tense and you're being told to offer these blessings and it feels like, you know, a real contradiction. Well, what that means is that it's a gradual unfolding, this movement from self-aversion to that tenderness of loving presence. So what's that passage? How do we make that transition? How do we move from the fight, flight, freeze, limbic brain with its reactivity to that presence that can really hold

with kindness? So I'll begin. I'd like to kind of just explore a few different pathways with you. but to begin with a story that's a recent one from my own life when I was up at the Forest Refuge this January retreat center and the weeks before I went to the Forest Refuge were really high-stress ones, a lot of demands and I got caught feeling tight, feeling impatient, feeling selfish, you know, like everything was about me getting stuff done, and it was very hard to have, I didn't have a lot of bandwidth. So I, when I got to the Forest Refuge,

I realized I were judging myself. And it showed up the most with the people closest to me, of course, that I didn't feel, you know, as giving or generous or spacious. I mean, for Jonathan, I stopped preparing that four-course homemade meal that I do ever. and ironing his clothes. I missed a few days. So I got to the Forest Reefuge,

and I realized I was judged, you know, when I started getting in touch, I kind of was remembering bits and pieces the last few weeks, and I felt this, it was really hard to be okay with it. And so I said, okay, rain. And again, rain is bring, let's bring some attention, some recognizing and allowing and deepen it with rain.

And it was very, very familiar, this sense of aversion towards my stressed self. I don't like myself when I get stressed. I don't like the person I become. That was the feeling. And especially don't like it when I'm, you know, not being kind and generous to people I love. So that's the recognizing and allowing was saying,

okay, that's here, the not liking self-experiences. here. So investigate. So I started feeling into it and feeling into where the kind of clutch was and it was a very familiar sense of not okay and it went down to if I had to give a voice to the belief it was I'm not lovable. I went down to that core place and so I could sense that that place needed a kind attention. So I tried, I put my hands on my heart as I teach so often And I said, okay, not lovable, feeling it, feeling it. And it was so in my body that it was just like, no, I just am not okay. It was just this, you know.

And so I had no alternative but to keep on paying attention. So this is one piece I'm saying, is that sometimes we just can't offer the kindness. So keep paying attention. Remember Krishna Merti's teaching that that's the most basic level of love. You just stay. You just stay. Okay.

So feel the unlovable place, feel it, feel the clenched, and give it a voice, and what is it most saying, what is it most wanting? And I could just feel that very young voice saying, please love me. So I just let that voice say it. And the more I kind of let the words repeat and repeat, the more it came from a very, very deep, rooted yearning, really deep in my body and being.

And I started sensing what I wanted to love me back. And it wasn't like a particular person. For me, when I imagine what I'm wanting, there's some presence. It's very real. And it has a personal sense, and it's really in relationship with the life that's right here. But it's just a diffuse, light, warm, formless presence. And so the yearning was so deep it invoked the presence. I must speak more to that. But saying, please love me came from such a deep place that the loving sense was there.

And I imagined that this presence was kissing me on the brow. And the kiss was like this blessing just saying, total care. And I just stayed and practiced something I've been practicing a lot, which is when something feels good, just pause and absolutely let it in. Feel it. This isn't entraining the mind to how it can be. So I just let it in and let it in. And the more I let in that sense of loving presence, the more

the eye dissolved into that loving presence. It just wasn't a self it was coming into. It was just I became a part of that field. But that wasn't the end. I was feeling this field of loving presence that was what

I was. And then I started imagining different people in my life. And with each of those people, I would imagine either kissing them on the brow or giving them a light touch and saying I love you. Seeing looking them in the eyes, saying their name.

And I had never found a way of doing metta that so immediately catapulted my experience of separation into one of pure communion. So I started doing metta for the people I knew. And then I started, you know, that I was walking, I went to a meal and I saw somebody passing by and, you know, an elderly man that we kept crossing paths. and I imagined kissing them on the brow and saying it.

