Tara Brach - Sheltering In Love - Part 6: Loneliness as a Portal to Sacred Presence - Part 2

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

Sheltering In Love - Part 6: Loneliness as a Portal to Sacred Presence - Part 2 of 2 (2020-04-29) - The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness predating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. This is the sixth of a series and I have no idea how long it'll go on called Sheltering in Love. And last week and this week the focus is on really facing the pain of separation and loneliness. Vivek Murthy was our recent Surgeon General in the United States up until 2017, also a physician. And he did a road trip across the United States talking to people, all different types of people, and now he's written a book called Together.

And I mentioned him because he's a key figure in bringing into our societal awareness the huge, huge, suffering, really how loneliness is a major public health concern. And he talks about how, for so many, that he encountered, whether it was drug addiction or poverty or a range of physical diseases, that the root suffering was a sense of isolation, of being stuck in this struggle and all by oneself. He shared a number of stories, but one that struck me. He met with a man several years after this guy had won the lottery. And this man told Murphy that the day he won the lottery was the worst day of his life. And when Murphy said, well, explain, please, he described how he had been working in a bakery and he had, you know, he was needed there

and appreciated for what he did. And he had friends in his neighborhood. And after winning, he stopped working, he moved into a gated community, he got really, really lonely, he developed diabetes, he felt pretty continuously angry at what he perceived as a snobbery of other people that live there. Well, for many of you listening, this isn't hard to understand or imagine. And what strikes so much is that loneliness is a dis-ease that hits all classes, people in all sorts of life circumstances. There's a really well-known teaching story that I love where a student asks a spiritual teacher,

what's the difference between illness and wellness? The teacher writes those words up on a board and he circles the eye of illness and the we of wellness. And we know it that we're not happy when the world is centering around I. Those are not the moments that we're happy. The trajectory of the spiritual path

is shifting from an identity and a self-concern and focus where our fears and our thoughts and all our intentions and motivations are really around furthering and defending a self. It's a shift from that to really recognizing in a cellular way that we're connected. And then the experience of that is a caring that's all-inclusive.

That's one of the definitions I have of radical compassion, that it's that awake sense that we belong, and of course we care for each other. We belong to each other. What's so interesting to me is that many evolutionary psychologists and philosophers also consider this the trajectory for our species, that there's an increasing movement and capacity for collaboration and for compassion with the understanding that we belong to this web of life, what happens in this web affects all of us, sensing we're part of Earth, we're part of what's described as Gaia,

this whole system that's synchronized and self-organizing. We're on the same boat. So we collaborate, because the truth is we belong. Now, of course, as I say this, you may be, instead of thinking of the long arc, you may be more focused on a short stretch of time that we've been having recently, and it certainly doesn't appear collaborative and, you know, embracing and caring of each other, which is why this week and last week really we're looking at the suffering of separation and loneliness that, you know, that many are calling an epidemic.

And we talked last week about how loneliness, it's really forgetting our belonging, quite literally makes us sick. It shortens our life expectancy. And that given we're such a social species, we have a longing to belong and very real pain of loneliness, and it's in our DNA to feel that. Because for most of human history,

it was really dangerous to be separate or outside of the group, not a member, not feeling our membership. So it's easy to see how in current days loneliness is exacerbated by this global crisis, by the pandemic. There's so much anxiety, so much fear around health and economy. We see each other and we're afraid of, of getting this potentially deadly virus from each other so there's distancing and many are living alone. It's a real setup. One person a couple of days ago from our DC meditation community who lives alone told me, she said, I'm afraid I've had the last hug in my life and I wasn't even aware of it at the time. And that really struck me, you know,

just that sense of really what if I never feel held again? There's so much suffering that comes with feeling lonely. It often appears as depression. We might not even be in touch with the loneliness. It appears as depression, which is a pushing down of that rawness because loneliness is so painful. It appears as anxiety because the more separate we feel, the more we feel vulnerable, the more we feel threatened.

It sometimes appears as anger or blame because when we feel lonely, really we feel rejected in some way and threatened by others. That makes us angry. And bottom line, core, we feel shame. We feel shame because to not belong translates to most of us as something's wrong with me. A lot of pain. Statistically, it's shown that the loneliest age group, is 18 to 20, but it's really all ages.

