Tara Brach - Sheltering in Love – Part 7: Awakening from the Prison of Blame (2020-05-06)

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

Sheltering in Love – Part 7: Awakening from the Prison of Blame (2020-05-06) - A key way stress disconnects us from ourselves and each other is through the limbic reactivity of blame. This talk helps us to recognize the suffering of chronic blame, resentment and anger, and to bring a healing presence to the vulnerability that underlies blame.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. So I'm really glad to be with you for our next talk in the Sheltering in Love series. And I'm aware as we go through these weeks of global crisis that periods of intensity, of great stress seem to activate us in two different ways. One is that our survival brain gets triggered

and of course that comes with fear and aggression and self-protection and the same stress and real disruptions in our world and in our personal world, the losses, can be a time of amazing learning, fresh perspective

and real spiritual growth, real spiritual awakening. We start to see what are considered the real great truths or insights of impermanence, that this life is fragile, that it comes and goes, and that brings up this tenderness or care in our hearts. We remember what matters, and it helps us to open, open in that caring. So for many, what we discover most matters, you know, when we're waking up, is a sense of true connection with our inner life and with each other.

And a key way that stress disconnects us when our survival brain gets triggered is through blame. And so that's what I'd like to look at more in this talk. I'd like us to reflect together on what I sometimes call the prison of blame. How do we get caught in it and how do we step out of it? So in that spirit, I'll start with a favorite story of an alleged conversation between a U.S. and naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland, and this supposedly occurred a number of years ago. And the way it starts is that the Americans say over the radio, please divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision.

Canadians recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. Americans. This is the captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again, divert your course. Canadians. No, I say again, you need to divert your course. Americans, even more sternly. This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous support vessels. I demand that you change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, our countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship. Canadians.

This is a lighthouse. Your call. So, this anecdote, it brings to mind for me a silly cartoon where one person saying to the other, sorry, but I can't hear you over the sound of how right I am. And we know it, how our world gets really small. we get hooked on how right we are. It's that saying that the world is divided into those who think they're right. And that's the whole saying. When we think we're right, when we think others are wrong and by extension, often bad or less, it keeps us in a very small identity. We get small, we get tight, we get rigid, and it creates separation.

So we'll be talking about waking up out of that, but I feel like it's important from the gecko name. There's a reason that our survival brain gets triggered into blame and anger and aggression, and that is because it's part of our survival equipment. I'm going to give you an example of that that's very, very current. Most of you are aware that our overcrowded prisons right now are one of the key places where the coronavirus is spreading at a horrifying rate. Well, April 10th, there was an angry riot at a Kansas City prison and inmates ransacked offices and so on. It was over health care that news had spread to them of several staff members and other prisoners had tested positive for the virus. And there they were living and sleeping in these totally

cramped spaces with no protection. So the inmates were blaming the authorities for lack of attention and rioting about it. Well, as it turns out, two weeks later, in that unit that had rioted, it turned out that almost all of them tested positive. In two weeks, they were almost all testing positive and 75% of all the inmates in the prison were positive. And what we know is that they would not have been tested. There would have been no attention to this if they hadn't rioted. So it's an interesting question. If you were in that situation, would you get angry? Would you feel filled with blame? Would you perhaps riot if it had to do with your life? We need our anger. It's built in to alert us to blocks to well-being.

So it energizes us to protect ourselves, to try to help get what we need. And blame helps us focus our attention on the cause of the problem. You know, if we think about all movements of uprisings, from populations who have been violated, from oppressed peoples, anger is part of the energy that moves us to freedom. And as my friend Ruth King so wisely says, and she's a Dharma teacher and the author of mindfulness of race, mindful of race, she says, anger is initiatory, but it is not transformative. Anger is initiatory, but it is not transformative.

And I quote this a lot because, oh my gosh, that really clarifies a lot that we need anger, to energize and to know that we need to protect ourselves. But if we get habituated to anger, if we don't end up moving past the anger, it turns from a wise messenger into a prison. And this is the challenge for us, is that anger and blame and aggression does get habituated. We do lock into beliefs about right and wrong and good and bad. And for many, there can be a chronic pattern of blaming others and creating a distance that is really suffering. So in contrast to real live threats like the spread of the virus, blame often fixates on people for reasons like they're not cooperating with us, they don't agree with us, they don't treat us

the way we want, they don't fit our idea of how people should be behaving. And when it becomes a habit or a reflex, we get very rigid and narrow-minded. We don't see very much. I'm thinking again of this aircraft carrier USS Lincoln. We get small-minded and it barricades our heart. So what we start watching is how when we are living in a habit pattern of blame and anger, we end up speaking and acting in ways that actually make us less safe, less connected, and less happy. And often, when I'm talking about this, I'm not talking about the deep, unforgiven relationships.

