Tara Brach - Return of the Prodigal Son

Episode Date: March 22, 2014

2014-03-19 - Return of the Prodigal Son - Drawing on Henri Nouwen’s book that interprets this famous parable, this talk looks at the ways we cut off from loving awareness, and the process of homecoming. Our inquiry, reflections and a guided meditation focus on an essential and often overlooked element of transformation: our capacity to trust in love, to let love in.

Good evening. I'd like to begin by welcoming all those that are here in Bethesda, Maryland, and also to honor and acknowledge all those of you that I know listen from around the world, a lot of the things I end up sharing in these talks come from your correspondence, and I thought maybe tonight I'd start with one little note that I received that I really liked. my young son and I were listening to one of your podcasts while making dinner and suddenly he looked at me and said I don't have any badness in me just goodness and that goodness keeps getting gooder and gooder every day

this is a good one for your refrigerator that goodness keeps getting gooder and gooder every day some of you might know that the derivation of the word good from old English, is very similar to words that have to do with coming together and belonging. And so what that means is that really our experience of basic goodness arises when we feel that sense of connectedness. And what we find in many spiritual traditions is that the word homecoming really has to do with coming home to that sense of goodness and belonging. when we feel that sense of loving connection.

And you find this in our typical stories and myths and some of the great romance novels that a lot of it's about separating, leaving home, getting lost in some way, and then coming back to discover belonging. Sometimes it's reconciliation, and sometimes it's seeing what was always there, but we didn't realize it.

And in Buddhism, this kind of understanding of this process is, that we incarnate and there's a sense of separation and a sense of lostness and that it's described in terms of forgetting who we are. It's like we've become identified with the wave and egoic sense and we've lost touch with our ocean-ness and that the spiritual path is one of, you know, acknowledging and honoring the uniqueness of our waivedness, but sensing that we're made of ocean, sensing a larger belonging that really allows us to feel who we are with each other and this earth and this life. Tonight, in this particular talk, I'd like to draw on a very well-known Christian parable that I feel brings alive the currents of leaving home and rediscovering our belonging

in a very beautiful, powerful way. And this is one that many of you know. It's called the Return of the Prodigal Son. And I'm going to base some of our exploration together on the book written by Henry Newn, Return of the Prodigal Son. And it's a book that I'll very much encourage you taking a look at. And what he did was he took the parable and then he based his understanding on the very famous Rembrandt rendering of the parable. And if you're interested in the Rembrandt, I brought a few pictures because they themselves are so evocative.

So I'll begin by reading you the parable. There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, Father, let me have the share of the estate that will come to me. So the father divided the property between them. A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered his money on a life of divotry. Now, when he had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine,

and now he began to feel the pinch, so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on the farm to feed the pigs. And he would willingly have filled himself with the husks the pigs were eating, but no one would let him have them. Then he came to his senses and said, how many of my father's hired men have all the food they want and more, and here I am dying of hunger, I will leave this place and go to my father and say,

Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired men. So he left the place and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy clasped in his arms and kissed him. Then his son said, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserved to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants, quick, bring out the best robe and bring it on him, and put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet, bring the calf we have been fattening and kill it. We will celebrate by having a feast because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life. He was lost and is found. And they began to celebrate. Now the elder son was out in the fields and on his way back as he drew near the house he could hear music and dancing. calling one of the servants he asked what it was all about. The servant told him, Your brother has come and your father has killed the calf we have been fattening

because he has got him back safe and sound. He was angry then and refused to go in and his father came out and began to urge him to come in, but he retorted to his father, all these years I have slave for you and never once disobeyed any orders of yours. You never offered me so much as a kid. for me to celebrate with my friends.

But for this son of yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property, he and his loose women, you kill the calf we'd been fattening. The father said, My son, you are with me always, and all I have is yours. But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice

because your brother was dead and has come back to life. He was lost and has found. In 1983, Henry Nguyen, who, for those of you that haven't heard of him, is author, he's a philosopher, Christian mystic, really, I'd say. He had a chance encounter with Rembrandt's picture. It was a copy of it and was so moved by the image of the father really blessing the prodigal son.

