Tara Brach - Self Forgiveness with RAIN

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Self Forgiveness with RAIN - Our inability to forgive ourselves blocks healing and freedom. As we explore in this talk, the habit of judging and blaming ourselves traps us in fears, prevents intimacy with our world, and veils over the goodness and mystery of who we are. This talk includes several reflections that can support us as we cultivate a wise and forgiving heart.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome, friends. If you have been attending these gatherings for a number of years, you might remember before the pandemic, we had these live held in this beautiful church, a Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. And I had an altar behind me and on the altar was a Buddha statue. And the story behind this statue is that a friend of mine and I went looking for one in the streets of Provincetown, Massachusetts, and found this in one little shop and this Buddha statue and really loved it. And we were excited to offer it into our community as, a community statue. And so I remember the first class that I held and it was there and afterwards

people came up to look more closely. And I saw them over there standing looking at the statue kind of like this. And a few of them came up and talked with me a bit and said, you know, we think the cast of the statues is done wrong. It's leaning to the left. And sure enough, you know, when I looked more closely, it was truly a leaning Buddha. And it turned out this statue became kind of an icon for the community. We called it the Sangha of the Leaning Buddhas, community of the Leaning Buddhas. And it was really helpful that, you know, we're all imperfect. We all have these imperfect casts.

And it's kind of a reminder. It's not so personal and that we can hold it with kindness, with forgiveness, with forgiveness. forgiveness. And it's true. I mean, we all do have imperfect past or said differently. We all have conditioning that creates the traits we might not like, you know, the traits of aggression or defensiveness and security, addictive behaviors, greed, anxiety, depression, it's all conditioned. And yet, as we know for most, rather than sensing that, that these are conditioned, the imperfections feel very personal and like real flaws. And we carry the message from way back when of original sin and that we judge and judge and condemn ourselves for what feels imperfect. I saw a cartoon, a man at a bookstore, and he's in the Bible section and asking the clerk,

well, what I need is a translation that won't leave me feeling guilty, ashamed, or in need of changing myself. And I love that. So this is a lead in to today's talk and reflections on self-forgiveness, really. the definition is to really let go of the blame, the self-hatred that armors our heart, that divides us from ourselves. And what we'll be exploring includes letting go of the blame and hatred, the lack of forgiveness for something big in the past.

But it also is letting go in a daily way of all the small things we hold against ourselves. ways we feel like we didn't live up to our idea of who we should be. I'd say the basic teaching is that our inability to accept and forgive these casts for past and present behaviors we think are bad or unhealthy. So that inability to forgive ourselves directly blocks our capacity to heal. it blocks our capacity for joy, our capacity to be truly intimate with each other. And in the deepest way, it blocks really the experience of true freedom. I so often go back to that line by the American psychologist Carl Rogers, who said it wasn't

until I accepted myself just as I was, that I was free to do. change, free to change. So it's a precondition, this accepting and this forgiving. And for this particular talk, this gathering, really my prayer is that the takeaway is that self-forgiveness is worth centering, that it's worth dedicating to. Because I've seen over the decades in myself and countless people how self-forgiveness, which is really a form of compassion, is an essential medicine that heals us, that frees us. I thought I'd share a poem from a dear friend, the poet Dana Faults and that is called forgiveness, points to this freedom.

She writes this. She says, take all your sins and shortcomings, every last mountain. and mole hell of your past, and give them over the waves. That's too easy, you say, but I tell you, there is light hidden beneath your fear and a free spirit waiting to soar with the seagulls the moment you relinquish, your tight grip on guilt or innocence. Receive the blessings of the salty spray, the benediction of the cormorant. Forgiveness looks like the delight in your eyes as you wave goodbye to the shoreline. So, friends, our inquiry is given our leaning cast, these imperfect casts, how do we release

the bind of self-blame and really open to that freedom? And we'll start by reflecting on the forces that shape what might feel unforgivable. And we can imagine that from the great mystery and through the coming together of two life forms, you incarnated as a new form in the womb, a sentient, sensitive being. And then consider, okay, so what is it that determines as you move through life your health and your moods and your behaviors over the years? you know, what determines the challenging parts, the alcoholism or the high blood pressure, the difficulty with commitment, or maybe with monogamy, the angry outburst, the addiction to sugar,