You know, I heard a story that I love. It's about this gentleman who knocks on his son's door and he says, Jamie, he says, Jamie wake up and Jamie answers, I don't want to get up, Papa. Father shouts, get up, you have to go to school. And Jamie says, I don't want to go to school. Why not ask the father? Three reasons, says Jamie. First, it's because it's so dull.

Second, the kids tease me. And third, I hate school. And the father says, well, I'm going to tell you three reasons you have to go to school. And first, because it's your duty. Second, because you're 45 years old. And third, because you're the headmaster. You know, not everyone goes around feeling like I'm lonely, but we all have this existential tendency to feel separate.

This is deep in us. I find that Rumi says it the best on this. He says that everything that comes into being gets lost in being, drunkenly forgetting its way home. And what he means by lost in being is that we lose the sense of our belonging to the whole and we get identified with a separate self. This I and all of our thoughts and activities just circle. around what I want, what I need, what I'm afraid of, this furthering and protecting of ourselves.

Now, what's kind of important to understand is that if in growing up our basic needs for safety and love and understanding are met, then that self-focus is there, but it's a wholesome one and it's not exclusive or so sticky so we can still remember in a very, fundamental way our belonging. But when our personal lives, when in our personal lives there's been stress and trauma and very little healthy bonding, healthy attachment bonding with caretakers, by nature we become more self-fixated, more self-protective, more aggressive and kind of defending. And that's where we get really imprisoned in the eye, that separate, lonely feeling with so much suffering.

As we know, that prison of separation is also shaped by the kind of society we live in. If there's natural ways to belong to each other, healthy families and communities and belonging to the earth, we'll be okay. But if we're in a society that's got a lot of trauma, one friend describes a lot of contemporary society as a PTSD society with a lot of deception. You can't trust things you hear, mistrust of others, dividedness, and the distinctive violence and oppression towards non-dominant parts of the population, a hierarchy that's oppressive. When we're in a society that's not compassionate towards those who are most vulnerable, that creates separation for everyone.

no true belonging to the whole. And for some, of course, it's particularly harsh and particularly cruel. And right now, as I say that, because I'm using the word prison of self, the level of compassion of a society is directly reflected and evidenced by its prisons, its justice system. And the United States rates very, very low. We imprison here more people than any other country in the whole world. And not only that, it's very, very punitive. There's no rehab, such as, you know, I'm reading more and more about Finland. It's just really wonderful system of reintegrating people back into society by knowing that punishment doesn't work. It doesn't reduce crime. Rehab does. In the United States, we target non-dominant populations as disproportionately

African Americans that are imprisoned in our country here. And there's currently a tragedy many of you are hearing about. It's beyond words painful, which is that those that are trapped in prison are in the hotspots and coronavirus hotspots. There's a piece I heard about prisoners at Rikers Island and what I heard one. one say was, help, we're dying and we matter. If we feel like we don't matter to society or to our parents or caretakers or to others around us, that's the isolation of prison. That's the isolation of feeling a separate self if we feel like we don't matter. And even if we stay busy and we cover it over and we try to accomplish a lot or we cover it over

with addictive behavior or we try to control people or hold tight to relationships or avoid people, there's still some place in us deep down that knows that we're cut off and feels like we're not valued. We don't matter. Now as I talk about this and you may be listening and feeling some identification with it and some not, to note that unless we're free, unless we really are living in a sense of oneness and wholeness, we all have some degree of feeling separate and to some degree that's suffering. And it's intrinsic part of the spiritual path to face it and to wake up through it so we can discover our true belonging.

I'd like to invite you to pause here with me and to do maybe a scan. We'll call it a connection or belonging scan. And you might close your eyes and beginning with how connected are we to our inner life. You might ask yourself, do I feel connected to myself? Am I at home in my own being? Am I in touch with feelings that are here? Is there a kind of or listening, a presence with what's here? Am I accepting of the life that's here? Kindly towards what's difficult? So just sense how much belonging there is to the life within you. And then widening the scan, how close am I to others? You might bring to mind some key people in your life. Is there a sense of understanding, of care?