I'm actually talking about those where we're carrying a kind of habitual resentment towards. could be friends, family, colleagues that aren't matching how we want them to be, but it actually corrods any sense of real closeness and prevents true intimacy. In my book Radical Compassion, I shared a story that a hospice worker shared with me about a woman who is at the center she served at, and this woman had cancer and a large tumor actually right on her tongue and she wanted to talk but she couldn't say much. So one night she had the worst nightmare of her life and she woke up at 4 a.m. in the morning paralyzed with fear because she dreamed that the staff at the hospitalist had told her she

was next to go and she was going, oh God, no, no, I can't. And she was flooded with a sense of separation, not just from God, but actually from her husband. And so she was filled with the sense of all the resentment that she had lived with and expressed so often with him and how much separation that it had caused, all the resentment about ways that he didn't parent the way she wanted him to or he wasn't doing enough for her and he was always letting her down. And it was with this flash of realization. that she said to herself, ah, it's not my time. I need to talk to him. I need to let him know. I love him. In the next two days, that tumor had shrunk enough for her to actually leave hospice.

And she did. She went home and she was able to speak her heart. And he was, because he wasn't defensive was able to share with her what his regrets and sorrows were and they actually had the first real connection in decades. So she returned, she got sick again, returned to the hospice and died peacefully soon after. I share this story right now because if we want to recognize in our lives where blame has become a prison, it helps to reflect from that perspective of the end of our life and looking back. And in particular, in this current crisis, we actually have easier access to that perspective because there's this heightened sense of our fragility, because loss is much more real right now. It's not just an idea way far in the future.

So let's pause here and reflect together. I invite you to close your eyes and take a few full breaths because that can help to collect your attention, bring yourself right here, and letting the breath resume in its natural rhythm, you might scan your life and sense those who are kind of close in, those that you interact with somewhat regularly, family, friends, colleagues, perhaps pick a few people and just sense the degree of closeness or distance. and how judgment or blame might be contributing. Maybe there's one person in particular that you'd like to bring some healing to your relationship and you might just notice where the judging is and how it creates separation. We'll be returning to this later in our reflection and during

the talk. For now, if you'd like to open your eyes, please do. Letting go of blithes, is challenging. You know, once we feel angry and once there's blame, it's in our body and there's a reason we hold on so tightly. I think James Baldwin put it the best. He said, I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. It's the same with any level of hate, our dislike, our blame, our anger. our blame gets activated when we're feeling a vulnerability underneath. We're either feeling threatened or hurt.

And if we're to release blame, that means we have to actually be willing to feel what's underneath it. And as we know, we have a deep conditioning to avoid feeling those unpleasant experiences of rawness and vulnerability. It takes a lot of intentionality and courage to be willing to drop in. Many of you might remember the story of the great sage who said that when you're stuck in your lives in some way emotionally, when there's distance from yourself or others, ask yourself, what are you unwilling to feel? What is under that blame? What is under that anger?

Now, it's important to note here that if you're feeling blame and anger and it's associated with trauma, with some sort of abuse either in your personal life or it might be the violence in the society against certain populations and you're feeling that in a traumatic way, a period of anger is absolutely necessary to energize and to protect yourself. we need that armoring of anger and we can get re-traumatized if we try it too clearly to open to vulnerability. And I've seen many times now how the message, we think this is a spiritual message that we should forgive those who have hurt us in different ways, well, when we've been abused or traumatized, if we're not ready, it can actually be a set up for shame, not healing, to think we're supposed to forgive. Because there's an organic time.

in letting go of blame. It's enough just to have the intention over time to wake up your heart and then be with the process as it goes because at some point in healing we do need to connect with what's underneath the anger and the blame. You might again just pause here. Just get a taste. We're tasting this with different reflections tonight. Closing your eyes. and perhaps choosing one person where you regularly fixate in some sort of resentment or blame, again, not something that's traumatic. It might be a person that you know that's close in where you feel a lot of resentment or blame or maybe somebody you don't know personally, maybe a public figure who you consider bad

or wrong and brings up anger. So choosing someone and reminding yourself, of what triggers the anger, the blame. Now here's the inquiry. If you put down the story of blame, you're bad, you're wrong. That whole aversive narrative of bad other, if you put that down, what difficult experience would you have to open to and feel? What is under the blame?