He was so moved. He found in himself this longing that he too wanted to have some father, God, some being, embrace him, take him back. That sense of, you know, he too was

unworthy in some way and really wanted to feel that love and compassion and forgiveness. So over the next ten years, he studied the Rembrandt picture and kept going deeper and deeper into the parable and unfolding the meanings in it and he found that he could he discovered in the

parable how he was both the younger son the one who had in some way not trusted where love was at home right here and had left home to go find it through the substitutes of achieving and getting approval and finding something out there and he saw in himself the older brother who was also the one that was being dutiful in some way and was in kind of a righteous anger and judgment towards others, he could see both sons in him. And what he discovered in this journey of 10 years as he meditated on this picture and this parable was that the transformation, the healing in his life came from being able to let in and receive.

the blessings of forgiveness. In other words, he had a let-in love. He had a trust that love was here in order to discover that he was the father to. So that, I'm going to keep coming back to that because that's the nutshell of, that's right at the heart of the whole path of transformation. And the interesting question that many people have,

because we often talk about being generous and loving others and forgiving others, but the emphasis on letting in love, that inquiry for all of us is, do we really let in love? Can we let in compassion? Can we let in forgiveness? So what makes it so important, this letting in love? If we reflect on absolute love, it's non-directional. Absolute love is just a timeless field that's really the essence of what we are.

And yet in the forgetting, as we forget our belonging to the ocean and become more contracted, in the forgetting we create barriers. It's like the wave or sometimes I think of a sea an enemy because it's so obvious that when the sea an enemy feels threatened, it goes, contracts and gets. it's tight, it's like the ocean can no longer wash through it. We don't allow this ocean, this life, the love that's here to wash through us when we get defended or when we're grasping after something. So the process of softening our boundaries and actually exploring what does it mean to let

in becomes a radical and fundamental part of the process. of opening back into that field of loving. So we're going to kind of go into that more, explore that dynamic. In the parable, love is always and already here. The father, it was almost like he didn't have to forgive a son as soon as he saw his son.

It was compassion and welcome. There was joy in receiving his son. So what we get in the parable is that and you can see it in the picture. And it's quite beautiful. If you look, and again, I invite you to look at these pictures. The father, the son is kneeling with his head at his father's chest. And the father's two hands are in the son's shoulders.

And one of the hands is very masculine. And it's got that kind of an affirmation of, you are goodness, you do belong, you are my son, you know. And the other hand is very feminine. The fingers are slender and they're more kind of close together. with a lighter touch, and it's this comfort and soothing. It's kind of a delicate, sweet kind of loving. So when the parable talks about the father,

they're really talking about, there's really in that the archetypes of both masculine and feminine, and that loving, that strength and tenderness of loving, is always and already here. With the son, you see his head against the chest and those two hands with the older son. Again, these words are so beautiful. He says, you are with me always.

All I have is yours. It's like, how can we be a part? How can you compare? I don't love one more than the other. You are with me always. All I have is yours. We're one. There's an Indian master and teacher.

I love his teachings, Poonjaji. And he teaches that love is always loving you. But the activity of love, there's this field of love that's always loving you. Love is always loving you. It's like the ocean is always loving and cradling the waves. Love is not separate than you, but love is loving the arising we call ourselves. Love is always loving you. So during his 10 years, the basic question that Henry Nguyen asked himself and asks us really

is can we open to that trust that there is love here? Can we open enough so that we can start listening to its call and letting it come in, letting it wash through so we can discover our belonging? Can we let ourselves feel loved? That's right at the center of its inquiry. Can we let it in? So we'll explore how this journey is unfolding in our own lives

and first how we leave home. And I liked the two brothers, the younger and the older, because it goes very well with the Buddhist teachings of one way we leave home is by clinging and grasping. There's something missing and we need something more, and that's the younger brother. And then the other way we leave home is a virgin, pushing away, judging. So it lines up nicely.

So we look at the younger son. And leaving home, that's the part of us that's really searching for love where it can't be found. There's some insecurity of, I don't belong, or separation, I'm not enough. And then we start fixing on things outside us that can give us a sense of belonging. So we quest in a foreign land, we leave home. And what is it for most of us? You know, we try to go for approval to feel love. That's a big one.

And I'm going to come back to that one probably more than other. that it's also wealth and it's also sense pleasures and it's also achievement and it's often power, prestige. We live with if only mind. There's a sense that love isn't here now, but if only such and such and such happens, then I'll feel that loving connection. So when we're on a quest to get what we want, there's some sense of wanting and something's missing. the very nature of a quest when we leave home is that the attention narrows. We get more fixated. And we fixated in how others are reacting to us or on the stock markets, ups and downs, or how we're planning a renovation or vacation.

