Tara Brach - Seeking What's True - Pt 2 of 3 (2016-10-12)

Episode Date: October 15, 2016

Seeking What's True - Within Ourselves, Beyond our Self, With Each Other - Pt 2 of 3 (2016-10-12) - 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. This talk tonight is part two of a series on Seeking Truth, and part one was really what we might call radical self-honesty, where we began to shine the light of awareness on the layers that are often unconscious, the loneliness, the feelings of being special or being bad in some way, feelings of loneliness, whatever is there that is really keeping us in trance and how when we begin to become aware of what's unconscious and included in awareness, we're actually freed up to really live from a more full

and alive and spontaneous quality of being. Tonight we're going to be deepening that inquiry and really looking at perhaps the most fundamental illusion we live with that keeps us from the truth of who we are, which is that perception of being separate, that I am a separate egoic self and the world's out here and I'm in here. And so we'll be looking really at the inquiry that all spiritual traditions have, which is who am I or what am I really. And from the get-go I want to say that this inquiry is not relevant,

are the most useful inquiry for everybody at all times. I mean, there's times when we're really, there's a lot of strong weather systems coming through, a lot of confusion, hurt, or pain, and we really need to focus on how do we bring some kindness, self-compassion, clarity to that. But there's other times when things quiet down a bit and we can begin to ask that very core question of,

really, who am I? And there's a kind of attitude that supports us in this, and which is that to kind of go with a light touch, because if we try to storm the gates with that inquiry, we just land up in another egoic state. So just interest, curiosity, humor, kindness, just a gentle inquiry. And we'll begin with one of my favorite poems.

This is by Tukharum. He writes, I was meditating with my cat the other day, and all of a sudden she shouted, What happened? I knew exactly what she meant, but encouraged her to say more, feeling if she got it all out on the table, she'd sleep better that night. So I responded, tell me more, dear, and she soulfully meowed. Well, I was mingled with the sky. I was comets whizzing here and there.

I was suns and heat. Hell, I was the galaxies. But now look, I'm landlocked in fur. To this, I said, I know exactly what you mean. What to say about conversation between mystics? This is sometimes described as the big squeeze. And it's something we all have a taste of, which is that on some deep level we sense that mystery.

You know, sometimes it comes out and we see the stars at night, or that incredible sense of tenderness that emerges when we behold a loved one when they're happy or sad, you know, can happen when we're in nature and we just lose ourselves in the beauty. And there's a sense of being beyond our familiar, small, packed up self. And then there's every day that we know how small-minded we can get, you know, how petty it can be, how our worries just circle around. The real protagonist and about everything is moi, and we're mostly trying to sense how do I get more comfortable

and how do I solve this problem. And the world is landlocked in fur, right? So there is really at the heart of the spiritual path this yearning not to fight that landlocked feeling, but to deepen our attention so we we can begin to discover that belonging to the galaxies, that the star and the light that's really at the very source of our being and the warmth that really animates our heart, the awareness that's here.

It's really right there that we really want to know the truth of who we are. I know for myself if I kind of track back my own practice in spiritual life, I had some sense. I was very active in social justice and just a political activist quite a while in college. And there was some part of me that sensed I really wanted to discover some more of this mystery I was intuiting and I began doing yoga. And I'll never forget senior year walking out of a yoga class and it was springtime and the fragrance and the air and the smells and the feelings that were there. And I stopped.

I just got really still and there was a slight breeze. And in those moments, my body and my mind were in exactly the same place. It's like there was just a belonging to everything. That self-sense was not interfering. And those kind of experiences had me decide to join a spiritual community where I'd be practicing much, much more full-time. And for whatever reason, my temperament, whatever, I joined a very vigorous one, and donned all sorts of garb and got up at 3.30 in the morning

and did yoga and meditation and prayer, and lived a very kind of arduous spiritual life. And it had many, many tastes of that sense of everything falling away, and they're just being love and light and presence and belonging. Many tastes. and it was wrapped up in some idea that I was on my way somewhere and that it was going to get even more explosive than that and I was going to be in some permanent state of ecstasy or whatever.