Do I feel like I matter? How much are you aware of where the distance is? How much are you aware of feeling lonely? How much are you yearning for more authentic intimacy or connection? See if it's possible to witness and sense into this without any judgment. Because this is the first step of deepening. belonging. It's just to see how is it right now in my life, with myself, with others. And for some, there may be a real sense of that kind of raw, lonely feeling and others

a yearning for more intimacy and aware of where you would like to be more connected. Whatever degree, let's explore now the pathways toward reconnecting. And if you haven't opened your eyes, please feel free. So this is the pathway from I to we. And maybe I'll begin with a metaphor I find really helpful. And it's of how a spore operates. It's seen in the plant kingdom that when times are harsh and what's needed to bloom can't be found, certain plants become spores. And what's interesting is that these plants kind of dampen down and wall off their life force in order to survive. And it's an effective strategy. In fact, spores have been found in mummies, thousands of years old,

and they've been able to unfold into plants when given the opportunity, in other words, of being nurtured. So plant spores are opportunists. In other words, there's this life force in them waiting, and it's scanning the environment for an opportunity to bloom. And the medicine of moving from eye to weave from that walled off, frozen energy to being part of the larger flow, nurtured, light, warm, nutrition. So in a parallel way, when we don't feel loved, when we don't feel we matter that we're valued by our caretakers or society, we form a spore-like inner life. In other words, we wall the unloved parts away.

It's just survival. We shut down parts and they don't evolve. Like we're identified with younger parts of us that feel not okay. They just endure. It's kind of a frozen life energy. And those walls are fortified by beliefs that we keep spinning. It's the story of unlove, of not mattering, of not being acceptable, of being flawed. So the inquiry is, how do we awaken beyond those stories to feel trust and belonging?

In other words, what's the nurturing that will help to dissolve those walls and free us into the larger sense of what we're a part of? And last week, we explored one really powerful inner pathway, meditative pathway, and just to remind you, and if you haven't listened, you might want to go back to this as part one of the two on loneliness, it's on purpose becoming aware of the pain of separation, where we feel disconnected. And the Poetha Fais said it best, let it cut more deep. In other words, lean in, bring a completely tender presence to the pain. be with it. And what happens is that pain of separation unfolds into a longing to belong.

We can feel right in the very heart of that pain of separation, this longing to connect. It's so deep in us. And when we open to that even more, we discover the source of that longing, which is that field of sacred loving presence. as I've been describing over the weeks, those animal-headed deities, loneliness is a really painful one. And if we let it cut more deep and really bring our presence, we open into the longing and into that sacred space of belonging. It's not easy, and it takes many, many rounds, but it's a very powerful pathway of dissolving the walls around that spore, the frozen life in us. Two other inner pathways that many of you are familiar with, and I'll name them because

we always need reminding, is to practice heart meditations, just offering love inwardly and offering love to others. Even if we're not feeling completely connected with that loving, just a gesture, just a gesture with the intention to be loving actually activates it. It's very, very powerful because the love is already there. It's just kind of stuck. So heart meditations, the loving kindness or meta meditation towards oneself, towards others, is really, really powerful. Also, the gratitude practices. I mentioned a few weeks ago, especially if there's depression and loneliness, to get in the habit every day of reflecting on three things, three things that you're grateful for. And as I've mentioned, that's part of my regular practice

with my husband when we meditate together. The first thing we do is ask each other, what are you grateful for? Very powerful to kind of again soften the walls, those hard walls around our heart. I want to mention another meditation that for loneliness and separation is incredibly powerful, and that is reflecting in nature. That is, bringing our nature into the natural world. This is Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist, writer. Our kinship with Earth must be maintained. Otherwise, we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved over souls

with no way out. our kinship with earth must be maintained. This is about kinship. This is about remembering what we belong to. And you don't have to live in the wilderness. You know, it helps to find more natural areas and to move in them. There's something about moving in nature that helps us to connect. And then, of course, stillness too.

Commune with a tree. You know, take in that new green of the leaves if you happen to. to be in a season of spring. When you're walking, feel the earth. Feel yourself walking on the earth. As Ticknod Han says, the miracle's not to walk on

water, but it's to walk on earth with awareness. Beautiful. Feel the air on your cheek. Smell flowers. Listen to the sounds of the wind or of the rain. Watch birds. Look at the moon.

