Tara Brach - Seeking What's True – Within Ourselves, Beyond Our Self, With Each Other – (Part 3 of 3)

Episode Date: October 22, 2016

Seeking What's True  – Within Ourselves, Beyond Our Self, With Each Other – (Part 2 of 3) (2016-10-19)- 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 class is the third of a three-part series on Seeking Truth and the first of the three was on what we call radical self-honesty, getting really honest with ourselves about what's true. The second part was deepening that inquiry with that question of who am I really. the deepest of truths. And the third is to bring that inquiry of what's true and speaking truth into our relationships with each other. So that's what we'll be exploring tonight. And I want to say, honestly, I did not plan this with it in mind that speaking truth would coincide with our

last electoral debate. That's just what happened. Start with a story someone sent me years ago about a guy who's driving around the back roads of Montana and he sees a sign in front of a broken-down old shanty and it says, a talking dog for sale. So he rings the bell and the owner appears and says, dogs in the back. So he goes to the back and there's this nice-looking Labrador retriever. And so he looks to the lab and he says, you talk and Lab says,

yep, I do. And after he recovers from the shock of a talking dog, he says, oh, okay, what's your story? And the lab goes on and says, well, I discovered I could talk pretty young, and so I wanted to help the government. So I decided to, I told the CIA, and they sent me all over the world because nobody thinks a dog can talk. So I would listen in on these covert meetings and do a lot of eavesdropping. Anyway, I was one of their most valuable spies for a lot of years running, but then I, jetting around tired me out. So I decided to sign up for a job in an airport, did some undercover security there.

uncovered some incredible dealings while I was working there. One warded a bunch of medals, got married, settled down, had a bunch of pups. Now I'm just retired. And so the guy's amazing, he goes out, he goes and asks the dog costs and the dog says, $10, and goes, $10? This dog's amazing. Why are you selling them so cheap? The response was, because he's a liar.

He never did any of that stuff. There's a lot of research on human deception. And we humans lie 10 times a week. And the research, it's interesting that it describes how, you know, one study I was reading how, you know, mostly we lie in very casual conversations to appear more likable or more competent. And it says that 60% of people, given a 10-minute conversation, will lie about an average of 2 to 3 lies. 10 minutes.

This is the research. They say women are more likely to lie to make the person they're talking to feel good while men more likely to lie to make themselves look better. It's a gender thing. Just the research, I'm not biased here. What's really interesting to us here is that we can know intuitively and through research that deception prevents intimacy.

And I'd like to read you one of my favorite all-time quotes from Adrian Rich who says, An honorable human relationship, that is one in which two people have the right to use the word love, is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other. It's important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. So love is the process of deepening the truths that we can tell each other. And it really fits with a kind of evolutionary perspective that honesty evolves our consciousness.

It enables us when we're honest to wake up out of our self-enclosed reality and be in this fertile mix of a larger shared truth and realize the connectedness that's there. And because our habit is to withhold difficult truths, to shade truth, to not want to feel vulnerable, it takes intention and practice. It really is on the spiritual path one of the domains of being intentional that's necessary if we want to break the habit that sometimes we're not even conscious of the way we present things. And the given, and this is to spare any of us from feeling ashamed, is that deceptions in evolutionary

strategy that is seen in creatures from the smallest on up, there's nothing new here, other animals, even plants rely on deception. I heard about, many of you've heard of the signing gorilla Coco, very well-known signing gorilla. Anyway, Coco blamed her pet kitten for ripping a sink out of a wall. She signed it. I thought that was hilarious. As I mentioned, here we are a couple of weeks before the presidential elections,

and we're observing you know, it's been going on through millennia and we're observing, you know, what happens when this is the milieu of deception, you know, to gain power. And research shows that you can say a huge, huge lie and if you say it again and again, people believe it. You can just get away with it. And again, it's through the whole animal kingdom. You know, we know that viruses camouflage themselves to be able to blend into their environment

and we do the same. We conform so that we won't be seen. We know that cats raise their fur to create an impression of being bigger and more dangerous and we might have a machismo style with certain clothes and postures we take on. There's mimicking when we have, when there's somebody that has the power of attraction, we mimic them to be able to, we align with them so that we can have that same draw. I thought this was a really interesting example because a lot of fish and reptiles and insects engage in female mimicry and there's a read about the garter snake males