But I had some idea that enlightenment was down the road and I wasn't there yet. Still this yearning. I ended up growing out of that particular ashram lifestyle and went to my first Buddhist retreat and this one of the first stories I heard went like this. There was a woman who decided she had to go see the guru. She just had to go see the guru.

But the guru, she was, you know, lived in Manhattan and the guru was in India. So in her travel agent tried to dissuade her and said, why don't you go to Miami like you usually do? She said, no, I got to see the guru. Because it takes like a long flight around the globe. and then you have to get on a train across India. And on the train, she ran into somebody going to see the exact same guru, and that person said, you know, you can only say two words, or three words, I think. Yeah, three words.

And she said, I know, I know, I know, but that's okay, I'm going. She gets across India, she gets onto this bus, you know, the bus ride, these sharp hairpin turns. it was just very, very scary and arduous, runs into a couple of other devotees on their way, and they reminded her of the three words, and she's all right with that. She finally gets there, and she goes to the encampment

where the guru's holding court. It's in this long line. She gets to the front of the line. Again, the attendants remind her of the rules, and she goes in, and there he is. And he's in his saffron robes, and he's got his wispy beard, and she goes right up to him,

she looks them in the eye and she says, Sheldon, come home. Well, I took that personally, you know, in some way, even though my mother's not the kind of classic mother like that, but that, you know, I had been trying to get, I had gone to this very kind of exotic ashram life, even though it was in the United States, it was very exotic,

and that we don't have to go to another country. We don't have to be back 1,500 years ago when the Buddha was born. We don't have to wear garb. In fact, the only place that we can experience the truth and the freedom of who we are is this moment right here in this very heart mind. Any notion that you're waiting for something, that it's outside of you, that you need to learn something more, that you have to go to a three-month retreat,

it's right here. And I mean like really right here, not at the end of the talk. That the idea that it's even a few minutes away that we're on our way somewhere is the fundamental interference that keeps us in the sense of a self trying to get somewhere. We stay landlocked.

I saw a cartoon once that had a bunch of fleas wandering around in a forest of fur, and they were wondering, is there really a dog? That was really good. The core perception then, that causes suffering, is this sense of that who I am is this self, you know, the story of self. And that there's the core narrative in that self is that in any given moment of time is that there's something missing that's not here. I'm on my way so that the next moment will give me what this moment does not have.

There's a leaning forward. And the other side of it is there's something wrong. There's something wrong with life or me or another person but something's wrong. And what that leads to is a sense of I need to do something. I need to do more to be okay. Now, the stronger the feelings are that something's missing or something's wrong, the more solid and tense and tight and anxious the self gets. So this is the trance.

If we're looking for what stops us from knowing who we are, it's a fundamental sense of I'm separate, something's wrong and I need to do something about it. I like the way Wei Wu-Wei says it. Why are you unhappy? 99.9% of everything you do is for yourself and there isn't one. So the Buddha offered a very radical basic teaching that you'll find in every what are called the non-dual or the wisdom traditions. It's not specific to Buddhism. And it's that the truth of who we are is that we're never apart from that oneness. It's like waves in an ocean. We have the

perception that, oh, I'm this set of waves, but waves are made of the same ocean-ness or ocean. And while there may be the truth that yes, right now certain waves are arising, there are certain weather systems that are going through right now. Today you might be worried about a certain thing and have those thoughts and those fears. And tomorrow you might be sad about some loss that's impending. There's waves. And to honor the waves, but not to forget the ocean.