or the unwanted weight, the chronic worrying, defensiveness? What determines all that? And so when we look at the forces that shape the cast, what we see is, of course, DNA patterning, we see that. We see for many, and this is increasingly common to start recognizing generational trauma. We see the capacity of caretakers to be attuned to create safety, to convey understanding, love, and we know they're limited by their fears, their insecurities. We see that a key element is trauma, early trauma, traumas through life. And then if we look at the wider society, which has enormous impact on how we think and how we feel, you know, how much violence, addiction, greed, mistrust in the culture. And what about the trauma of racial oppression,

and injustice and all the other forms of oppression and injustice for non-dominant people. And then we look at the global unfoldings, the enormous impact on our hearts and our nervous systems, the pandemic of the climate crisis, of war. So we know this. There are lots of forces at work that create our caste, that create the the way we lean. So here's the inquiry then. If you bring to mind something about yourself that feels bad or unforgivable, if you bring something to mind, it might be a past hurtful action that's really hard to forget. You bring something to mind and ask yourself,

was it your fault? What did it come from some basic bad? really. Could you at that moment have controlled, have determined something different happening? You know, starting at what point could you have been different? We'll do a few short reflections and a longer one. Many of you know the little metaphoric story I tell about walking in the woods and seeing a dog, the base of a tree and you go to pet it and it lurches at you in a furious, sway, fangs bared, you know, and then, you know, you get angry at it, but then you see that its leg is in a trap, its paws in a trap. When we're causing suffering, we're usually suffering. And intellectually, you might look at something you've done and sense, okay, my leg was in a trap,

that you didn't choose it or have control in those moments. Yet emotionally, most of us still believe were to blame and feel self-aversion. You know, we think, well, even though there was a trap, let's say generational trauma, or even though my parents were divorced and they neglected me, or even though there's pervasive racism that affects me daily, I should have been different. Or maybe it's current. I should be different. By this time in my life, I should have worked it out. I should be more perfect. And again, check it out, check inside. And do you have an ongoing sense, I should be different, I should be better? And I ask this because many of us do. Sometimes it's conscious and sometimes this I should

be different is more unconscious. And of course it gets seated and reinforced by messages from caregivers, you know, parents saying be different, peers, you know, the larger society from social media. We think of the impact Instagrams having, telling us and often young adults and most often young women, you should be different. Huge, deep, painful message. So if you've been exploring and on a path of self-forgiveness, you've probably discovered the kind of resistance that we meet when we try to forgive ourselves, the inner objections to letting go of blame. And often they come from a misunderstanding that in some way forgiving means that we're not going to attend to what needs attention. We're not going to really pay attention to the ways we're hurting another person or

hurting ourselves, or even that we're condoning, you know. Some of you might remember Jack Handy and Saturday Night Live. He said, the first thing was, learn to forgive myself. Then I told myself, go ahead and do whatever you want. It's okay by me. So it's that. That's the misunderstanding that there's some indifference or dissociation or indulgence and it's really masquerading as forgiveness, but that's what we're imagining. True forgiveness is actually a process that unfolds through a process of deep attending, a kind of courageous being with the wounds and being with the sense of vulnerability underneath what drives behaviors. I'm getting ahead of myself, but true forgiveness is a deep process with a lot

of integrity and what I've seen over and over is that when self-blame and self-hate is released, we gain huge sensitivity to others. In fact, we naturally evolve from the old unhealthy behaviors. But still, the fear is, if I stop judging, I won't change. I mean, I remember being on a radio interview and the theme was mindful leadership. And I was speaking about how the incessant evaluation of I'm falling short, how I'm falling short, how much it constricts our creativity and our life force, I was expressing this. And then the question came in, you know, well, but if I put aside the shoulds and the anxiety about performing and the need to change, I'm afraid I won't improve that I'll actually regress.

I'll get laissez-faire about what I'm doing. And it's an important point to reflect on. If you're trying to forgive yourself and finding it's hard, it's because there are compelling reasons. Most of us hold tight to our anxious shudding and blame. and aversion towards whether it's our addictive habits or the ways we fall short as a parent or partner, being selfish, lose our temper. It's very hard to let go because not forgiving, judging gives us a sense of control.