and they emit these pheromones to suggest they're female but they only do it for a couple of days right after they've emerged from their winter dens and the reason they do it is they want to get warm and garter snakes form mating balls 100 males around a few email. So these guys come out of their, you know, out of the long winter's night, you know, and they're cold and so they emit these female hormones and they attract 100 males to warm them up and then once they're warmed up, they stop emitting the hormone and go on their merry

way. It's a great strategy. There's so many, so many examples, but I kind of share it for the same reason I often talk about an evolutionary perspective so that we don't take it personally. We don't say, oh, I'm bad because I end up misleading or exaggerating or holding back information. It's just our programming. And children, you can see deception in children from six months on when children will pretend to laugh or cry to get attention in a certain way. And we manipulate to get what we want. We're trying to create impressions.

It's deception. One great story since the holiday, we're kind of going towards the holidays. An old man, and Phoenix calls his son in New York and says, I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you your mother and are divorcing, you know, this 45 years of misery, it's been enough. And the man's really upset.

He's, Dad, what are you talking about? You can't divorce. And he says, don't do a thing. I'm going to call my sister in Chicago. We'll talk about this. And he hangs up, he calls his sister frantic and says, you know, tells him, what happened and she explodes. Like, heck, they're getting a divorce. I'll take care of this.

So she calls Phoenix. She's talking to her father in the phone. She says, you're not getting divorce. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back. We'll both be there tomorrow until then. Don't do a thing. Do you hear me? And she hangs up. The old man hangs up. The phone turns to his wife. Okay, he says, they're coming for Thanksgiving. And they're paying their own way. So we're going to look a bit at our lives. and sense, you know, what it is for each of us, because this is really how we wake up out of a trance, to start looking, okay, so how am I holding back

and what would happen if I was more real? What would that be like? And the understanding about what keeps us hooked on deception is pretty straightforward that we come into life, a difficult environment, where there's standards to meet, where we have parents telling us that, you know, you have to be a certain way if you want to be accepted or loved or be safe. You know, so we take on what I sometimes describe as a space suit self.

You know, we kind of develop our defenses and our ways of presenting ourselves so we'll make the impression that'll get the most rewards. And presenting ourselves so we'll create the impression that'll protect us from punishment. presenting ourselves so that in some way the needs we have to be safe and loved and respected will get met. We each do that. We each have a set of strategies that include how we present ourselves and the more unmet needs we have that are either set in because of the culture or family, biology, the

The more needs we have, the more we get hooked on our strategies of protecting and defending and presenting. And they take us away from our real selves. You see, the more we have to rely on protecting ourselves, we get identified with that space suit. We even believe our own lies because it keeps us feeling congruent with our self-image. So we'll do a few brief reflections tonight to get us in touch and then this is something you can work with on your own if you feel inclined in terms of playing your edge and being more real.

The first reflection is this, if you close your eyes and just check this out, bringing to mind someone you value, someone you'd like to nourish your relationship with that it's like to become more real. This is a place you'd like to experience yourself being more honest and real. And as you consider this person, ask yourself this, what is it I most want them to see about me? What is that I want them to see?

And how do I go about showing that? Do I want them to see that I'm a caring person or an intelligent person or a together person? What do I want them to see? And how do I present that? this question, what about myself do I most not want this person to see or know about? What are the characteristics, the parts of my personality, the ways I think, the ways I maybe act secretly that I really don't want this person to know about, with judgments or insecurities, things that you're embarrassed about? And how do I cover these over? You might take one

thing that you really don't want the other person to know about and sense the ways you hide that. And as you do, sense into what's the quality of connection? What's our relationship like when I'm in that mode of covering over? How do I feel about myself? How do I feel in relationship with them? Okay. So I'm going to continue.