this belonging that's always here, not a hair breath away. So the Buddha said basically that I would not have taught you these teachings about the truth, about this belonging, if it weren't possible to realize it. What makes it so important to remember the ocean? If we just think we're waves, we're going to be completely fixated on how well the waves are doing and what's going wrong with the ways. And we're going to forget what's timeless, we're going to forget what's formless,

and what really gives us the true sense of love and belonging. That's what carries us. And it's not at all esoteric. I mean, I love the teaching that, you know, if you remember you're the ocean, you're not afraid of the ways. It's truth. The other side of it is if you forget you're the ocean,

you're going to be seasick all the time. But if you know, if you intuit that formless mystery that we sometimes sense when we're in nature, when we're in that very loving connection with another person or when we're really, really quiet, if you intuit that, it gives space for the changing life that's here. There is a freedom in that. Then you can respond to what comes,

you're not tensing against the future. You can live it. So we'll look at two primary pathways that we can come to that remembrance of who we are beyond the small cell. And a language in terms of ocean and waves, the one pathway is to deepen our attention to the waves. If you really open your attention

to exactly what's going on in the moment, the waves of the moment, you'll discover the oceanness. you'll sense something larger of who you are. And then the other pathway is directly turn the attention to the quality of awareness itself. Takes being a little quieter, but we'll explore both of them. So we start with the waves and the main waves that keep sustaining this perception of,

I'm here, I'm separate, and something's wrong, is this narration in our brain. We think incessantly. We're addicted to thought. And so we keep telling ourselves what's wrong, which creates a biochemistry of anxiety and worry that then churns more thoughts. This is what Carlos Costagnata writes.

He says, we maintain our world with our inner dialogue. A man or woman of knowledge is aware that the world will change completely as soon as they stop talking to themselves. So this is the core level of training that we recognize the waves of thinking and we begin to say, oh, okay, these are thoughts, but I don't have to be lost in them. So a primary flag of being entrance, a primary flag of really what's keeping us stuck in this

kind of egoic self is obsessive thinking. and it's a survival tool of the ego and it goes way overboard. Always trying to figure something out, ruminating. One of my favorite examples of how the obsessive mind works is when I think back to when we had a dog Hakuna, we call them a super standard,

this huge, huge standard poodle, just supersized. you know he weighed about 110 pounds and I would take him for a walk and he'd be happily sniffing and we really enjoy it but whenever I saw this pair of Akitas that also came kind of would cross-pazzle this now and then it was tough because he would lurch at them so as soon as I saw them I would wrap the leash around a tree to hold it because he was 110 pounds and when he lurched that was it for me so I would be holding him like that and he'd be going crazy

and just as aggressive as you can imagine they'd pass I'd unwrap it and he'd go back to sniffing and cheerfully wandering around now if it was a human that that was happening to they'd keep fueling the fight stories you know like who the hell do they think they are they're in my hood you know you can't trust them

they'll do it again I'm going to show them I'm no wimp you know I'm not going to be stepped on. You know, we would get into it, but, you know, it was like out of sight, out of mind. He went back to enjoying himself. I mentioned this a lot. One neuroscientist described it, that our emotions, if left to their own devices, 1.5 minutes, they come, you know, we get aggravated, aggressive, whatever, they go. But they get fueled by our obsessive thinking. We keep the resentments going by remembering what that person did wrong to us. Are our fears going by anticipating how we're going to blow it when we get to this event

that we need to perform for? Whatever it is, we keep it going. So, this is a key element of practice, that we recognize the ways of thoughts. You know, there's one teacher that said, just keep asking yourself, am I dreaming right now? And it's really powerful. It just turns the light to like, oh, okay, I'm inside that movie right now. The biggest takeaway I find when people practice more deeply, let's say, at a week-long retreat, is they come out of it and get it, I am not my thoughts.

These are waves, they're part of my ocean of being, but they don't define me. My thoughts aren't the truth that defines me. They're real but not true. And I love that phrase from Tibetan teacher Sokney Rinpoche. Real but not true. They're real and that the real waves moving in the ocean. But the content isn't truth. When you have a thought about a tree, it's not the tree itself, the living tree with bark

and leaves and blowing in the wind, it's just an image, a soundbite if you're having words going on. Real but not true. And yet it's so easy to take these waves in our ocean, this virtual reality as the real thing. Anyone that's dated knows what it's like with the personals, you know, like you get this idea of a person, you kind of think that's who they are. There was one that I read a while back that was the best. Single black female seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant.