We're sensing like this is the only hope for change. Here's how I can make a difference. I mean, ask yourself again, just these kind of inquiries, would you continue to grow, to serve, to contribute without shoulds, without anxiety? Do you trust that? And maybe as you reflect, your wise self says yes. But for most, the emotional part of us, the fear-based emotions, say no. And the emotional brain controls most of our thinking and our behavior.

I always think of this story when I'm talking about this, the kind of investment in not forgiving of a very capable executive in a firm, and he only had one problem, really, and that was at the monthly meeting with shareholders and the president, he would urinate and he'd pee in his pants, and he was hugely embarrassed about it. And the kindly president suggested therapy and that the firm would pay for it and this man agreed and he was back next month. Turned out he had been to a mindfulness therapy and it happened again. And then the president asked, well, didn't you go and have some treatments? And the response was, I sure did. And now I'm not embarrassed anymore. So we're addicted to blaming and shaming ourselves to try to control ourselves, to make ourselves

change. And then there's a deeper question. And that is, well, how come I want to change so much? How come it matters so much to be different, to be better? It's a really deep drive. How come that matters so much? You might just ask yourself that, if you were different, if you were better, what would that do for you? What would it give you? These are the moments, you know, I wish we were live together, my friends, because I'd love to hear the different flavors of what you sense it would do for you to be different, to be better. What I found is that the common denominator is that if we were different and if we were better, then we'd be more lovable. We'd feel our belonging. We trust our belonging. and the opposite, the bad feelings about ourselves, falling short, risks are belonging.

If we don't change, we might get rejected or exile. And I want to just take a little more time on this link between our experience of belonging and our experience of shame. And in particular, how if we don't feel belonging, it goes hand in hand with shame. that there's this bad, unforgivable self, that our feelings of failure and shame, that pain is the consequence of our badness. It's because of a loss of belonging. We got kicked out of Eden. And what I've seen is the more we've already felt kicked out, rejected, abandoned, abused, the more we get locked into a sense of personal badness that we're unforgivable.

And the two areas where this is most obvious, the first is with childhood trauma. Trauma disconnects. That is what trauma does. It's severed belonging. And when we're traumatized in those moments, we contract into a powerless, endangered, separate self. And when it happens to young children, they assume that that experience of severed belonging happened because of some badness in them. This has been found over and over again. The trauma

equals something's wrong with me. And then that gets compounded growing up because the continual symptoms of PTSD, you know, that come up or confirmation, oh, something's wrong with me. And then the behaviors that come around trauma. Great shame and judgment. So as I mentioned, it's very difficult to release the shame and judgment and blame, the lack of forgiving when there's been early trauma because it gives the survivor some sense of agency. You know, maybe I can judge myself into being different, being acceptable, being lovable. And then letting go of judging, forgiving would mean resigning into badness, losing any hope

of belonging. again, as I say these things, check them out if this relates to your life. Another example of severed belonging and the shame, the bad about self-feeling, is through both generational and ongoing trauma of those in non-dominant groups. I mean, the most stark, I think of people of color in the United States. and I read, I hope many of you have read, passed by Isabel Welkerson. There's a story in it. It happened in 1944, World War II.

Teens in some high schools were asked what to do with Hitler after the war. It was kind of a contest. And a 16-year-old won. She wrote, put him in black skin and let him live the rest of the rest of the rest of the of his life in America. You know, as a white woman, I sometimes imagine living in a world like ours, but different, where white is at the bottom. I imagine this a lot. And where every institution, whether it's education, justice, health, is constantly sending the message to me and other white people, you're inferior, you're not as intelligent, you're immoral in some ways, you're bad.

it gets internalized. You know, the same message gets sent to self. So I'm just giving you two examples, childhood trauma, racial trauma. When there's severed belonging, it comes hand in hand with a sense of personal badness. And you might scan your own life. You know, we all have our own ways of feeling severed belonging, whether it's from family, our peers, our society, in a ways we feel on the outside like we're not a part of. And to whatever the degree, we can get painfully hooked on the sense that it's because something we've done, some way we are, is really not okay, is unforgivable. And if you keep looking, you'll sense that no amount of self-blame and shaming and judging for that actually has made you feel good enough.