You can open your eyes if you'd like. We're often unaware. It's such a habit. unaware of this process. We're unaware of when we're kind of covering over or trying to present. Some of you are familiar that in Greek theater, the masks, the word persona comes from the mask that actors would use and they'd use them to present a persona, their spacesuit self, whatever. And then at night they'd go home and they put their masks down and be themselves. But for us, it's such a habit in our nervous system and in our thought patterning that we actually take

ourselves to be the masks. We are the one who's covering over and pretending. We are the self that's trying to show a certain thing. That becomes our identity. So there's no intimacy possible when we're really holding up that mask and thinking we're the mask. To the degree that we're trying to be a certain kind of person and make a certain impression, to the degree that we're trying to cover over something, we can't connect. That's why Adrian Rich speaks so beautifully about love as being the deepening truths that we can tell each other. That's our homecoming to who we really are.

So we've explored the process of that kind of getting honest with ourselves and now we're going to look at, well, how do we start getting in touch with and bringing truth more into our relationships? And the Buddha had a basic description of wise speech that is quite elegant, which is to speak what's true and speak what's helpful. It's completely difficult to do that because how do you even know often what's true? There's all these layers of truth in us and how do we know what's helpful? So we're going to look a little bit at that.

And in terms of discerning being able to speak what's true. one of the most powerful principles, and this is you can find this in nonviolent communications and find this in most trainings in communication, are what are called I statements, that any time you are speaking truth to another person, if it ends up being framed as about them, it's no longer truth. That for you to be in resonance, for you to be at home with the deepest truth in your being, it needs to be about your feelings and your unmet needs, not about them. So, for example, you wouldn't say, I feel, I mean feelings are really important,

but you wouldn't say, I feel like you're being irresponsible. That's not a feeling. That's a comment about the other person. But you might say, I feel hurt, I feel angry, I feel sad. Another level of important communications is your needs because under every feeling there's an unmet need and if you can get the knack of saying I feel angry because I have a need to feel connected

or I have a need to feel like I matter or I have a need to feel seen or I have a need to feel safe then you are speaking from your own experience Now for most of us, when we want to deliver our truths, it often has blame to it. So this is where the key training, if you're really on for this, if you really want to practice deepening truth and we're going to focus mostly on deepening truth where it's difficult with somebody.

Okay? If you're really sincere, the training is to notice when there's a tendency to blame and to make that you turn and come around and say, what am I? feeling. Not what you did wrong, but what am I feeling and what am I needing. And I'll give you an example, one couple, Jeff Margo. Their marriage is falling apart. I worked with them years and years ago. He had limes and was increasingly unable to work and he became more and more withdrawn and depressed and he became irritable at her because the more he was pulling back, the more she was uptight and he could tell by the grim set in her mouth that, you know, she was judging

him. He was letting her down in some deep way. So he felt judged and guilty. So he was chronically angry at her and she, because he had a cut back on work, was working overtime and she was really resentful to him because you're not appreciating me enough, you know, and you're pulling back. It's like, okay, you can't work but you have to pull back emotionally so much. So as you can tell they were both in blame. So we did just the process we're talking about right now, the U-turn. But they both did it and they did it bearing witness to each other and here's how it went.

That Jeff, instead of saying, you're uptight, you're making me feel guilty, did the U-turn and he said, wow, under this anger I feel ashamed. I feel a deep sense of shame and it's a deep sense of shame and it's because I have a need to feel worthy, to feel empowered, to feel relevant. And when he could say it that way, she set it back to him. That's mirroring. It's very useful, or reflecting back, it's very useful when two people are talking. She could get it. Oh, so that's what's going on. Instead of him blaming her, oh, I'm feeling ashamed.

I'm feeling a sense of disempowered. I need to feel worthy. then she could speak and instead of her saying, well, you're not appreciating me, she was able to make that you turn and underneath that, there was a sense of feeling scared and heard and helpless and this need to feel like she was contributing, that she was connecting, that she was included with him, and feeling this hopelessness, this need to feel hope. He could reflect that back.

It was the beginning of them unwinding the suffering that had really built up and created a distance. It was the beginning of connection. So I share this example because it is a single most common block to intimacy, to lock into blaming the other and thinking we're telling our truth, well, you're not doing such and such, that's my truth, when there's a deeper truth if we make, the U-turn. So that's our next little mini reflection. Okay? Again, come closing your eyes.