Look at the sky. the night sky. This helps to dissolve the spore walls, the walls around the heart. It really heals loneliness to feel our belonging to this precious world, our kinship to the earth. It also helps ensure that we'll take better care of this beloved earth. So these are some of the inner pathways. And there's no way we can do outer pathways. of connecting with others if we're also not doing inner pathways. We need to have that sense of belonging to the life within us. And our wounding was in relationships. The severed belonging in our relationships with caretakers and our society. And healing comes in relationships too. So one of the

kind of catch-22s, and I want to put it out front here, is that loneliness has a kind of vicious spiral, that it makes us wall off and withdrawing away from others. Even when we're with others, we're not able to be as spontaneous or real because we don't like ourselves and we're afraid of rejection. And that creates more distance, which is a message to wall off more. So to undo our stories of unlove and remember our belonging, it actually takes courage, a courage to make an effort towards authentic connecting, and a lot of acceptance that it's going to be organic. We need to stretch but not push ourselves in a judgmental way.

So that's the kind of, I wanted to put that out as a container and then look a little bit more close in on this pathway of authentic connecting. because the walls around our heart start dissolving in the moments that we really are seen or we see others, in the moments that we're listened to and we listen to others. In the moments when we're felt and we can feel others, that's what gives us a sense of mattering. Rachel Remen is a physician, author, deep, deep respect for her, and if you get any of her books, she's wonderful. In one of her books, she describes a colleague who's very wise elder, also in medicine,

and at one of the large East Coast Hospital. And one of his patients was a homeless woman, and he would see her once a month, and she'd come to the hospital, and he, with tremendous respect, just hold a space for her and listen and care. But what started happening was when he wasn't there, this woman would come to the hospital to his consulting room. And she seemed to know he wasn't there. What she'd do, she wouldn't go in, but she'd go right to the threshold of the room. And then slowly and deliberately, she would put one of her feet in the room and withdraw it.

and then she'd kind of put it back in and withdraw it. And she'd do that a number of times and after a while she'd be satisfied and she'd go away again. Rachel writes this. She says, the places in which we are seen and heard are holy places. They remind us of our value, that we matter. They give us the strength to go on. So we, in some way, the need is to create more holy places and spaces with each other.

other, that kinship together. It happens sometimes in therapeutic settings, and it can certainly happen with our family, with our peers, with our dear ones, when we get more and more intentional about connecting. So in these times of pandemic, in some ways it's harder. But in some ways, the pandemic is forcing us kind of out of our old habits. So it's actually an opportunity to be creative and adaptive and intentional, maybe to deepen commitment to making relationships more central. And the invitation is commit, commit to spending some time each day with others, to spending time each day with others in a meaning.

way. And if you don't have close others who are, you feel are friends or available, or you don't, and you're single, you don't have family, let's say, then to find groups online and it won't feel as intimate at first, meditation groups, discussion groups, yoga groups, and participate, we have to move towards others in some way. In the interview that I mentioned right at the beginning with the ex-surgeon general or last one, Murthy. He describes very honestly going through some real loneliness in his life and at a not-that-long-ago period of loneliness, very difficult time for him. He and two other friends agreed to have a two-hour Zoom once a month. And the guidelines or commitments in that were that they had to talk about what was really

going on. They had to talk about what was real, even if it was made them feel vulnerable or uncomfortable. In the Buddhist communities, there are what's called spiritual friends groups, the polywordist Kaliana Mita groups. And they've been going on for a really long time. and I see them as being one of the prototypes for what we need more of in the future. This is where six people, eight people meet every other week. And the format is really simple of just sitting together for 10 minutes, a half an hour or whatever, and then sharing, what's going on, what's real. Some back forth, closing with a loving kindness sit.

but it's a place of tremendous intimacy and we can find our ways to create those with one other person, with three other people. It's powerful because there's a container of mindfulness and a mutual commitment to being real. Another approach for some of you, if you love the practice of rain, is to find a rain partner and all the resources for Rain or you can find them on my home page.

Tremendous intimacy with that and the invitation again is to take what's real, what's challenging, and explore it with someone else. It deepens belonging. But whatever modes you discover or try out of deepening authenticity, make real eye contact, listen. and take the chance of speaking truths, difficult truths, because that's what really nourishes. Another thing on this that has become increasingly vivid to me

is that how valuable it is in our intention to deepen connection to include strangers. It's very easy to just think that we're deepening conscious relationship with the people we know, but those we don't know are in another universe. And yet, how many of you have passed by someone on the streets and had that moment of some a smile of human warmth, some acknowledgement? And you kind of walk by and your heart's glowing. And all of a sudden, you just feel, you just feel good. It's like this unexpected hit of, oh, here we are together on the planet.