And it's like from then on, that person was like, we were really intimate for the rest of the retreat. So this became a kind of custom design meta for me. But what I want to say is that many, many rounds since then, the trance of unworthiness comes up for me a lot. I don't believe it so much. I don't stay in it so long. but the sense of not okay comes up. It's just a pattern that comes up. And so I do a much more light or

quick rain. Oh, recognize it, let it be right there, feel where it is, and then I just imagine that kiss on the brow. And then the end of rain is really resting in that field, getting familiar with that field. Knowing that field of love is what we are. That's the end of rain. Now, I took time on this because these steps are kind of archetypal. They can do them in different order. I haven't run into somebody that particularly had a kiss on the brow, but I've heard many variations. One friend here that I was with in an individual meeting described how what she calls on and what emerges is a sense of her high self is like an angel unfolding her in its wings

feel the very light touch on the face really protected really safe every one of us because love is our essence because the waves are no more distant from the ocean in any moment than we are from that loving presence every one of us has the capacity to find a pathway to feeling that sense of loving the life that's here. But they take practice.

I more and more think of it in terms of neurosurcuitary that we have the circuitry that tells us something's wrong with us, we're falling short, we're not okay, we don't belong, we're incomplete. and that's been running for many mind moments, millions of mind moments, with an association of feelings and sensations, each time we in some way interrupt it, in some way, and introduce something more healing and true to our being. We're beginning to create a whole new, the physiological grounds for a different identity.

So the steps, when we get stuck, to recognize it, to let it be there, not to try to do one of our control strategies to get away. This is the learning to stay peace. The next step after we've allowed it, recognized and allowed it, is to feel it in our bodies. There's no awakening of love. the moisture of love does not awaken unless we're in our bodies. Have to be in our bodies. And I realize that for many of us,

that takes months, years. It's a practice coming into our bodies. Once we sense the aversion and the longing to reach out from that place, we all have different ways of doing it. As I mentioned for me, the words were, please love me, someone else may have a sense of, may I behold or held and someone else, please see me, just keep me company, whatever the

wishes. And then to in some way imagine receiving that, offering it to yourself. Jonathan told a beautiful story last night of a young man caught in aversion and finding where that pain of it was in his body and really being able to offer deep sense of kindness. offering it to ourselves or reaching out to have some sense of the larger who we are holding us. So, many rounds, and you may do it and might not be complete, you might not get to the full-blown end of feeling totally in the ocean of loving presence, it's okay.

It's really okay. Just start again and feel it and allow it and be with it. Now, for some of us, the sense of violation, how we have caused harm is so great that it's very hard to reach out. It's really impossible to hold ourselves with forgiveness or kindness, and it's very hard to even sense some love coming into us. and the greatest challenge is when we've violated our sense of how we should be in the world and hurt others. So another story for you. This is a man I was working with many years ago. He was a recovered alcoholic, and he got divorced when his son was pretty young.

He was still drinking, and he tried to maintain contact and offer support. and there was real estrangement though, very, very hard. His son felt, you know, allied with the mom, and he was pretty much on the outs. So even as a son was an adult, he'd have visits, but they were pretty superficial. They barely had eye contact, because mostly the visits were so he could see the twins,

which were his grandchildren. But it became worse and worse for him because he felt so guilty and so unwanted and so unforgivable that, and he was starting to practice mindfulness, so he was actually getting in touch with it. You might have noticed that mindfulness can make things worse before better. You know, just checking. So, and he, you know, I often teach about the story of a man in the woods

and seeing a dog under a tree and going to pet the dog, and the dog lurches at him all ferocious, and the guy gets really angry at the dog and tell, He sees that the dog has its leg in a trap. And then he goes from feeling angry at the dog to, oh, you poor thing. Well, part of this practice of self-compassion is really getting it, that when we act in ways we don't like, our leg is in a trap. We're caught in something.