As much as we try to shame and blame and judge ourselves, it doesn't really work. But again, don't take my word. Sense for yourself, does withholding forgiveness make you a better person? I remember working with one woman who had... the I'm never doing enough to feel like a good person syndrome. And for years, she worked in Asia with women in extreme poverty and still felt in some way she wasn't giving enough. And the breakthrough for her was when a therapist said, okay, well, share with me what would be enough. What would be enough? And she realized no amount of service or accomplishment could make up for that

sense of a primal, flawed self. And many of us know this, that we might feel temporarily redeemed by a good behavior or accomplishment, but it's so fragile, you know, the next stressful, reactive episode, and we're back in the red again, judging and striving and trying to be better, it just doesn't work. So, in the most basic ways, this pattern of not forgiving ourselves, locking into failure and self-blame, it takes us away from the very presence that can heal. It cuts us off from the creativity, the heart, the clarity, the attunement. One woman shared a story. This is a mom very into organic foods and a healthy lifestyle. And very much that was very much a part of being a good parent.

And one day she hadn't gotten to the grocery store. She was exhausted. And she writes, she says, I look for what we could possibly eat for dinner and thank goodness there was a frozen pizza in the freezer. Okay, guys, we're having frozen pizza for dinner. I tried to keep the guilt out of my voice that it wasn't going to be a homemade, organic, made-with-loved meal. And my son instantly resisted, but I don't want frozen pizza. I remain calm and said, well, that's what we're having tonight. And he resisted getting more and more upset on the verge of a tantrum. I don't want frozen pizza. I try to remain calm and repeat out loud, this is dinner tonight, it's what we have in the house, it'll be okay. Have you ever had frozen pizza? All the while going crazy in my own mind.

I'm such a bad mom. Of course, they don't like frozen pizza. I don't like it either. I'm doing the best I can. but I'm falling short today, and I've created a monster of a child who will only eat healthy, organic, homemade food. He's spoiled and he doesn't understand how much work it is. I've completely lost my sense of myself to these kids. They're taking over. I'm raising entitled brats. I'm a bad mom. Maybe I could make it to the store. No, that's just giving it and she went around and around. That's what we're having tonight, sweetie. I'm tired. It's what we have. It'll be okay. I say relatively calmly. Take a deep breath and look at my son's tears streaked face and he looks at me and says, actually quite calmly for a three-year-old, okay, mama, but could we at least heat it up? It takes

us from presence. We don't attune to what's happening around us when we're locked into our story of failure. It happens when we're off judging past events, current events, and anticipating future events. We lose touch. A prayer that I've always liked is, dear God. So far today I've done all right. I haven't gossiped, been greedy, been grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent and I'm very thankful for that. But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed. And from then on, I'm probably going to need a lot of help. Okay, so thus far, I've been speaking about a wide range of turning on ourselves, everything from judgments, for making a mistake, for falling short of our own high standards to a deep

sense of flawedness that comes from trauma, from real severed belonging. And at whatever degree, if you're caught in a place of feeling bad, then some way you're wrong and bad, and you investigate, you'll feel under a vulnerability, a young place that really wants to feel forgiven, that really wants some flavor of being reminded of being lovable, basically good. And this goes for even those who are not plagued by deep self-doubt and self-aversion. We long to feel forgiven for the different ways are, egos are imperfect. We don't like our selfishness, you know, our ways of being insensitive, are hurtful. There's a deep longing to feel that all is forgiven. We long to belong, really.

And of course, it's most essential when we feel deeply cut off. Share an essay that always love that touches me. This is by Scott McClanahan, and it's from a book. book called Crapalachia, A Biography of Place. One time a man left home, he had argued with his mother and father the day before he left. They spoke horrible words to one another and he left without saying goodbye. He was gone many years and even spent time in jail. Years later, after he got out of jail, he wondered if his parents were alive and if they were ashamed of what had been said and where he had wound up. He wrote to them. He told them he'd be coming home on a specific day the following week. If they wanted to see him and they were not ashamed, they should put a blanket on the clothesline he would know

to come inside. If the blanket was missing, then he would know he was not welcome. He would know to turn back. He told them he hoped they were in good health. The man arrived by rail next week, the next week. He was nervous when he stepped off the train. There was no one there to meet him. He walked up the worn path towards the home place and thought about the past. He thought about his time in jail. He thought about how ashamed his parents must have been. He thought about the horrible words they spoke. He was just about to turn around and go back from where he came when he saw a blanket in a tree. He kept walking and he saw another blanket. He kept walking and saw another blanket. Then he turned towards home and the house was covered in blankets. The yard was covered in