So in this pause you might let come to mind a relationship where there is some blame and where you can sense the distance that gets created with the blaming. And take a moment to enter into the situation and kind of remind yourself of what's going on when you in some way are blaming the person for making you feel bad, for not holding up their end, for doing something wrong. And then experiment now with this U-turn of coming back to yourself and sensing, well, if I couldn't be blaming them, what would I have to really be feeling that's difficult? What's underneath the blame?

Is it hurt? Is it fear? Is it shame? Is it helplessness? I'm driving that fear. What's the unmet need? Is it to feel safe? To feel connected?

To feel cared about or seen? You might sense the difference between your self-experience when you're in blaming mode and your self-experience when you're tapping into this deeper level of truth of the fears and unmet needs, the vulnerability that's inside you. And we're going to continue on because there's a question that comes up so we start to contact this vulnerability. Then the question comes, well, when is it helpful to express that? You know, if I'm feeling a sense of feelings that are difficult and needs, when is it useful

to bring it up to a person? And if you're with a person and their politics make you really angry, okay? Because you have an unmet need for safety or for connection or whatever. Is it helpful to say it? If you're with your boss and your boss brings up fear and you have an unmet need for approval or feeling safety, certainty about your job, is it helpful to say it? When is it helpful to say what's going on inside you?

And one story of families having guest to dinner and at the table the mother turns to her six-year-old daughter and says, Dear, would you like to say the blessing? Well, I wouldn't know what to say, says the little girl. Just say what you hear mommy say, sweetie. Daughter takes deep breath, bows her head. Dear Lord, why the hell did I invite all these people to dinner? So when is honesty helpful is the big question here? So the second major guideline that I feel makes a difference in our really live a spiritual life.

The first one is make that U-turn, have the courage to make the U-turn. The second one is check your intention before speaking. Because sometimes the intention is you might be in touch with something very real, some real feelings and unmet needs, but you're saying them to get the other person to change. Are you saying them and you're doing it perfect style NVC, nonviolent communication, but still you're doing it to make them feel bad? Check your intention. Because if you really get to that sincere intent,

where what you're doing is you're saying it because you want to deepen the sense of understanding, truly. You want to deepen the sense of connection. Or you want to express something that really will allow each of you to be, making decisions that will serve your life, serve healing. If you're in that pure place of intention, then what you offer out will not be felt as threatening. Now, some people are geared to feel everything as threatening, so there's no unilaterals here.

It has a better shot at being received well, okay? Check your intention. The other piece, and this is to do with, again, when do we speak? Because it's a real tricky thing in terms of training to bring more truth into our relationships is to attune to the outcome that could happen from speaking. This is called comprehensive mindfulness where we sense the big picture, we sense the patterns of our life and we begin to sense, well, is speaking the truth in this particular situation or at this particular time of day or when this person's in this particular mood, is it going to accomplish

what I want to accomplish? Okay, so making the U-turn, coming from what's here, sensing our very pure intention, and then that kind of discriminating wisdom that senses, well, what's going to be the outcome? And there are many variables. There are many variables on outcome. And one of the key variables is the degree of safety that you feel and the other person feels in your communicating. And one of the questions I get a lot, I'm right now in the midst of a course unconscious relationship,

one of the biggest questions I get is, well, how do I keep on being more real when my partner or my friend doesn't have the same intention as I do. Or how do we be real if our partner or friend or daughter or our parent doesn't have the same self-awareness or self-honesty that we do? Because things are uneven. And so I'd like to just take a moment to acknowledge is that's really the norm. The norm is that we're uneven in our capacities. if it's really greatly uneven

and you feel like it's dangerous or threatening to begin to speak more truths then clearly that's your signal. It's not going to serve the outcome that you want. But I'd like to name a few elements that help to bring more, even when it's uneven, to bring more potential to the exchange of truths. And one is, if that's your situation,

If there's somebody you want to have more realness with, practice where it feels safer first. That could be with a therapist or it could be with a friend where there's a real sense of acceptance because by the way acceptance is the key thing that makes it feel safer. You know, when we really feel just as we are that we're okay, we can deepen the truths. So start where it feels safer. It may be that there's a group that you belong to where it's safer. When there's vulnerability between the two of you and you know that what you're going to say is going to create a bit more vulnerability, create a container first and by that I mean

make some agreements about sharing truths. So it's safe for both of you as much as possible. You know, when I got married, Jonathan, my husband and I, at our, one of our parts of our vows, exchanging vows was a Rilka quote and I want to share that with you. He says, I want to unfold, let no place in me hold itself closed. For where I am closed, I am false. I want to stay clear in your sight. I'm going to read it again because it helps me.

