Tara Brach - Seeking What's True - Pt 1 of 3 (2016-10-05)

Episode Date: October 7, 2016

Seeking What's True: Within Ourselves, Beyond our Self, With Each Other  - Pt 1 of 3 (2016-10-05) - The ground of the spiritual path is realizing the nature of reality and living our lives from this awakened heart and mind. The first of this three part series examines the process of radical self-honesty - the non-judgmental recognition of what's going on inside us, and especially what has been outside of our conscious awareness. The second talk deepens this process with the practices of self-inquiry, looking directly into the one who is seeking truth. The third part explores the challenges and blessings of honesty in our relationships. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks 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. At one of my first week-long retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, there was a notice on the bulletin board and it was actually a little quote by Lily Tomlin and it had one it was one line and it said, self-knowledge is not necessarily good news. So here we were dedicating ourselves to seeing who is here

and of course from the ego's perspective, she's entirely right. That what we discover under our more civilized persona when we're on good behavior is all those reptilian tendencies to be aggressive and fearful and all those tendencies

to try to grasp onto what will further us and jealousy and judgment and the whole catastrophe. And one of the things we most start noticing as we're paying attention to the way our minds work is that our thoughts are primarily focused on what's going to help me, what's going to hurt me. It's like that fantastic little cartoon of the guy who's confess. to the bartender, you know, he says, I know I'm nothing, I know I am nobody, but I'm all I can think about. So, of course, if we're attending with honesty, we'll also, in addition to all the judgment and fear and anger and so on, sense this deep longing and intention towards loving and being loved and sense our compassion for others and a capacity at times to get very quiet

and touch into peace. So it's not just that we tap into all bad news. One of the stories I've always loved is of one man who went to a retreat and his report when he got back was of this kind of roller coaster where he had had moments of incredible stillness and wonder and appreciation and open-heartedness, the whole world he was embracing and other moments where he felt absolutely isolated, he felt like he was flawed, damaged goods, he felt like he was disgusted by his own aggressiveness and he said it was this complete whirl or coaster but underneath at all there was this joy in getting real. Joy in getting real. And so it is that there's this honesty that begins to see and include all the different dimensions,

And just with that increasing sense of what's true, with realness, there's a freedom that comes with that, a kind of joy. Like we're not having to hide from something or pretend, we're more able to live in a wholeness. What I'd like to explore, and this will be a two-part series, the title will be Seeking Truth, part one and two. And in the first part, this particular exploration right now will be on self-honesty. You know, how do we cultivate this capacity to really be real with ourselves? How do we do that?

And then part two will be what's called self-inquiry, which is how do we deepen that attention so we can see past all the mass, pass all the egoic tendencies to this awareness that's timeless and always here. So these are this next two classes. And if we say, well, what is really a description of self-honesty, it's this capacity to recognize what's going on inside us, in particular the unconscious patterning without judgment or interpretation. Now, why is that important? And we can look at it from, you know, the observer effect in physics where there's an understanding that often that the instrumentation itself that's used to evaluate things interferes with what's seen and a similar thing the observer

bias in psychology that describes how our biases and our assumptions and our beliefs are interference and they stop us from actually contacting the realness that's here. So that's the challenge, is to develop this capacity to bear witness in a very engaged direct way with the life that's here without adding on our habitual judgment and interpretation. You know, the very word of apostina means to see clearly. And it also can be understood as to feel directly and to listen deeply. It's a real clean contact with truth. Why is self-honesty so important?

My sense is that each of us has a longing for it. We also have a longing to, we each have a habit of wanting to avoid what's painful, but deep down we know that our only refuge is reality. We just know that. The deepest wisdom knows that anything other than reality, can't trust what's going on. So something in us wants to know. And I often, especially recently, have been drawing on Joseph Campbell's fantastic kind of image of this big circle which is awareness and the line that goes through it and that below the line is what's unconscious. Above the line

is what we're aware of. And to the degree that we're not aware of patterns of strong emotions and strong beliefs under the line, to the degree that we haven't directly contacted them, they rule us. They affect how we make decisions and they affect how we relate to each other. And in the deepest way, they actually give us our most core sense of a small, separate self. To the degree that they're strong, emotions, sensations, beliefs, that we're not conscious of, they control our experience.