And that, for the moment, becomes our substitute that's going to in some way make us feel more full and ultimately more connected and alive. And in those moments, we can't see what's here. and in the moments that we're in some way trying to get love or find what's missing or get approval, we can't see what's already here. One of the stories I've always loved is of this young man who asked God how long a million years is to him.

And God responds, A million years to me is just like a single second in your time. Then the young man asks God what a million dollars is to him. God replies, A million dollars to me is just like a single second in your time. single penny to you. Okay, so then the young man gets up as courage. He says, God, can I know just one of your pennies? And God says, sure, just a second. So part of what happens when, as the younger son, we leave home, and this is before that awakening, is that we get

addicted to our substitutes. And every one of us has them. Every one of us has things we think if we keep on getting more of, it'll actually make us feel more loved, more connected, happier. So we get addicted to them because they actually work a little. You know, we temporarily get a lift in some way and we get fixated but addicted because we keep on having to have more to keep the lift. There's not a real deep kind of satisfaction. So addiction becomes on some level, there's different degrees, that sense of have to have. And we know when we're because when we don't get it, when we don't get attention in a certain way, or when there's something that goes wrong financially,

or when there's something that goes wrong on any of the levels we're attached to, we get upset. And of course, substances is a big one. We use them to change our biochemistry around. In this little reading, the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you've started. So I looked around to see all the things I started and hadn't finished. today I finished one bottle of gin, a bottle of red wine, my Prozac, a large box of chocolates,

a pint of Beninjeri's pistachio. You have no idea how good I feel. So the bottom line is that as the younger son found, when he was lost, and this is the nature of suffering, when we are going after what we think we want, and just to say that in the parable, when the son left his father's home at that time, and there's been a lot of research about this, for a son to say, I want my part of the inheritance and to leave, was the equivalent of wishing his father dead.

It was a very deep denial and pushing away of his belonging. So when we turn our backs on our own hearts and belonging and go for whatever else it is that we think is going to make us happy, that there's a kind of a betrayal of ourselves. And it's very, very difficult to remember what it is we really wanted. We get lost. One more kind of light illustration is of a woman who goes to her priest and says, Father, I have a problem.

I have two female parrots, but they only know how to say one thing. Well, what do they say, the priest inquired? Well, they say, hi, we're prostitutes. you want to have some fun. Ooh, that's obscene, the priest exclaimed. Then he thought from him, you know, I have a solution to your problems. I have two male talking parrots, whom I've taught to pray and read the Bible. Bring your two parrots to my house and we'll put them in the cage with Francis and Job.

My parents can teach your parents to praise and worship, and your parents are sure to stop saying that phrase in no time. Thank you, the woman responded. This may very well be the solution. So the next day she brings her female parrots. To the priest's house. As he usheres her in, she sees that his two male parrots are inside their cage holding rosary beads and praying. Impressed, she walks over and places her parrots in with them. After a few minutes, the female parrots cry out in unison,

Hi, we're prostitutes. You want to have some fun? There's a stunned silence. Finally, one male parrot looks over at the other male and exclaims, Put the beads away, Francis. Our prayers have been answered. So in a way, I'm talking, I've languages as false refuges where we get fixated in one way that it's to get something, but it's not what we're really, really looking for. And I think, I mentioned approval before, I think that one of the most pervasive ways, and it's quite natural given our upbringing and the kind of criticism we have and conditionality

of, you know, we have to meet certain standards to feel really our love, that approval seeking is a really, is very deeply ingrained in us. And if we're honest and we watch ourselves with many other people, a lot of the filter that's going on is how is what I am presenting of who I am going to be received. Will it be approved of, liked, respected, that kind of thing. So rather than a spontaneity and a naturalness, we are shaping and in some way, creating or a sense of self that will conform to what we hope will be accepted. So trying to win approval, whether it's in work or spiritual life, is actually a really joyless task. In a way, the whole project keeps affirming deep down that something's