I'm a very good looking girl who loves to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping, and fishing trips. Cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. Rub me the right way and watch me respond. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work wearing only what nature gave me. Kiss me and I'm yours. Then there's a call and a phone number.

Ask for Daisy. So thousands of men called this number to find it was the Atlanta Humane Society. and Daisy's of course a black lab retriever. It's a virtual reality. Isn't that the best personals? I love that one. So the training is to begin to sense the waves of thoughts and also sense the gaps between the waves because that's when the light of awareness begins to shine through.

The training is be quiet and don't believe your mind and don't believe your mind and don't believe your mind. Okay? So now the challenge is what happens when there's really sticky thoughts, when the waves are recurrent waves and they're really powerful. And this is what we'll call core beliefs. And how do we deal with those waves? And I'm going to spend a little bit more time with them

because our beliefs affect so much of our experience. Mahatma Gandhi wrote that your beliefs create your thoughts and the feelings that loop in it. and then that creates your words and that creates your actions and that creates your character and that creates your destiny. So when we have these waves, these recurrent waves of beliefs that come through and we don't remember that we're bigger than them, that they're real but not true, we get caught in them, they they perspay mean that they keep in motion this sense of a small, limited, deficient self.

So we need to challenge them. So I'll give you an example of how we bring this deepening of attention to challenge the waves of beliefs. And this is, this example is a woman who came, this is years ago we worked together and she came to work on this, you know, core belief, I'm on level. and anybody that gets to know me will find that out. And she went through a series of relationships and her pattern was that as soon as she started

to get some closeness and there was any sense of criticism or any sense of the other person was not fully in, she would go pull way, way back and get very armored because it was that sense of, oh, he'll find out. And once he really knows who I am, won't be attracted or won't find me appealing. And so we decide to work together to deepen attention to those waves

that were keeping her very, very much feeling small and separate and rejectable. Now, some of what we do with deepening attention, if you are familiar with rain, just to recognize and allow, okay, this is the set of waves that are going on, to not make that bad or wrong. This is what's happening. We need to just offer attention. And then to investigate, recognizes R, A's allow, I's investigate. And one of the teachers that's fabulous at investigating is Byron Katie in terms of beliefs. So if you haven't heard of her and you're working with beliefs, she's great. We begin to ask questions and then we begin

to offer the Anne of Rain, nourish kindness. So with her, we began to investigate, and I asked her, you know, she was basically saying I'm unlovable. That's the belief. And I said, is it possible? That's a real belief, but it's not truth? And she said, it's possible, but it feels true.

And when that's still often the case, that we can intellectually go, well, it might not be, but this is how it feels, and which is what of course keeps us going. So I asked her, well, what's it like when you're living with that belief really full-blown? And when you're really sitting there feeling, I'm just unlovable,

and when you're really perceiving the unlovable self, what's it like? And she described this hollowness and this ache and this shame of just not wanting anyone to see her. And I said, well, what's it like to, I mean, as you lived through your life, how has it affected your life to have that? And she described how many situations she really could never really relax or enjoy it because she always felt in some way marginal or that she didn't belong.

And when she sensed that whole landscape of how many moments, that belief I'm unlovable, how it affected her whole life, that's what I call the ouch moment. That's when she really could sense the suffering and pain of living with that, of believing her belief. You know, her eyes welled up when she saw her whole life. I call it sometimes a soul sadness. When you see the whole contour and shape and landscape of your life, that deep sense of something's wrong with me, how it affects it.