So that's the deal. That's why self-honesty is so important because as you begin to shine the light of awareness on what's been below the line, as it becomes part included in awareness, the sense of your being becomes more enlarged. You start to inhabit more of the natural fullness of who you are, which means that you get to the,

then draw on the awakened heart and mind, the wisdom and love that are always there but not always accessible. So self-honesty is a key and I often think of it in terms of responsibility that the more we can recognize of what's going on within us, the more we can be responsible to ourselves in our world, able to respond. When things are below the line, okay, our reactions are automatic. We're not able to be responsible for them. We just, you know, somebody makes a criticism and because we're not so aware of deeply how vulnerable we're feeling and how that plays right into the most core sense of I'm

failing and nobody approves in me or likes me. Because we're not, that's not in our conscious awareness, we're not holding that with awareness. We react out of it and we've become defensive. and we do the very behaviors that then bring on more of the pattern that we don't like. But when we become aware, we can be responsible, we can respond to the wounded places in us and break the patterning. One way to consider it is that your future depends on how honest you are this moment with the life that's inside you.

every moment that you're being really awake to the life within you, you're actually creating the conditions for more freedom, more responsibility, more happiness, more realness in the future. This theme is particularly relevant to the Jewish high holidays to which I want to honor and bow. I've been reading a few different posts that really inspired me and one of them was describing atonement, at one man, coming back from being out of harmony into a sense of harmonious relationship aligned with truth, God, love, freedom, whatever we want to consider it. And it's really the movement from below the line to above the line, becoming more conscious. More is included in awareness. We're more wise. This is one of the posts that I read was

from Rabbi Rachel Baramblatte and she says, the Jewish mystics know, known as Kabbalis, teach that today, this is the first day of the Jewish high holidays, the door of wisdom and insight opens. Tomorrow, the second day of the holiday, the door of discernment and understanding swings open too. These are the origin points of the year are springboard into whatever's coming next. So our future comes out of our capacity this moment to get real. When we get real, we're unhooked in some ways. So again, I want to say that if we start looking at what's below the line and recognizing it and adding judgment, this is evil in some way, it's not freeing. It just deepens our tendency to go below the line and shame. So what makes

it transformational is we start getting, and this is really key, that what's below the line isn't personal. What you start catching and seeing below the line is part of your evolutionary inheritance. And we can see this very, very clearly that we're really awakening together. We're all shining a light on the fears and the aggressions that are just in our nervous system. And this is, it's key and you can see it in all the wisdom traditions. You can see in Yom Kippur there's a kind of confessional reading of harmful behavior and it always says we. It's not you've sinned, it's we.

We collectively recognize this tendency towards creating harm here or creating harm there. It's just part of our collective unconscious. And you can see it certainly in Buddhist traditions, we have our spiritual friends groups. They're called Kaliana Mita groups, where people share the patterning that this, that they're running, whether it's in their process of divorce and blaming or whether it's an addictive behavior.

And in that sharing, there's a recognition that what's below the line isn't my addiction or my judgment. It's just our addictiveness and our tendency to blame. Very freeing. Let me read you this. This is Michael Mead describes a healing ritual in Zambia. that has this same wisdom about what's below the line. If a member of the tribe becomes ill, emotionally or physically,

the belief is that the ancestor's tooth has lodged itself within the person and is responsible for the sickness. Because all members of the tribe are connected with each other, the suffering of one affects the others, and all become involved in healing. The tribe's healing ritual is based on an understanding that the tooth will come out as the truth out as the truth comes out. While the sick person must reveal the rage or hatred or lust

or she is experiencing for the full truth to be revealed, each person in the tribe must express his or her own buried and hurts and fears, anger and disappointment. The release happens only when everything comes out in the midst of dancing and singing and drumming. The whole village gets cleansed by the release of the tooth through the release of these difficult called truths. I love this because what it's really saying is that this practice of self-honesty doesn't work if we're going to judge what we find as my big evil self. But if we can sense that perspective of we're shining the lens of awareness on these patterns that are really collective that belong to all of us, then we can look, we can look, we're in the lens of awareness, we're