We're hurting. He could see that. He could see how his leg was in a trap through drinking. he could see it all, but the very, in front of his face, seeing his son who was struggling with anxiety and depression and seeing the harm he felt that he was the cause of, and he was a partial cause, he felt unforgivable. So I asked him, you know, if the question is, is that what could, your self can't forgive yourself. I mean, the small self can't do it. What could be forgiving? and he's practicing Catholic, he said,

God, the sacred that lives through all beings, there is a mercy, but I can't feel it right now, coming towards me. So I suggested that he take the badness, that in him that he felt was bad. It's like almost gathering into two hands and just offering it out, like handing it over, just taking what felt so bad,

and just handing it over, and just handing it over, It's like he's just bowing his head and saying, you know, just take it. I can't do anything with this. That became his practice. He had this achy, murky, hole of darkness in him, and he just kept imagining that he was handing it into something very vast and very merciful, handing it and handing it over and handing it over, until gradually that murky, dark, gunky place

started being filled with a sense of lightness. and space, handing it over. While this was happening, his visits started changing. The conversation, there actually started to be some contact with his son and his son's wife, just some light conversation, but mostly with the twins. He got them a sprouter. You know how you get a sprouter, you put the seeds in, and you can water them. And within a few days, you get a bunch of either mung bean sprouts or alfalfa sprouts.

He got them a sprouter. And the kids were excited, and they started growing sprouts, and then he brought some vegetables from his garden and home-baked bread. And they had their first dinner where he was actually with his son at a dinner table in decades. After dinner, the children went to bed, and that's when he finally said what he needed to say and couldn't because he felt too ashamed to even say it, which was, I failed you, and I could.

never make it up, but I love you. I love Deanna, his wife, and I love the twins. And I hope you'll accept me back in your life. His son couldn't say anything for a while, but that was the first time the two of them had hugged since his son was seven years old. His son wouldn't hug him after that. And it wasn't like a fairy tale thing. It took a long time because there's a lot of hurt and anger. But I think again of that line from the Buddha that when you see how important it is to love yourself, you'll stop causing others to suffer. This isn't something we do for our own individual self. We do it for the freedom of our hearts and for others as well. the Buddha's awakening

and the night of his awakening he got attacked by all the challenging energies that Pat described you know greed, hatred, delusion, all of it and he was pretty free by the time the morning star appeared but not totally free

and then Mara, the attacker, the shadow side that it was attacking him you know, through the night he had met these all of the attacks with this presence and compassion. It said that the slings and arrows turned to flower petals and fell at his feet.

There was a mound of petals. But he wasn't fully awake. So then Mara issued his final challenge. And some of you probably know what the final challenge was. It was self-doubt. It's the hardest and the deepest to not trust ourselves. It's really hard. So when that happened, the Buddha did not try to do a meditation muscling into, you know, working with that one.

He put his hand out and touched the ground. And he called on the earth goddess to bear witness to his goodness. And I feel like that's a really important gesture and an important moment in the awakening story. Because it wasn't like a self trying to prove that he could do it or prove more wrong or whatever. He reached out to a larger belonging. He reached out to the web of life, to bear witness to his intrinsic goodness. And in those moments, as it says,

the heavens turned dark, and there was lightning and thunder, and Mara receded. And it was in those moments that the Buddha truly became free. We need mirroring. We need to be reminded because a small self does not believe in itself.

It doesn't like itself. Rumi says, whenever some kindness comes toward you, turn that way. Turn towards the source of the kindness. So we reach out. We reach out to our own high self, in the angel wings of the high self. We reach out to the loving presence that I call that formless loving presence.

We reach out by offering out. What is surrender? When we offer our surrender the badness, what does that mean? my understanding, because I do this also, I'll just say, it's too much take it. It's not like, I want to get rid of this, you take it. It's like, this isn't truly what I am. This is not my full identity.