And so that's when I said, what do you wish for yourself right now? and she said my deepest wish is that I could really trust and believe and feel lovable and I said offer that message just offer that wish to yourself

and I always have people when they're willing and open to it put their hand on their heart because it really counter conditions the way we're in relationship with ourselves we're so lacking intimacy and tenderness

that to even make a gesture of tenderness is radical in the shift in what's possible. You can begin to sense it. So she put her hand on her heart and I said, you know, what is that place you most need right in this moment? And, you know, she said, just to feel that I'm caring, I'm here with that part of my own being. So she did that. She offered that caring presence and that wish, please trust, you're okay, you're okay. I sometimes use the phrase, it's okay sweetheart. Then she was still for a while and I asked her another question and it was, who would you

be if you no longer believe that belief? Who would you be? If you no longer believe that you're unlovable. And her response was something I've heard before which she says, I have no idea, it's just that when you ask that there's this, this sense of space and possibility, which is a beautiful answer because the who we really are

isn't some other form of a self. It's more spacious, it's aware, it's loving. For her, the effect of that process of deepening her attention to a wave and then touching into more of an ocean sense allowed her enough confidence to be able to name what was going on in this new relationship she was in. She was afraid she was going to replay the patterns but she was able to name it which let him name where he was vulnerable which

created for the first time a foundation of honesty and vulnerability that actually gave her an opportunity for intimacy. So what I thought we do is take a pause here and give you a chance to practice a little this first path to of paying attention to the waves to discover the ocean. And it's going to be a brief touching into a difficult belief. And because we don't have time for a deep practice of this, I invite you to explore it on your own afterwards. For now, take a moment wherever you are to come into stillness.

I can scan your life right now and sense where it is you find you find it. is you find you get stuck, emotionally stuck and reactive, where you know that you're in some way down on yourself? And it might be a situation where you're with family or friends, it might be a conflict that happens with your partner, it might be around an addictive behavior or something at work, where you get emotionally stuck, either angry. or hurt, anxious, and you know that you're down on yourself in some way. And as you sense the situation and you have to go really right into it to sense really

the feelings that are there, you might ask yourself, well what am I believing? What is it that you're believing about yourself? Is it that you're always going to fail? Or is it like this woman that in some way you're unlovable, that something's wrong with you you, that you'll never really be the person you want to be, that you're not forgivable, that something's not acceptable about you. Just to begin to recognize and allow that, okay, so there's this core belief, this is the waves of the ocean that you're getting stuck in, that you're forgetting the larger sense of

who you are. Just that recognition. You might ask yourself, is it possible that this belief is really really that you're forgetting? real, I'm really experiencing it, but not truth. There's a larger truth. Is that possible? And whatever the response, you might go deeper and just sense, well, what's it like when I'm believing this? Like when it's full-blown, when I'm really inside the wave, when I'm getting tossed around by the wave, when I'm really buying it, what goes on in my body and my heart? What's the feeling? You're opening now to the waves of the feelings in the body, the feelings

of hurt or fear, squeeze, the shame. What goes with that belief? And how has living with this belief affected your life? What has it kept you from doing? How has it kept you from intimacy, from enjoyment? How has it kept you from really letting in or expressing love, creativity, aliveness? I invite you as you investigate to begin to bring, that nurturing to whatever you're experiencing.

You might experiment if you haven't done it before with putting your hand on your heart. I often do it even when I don't need to just because it always deepens in some way a quality of connection. And just sense with the part in you that's been living with this belief most needs in this moment.

And no matter how you've been doing this exercise so far, you can always start in this moment by sensing what does the vulnerability in me most need? Perhaps it's just the feeling that you're there and willing to offer care. Perhaps there's some wise and caring part of you that has a message to offer. Just to let in some care, to feel that you're holding with care. You're the compassionate presence that's holding that part of you with care. You might ask that final question, who would I be if I didn't believe that, that limiting belief anymore? Who would I be? Who would I be without that belief?