wrong with us. Every time we do it, it's like the Nose Circuitry, we're kind of deepening that groove of, I'm not okay and therefore I need this. So it's one of the fixations to try to feel loved that actually keeps us more and more distant from truly letting in love and trusting in love. So the wake-up that comes for all of us, and we wouldn't be here reflecting on this together if it wasn't already happening, is that we realize that the false-refages aren't really working, that there's still a sense of something's missing when we do them, and that actually the more we are pursuing our wants and not really listening to what we really long for, the more we feel a kind of emptiness and a self-betrayal and a defeat, there's a sense of feeling

bad and then feeling I am bad. And if you look closely, those two go together. we feel bad, we then go right into I am bad. So let's just reflect for a moment. Just give you a chance to connect with this one. So we're reflecting on the younger brother. And much as Henry Nguyen did when he just started looking at his life and sensing, well, how is this part really playing out in my life?

the part that feels addictive, that's seeking pleasures, selfish. It's really going for approval, leaving home. Just to take a moment, a sense in your own life, how this appears. This is the part that's trying to promote ourselves, trying to look good, prove ourselves, have things go our way. achieve more, accomplish more, consume more. And as you sense how this kind of archetypal part plays out in your life, can you sense feeling

a contact with that and then imagining just like the younger son with his head on his father's chest, feeling forgiven, feeling embraced, feeling blessed? In other words, can you sense this part playing through you and also sense those two hands on your shoulders that are blessing and comforting you? Can you be in touch with the wanting part of you and sense the possibility of letting in love that love is loving you?

And sometimes when I do this reflection, I imagine taking all of that energy of wanting and all the ways that my personality does it into two hands and as if I'm bowing my head and just offering that into the universe, letting it be held and understood and seen to create space for love to come in. Contacting the younger brother and asking ourselves, can I let love in?

You can keep reflecting on this on your own, if you'd like to open your eyes. I want to just name a little bit about the older brother because for Henry Nguyen, what he found is, while he originally identified the younger brother, it was the older brother that actually became much more powerfully his sense of where his identity was, and also how the older brother played through him, that it was much harder for him to let in forgiveness and love

when he felt that archetype. So just to check that one out, externally, the older brother in the parable stayed home, but not internally. Internally, he was being dutiful, still insecure and very much judging others that weren't doing it right. So the older brother is the one who is that kind of righteousness and condemning others for falling short.

The older brother is the angry victim. And we all, most of us know the victim stance. So in Buddhism, as I mentioned, the older brother's fear and aversion and comparing mind, judgment. it's that resentment or envious being envious of others it's a part of us that said I wanted to have fun and enjoy things too or I tried so hard but I didn't get what I needed so we can sense the tightness

and then part of the older brother is not liking parts of himself we're projecting it on others so it's a part of us that sees in others what's wrong that we're really not liking it inside ourselves So again, the wake-up for the older brother is a sense of how separate, disconnected, he ends up feeling, a sense of failure. And again, it's, I feel bad, I am bad. If you'd like to just to continue reflecting inside yourself and sensing how this part also, this archetypal part of aversion and judgment and fear plays through. And see if you can be tuning in in a way that doesn't add judgment, but rather with interest, curiosity.

Okay, so where is this older brother in me? The judge. And if you sense where the older brother is, where you get angrier, judgmental, aversive towards others, can you imagine, this is the same question as we did with the younger son, can you imagine some divine presence whispering to you, you are with me always, all I have is yours? In other words, can you imagine love loving you? That this conditioning towards judgment and aversion, this too can be loved. You can let love in. And again, if you'd like to open your eyes, please do. So we're going to explore a little bit more for the rest of this talk,

how we can let love in. And in the parable, the turning point for the younger son was he's lost his entire sense of being worthy of belonging, saying, I've sinned, I don't deserve to be called a son, I don't deserve anything, but still, in that hitting bottom, you know, I'm not worthy,

there's still something he senses that he can belong to. He still in some way has a connection with his father. So the turning point when we start returning home is when we totally contact, totally contact the suffering of separation. We've hit bottom, and it could be in a big way or in the moment where we're really feeling that we are in some way lost and separate.