blankets. The clothes line was covered in blankets. The path to the door was covered in blankets. And his parents were standing there and they were welcoming him inside. Blankets of forgiveness. It always gets to me. That story is a kind of arctippal experience of feeling the severed belonging and just that deep longing to be reconnected, to be welcomed back into the fold. There is a vast forgiving heart space that's here within each of us. It's a powerful part of our path to wake that up, to forgive, to embrace the rejected parts. I love the way Jeff Foster puts it. He says, the most potent medicine is this ancient commitment to never, abandon yourself, to discover wholeness in the whole mess, to be a loving mother to your insides,

to hold the broken bits in open awareness, to illuminate the sore places with the light of love. Okay, so we're going to be doing a couple of practices still. I'd like to start and warm up with what I consider a really light practice that's actually quite powerful. You can do it every day, and it helps to reveal and release what we accumulate through the day, the ongoing maybe not so conscious ways that we are blaming ourselves. So I kind of recommend it at the end of the day. That's what I do. And you might just practice for a moment if it helps you to adjust how you're sitting

to either close the eyes or let the gaze be soft to feel your intention, to love yourself into healing. And then to review this day so far, if you're at the very beginning of a day, perhaps the day before, and just sense kind of the external events and perhaps the internal spaces you've been in. And as you do, just sense, is there anything here between me and really feeling at home and myself, feeling aligned, feeling a basic sense of goodness? So you're scan and just notice if there's anywhere that there's a kind of undercurrent of judgment or maybe it's very explicit. And if you find a place like that where you don't like the way you were, that aversion's still here in your body, then as you see it, and if it helps you put your hand

on your heart, I always find that's helpful, just notice it and just whisper the words Forgiven, Forgiven, or whatever resonates, it might be letting go, letting go. Because forgiveness is like opening that clenched fist of anger or hate. Just letting be. It's okay. So reviewing, sensing where your leaning caste might have acted in a way that you didn't like. and then forgiven, forgiven. You can whisper out loud or mental whisper.

Sensing it's imperfect and it's okay. And if you encounter something that's really difficult to feel forgiveness towards, just sense your wish to let go. It's amazing how the intention to forgive softens the heart. Okay, so what about when it really is not easy to forgive? when blame has a real foothold and it's a reaction to a very deep sense of badness, fear, vulnerability. There's that quote, everyone thinks forgiveness is a good idea until we really have something to forgive. So what if we really have something we feel we have to forgive

ourselves for? How do we free ourselves up? And the last practice we'll do is exploring awakening forgiveness through rain, how we can go deeper and the letting go process. And I'll first give you a story, share a story that shows how it happens and then we'll practice together. And this is a woman I worked with some years back who had had a very very very very difficult marriage and while her daughter was growing up she had had several affairs she had gotten very immersed in her work which had to do with TV news and also struggle with prescription drugs so a lot of struggles internally divorced when her daughter was 15 and her daughter really bonded with her father

insisted on living with him and considered her mother a narcissist and there's a lot of hostility so I began working with this woman when her daughter was 30, and her daughter was having her own struggles with depression, with anxiety, with bulimia, and she was three months pregnant. The woman in that interval had practiced meditation, done some therapy, was much more self-aware. She was in a 12-step program. She really wanted that kind of inner healing that would let her connect more and be there for

her daughter, her grandchildren. And yet when she'd visit, and they could visit together now, it was still really painful. She felt a lot of self-consciousness and really under that just guilty, bad person, you know. And she told me that I can't forgive myself for my self-absorption and having been such a bad mother and having hurt her. And I asked her, you know, well, what What would be wrong with forgiving? And she said, you know, I'd be getting away with something bad. I don't deserve it. And then I asked her a follow-up question.

And these are questions you can ask yourself. I said, so what's the effect of not letting yourself get away with it? I mean, does judging and condemning make you less self-absorbed? Are you more loving and open-hearted? As you can imagine, she shook her head, no. So we went deeper and began to practice Rain with this. And she got in touch with a memory of being a bad mother that was very acute, difficult to be with.