with more clarity and gentleness and actually bring some healing. I was reading from the Christian Desert fathers about this too because there's a central practice described there. They describe the thoughts of the heart, the stories and thoughts and emotions that can attract us. In other words, we each have the beliefs and feelings to keep us small. It's said that when we bring, when the heart is open to the light of of truth when there are no secrets, the demons have nowhere to hide and they cannot begin

their crafting of obsessions and illusions. When we shine the light of awareness, there's nowhere for those parts of us to go more underground, they're in awareness so they can no longer control us. But here's the part that I really thought was interesting. That part of the ritual of self-honesty was to bring what a novice was to bring what a novice was beginning to discover to an elder called the abbot. And that person's role was to simply offer a space, a kind of accepting, loving space, a non-judging space

for this process of self-knowledge. We're not meant to do it alone. It easily becomes my problem. And I love this phrase, opening the heart to the light of truth. Because that's really what self-honesty is. It's got a quality of heart and light, including what hasn't been included. Let's look more closely in because I'm going to ask you to reflect on what you sense might be some of your unconscious patterning.

By the way, unconscious pattering doesn't mean you're fully unconscious of it, it just means that when you go into trance and reactivity then you're not so conscious. You might say right now, oh yeah, I know I have the trance of unworthiness. But it's all those moments of the day where you're just anxious and tight or defensive and not realizing, oh, that's what's going on. Okay? So our under the line patterning is driven by the survival brain, the stuff we don't want to hang out with.

There's three domains you can think of. I always enjoy thinking of the evolutionary brain and one is the reptilian brain which is basically occupied with survival and the fears of anything that might threaten and the the aggression to deal with that. So it's fear and aggression primarily, avoiding harm and danger. That's the occupation of the survival brain. So we all have that going on every day. It's absolutely wired into us. Then we all have that mammalian brain that's going for reward and pleasure and gratification. And just that pursuit is a pretty active pursuit for most of us every day if we really watch.

And then we have the primate part of the brain, the most recently evolved part of the brain, that is trying to secure attachment, trying to secure our relationships so we can get what we want in this world. We take a look at it and begin to sense, well, where are these activated? I mean, you can go right back to Eden to see all of this.

I mean, if we go back to the Garden of Eden, you see Adam and Eve, and they're fearful of punishment, right? That reptilian, oh my God, God's going to punish me. And then there's the mammalian shame. It's going to screw up my relationship with him. You know, he's not going to love me anymore. And this sense of this guilt that comes with it,

you know, the attachment bond's going to be messed up and it all came because of that mammalian, let's get some pleasure and have that apple. You know, I might be mixing it up some, but you get the idea that these parts of the brain are playing out and, you know, if there had been the capacity in Adam and Eve to say, hey, let's pause. Let's shine the light of...

Let's meditate a little on this and begin to say, hey, we weren't conscious of this, but these are the thoughts and feelings going on. They might not have felt like they were kicked out of the garden. And it would have saved us millennia, many, many thousands of years of... having to live in the trance of separation and unworthiness. But that's not what happened. Here we are. Let's take a look at how those three parts of the brain are alive and well in us now

so we can sense collectively how we can kind of bring some more self-honesty to our lives. And the first part of the reflection is if we look at this reptilian brain, it's really the fear of pain, of illness. For many of us, if it's not physical, it's the psychological. fear of failure and then we get kicked out of the tribe and then we don't belong and then that's death, that's a certain kind of death. This reptilian brain takes the form of incessant planning and worrying and obsessing and trying to figure things out and self-judging so we don't get it wrong and then also when we're insecure and afraid we then blame others so there's that aggression.

So you might just close your eyes for a moment and just sense today or yesterday and today and with a sense of you can witness right now without adding any judgment knowing that you're joining with 300 people sitting here right now and thousands that'll be practicing this and already are really in a way other times, that we're just looking at how this deep part of our nervous system is playing through this particular heart mind. Where today, maybe were you driven by the fear of danger, that you might fall short,

that some physical symptom might be something more serious, that something's going wrong, about to go wrong, that kind of existential sense that around the corner something will be too much to handle. That's the reptilian brain clutching. And that's often below the line because we're just busy kind of spinning in our thoughts.