And at the same time feeling that sense, but there is something we're lost in. separate from. That combination is what begins to turn us towards homecoming. So it's a really powerful and sometimes seemingly subtle juncture, but I think it's something that we actually encounter many moments, this kind of forgetting and turning towards home. We have voices in us that tell us we're worthy, unworthy, voices that tell us that something's going to go wrong in the future, voices that tell us we can't trust other people. And at certain junctures, we'll open to the pain of believing those voices. We'll start getting, it's kind of a soul

sadness, like, oh my God, look what I'm caught in. And then at that moment, there's a kind of longing to not have to believe them. There's a longing to be able to listen to a deeper truth. And those are the moments of homecoming. And I like the way Mary Oliver puts it, and many of you might be familiar with this poem. She says, one day you finally knew what you had to do and began, though the voices around you kept shouting, their bad advice, though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Men my life each voice cried, but you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do. It was already late enough and a wild night and the road full of fallen branches and stones, but little by little, as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own. They kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do, determined to save the only life you could save. So in the return home, in this awakening, there are two key elements. And one key element is being able to, instead of believing the voices that say, you're unworthy, you can't trust, something really bad's about to happen around the corner,

you need to defend yourself. Instead of believing those voices that tug at us and really kind of drive our day, there's something in us that pauses and just opens to what's underneath them, the pain, the fear, the hurt. So one piece is opening to that, opening to what's underneath those voices but not believing the voices. I have a number of times shared here the phrase real but not true that Sokney-rimpichet offers, where we go, the voices are real, but they're not truth.

The truth is by opening to what we're feeling underneath. and really bringing a mindful presence, a tender presence to that. And when we do, we begin to find the gateway that allows us to come home to let in love. This is Persia Joyce Gettler. She says, finally, on my way to yes, I bump into all the places where I said no to my life. All the untended wounds, those coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again. and I lift them one by one close to my heart, and I say, holy, holy. I say holy, holy.

So the first piece of turning towards home, instead of believing the voices that keep us insecure and distrusting ourselves and distrusting love is to start opening to the rawness that's in our bodies and in our hearts. And a big piece of that, I want to take a few moments with this, a really big piece of that is when the voices are condemning other people, when the voices are making other people wrong, if we are able to begin to pause and not believe those voices, but again open to what's going on inside us, then we begin to find that gateway back home.

Harville Hendricks, many of you know him as a relationship guru, he and his wife, Helen Lekelly Hunt, recently wrote a book called Receiving Love. And they really spent some time with this same piece. And it's interesting to me that about seven years ago, they were writing best-selling novels, self-help books and so on, their own marriage was crumbling. And so they were on the verge of divorce when they got to the root of their trouble, of their disconnect. And here's what it's written.

One morning when we were having the most trouble, Helen says, we were in our bedroom and I asked Harville, do you believe that I love you? Harville thought about that for a couple of seconds and said, no, I don't think you do. I was distraught. I could only respond, given all that I do for you in our life together,

how could you not know how much I love you? And Harville understood that his feelings were irrational, but that sense of alienation was really deep inside him. Because no matter what Helen gave him emotionally, it had little impact, because he always suspected that strings were attached. And so he says, only with time reflections I realized I was not able to recognize genuine love

when it was offered. So he's really been focusing on the same theme of, we don't let love in. He names all the ways that we devalue love or praise. He says by assuming the other person is insincere, by criticizing the sender of a positive message for not getting it right, not doing it on time, not doing it often enough, by not listening,

by feeling embarrassed, we also block loving words by hardening our chest and stomach muscles. This is a place of deep attention. Can we let love in? And one of the main ways that opens the door, what we've been talking about is we need to start opening to where the suffering of separation is in our bodies and hearts. And if someone else is our focus of aversion,

and this comes to the older brother, if we're critical of someone else, it's not until we let ourselves open to compassion and include that person in our hearts, that we can actually let love in ourselves. I just want to slow this down. I'm going to say that one again. If we are judging another person,

we're aversive towards another person, it's not until we open our hearts to what we're aversive about, whatever behavior or ways of that person is that we're judging, that we actually can let love in ourselves. Why is that? we project the things we don't like about ourselves on others. And if we can begin to open to how others are living that thing we don't like out, then we're able to let love in and accept ourselves more.