And the recognize of Rain, and for those of you that are unfamiliar with Rain, the acronym is for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. And the Recognize of Rain, where we started, was she recognized her. her self-judging voice in her mind, the harshness of it, and the self-aversion that she felt in her body. And the allow is just to let it be there. It's like saying, okay, this is part of the mix. These are waves in the ocean. So she recognized and allowed. And then for the eye of rain, investigate, I asked her what she was believing about herself, about daughter and she's basically believing I am not a loving or good person. I am self-absorbed.

And along with that came in the body of very deep shame, a sense of badness that was like this dark, empty hole in her belly. And I asked her, how long have you been living with this, with this sense of badness and shame? And she told me about a little bit of the back story of being young, her mother was an alcoholic and her father left when she was young. And she locked into the sense of I'm a nuisance, I'm a burden, you know, I'm hard for my mom. She was a wild teen, she was looking for attention and approval and love and in the wrong places. And she said, I never felt like a deserved attention or love. I always thought there was something wrong with me. And then I asked her, and I do this all.

often with investigating and rain. I said, when you're feeling that, that basic something's wrong experience, let your face express that and let your posture express that. I had her do that. And she got into that posture and that expression of self-hatred and failure and feeling underneath that, you know, really unlovable. And that's when she began weeping just sensing how she had really shut down any possibility of closeness with that self-hatred. And I asked her, what does that grieving part need? What is it most need? And she said it needs to feel love, to feel forgiven.

It needs some hope of closeness. And that's when we began the nurturing, the N of Rain. I said, what would be the source? of that forgiveness, that love that would most you'd most be able to receive. And for her it was a sense of the divine, a kind of universal loving. And I suggested she asked for that. Ask for love, say the words, please forgive me, please love me. And that's what she did.

She just asked for that forgiveness in love. And then I invite her to feel that. open to receiving and just kind of let in the love of the divine, the forgiveness of the divine, which was really the most powerful moment for her to feel like there was forgiveness in this universe, that she could receive it. And then I invited her, I often do this, she had her hand on her heart to sense that it was moving through her hand into her own heart, that it was really her spiritual heart forgiving her human heart.

her spiritual heart, forgiving her human heart. And that's what she kept practicing with. And then she told me that she felt that she was holding that young girl with real forgiveness and tenderness. And then I invite her just to feel the presence that was here. And this is what I call after the rain. This is where we experience the fruit of rain. And asked her to feel that presence.

And then I put forward this question. I said, who would you be if you didn't believe something was wrong anymore? This was a question I'm going to ask you to ask yourself, who would you be if you didn't believe there was something wrong anymore? And her response was, you know, she said, O-Tar, my heart would just be so open, so free. So this was her practice. and it was many rounds. She locked in many, many rounds into feeling the shame and badness of the way she had mothered. But she gained more and more fluidity and being able to feel that

and sense the beliefs and hold herself and invite in, let her spiritual heart forgive her human heart. And then over the week she began to extend her practice to her daughter. just extending her care to her daughter. So during one visit after doing rain for several months, we talked and she told me about how she had told her daughter some of her process, what was going on, and how much she wanted to show up and be there for her daughter and also for the babes, because as it turned out, her daughter had twins. And there was a wariness but more openness. But it lightened a lot more after the birth of the twins, especially because her daughter needed her help so much and

she was so much wanting to be there. Just letting in forgiveness and love really allowed her to express her love more freely. And she told me about one afternoon they were both holding a sleeping twin. They looked at each other and there was this, they smiled and then there tears and it was an utterly undefended moment and she said I knew we were going to be okay. There are so many gifts of self-forgiveness. Just to highlight the two that we've been really focusing on and the first is, as happened for this woman, is not forgiving ourselves, divides us. It prevents us from relaxing into the vastness of our loving, who we are. and in self-forgiveness it frees us to love without holding back.

It lets our heart open into its naturalness. So that's really the first gift. And the second is when we don't forgive, it locks us into a sense of who we are that's very limited, that we're this separate self that's really defined by deficiency. know, we are defined by the caste of the leaning Buddha and we forget the Buddha nature, the spirit. And so that question, who would you be if you didn't believe something was wrong? Only when we forgive ourselves do we open beyond that limiting identity to taste the mystery

of who we are. That timeless, formless, loving awareness that's beyond it. It's beyond any leaning cast. My friend that I mentioned is an amazing poet, Dana Faults, has a verse that I'm going to share with you. It's slightly adapted. She writes, forgive yourself. Forgive yourself.