Perhaps you can sense that shift from that stuck self to something much more vast and mysterious and free. What would my life be like if I didn't live with that belief? anymore. You can take some full breaths and in some way feel what's going on inside you at whatever stage of your process you're at and know that you can revisit this when you have more time bringing these qualities of attention of clarity and kindness to wherever there's waves that you've been stuck inside. Now, thus far, we've been exploring this one pathway to deepening truth, which is that look at

the waves more deeply. Discover the oceanist. Discover there's a sense of our beingness that's larger than that particular wave. The other approach that I've mentioned is to begin to look directly into awareness into this mystery. So instead of looking at the objects or the forms or the feelings or the emotions, we're really looking right into that vastness. I thought I'd share with you a story that evokes a little bit of this mystery of how much we don't know. It's written by, it's called, from the Carts Code by Paul Pearson, who's a physician, a psycho-neuroemunologist. And

It starts like this. Oh my God, David. No, cries Glenda when she sees the bright lights headed straight for their car. As the squeal of the tire struggling to grip the road became one with her own shriek of helpless terror, she knew that she had lost her husband forever. Moments before the car came crashing through their windshield, the couple had argued over something silly and had been sitting in resentful silence. They had had these little scuffles before, but unlike all their previous skirmishes, this

time there would be no opportunity to apologize and reconfirm their love. Three years after the accident, Glenda sat with me in a dimly lit hospital chamber. At her request, I had arranged a meeting between her and the young man whose life had been saved by the gift of her husband's heart. The heart recipient and his mother were almost a half hour late for the meeting and I was ready to suggest to Glenda that we leave. The issue of recipients' meeting donor families is a sensitive one and I understood why the man may have changed his mind. As I stood and took Glenda's hand, she said quietly,

no, we have to wait. He's here in the hospital. I felt him arrive about 30 minutes ago. I felt my husband's presence. Please wait with me. Glenda is a practicing family physician. She's well-versed in bioscience and as I do admires the rigor and healthy skepticism of modern science. Now, however, the power of something that transcends what science calls common sense was tugging at her heart. David's heart is here, she added. I can't believe I'm saying that to you, but I feel it. His recipient is here in this hospital.

At that moment the door opened and the young man and his mother walked hurriedly down the center aisle of the chapel. Sorry we're late, said the young man with a heavy Spanish accent. We got here a half hour ago. We couldn't find the chapel. After introductions and awkward attempts at humor about a heart-to-heart meeting between the young wife and her husband's heart,

the usually shy Glenda blurted out, this embarrasses me as much as it must embarrass you, but can I put my hand on your chest and feel his, I mean, your heart? The young man looked at me and then his mother put his hand to his chest and finally nodded his head. As Glenda reached forward, he unbuttoned his shirt, took her hand and gently placed it upon his naked chest. What happened next transcends our current view of brain, body, heart, and mind.

Glenda's hand began to tremble and tears rolled down her cheek. She closed her eyes and whispered, I love you, David. Everything is copacetic. She removed her hand, hugged the young man to her chest, and all of us wiped tears from our eyes. Glenda, the young man, sat down and celioletted against the stained glass window of the chapel held hands in silence.

Speaking in her heavy Spanish accent, the young man's mother told me, my son uses that words copacet. all the time now. He never used it before he got his new heart. But after a surgery, it was the first thing he said to me when he could talk. I didn't know what it means. He said everything was copacetic. It's not a word I know in Spanish. Glenda overheard us in her eyes wide and she turned towards us and said that word was our signal that everything's okay. Every time we argued and made up, we'd say everything is copacetic. Our discussion

about a magic word that seemed to reveal a code of the heart within him, stimulating the young man to share story after story of changes he experienced following his transplant. Described by his mother as a former vegetarian and very health conscious, he now crazed meat and fatty foods. A former lover of heavy metal music, he now loves 50s rock and roll. He reported recurrent dreams of bright lights coming straight for him. Glenda responded almost matter-of-factly that her husband love meat played in a Motown rock and roll band while in medical school and that she too has dreams of the of that fateful night.

The reason I share the story and the reason it touches me so much is that it kind of catapults me into don't know mind, that we kind of think we know what it's all about and this world is so mysterious and what is love and what are these beings, do we reside in these bodies and hearts and what happens after we're here. and for so many that have accompanied the dying and know how transformative it is to sense this mystery that's just right around the edges. It's always here that we block out with our day-to-day trance.