Is it fear? Is it powerlessness or helplessness? Is it a sense, well, that if you're not the one that's wrong or bad, I'm the one? Or is it a sense of grief? What do you have to feel that's difficult if you put aside the blame, the aggression, the aversion towards another? Taking a few full breaths and coming back and I invite you into this reflection because part of the reason, Part of our way of waking up is to pay attention to this underlying vulnerability. In fact, it's actually the entry or the gateway to waking up from the prison of blame is to find out what's under it. It's taken what I call the U-turn where instead of directing blame out there and saying

you're bad, you're wrong, you know, you've made a mistake, blame, blame, blame. We make a U-turn and we bring it back and we say, okay, what's under that blame? feeling. So we're shifting from bad other to what's going on inside us. And it's a very empowering way of taking responsibility. And by that I mean finding our own inner resources so we can respond, the ability to respond to the situation from a wiser place. But we'll get to that. I'd like to give you an example of making the U-turn. One couple. This is recent. This is a a pandemic story. It's a new category of story, the pandemic stories. And here one couple's living in a very small apartment and a lot of stress, three children, they're having to do

the homeschooling. They're both trying to work from home. And she's got this growing anger and resentment because a large proportion of the child care and covering the children in their schooling is falling to her. And she's equally business. So her blame is you're being self-centered, you're being insensitive, you're not being caring. So she makes the U-turn, which means instead of blaming him and going on with that storyline, she makes the U-turn to what is going on inside me. Using the acronym Rain, which is a really good way to find out, she recognizes, it's the R of Rain, okay, angry, angry, whispers that.

Then the allowing is let it be there. just don't try to judge it or fix it or get away. And then starts investigating and sensing in her body, okay, what's under that anger? And she finds hurt, hurt that he's not really trying to be sensitive to her, but she finds something even stronger, which is a feeling of deficiency that she's falling short as a parent, that she's being impatient with the children and she's not doing it well.

and she senses that shame in her, that she's really not being a good parent. And so when she felt that, she could sense how much that was gripping her, and she started the nurturing of rain, which is self-compassion, just offering kindness to that part of her, getting that you're doing the best you can. This is a hard time. Just trust that you care. Trust that you're doing the best you can.

And that nurturing softens. things. It opened her up. And so that during after the rain and after the rains, so when we can sense that our identities opened up and we're no longer caught in the blaming self, we're resting in a larger heart space. She could then, from after

the rain, from that larger heart space, she could start to see him with more clarity. She could start to have empathy and insight into, well, what's this like for him? And she could begin to sense his anxiety. She could sense, here he is,

watching layoffs in his company and feeling personally threatened and that insecure, is he really valuable or worthwhile? And if he's laid off, just how devastating that would be? So they talked. And it was really the first time they had the kind of talk of, how's this really affecting you. You know, the real vulnerability of how they each felt they were falling short and they each felt in some way deficient and what they were afraid of. and it brought them closer. It wouldn't have happened if she wasn't able to step out of her story of blame and make that you turn and come back to sense what is going on inside me. Now, what we find when we then look out at others after we've come home to ourselves

is that when people are acting in ways that we don't like, they're usually suffering in some way. I think of it like people who are truly happy feeling loved or valued don't have to act in harmful ways. Now, that doesn't mean we put down wise boundaries and disregard our needs and don't take care of ourselves. But it broadens us to recognize this. It broadens us so that we can take care of our own needs but also recognize this other who is struggling too. I heard a story I wanted to share with you. And it's about a Muslim man in Virginia, his name's Rashid. He's running for Congress here.

I live here. He's very used to Islamophobia, but he started receiving these very offensive tweets by a guy named Dellen about Islam. And one particular one was so hurtful. He said it really stung him, and he was about to respond and correct the perceptions, but then he clicked on Dylan's profile and he saw a GoFundMe that was asking for help to help Dylan and his family cover very crushing medical debt. So instead of a reactive tweet back, Rashid donated $55 and asked his $290,000 followers to do the same. So as you can imagine,

Dylan was utterly flabbergasted because he had sent a link to conservative delegates, no response. So he asked if Rashid would meet him at his home so he could plant a campaign sign in the yard. So they met at his home and then they actually met again for coffee. And the upshot is Dylan still tweets his opinions loudly, but they're not anti-Muslim anymore. And he said that he's committed to learning about his biases. And he says he thinks of Rashid is a patriot. And he says, what is a patriot? Someone who does for the good of the community.

It doesn't always work out that we can respond to the person who's heard us by trying to help them. But it does help to make the U-turn and bring compassion to the inner so we can respond by seeing with wiser eyes and a more open heart what's going on. Now, I mentioned a few allusions to our political world. Much, much blame is flying around politically. We have a deeply divided world and a whole lot of it's on display in the United States with an approaching election. And many identify with one side and often feel a lot of anger and blame and aversion towards the opposition, and the sides are living in quite different realities based on very dramatically different stories of what's going on. So there's a lot of very deep believing in being

right and that the perceived opponents are wrong and sometimes bad, definitely unreal others. They're not like me. So I thought it would be valuable for us. to just inquire, what does stepping out of the prison of blame mean here? And first to say that it's crucial to do it, if we want to create the world we believe in. In other words, if you want a more compassionate world, hating those you think are hurtful, those on the other side actually deepens the divide. What we need to be doing is finding ways to dialogue and to listen and to find common ground and to decrease the othering. So I bring it up because as stepping out of blame is really challenging for all of us, it can be