Now is the only time you have to be whole. Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true nature. is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Please, oh please, don't continue to believe in your stories of failure. This is the day of your awakening." So this is from a book she wrote called Go In and In, poems from the Heart of Yoga, if you want to get the full poem, awakening now. Self-forgiveness is the past. pathway to realizing the mystery of who we really are and we can't force it. It's an organic process, but you can let this be your deep aspiration. You can explore surrendering the

imperfect castings over and over into the waves, into a larger truth. So let's practice, friends. Let's explore a bit. This practice is the reign of self-forgiveness. And as always, I invite you to take a moment, move around a little bit, fuel your body, so that as you become still you feel like you're in a position that allows you to be relaxed and awake. You might bring to mind something from the past that you still can't forgive, some behavior, some way that you hurt yourself or another person. And as you bring this to mind as kind of a witness, just notice the worst thing about it, what

you've been holding as the worst part of it. Let your attention get close in so you can see or feel the harm that came from a past behavior, what you're holding against yourself, and begin reign with the recognizing of what the strongest feelings are that come up. It could be aversion, judgment, fear, hate, blame towards yourself. You might mentally whisper what you're aware of, what you're noticing. And then the A is to let it be there, to have that kind of courage just to say, okay, this is here, this is part of the experience right now.

Letting B. That'll allow you to begin to investigate and just to ask you. Ask yourself, okay, so what am I believing about myself? What's the painful belief? And as you sense into what you're believing, see if you can feel how it's experienced in your body when you're believing that. You might notice where you're feeling it through chest, belly, and even let your posture take the shape of how you feel when you're believing this.

and let your face express it and feel your face from the inside. Sensing the worst part of the harm or hurt that's been caused, how you feel about yourself, feeling it in your body, see if you're going to go again right where you feel most vulnerable where you feel that badness, that something's wrong feeling. And if it helps to keep yourself company by having your hand on your heart as you investigate, because that brings in some kindness and can help stay connected with the vulnerability. You might sense how your leg was in a trap. What was driving the behavior that you're judging?

Was it fear, hurt, confusion, some deep unmet need? What forces were shaping the cast? Just include that in a wise awareness. Sensing could that part of you, that self back then, have been different in the moment? So you really sense the leg in the trap. And sense that vulnerable place that has been feeling bad and how much pain there is in feeling bad. Just a suffering of feeling bad.

sense the deep longing under that suffering. What does that place need most to heal, to grow, to be free? What is the version of forgiveness or love that part most needs? What's the blanket that would be warming and healing and really comforting that place? Just to sense that. The nurturing is to actually let that place be held in forgiveness, in love. And if there's a source that's beyond your sense of yourself that it comes from a merciful God or a benevolent, loving spirit of some sort, or if there's a person in your life or a person you know of that embodies that, to feel the spirit of forgiveness coming through that person into you. Or perhaps it's your own awake heart, your spiritual heart.

And if you feel your hand and feel the energy of forgiveness, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, coming through your hand right into the vulnerable place. You might whisper, forgiven, forgiven. You might sense this really is. your spiritual heart, forgiving and holding your human heart. Forgive yourself. Now is the only time you have to be whole. Now is a sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true nature. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Please, oh please,

don't continue to believe in your stories of failure. This is the day. of your awakening, taking some moments to let it in, that kindness, that love, that forgiveness, and then to sense the presence that's here, just sense what's shifted, and let yourself relax and rest in that presence, perhaps noticing the difference between being caught in a unforgivable self and the awareness, the tenderness that's here, trusting that this is more the truth of who you are than any story of what's wrong. And you might ask yourself who you are when forgiveness is the field you're in. I mean, what would your life be like if there was no belief that something's wrong? Close by sensing your heart's aspiration for healing, for living

from the freedom of a forgiving heart. Thank you, friends. for your attention, your presence, your care. Deep prayer that we all might free ourselves from the binds of self-judgment, self-hatred, and live from love. Blessings. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.