I hope it helps you. I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed. For where I am closed, I am false. I want to stay clear in your sight. We can feel that intuitively that when we're closed, when we're presenting, when we're withholding, we're not living in our truth. We're false.

and when we express the truth, when there's that clearness, then we can be intimate. So one of the things that we've done in our relationship, and I think we all need to have some form of this, is we create a container for telling truths that are hard. That doesn't mean we can't speak casually during the day without going to our little container, but we have a ritual that we do where we twice a little. week we have check-ins. The way our check-in goes is that we meditate for 20 minutes to 45 minutes and then we, that really helps us get present and then we have a few inquiries together and the first one is, so what are you finding right now that you're feeling really grateful

for in your life? That kind of softens and opens the heart. We'll just name whatever's there, you know, whatever's going on in the moment. Then the next question is, what challenges are going on for you right now? And that helps to create, not to do with each other, but that just helps you create a kind of tenderness for each other. Then the third question, and this is where it gets more vulnerable, is, and is there anything between us right now that's getting in the way of really feeling open-hearted and loving?

And that's where we take turns, much as I, you know, we've done the U-turn, we make sure we we do our U-turn in advance so that we can express this is this feeling and this unmet need and we reflect back when the other person needs reflecting back. And each of those steps is critical. I mean I remember and I've shared this in a talk not too long ago where I had been, when I first met Jonathan I was quite robust in my health and very physically active and so on and within two years I had my health had collapsed and all the things we had fun doing as a couple that kind of brought us together, you know, whether it was the boogie boarding in the ocean

and swimming and hiking, I couldn't do most of it. And I remember getting really gripped with this feeling of wow, he might not want me anymore. I might not be an appealing mate and that was a really vulnerable place to be in. while I was feeling really kind of irritable and oversensitive with him, like almost anything he would do would translate in my mind as in some way he's going to be judging me and not liking me as much. But I did the U-turn and I realized, okay, I had a feeling of shame, embarrassment, fear because I had an unmet need deep down to feel like I could trust loving, that I felt love,

I felt seen. And when I could bring it to him that way, you know, rather than saying, you, when you act this way, it gets me even more insecure, when I could really be responsible. For him it was very, very touching. And he could express to me how powerless he had been feeling watching me go downhill. So I share this with you because it's really important to have some agreements on how to communicate truths, to have some safety, some container for it. And the last thing to mention on this particular, you know, how to create the environment is that we start to find out what helps us feel more safe and what helps the other person feel more safe. And that is key. And what are the ways that we can sit, talk, look, respond,

that really help to create a reassuring kind of environment for each other? heard a story going around about a four-year-old child who's next-door neighbor was this elderly gentleman and he had been recently widowed and so one day the little boy noticed the man was outside on his porch and he was crying so he went into the yard, his yard sat in his lap, just sat there and his mother looked over and saw her son

and saw the old man sitting together and when the child came home and the mother asked what he had said to his neighbor. And this was his response. He said, I didn't say anything, Mama. I just helped him to cry. So it's that quality of heart space that we open to, that we hold for each other that helps to create the truths, create a space for the truths, the difficult truths to be shared.

So again, I'd like to invite you to reflect. I'm going to put these pieces together now and give you a chance to explore deepening truths with someone you value in a meditation. It's a short meditation but I invite you to practice on your own and then practice in real life. Again, someone you value, someone you'd like to nourish your relationship with by playing your edge more, by taking off the mask, by being a bit of you. more real and to scan inside and sense where there might be some unspoken truth, something that you in some way feel you've covered up that you're not sharing, that might be creating