well, it's really important to bring that awake consciously. I've noticed for myself I walk regularly in the woods and there are people on the trails and I noticed at first how awkward it felt. You know, some with their mass, some not, and us creating, making sure to pass each other but have all, you know, I'd step way into the woods to make room for people to pass and not be within six feet. and the awkwardness was some sense of mutual threat. And what occurred to me was just make the effort to be more friendly, just more friendly,

even though we're creating the physical distance, not a heart distance. And each time I do that, it's so amazing how quickly the defenses drop, like there's this eagerness to go, yeah, here we are, you know, all aware of all the things going on and yet here we are with these hearts. What if we all committed to being extra friendly? I mean just what if? Just whenever there's an opportunity and just to say, okay, what would it mean right now to be extra friendly? And especially if there's loneliness to take the chance. So this has been spending some time on deepening belonging, nurturing, and dissolving that wall by extending ourselves for authentic contact.

The last piece I want to bring in is how much belonging gets revealed when we help or receive help. It's so powerful. Now, when we're lonely, we want others to reach out to us, and yet we can break that patterning by just having a background inquiry. How can I help? How can I help? Sometimes that question, where does it hurt or what's it like for you? Just a shift from that self-focused that kind of perpetuates a sense of something's wrong with me

to how can I help? One of my dear friend, Dan Gottlieb, he's for many years the radio host, a psychologist, also paraplegic. Decades ago he was paralyzed from the chest down. Right after his accident, he was in the ICU and he didn't want to live. His life didn't matter to him because it didn't seem like he could live a real life. One of the nurses that was tending to him knew he was a psychologist, and she shared some of her suffering with him, you know, about a relationship she was in and about her own suicidal ideation.

And he was loving and present because he knew how it was. he just knew how it was and when she left she felt better and she let him know she let him know she just didn't feel so alone in her pain and after she left the room he describes

saying to himself I can live with this life had meaning because he knew he could give love and he could receive love there are so many ways we can do it Many of you are familiar with them in terms of times of pandemic.

I'd say the most immediate is to be in touch with anyone you know who may be vulnerable and need human connection and support. There are pandemic mutual aid programs near all of us now. And you can support a broader cause, a way of helping in a societal way, whatever appeals to you, responding to our climate emergency, which is not going to go away and it's going to need all of us to care and act. You can get engaged getting out the vote so that each voice is honored to bring us to a more compassionate society. Get engaged. But I want to name as part of closing what I consider

maybe the most transformational level of giving and receiving. And that is helping each other to remember our goodness. I thought maybe I'd share a story that I heard years and years ago and it stayed with me through these years. A Catholic nun told this story and she taught in a very small Catholic school and she got to know the students over the years

because the same teacher would be with them in grammar school and then reconnect with them later on. Well, she was very fond of one of the students, his name was Mark, and he was mischievous and yet totally respectful and fun. And she remembers one year in high school in his class that they were having a really difficult season. She was teaching them the new math and it was hard. And she could sense they're all stuck in their own worlds and their own insecurities and tense and guarded with each other.

So one Friday, she just had them put aside their studies. and she had them list the names of all the other students in their class on paper and think of the nicest thing they could say about that person and then hand it into her. And Monday she gave each student their list. And she said the response, so many people were surprised and touched. You know, I never knew I meant that to anybody. You know, I never knew how others liked me for that.

So the papers weren't mentioned again, but she could tell that they had made a difference. Well, several years later, she was returning from a trip, and her parents let her know really tragic news that Mark, that student had been killed in Vietnam, which gives you a sense of when this story was told. So she attended the funeral, and all the classmates were there. And at one point, Mark's father took her aside. and he said, we want to show you something. And he took a wallet out of his pocket. They found this on Mark when he was killed,

and we thought you might recognize it. And opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped and folded and refolded many times. And she knew without looking that the papers were the ones that she had, when she had had the class list

all the good things about each other. Thank you for doing that, Mark's mother said. As you can see, Mark treasured it. And Mark's classmates at this point were gathering around, and one of them, Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk. Chuck's wife said, Chuck asked me to put this in our wedding album.