But when that's there, when there's that fear of what's around the corner, what's your sense of yourself? sense that the trance below the line when you're caught when one part of the brain is really dominating and there's not that recognition it's not in the light of awareness you can open your eyes when you'd like

I mean for me sometimes if I just say there's my reptilian brain that itself adds enough of a sense of perspective and humor and so on that I can witness without adding on this is terrible implications for my goodness, you know. So then the mammalian brain, this is us seeking rewards,

whether it's physical rewards of good tastes, food, comfort, sex, whatever it is, or the emotional rewards of buying something that we're really wanting, of having more beauty, more, you know, maybe different kinds of rewards that we get, like money for something, but are grasping. It's sad in us that wants more.

and often it takes the mode of wanting to win something or over-consuming, but being in some way addicted or attached to having more. I like the little story of where kids are at a Catholic cafeteria and at the beginning of the line there's a pile of cookies and there's a sign saying take only one God is watching. and at the end of the line a kid's drawn a sign around the apples and the sign says take all you want, God's watching the cookies, you know? We're just so geared to, you know, how can we get more of what we want?

So again, take a moment to reflect. And since in these last couple of days how this mammalian brain seeking reward, gratification, pleasure, how much it was driving. your behaviors, your thoughts, some way wanting more pleasure, wanting to accumulate, wanting to win something or prove yourself in some way. Just sense these as these are the below-the-line energies and what's it like when you're caught in them. Just a sense your experience of your own being and you might notice how when you're caught

in seeking reward or some kind of addiction or attachment to pleasure, how quickly shame comes with that. And yet it's just the mammalian brain and the more there's unmet needs, the stronger that drive us. It's not our fault. Okay, so coming back again. So then the next part of the brain is the primate brain that's trying to secure attachments. And again, the more insecure we are, the more unmet needs are around having a real sense of belonging,

the more we're going to see the primate strategies to get attention and approval are to avoid being seen because we're afraid we're going to be rejected. There's more fixation. It comes in many ways. Often it's in some way people-pleasing, in some way, trying to be a common way, trying to be a trying to show people what you think they're going to want. That's the primate brain. I really enjoyed the story that Franklin Roosevelt described

when he had to endure these very long receiving line at the White House. And he complained that nobody actually paid attention to what he said. So there was no authenticity, no realness. So one day he decided to try a little experiment. and each person that he met, he murmured to them, I murdered my grandmother this morning. And they responded with these phrases like, Marvelous, keep up the good work,

or we're proud of you, or God bless you, sir, you know. So it wasn't until the end of the line. He was actually greeting, I think, was the ambassador from Bolivia. And his words were actually heard, and non-plussed, the ambassador leaned over and whispered, well, I'm sure she had it coming to her. So, okay, this is the primate brain trying to bond. So again, we'll just take a pause for a moment and just check in.

And again, this is just to notice within ourselves what might be unconscious in the last day or so. Behaviors that come out of our unmet needs for secure attachment, ways that we might pretend, the ways that we might lie or exaggerate, withdraw or be defensive, or maybe ways that we try to get others to depend on us, try to get approval, just to notice for yourself where that seeking of attachment or that primate brain was activated that might have been unconscious As you do sense into really what is the sense of your own self when you're in it? Or we're in a trance, whenever we're below the line, the self-sense is confined. And usually the self isn't liking itself.

The suffering of not seeing, of being caught below the line, of not honestly recognizing what's going on, is that we forget who we really are. who we really are. We're cut off from the awareness and heart that's beyond any story that we have. If you'd like to open your eyes, please feel free. What's unseen and unfelt, what's below the line for us, creates the experience of what sometimes described as the false self and it's not a it's not a bad thing as much as it's just not the truth of who we are. We're living in a smaller identity.

And so the way to wake up, and this is on all the, in all the spiritual paths, there are these practices to get us really in a way above the line, reconnecting. The practices that we're exploring right now in these two classes are how to shine the light of awareness on what we haven't been paying attention to. And I like this prayer from Elizabeth Lesser, who's really a very wise woman and teacher. She says, my prayer to God every day, remove the veils, so I might see what is really happening here and not be intoxicated by my stories and my fears. I'll read it again. You might just feel it in you.

Remove the veils. So I might see what is really happening here and not be intoxicated by my stories and my fears. I've seen how the power of that prayer and we have different language for it, but it's really, let me see the truth. So I'm not caught in the trance. I've seen the power of it when we start including more and more in awareness over and over again.