a separation that maybe you're not even aware of some of the time, something that if you spoke might potentially bring more understanding and connection but it's scary perhaps. the moment as you do this to, and this is the self-honesty, the U-turn to really feel inside you, what is the vulnerability, what are the feelings that may be difficult to name out loud that are there that have been as yet not so well expressed? Is it a feeling of your own self-aversion, feeling of insecurity? Is it the, is it a feeling of, is it a anger and judgment that you've been carrying. Underneath that, a sense of hurt. What's there? Is there an unmet need for more loving, for feeling respect, seeping seen? Whatever you're

noticing, first bring compassion and tenderness to it. Making the U-turn means contacting what's inside us with a real full and gentle kindness. You might sense that your own high self or your future self, the most awake part of your heart really holding that vulnerability with tenderness that will help make it safer to then share it. Sometimes it's taking the moment to put your hand on your heart and feel like you're directly offering kindness to that vulnerable place. and really bring that relationship with your own inner life alive.

It helps you stand behind yourself then when you share with others. You're with yourself. And as you then sense being with the other person, sense your deepest intention in sharing this truth. What's your intention? And you might sense the situation, the setting where you'll have the best potential outcome. Imagine that you can bring yourself to that setting and still with that self-compassion, holding your own being with kindness.

And imagine sharing from that place of being aligned in integrity with yourself, from that deep intention towards understanding, connection, sharing your truth. These are the words of poet Mark Nipo. He says, we waste so much energy. trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed, and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time. When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip on something,

some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness, which if not put down, diminishes our chances for joy. It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something and then forgetting we chose to put them on. We complain that nothing feels quite real. And this way our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world, but to un-glove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold

and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being soft and unrepeatable. Opening your eyes when you're ready. In these three talks we've really been exploring what sometimes described is opening the heart to the light of truth. Exploring within ourselves, deepening within ourselves and with each other. And we've been talking about it on an individual level and yet each of us as we play that edge or creating the conditions

hurt also to happen societally because as a culture if we want to heal the divisions we need to be able to get to know and speak with each other speak with those that feel different speak with those where there's the least understanding and I wanted to end with a very brief story and then we'll close on this but just to say there are as we evolve as humans, you can see on a societal level that these containers are beginning to develop the circles of reconciliation, peace in reconciliation, restorative circles,

where people that would normally be adversarial are listening to each other and speaking truths to each other. It is the hope. One of friends some years ago arranged in San Quentin for the Guyoto Tantra Choir. These are Tibetan monks that are famous to their multivocal chanting to perform there. And then the San Quentin Gospel Choir was going to respond and sing in response. But as the day approached, the organizers were really concerned of the cultural gap there. You know, because the members of the San Quentin and gospel choir were African-Americans, large men worked out with weights and then in contrast they had these so-called heathen monks

that were small Asian men wearing kind of maroon skirts so there was this cultural gap the question was how to bridge it and the key sponsor found an inspired solution and here's how I want to read you how we introduced them to each other he said almost all these Tibetan men who joined us today have spent years in harsh prisons. The communist Chinese army not only imprisoned them for expressing their belief but tortured them as well. Somehow they were released or able to escape from prison. Then to find freedom they walked across the Himalayas the highest mountains on earth. Some tied rags on their feet because they had no good shoes but even now they're in exile. They're forced to live far from their home apart from their families and communities and they

do not know if they will ever be able to return. What has kept them going through all of their struggles have been their songs and prayers and this is what they'll sing for you today, which is of course the heart of the gospel choir also singing their hearts, their souls. In an instant the gospel choir and the Tibetan monks

looked at one another with eyes that shared the vulnerable depths of human sorrow and they found understanding. Each group sang to the other from the heart and when their music was finished they came together to hug and embrace like long lost brothers. So this is the spirit of which we explore deepening the truths, that it's for the sake of awakening love. So in that spirit we'll just close for a moment.

I invite you to close your eyes, just come into stillness, opening the heart to the light of truth. Just to feel in your heart your own intention towards living from the most true and awake place in your being, imagining and sensing how you can deepen truths with those around you. And sensing our shared prayer, those that are gathered here now, those that are in the field and the cyber field are our shared prayer, that all beings will unfold, awaken, evolve, to touch the truth that's within them,

to express that truth, to receive each other's truths, and to find that place, that heart space, of shared belonging, that's our birthright and our freedom. Namaste and thank you. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list,

please visit tarabraq.com.