Let it be held in something larger. It's like letting go of a small identity when we surrender. But a self can't surrender. Surrendering happens. All we can do is intend to let go. So in the moments of making a gesture, It's kind of coming around to the home stretch here. In the moments of recognizing we've turned on ourselves,

sometimes we can't go to deep loving. We just say, okay, I'm willing to pay attention. That's the bare minimum. I'm willing to stay. I'm willing to pay attention. And then we deepen it. We start really paying. What does it really like?

What does it feel like? What really do I need? And then we begin, as we touch into the need in the yearning, to find that if we're really inhabiting the yearning, if you really say, please love me, from pure yearning, it will call forth loving. So what happens is there's a shift in our identity, that the more that we make love of ourselves perfect, the more we let love into these lives, the more we dissolve into loving presence, it's not just that we don't

cause other suffering, we actually become a space for them to melt and dissolve and open. I heard a story about a woman who's an educator in a progressive school, and she was in a grocery store in California, and I'm going to read to you what her friend wrote, her friend was with her in describing the incident. She said, as we snaked along the aisles, we became aware of a mother with a small boy moving in the opposite direction and meeting us head on. in each aisle. The woman barely noticed us because she was so furious at her little boy, who seemed intent on pulling off items from the lower shelves. And as the mother became more and more frustrated, she started to yell at the child, and several aisles later had progressed to

shaking him by the arm. At this point, my friend spoke up. A wonderful mother of three and founder of her progressive school, she had probably never once in her life treated any child so harshly. I expected my friend would give this woman a solid mother-to-mother talk about controlling herself and about the effect this behavior has on a child. Braced for a confrontation, I felt a spike in my already elevated adrenaline. Instead, my friend said, What a beautiful little boy. How old is he? The woman answered cautiously. He's three.

My friend went on to comment about how curious he seemed and how her own three children were just like him in the grocery store, pulling things off shelves, so interested in all the wonderful colors and packages. He seemed so bright and intelligent, my friend said. The woman had the boy in her arms by now, and a shy smile came upon her face, gently brushing his hair out of his eyes. She said, yes, he's very smart and curious, but sometimes he wears me out. My friend responded sympathetically,

Yeah, they can do that. They're so full of energy. As we walked away, I heard the mother speaking more kindly to the boy about getting home and cooking his dinner. We'll have your favorite macaroni and cheese, she told them. So children

and criminals don't unfold in flour because of punishment because of harsh judgment, and neither do we. You know how the Dalai Lama put it, my religion is kindness. And we can't separate kindness from awareness. The very, when we're really, really open and

awake, and as it's described empty, and it's not solidified. The natural flavor of that experience is kindness. There's a natural responsive warmth to awareness when we're really awake. And the more kind we are, the more we rest in that awareness. Does that make sense? This movement of offering kindness and opening into that awareness and from that awareness offering it out, it's never a one-shot. It's over and over again, but gradually, gradually as we develop this habit of responding to the life that's here with that quality of care, we become more familiar with the caring presence that's here than the self that we were judging. And I want to close with that because that is really the essential waking up or shift

that happens in this practice is that as we deepen our attention and as we rest more and more in that kindness, the sense of our being opens. We become familiar with that in a way that we really, really trust that's who I am. That loving presence is more the truth of who I am than any story I ever believed in about myself. So we'll take a moment to do a closing reflection together. Let yourself be aware of the life inside you right now, noticing what's happening. Notice if there's anything between you and really feeling at home in your being a place. tender presence towards what's here.

With whatever you notice, you might explore what it means right in this moment to make love of yourself perfect. You might experiment with any gesture or words, any images, any felt sense that wakes up

the experience of loving the life that's here. You might sense with your body and your heart Who would you be if you didn't believe or feel that anything was wrong? The poem Awakening Now by Dana Foulds. Now is the only time you have to behold. Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the radiance, the love of your true nature. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Please, oh please, don't.

continue to believe in your stories of separation and failure. This is the day of your awakening. Namaste and thank you for your attention. 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.