In one situation, just to give you a sense of really how it works when we start shining the light of awareness, one man had remarried and part of what the new family was that he had a teenage stepson. And when I met him, he'd actually been married for about five years. So the young man, I think he was about eight or nine when they got married. The boy had some real-life challenges and he had some tantrums, he was often rude. And for this man, he was really judgmental of the boy and of himself because it was hard for him to hide it. but he just felt a lot of anger and sometimes rage at the boy. And he felt disgusted in himself that he wasn't responding in a better way.

And he couldn't really share it with his wife. It's like how could he tell her how much rage he felt towards her son. But it was destroying their relationship. So that's when that kind of prayer that I read to you in his language, it was like, I really need to get real with what's going on inside me. get real with my wife. It's corroding my life. Okay. His intention was to be more responsible. He didn't want to be driven by what was going on. He wanted to really face it. So, what began, and you'll see for those that are familiar how this mindfulness, compassion, acronym

reign really works to bring the lens of awareness. That for him, the beginning was to recognize and allow, okay, there's reactivity. It's just happening. Allow it. In other words, it wasn't something he could legislate go away. He was triggered. So recognize it and allow it. That's the beginning of rain. Recognize and allow. The eye of rain investigate is where we see really activating that self-honesty. And one of the best descriptions, if you're a visual, of the investigation reign is that you're making a U-turn, wherever you've been fixating your attention, whatever stories, whatever blame, you're making a U-turn and coming and saying, what's really happening here inside me?

That's the movement of taking responsibility. That's the movement where you say, I am, my happiness, what's going on inside me is not hitched to what's going on out there, I can pay attention to this and be responsible." So he made that U-turn and began to investigate and under the anger there was a voice saying, I just don't like him. And with that voice was this fear of, and he's ruining my life, and then that brought up a sense of hatred. So now this is something people don't want to, most of us do not want to feel hatred,

towards a young person, towards a stepson, towards our own child, that's very taboo. But here he was making the U-turn and acknowledging hatred, the reptilian brain. And then he felt immediately shame because here we were talking and, you know, here I was watching him feel hatred towards a young person. What would anybody think of that? So we talked a little and part of what we talked about is how many parents dislike and even at times hate their kids and totally love them too. And that's a truth.

We can be triggered and have our reptilian brain hate what's going on and seemingly hate the cause of what's going on. And still in the background there's love. It just that's the wave of energy that's overtaken us. And how for him and for most of us when hatred comes up, it's because there's some deep unmet need for safety or for gratification. For him this need to feel like he was having a life. He felt like his life was being ruined.

And so I invited him, you know, that's the eye, the investigating, the naming of the hatred. And then I asked him to call on loving presence, to kind of look through the eyes at loving presence at his own self. So that instead of, you know, this is the nurture of rain, by the way. And this is really, he's looking, I said, imagine yourself when you're more free from all of this, your future self, you know, who you might be 15 years down when you're really able to hold us with wisdom and with compassion. Look from that viewpoint at yourself right now and how trapped you are and how the feeling

that your life is down the tubes, your relationships being screwed up, there's no happiness. Look at yourself through those eyes and just let that hatred be there. Just hold it with wisdom, with kindness. In fact, invite it to be as full as it is. That's important. Again, we're being honest. And so he let that sense of the hatred, the aversion be as big as it was and he could feel then fully the fear that he had that he was losing his life and losing the love with his wife. And then he felt the tears. And that just filled the space and there he was kind of resting and watching all of this from his kind of future wise self and really letting the truth be expressed. And as things started settling,

he said, wow, getting real with that actually has given me hope. Because if I can include it all, I can deal with it. We just can't deal with it if we're not including it. And so he was very able to talk to his wife and confess that these are feelings that came up, that he had a lot of fear, and she was able to confess how much she felt this like at times, which was really, really painful for her and had been so buried in shame that they both felt that in large space that happens when we bring above the line the stuff that feels so shameful. And it gave them both some flexibility and capacity to then respond to it in a way that actually brought a lot more ease with their relationship with their son. And without

going into it a whole lot more, I can say that when they both felt ashamed of their negativity towards him, they had very little creativity and had to deal with him. It's a matter of flexibility. you're below the line, it's very rigid, very reactive, very little flexibility. But when they could say, okay, there's the reptilian brain that's really angry and aggressive and aversive and then there's this part of this part of my primate self that really wants the attachment bonds to be good and then there's the fear they won't be. When they could see it from a bigger picture, that quality of presence allowed them to respond with a lot more heart and a lot more intelligence and a lot less reactivity.