I have mine too, Marilyn, said, it's in my diary. And then Vicky, another classmate reached into her pocketbook and took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzles. list to the group. I carry this with me all the time, she said, I think we all saved our lists. And this teacher said that's when I finally sat down and could cry. The heart breaks open when we let in the goodness of other beings, when we let in the preciousness of this life. Seeing goodness, feeling seen, it creates kinship. It's so easy to fixate on what's wrong.

We all do it to ourselves. We fixate on what's wrong. And it covers over that basic light in our being, that in us which wants to live honestly and truthfully and caringly. One of my favorite all-time quotes is Arne Garborg. He says to love someone is to learn the song in their heart and sing it to them when they have forgotten. we all forget and we need reminding.

And this is part of nurturing the kinship and dissolving those walls that separate us. The poet Tukharam says it a little bit of a different way. He says this. He says, I could not lie anymore. So I started to call my dog God. First he looked confused. Then he started smiling. Then he even danced.

I kept at it. Now he doesn't even bite. I'm wondering if this might work on people. I think it does. And so my friends, tonight, this class, we're really talking about dissolving the walls that separate us. It's a life path. If you felt like there were a lot of different pieces, it's because in a way it's the whole of the spiritual path, is waking up from that prison of eye where our self-concern and fears, and defensiveness and so on blocks out the truth of really being embedded in this mysterious living web that's so filled with love and with awareness, just forgetting that belonging. So this is the path and if you want to have it as simplified a little as you move into the rest of your evening or tomorrow, let's be friendlier.

Let's be friendlier to our inner life by really honoring the feelings that are here and holding them with kindness. Let's be friendlier with each other. Just express our care, remind each other of goodness. Let's be friendlier with strangers. It could create ripples that can totally change this world, widening the circles, and we're not whole unless that friendliness and heart includes those who are most of the vulnerable. Remember those who are calling for help. We're dying. We matter. There's so many.

Letting our hearts cherish all beings. So we'll do a closing sit together. I will invite you to come into a position that helps you. This is a reflection on feeling kinship with all beings. and as a way of gathering your attention, you might take a few long, full breaths. Take a moment to scan through your body and let go of any unnecessary tightness or tension. See what might want to soften a little. Relax your face. You might sense a slight smile at the mouth. You might visualize and sense the curve of a smile spreading through your heart.

It's allowing you to be open and connect. with whatever's right here. And we begin by bringing more intimacy to our inner life, just noticing whatever might want your attention right now, wherever there may be a sense of vulnerability, separateness, sadness, fear, numbness, disconnection. And with whatever you notice right now. And it may be something pleasant and beautiful. with whatever you notice. You might mentally whisper this belongs. Let it be as much as it is, just as waves belong in the ocean.

This changing experience in your body and heart belongs. You can be the caring witness, an intimate presence, and sensing the heart space that's here, including a dear one, someone in your life that can use your healing attention and feeling them close in and in the same way offering your attention your presence perhaps sensing any vulnerability that's there what life is like for them also sensing the goodness of this being what you love you might take a moment to imagine and sense possibility of mirroring their goodness, letting them know, just giving them that gift and sensing

in their eyes what happens when they feel seen and taking in their love, bringing to mind someone you don't know so well, perhaps not a full stranger, but someone who isn't a close in circle. And just taking a few moments to imagine some way you might be extra friendly. Let the warm of your heart include them. You might mentally reflect, we are friends. And widening the heart space now, to bring to mind somebody from one of the most vulnerable populations you can imagine, perhaps someone in a jail, refugee, someone who's sick and alone with the virus away from family, someone who's feeling panicked, fearful around finances. Let yourself be touched. Let yourself be touched. Feel your prayer and widening now in all directions to sense all beings who are

feeling separate, parts of you that don't feel so seen or connected. Your dear ones, those you don't know so well, most vulnerable beings, beings everywhere, including all who you imagine and sense in the field right now listening all of us together seeking to realize that kinship and live from that belonging all beings in this heart space included the poet mark nepo writes my soul tells me we were all broken from the same nameless heart and every living thing wakes with a piece of that original heart aching its way into blossom. This is why we know each other below our strangeness. Why when we fall we lift each other, or when in pain we hold each other, why when sudden with joy we dance together. Life is the many pieces of that great heart

loving itself back together again. May we remember our shared belonging, live from that tender heart space, and bring healing and love to our world. Namaste and thank you. Be well, my friends. Take good, good care, and I'll look forward to being with you again next week. For more talks and meditations,

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