We're so connected with something larger. And I know that happens, we feel like when we're with the dying, there's something that is momentous and meaningful that happens. don't want to forget and it happens when we face our own mortality and there's this longing to keep remembering and what that is that we don't want to forget is that we belong to something larger, that this isn't it, this little world of our thoughts and our fears and our wants, that there's something larger and there's a tremendous refuge of truth in that

It allows us to hold this world more lightly but also cherish it because we're not grasping for it to be a certain way and scared it's going to go away. There's more of that sense of a fearless heart. So there are several pathways of training to have that remembrance of really this ocean to which we belong and we're going to close this evening with a guided practice that can give us a taste. And as I mentioned before, for some when we begin to really look into the nature of awareness, it can be scary or just orienting because it kind of takes away the ground of our normal reality. And so if it doesn't feel like a match for you, just

put it aside and just even in experimenting with this really a light touch. Try not to think about it so much, just to feel your way in in a kind of embodied open way. I like to begin, and I do this for myself too, so you may have been with me before with this first question I have for you. It's really about a 15-second meditation. What I'd like you to do is for the next 15 seconds, close your eyes and try not to be aware. Okay? 15 seconds, beginning now. Try not to be aware. Okay. Open your eyes.

That's enough. Okay, so how many were successful? Can I see right? I like to share that when I first did this, my mother was in this room, and she was the only hand that went up in that one. But I think she was being a little contrarian with me, but that's okay,

because sometimes we really feel like, oh, I wasn't aware, but we were aware of that. That's a little tricky. Okay, let's close your eyes again. And this time we're going to just, this is going to be more like a five minute, six minute meditation. And settle yourself, feel the sitting posture and take a few full breaths. Let the breath gather your attention, collect your attention. And for a moment again you might try not to be aware, try not to be aware.

And very quickly notice that awareness is always here. We might not be aware of the awareness, but it's here. There's this ongoing registering of sound and sensation and feelings. You might let that awareness that's here be relocated and just imagine that that awareness is in front of you and up a bed, like a stage light, but it's your awareness that's looking down on this body and mind, bearing witness, perceiving. And just through that locality above in front of you, just be aware of the body and sensations and feelings that's here in what you call you. Awareness is beaming down, picking up the kind of thoughts that might be in the background

and the feelings in your body, the sense of sitting here. And sense that witness, that beaming awareness now just kind of surrounding you. So it's around to the sides and behind you. It's really all surrounding you and seeping inside so that you can begin to sense that that awareness is outside and inside. So it's feeling from the inside out and aware from the inside out of your body, interior space of awareness, feeling sensations, an exterior sensing sound. So there's this whole field of awareness picking up everything, a continuous field of sensation. The stillness that's perceiving

aliveness and vibration. This awareness is the silence that's listening. It's the openness, the formless openness that sounds and sensations are occurring in. It's relaxing back, being that field of continuous awareness, listening to and feeling the changing movement of waves, listening to the sounds. And you might inquire who is listening.

Really, who is listening? Who's hearing these words? Just turn the attention back gently just to see what's aware, what is awareness? And then just let go and just be that awareness. Again, that silence that's listening. Empty, awake space if a thought comes up, who's thinking? I simply turn the attention back to awareness, who or what is aware, and just let go again. Serena Sargadatta says, when I look into my mind, I see I am nothing.

When I look into my heart, I see I am everything. Between the two, my life flows. Sensing the heart space, be awareness at the level of the heart, that cherishes the ways receiving everything that's arising in this heart space and you might bring to mind a dear one just let the image and sense of someone whose dear come to mind and sense how this dear one

is received in this open-hearted awareness this dear one floats is included is a part of your heart. And perhaps let another person arise in awareness, sensing how this heart space holds this being open, inclusive, and tender, intrinsically tender. True homecoming is to the awake awareness,

this open-heartedness that your deepest nature, You're not a human awakening to spirit. You are spirit, awareness, awakening through this body mind. The truth you're seeking is already here. When I look into my mind, I see I am nothing. When I look into my heart, I see I am everything. Between the two, my life flows. Thank you for your presence.

For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.