So again the steps of self-honesty is to recognize and allow when you get, when you're stuck, that's the flag. When in some way you're stuck in a pattern that's causing pain, that's a flag that there's some below-the-line stuff to pay attention to. And that motivates you to remove the veil. So you just recognize and allow, okay, this is going on now. In other words, don't blame yourself for the reactivity. Create some space.

You investigate, you make that U-turn and you begin to feel into the body. What's really going on? Because the aversion and hatred and fear, that stuff's in our bodies, okay? And you call on as much love and care as you can to help hold the investigation and hold what comes up and invite it to be as big as it is because if there's not loving presence that you call in, you won't be able to see clearly the truth. There won't be enough space, softness, gentleness for it. The nurturing is critical.

This is what we mean by opening the heart to the light of the truth. Opening the heart to the light of the truth. I'll share with you a kind of a mini version of some years back of it was very specific of where I did that and how much impact it had. was I had a realization not even that long ago, five or six years ago that with almost everyone in my life I had a subtext that I wasn't aware of when I was with them

of letting them down, a feeling guilty, a feeling in some way I wasn't a good person even though my conscious mind would say, oh, we have a beautiful relationship and of course I give myself to this and of course they love me and I love, it didn't matter. This is from being a child and not being able to save my mother from alcoholism.

Still there. So it was like anybody had looked at on some level I was feeling a little guilt like I wasn't coming through as much as I should. So recognizing that motivated me to draw the veil over and over because as long as that was operative, there was enough trance that I wasn't being fully able to engage in a spontaneous open-hearted way because guilt makes you not fully there. It was really powerful for me to shine the light on it, to let that feeling of falling short, just to feel that old, young self that felt like she was falling short,

and then have that nurturing that would in some way remind me from the most awake part of me of you care, others care, love is the most basic container for what's going on. And just by doing enough rounds of that, I can still see many times when in fact somebody might feel disappointed but it doesn't put me in trance because I know that's just a stream and something larger. That's the difference between below the line and trance and a remembrance that comes from above the line. Now, I want to name that there are times

that the below-the-line energies that are controlling us come from such deep unmet needs from places where we've been abused and violated that we can't necessarily make the U-turn and say, okay, shining the light, be all that you can be, letting the heart open to the light of truth, because it would be too much. It would be overwhelming.

We don't have enough of a container, of presence, enough tolerance. And so it is part of wisdom and compassion to know that self-honesty has its own organic timing, that you can deeply long to pull the, avails and let that longing guide you but still know that there's a patience and a timing that you can't will it and that we often need support in the process of shining the light of a therapist or a healer or doing some kind of meditation that helps us really first evoke the nurturing that place of loving kindness and then begin to shine the light. I share one story that to me was a very powerful illustration of this organic process.

This is a friend of mine, Ayesha Ali, who's wonderful, wonderful, wise, munch and also writes. And she has a blog post, she wrote Being Present, Numnus versus Strength, and I'm going to read you bits of it. My son has recently had a gun held to his head and robbed of a small amount of money. I was within a nanosecond of being another black mother torn asunder by the death of her black son. This tragic figure that is so common in our media that is viewed and barely remarked upon, this is what happens to us, we black people, we get killed in everyday existence and some even see this as our lives.

violence erupting because of fatal flaws and decisions. I've always understood that my child, my black son, is at constant risk. My stomach tightens every time he leaves me. So, after this happens, after this gun is held to his head, I am numb. I talked to police, I went to work and I canceled the phone and made arrangements through the insurance company to get him a new phone. I am numb, not strong. I cannot fully deal with the idea of burying another

child. The thought occurs that I have often mistaken numbness for strength. The crash that awaited came as a surprise. It devastated me in part because I was unaware of its roots. I am numb, but because of the practice, I am aware of it and not lost in the only positive fantasy this society allots to black women. We are so strong in the face of real nightmares. Many of us carry outrageous burdens of awareness every damn day. Many of us are numb. The gift of the practice is awareness. I am numb, but aware of it.