There's different directions that these practices go, but I feel like that's a really powerful and important place of practice for us. If each of us picked one person close to us and one thing we regularly, we regularly, we're regularly judge and said, okay, on this one, I'm going to see how much I can really open myself and tenderize. It's quite powerful. I did this with a friend of mine. I did this some years ago, an old friend, very dear old friend, but I'd always get turned off because he bragged a lot. And his bragging was really transparent. And I couldn't believe he didn't see that he was doing it, but it was just a turnoff. I just didn't like to have him trying to impress me the

way he did. So I decided, okay, I love this guy. I really have to loosen up about this. And so I just imagine him as a younger child that was just insecure and would be relaxed if he knew I was impressed. And the more I did that, the more I got really kind of caring and playful in my response so that rather than feeling there's this demand on me to respond and like, oh, aren't you terrific, I actually in my heart felt, I love you and you are terrific. And, you are terrific. And I just was more fluid, which I realized much later on made me much more easy with myself. Because what I realized is I was doing it just as much as him, but I was much more subtle and refined about my approach.

So we all have this longing to be approved. We just have different ways we play the game. It's very, very powerful to find out what you are judging in another. So that's one piece of this homecoming for the prodigal son, is contacting the suffering, the pain of separation where we're at war with ourselves, with others. The other piece, the last piece we're going to cover, is to become very present with our longing for love, to open to our longing for love. When we open to the painful parts, to the grief, the fear,

the wounds, the hurt, we also open to our longing. Any time you open deeply to pain, you'll find that longing embedded. But we don't always have the knack of staying with that longing and inhabiting it. And it's that longing that it's that prayerfulness, that humility of in some way asking the universe, please, you know, love me, approve me, may I feel this, washed through me, it's that asking that makes us actually receptive and more porous and more available. Does that make sense? Yeah. So again I'll share from my own saga, which really, again, has to do with this approval seeking. About 12 years ago, right before radical acceptance

came out, I was seeking endorsements and people were very, I was just blown away about how the generosity of that. But of course you can have, you know, 15, you know, really caring, you know, very supportive responses, but the one response I really remember was the one person who said no. And this was an author I really respected him, and I wasn't close to him, but I liked him. We knew each other. And I found it over time that, you know, and he was public about it, that he didn't resonate with parts of the book. And more generally, there were things about the way I taught that he just didn't resonate with.

He couldn't sign on to. So this came to my attention several times, and each time it would I'd feel really stung, you know, and I could feel my heart get hardened and, you know, wanting to put him down in some way. And, you know, because he was messing with my approval project, you know. And I also felt embarrassed because he was. was public about what he didn't agree with and hurt.

You know, the Buddhists talk about the worldly winds. Some of you know them of praise and blame, of gain and loss, of pleasure and pain and fame and disrepute. And for me, this was like I got all the hard ones all wrapped up in this one. So it was something that I really needed to sit with. And as I sat with it, I found under the anger, as you can imagine, under the reactive place to me that was judging, the deepest thing was hurt. And the more I got in touch with the hurt, I got in touch with what I've 10,000 times come to,

this kind of crying place. It feels like this crying place that's just in some way saying, you know, please love me. Just that's probably the essence of it. It's longing. And so initially the longing, you know, I could imagine in a therapeutic way. I was a psycho way, I was kind of like fixing it. on him and saying, please approve of me, please love me. But then when I turn back to the longing itself, and this is the key, to take the longing from any object, any person, any particular,

and actually feel the energy of the longing, it was just this very pure energy of just yearning and feeling a sense of my heart just wanting and moist and tender and hurting. And the more deeply I would inhabit that, the more it just became this heart space that was really receptive. And I could imagine and feel love washing through the cells, love washing through the spaces between the cells, and being suffused. Longing is the pathway to belonging.

If we inhabit it, if we don't aim it at an object, if we trace it back right to its essence, we find the love that's loving us, that it's already here, that it's intrinsic to the longing. So for me, the more I would deepen my attention to this love that was already there is that it was interior to my heart. And then as often happens with these kind of meditations, there's no doing, there's just a kind of relaxing into or melting into or becoming that love. So it went from as if that younger son saying, you know, please love me, bless me, forgive me, to actually becoming the father, becoming that space of loving presence. And that is the transformation that Henry Nguyen talks about.

And I really again encourage you to read the book because it's so layered in such a beautiful way, that there's this blessing that we move from being identified with one of the sons, with the wanting or the fearing, to letting love in, to becoming that loving presence, so we become the Father that can offer blessings. I'd like to close with a meditation on letting in love. And we're going to go a couple of minutes over tonight, and I think you'll find this valuable. It's really one of the most powerful meditations I know.