I am numb, so I am walking and feeling my body as it moves and awaiting the inevitable crash that will come with curiosity and hope. The crash will not surprise me and the hurricane of fear, despair, resentment, anger and tears will find me ready. This is a woman dedicated to self-honesty. And I feel like this is such a powerful expression. The point is not that we shine the light of awareness and get to a certain hub of truth. It's just that we shine the light of awareness, period.

And if what's ready to reveal itself is, oh, there's numbness, then we honestly be with that. But what we find is the more that we practice shining the light of awareness, the more we trust that we're ready for what wants to unfold itself. It's what one teacher called a heart that is ready for anything. and it's an amazing source of confidence because of course we have layered in there all sorts of raw and intense emotions. But when you have this sense of awareness

can keep on transforming what is seen, it can help me to rest in a larger and larger space of wisdom and compassion when we trust awareness then we can engage in this process of self-honesty and really know that we're on a path of freedom. Back to Eden for a moment again, just as we begin to close in this talk,

that if we don't face what's under there, there's more shame. In fact, as long as you're not facing and shining a light on what's there, there's going to be shame wrapped around it. There's an instinctual sense that something's wrong in there. I know I'm not looking at it right now, but something's wrong. The more, in contrast, we evolve and are honest,

we regain a kind of innocence. This is what Adam and Eve weren't able to do. We, through our awareness, regain a kind of innocence because we're not so hitched to that ego that was operating under the covers, trying to look a certain way. We're resting in, as children do, before the ego solidify,

there's a sense of freedom and spontaneity because we're not hiding or covering something. There's not unseen, unfelt material there. That happens until we civilize them and frighten them into covering up, right? There's a, I think a grandmother submitted this as a few examples of that innocence. She said, my young grandson called the other day to wish me happy birthday.

He asked how whole I was, and I told him, 62. He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, did you start at one? I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colors yet, so I decided to test her. I would point out something and ask what color it was. She would tell me, and always she was correct. But it was fun for me, so I continued.

At last she headed for the door saying sagely, grandma, I think you should try to figure out some of these yourself. When my grandson asked me how old I was, I teasingly replied, I'm not sure. Look in your underwear, grandma, he advised. Mine says I'm four to six. The joy in getting real. So it's a path, you know, and the more that we have that longing to move the veil, the more that we're courageous in it, actually the more we get to feel that sense of freedom

from coming in contact with what's real. So let's take a few moments to get quiet together and we'll be with this. Just for these few moments you might sense first that sincerity, that in you which wants to be real, wants to be in contact. One great sage suggests that one of the powerful questions we can ask ourselves is, what am I unwilling to feel?

Perhaps there's something going on in your life right now where you're kind of stuck in a certain pattern of reactivity, something you might have touched on when we did our reflections of what sometimes below the line for you. And if you sense a pattern and you sense something is there below the line, just ask yourself, this is, you know, you recognize and allow, okay, this stuck place is here, let it be here. And then just ask yourself that making that you turn, what am I unwilling to feel?

Just to examine and sense inside yourself, this kind of universal conditioning, is it feeling a sense of shame or is it fear of failure, it's a sense of being hurt, fear or something will be too much without figuring out much and you just feel in your body that kind of felt sense of maybe uneasiness or fear, quivering, of discomfort. And as you do, bring that nurturing in. So if you can bear witness from the highest, kindest part of yourself, opening the heart to the light of the truth. Just that simplicity of intending to see what's here without judgment, opening the heart to

the light of the truth. Gentle, kind. You'll know that there's a getting real because there's a little shift that goes with it where more of you is freed up to rest in presence, rest in the kindness, rest in the awakeness of your awareness. You're not so identified. Now clearly this is a very short amount of time to be practicing with self-honesty, but you can send that message inward of your dedication to keep on drawing the veil, seeing what's true, opening your heart to the light of truth and know that as you do so, you're holding hands with many, many beings who want to wake up and evolve our consciousness so that our actions in this world come from more of our own.

of an awake, wise and loving heart. 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.