So if you'll find a way of sitting again, move around a little, refine your place of sitting comfortably, and if you're listening to this as a podcast on your elliptical, do this when you get off. This takes a little bit more time and presence. So let's just take a few full breaths together, inhale deeply, perhaps taking in more breath than a normal inhale and a slow out breath. Letting go.

Letting go. And again, inhale deeply, filling the chest, filling the lungs, and exhale slowly. Feel yourself relaxing with the out breath, letting go. Then just let the rhythm of the breath be natural. Feel the sense of your body. sitting here, the posture and feeling from the inside out this aliveness that's here. You might feel your belly and let the breath go deep into the belly, softening and opening as if with the in-breath the belly can expand and large,

fill with aliveness and with the out breath, just sensing the space, the openness, in the similar way with the heart, breathing in and just, feeling the heart open and be filled with prana, breath, aliveness. And with the out breath, just sensing the space of heart, openness. You might sense what's called the crown chakra, the top, the rear of the head. Again, with the in-breath, just sensing light and aliveness there, and the out-breath, an openness and space. It's a feeling that fullness of presence.

And as you do, allow your attention to examine a little whatever in your life might be a situation or experience where you feel cut off from love. Whereas the younger brother, you might feel that unworthiness like I left home, I don't feel worthy, deserving, or where you feel caught like the older brother in the judgment. And just to sense how it's created distance. So you're picking a situation in your life with someone perhaps that is dear to you but you feel cut off from where you want to feel more connected. But for right now there's a sense of being rejected or hurt or afraid or deficient yourself,

lonely. Take your time to let yourself feel the felt sense of being cut off, of what's missing, of the absence. The more you can feel it in your body, the tightness or ache, pain, unpleasantness, contraction of distance. The more you might be able to sense buried inside that is that there's this longing. to experience love, to be seen, to be understood, appreciated, held in love, loved really as you are. So again, let the situation be right clear in front of you and just sense the distance,

the pain of the distance in your body, and just sense the longing that's there, sense that this life is short and that this is really what matters you might start by you're sensing this with this particular person but then you can shift to rather than focusing on the person just feel your longing that there's a longing

for loving for being loved for feeling loved and this longing's sacred it's what really allows the heart to be an open channel through which love wants to flow. Inside the longings there's a desire to receive. So you can feel and acknowledge that.

Just say yes to that desire to receive, that it's a good thing. It's a natural, wholesome thing to want to let in love, even though part of you resists. Just to begin to explore, to investigate, and sense if you can feel that there's love available. Is it anywhere close by to let in? And if you don't feel it close by, you might mentally whisper some words of longing. What is your longing really wanting? I mean, for me,

the words are often, please love me, but it might be I want to feel loved. I want to let love in. And just let yourself mentally whisper that so that you're inhabiting the longing. Can you sense the presence of love available as you ask for love. If so, let it enter. If you're saying, please love me, see if you can just let it enter, let it flow in, let the cells be bathed. Perhaps you can sense love as a field permeating, surrounding. See if it can fill you everywhere. And if there's resistance which is quite natural, just be gentle with it. This is a life process really. You're only just job is that openness to see what's true for you right now. Can you feel that longing? Can you inhabit it or express it with words? How sincere can the words be? How innocent? Please love me.

I want to feel loved. I want to let love in. And if you can feel a sense of this field of loving, washing through, permating, surrounding interior to you, Just dissolve into it. See if you can just let go and melt. It might soften the boundaries of your body and let go. Rest in love. Be love as a way of closing just to sense this heart space that's here, the love that's always and already here,

as vast and edgeless and inclusive, that when we open to and sense this heart space as the very essence of our being, our very nature is then to offer blessings. So we close by sensing that these hands of ours, like the father and the prodigal son, can offer blessings. You might bring to mind one person that you'd like to include in this heart space and send your blessings to someone that's dear to you, that's perhaps having difficulty or can use your blessing.

Just imagine putting your hands on that person's shoulders, whispering a prayer of care, and then allowing that tension to widen to be all-inclusive. So we close together, sensing this whole world, this whole living world in our hearts, offering our blessings to all beings, that all beings everywhere may realize that timeless love that's the very essence of our being, that all beings everywhere might inhabit

and express that loving presence, that all beings might touch a great and natural peace, that all beings everywhere might awaken and be free. Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.