particularly challenging in this realm when we live with so barrage by news that absolutely triggers us day after day. And it's an ongoing process for me personally, and I wanted to name that, that I'm working it as I go. I have very strong conditioning implanted. My parents both were social activists, very politically active, environmentalists, anti-racism, the whole thing. And so I'm quite passionate about social justice, progressive values. and therefore my lens when I'm reading the news or actually I listen more quickly goes into good, bad, right, wrong. That's just the reflex that goes on. And there's a dosage of distress and

blame. And because I know that there's no freedom if I live in that, I'm also slowing down and watching it more and more, very regularly doing that U-turn. So I'll give you an example. for me, hearing about how this virus is ravaging those in prisons, then think more and more of the, so much of the suffering from coronavirus. And then it goes into blame towards the administration for the handling of the pandemic. And that can be very agitating and then taking this time to do the U-turn. Well, what's under that blame? Oh, okay, fear. That there's just going to be more and more suffering. It's not being taken care of. It's not being responded to properly. And then under that fears, that sense of powerlessness, as people are struggling right now so

much. And then grief for those that are hurting. And then if I stay with it, it goes down to caring. And if I can remember the caring, then I can respond. And it's not from a sense of individual blame. I might see individual. as wounded, even quite dangerous. But it's not with aversion, and it's not so personal. It's more that it's the world's fear playing out and it's the world's greed playing out and how to hold it and respond in a way

that actually allows us to care more about each other. It's become clearer to me, and this is every day, that if I'm caught in blaming a bad other, diminishing another, my heart's not free. I can't be part of the healing. So you might wonder then, well, what about action? You know, if we let go of anger and blame, will we have the energy? You know, if anger and blame's initiatory, what energizes transformation? and what I observe in myself and many is that it is the caring.

I mean, the caring does motivate us into action. Of course, the anger gets re-triggered regularly, but if we can keep reconnecting and responding from caring, we can be part of moving forward in a healing way. So for me, the upset about so much suffering, and this predates coronavirus, has led to active engagement and getting involved in initiatives for getting out the vote. And if this is something that appeals to you, feel free to join me.

And project I'm involved with, you can check my homepage next week. But the point is this, that we don't become passive. Letting go of blame doesn't mean passivity. It means that we then become free to act in ways that come from a more awake heart. Now we started with the woman in the hospice and again these times can be real catalysts for spiritual awakening and they can be catalysts for waking up spiritually and then engaging in our world with a lot of care. It's much easier right now to sense impermanence and to remember what matters. And on the level of personal relationships, if we look from that vantage point

of the end of our life looking back, most of us would wish we had let go of whatever resentments or blames were keeping us separate. We'd want to let go of what we're holding against others. We'd rather be connected than right. We'd rather be open-hearted than having our way. So we'll close with a guided practice on this. This meditation is called Freeing Ourselves from the Prison of Blame. But first, I'd like to share a favorite story. It's actually more like a poem,

and I share it when I remember when I have a chance. It's from the author Scott McClanahan. 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 had been gone many years and even spent time in jail. Years later, he finally got out of jail, and he wondered if his mother and father were even alive, and if they were ashamed of what had been said and of where he had wound up.

He rode to them and told them he would be coming home on a specific day the following week. If they wanted to see him and were not ashamed, they should put a blanket on the clothes line, and he would know to come inside. If the blanket was missing, then he would know that 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 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 he 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 to where he came from when he saw a blanket in a tree.

He kept walking and he saw another blanket. He kept walking and he saw another. Then he turned towards home and the house was covered in blankets. The yard was covered in blankets. The clothesline was covered in blankets. The path to the door was covered in blankets. And his parents were standing there, and they were welcoming him home. We have a deep longing to feel forgiven and to forgive.

To let go of whatever is separating us. And so it's in the spirit that we'll do our last reflection today. So, my friends, if you'd like to again make yourself comfortable, Close your eyes and bringing to mind a relationship that matters to you where you feel some separation, where there's been some blame or resentment. And again, not trauma. Related. When you have somebody in mind, bring to mind a situation that you've been in with that person

that has triggered blame, something they said, a way they behaved. and bring that situation close in so you can see the look on their face and hear the words that were spoken and let yourself feel what comes up with that. We'll make that you turn now and we'll use rain just coming and bringing the attention right inside you and the R of Rains just to recognize the emotion that's strongest. And it may be anger, worry, anxiety, fear, blame, resentment. Just to whisper the word, let's say you're whispering blame or anger. The A is to allow it to be there.

Just to pause with it. It just belongs. This is part of the ocean of my being. It's a wave in the ocean. Let it be here. And then deepen your attention with some interest as you investigate now. Where does the anger or blame feel strongest in your body? So your throat, your chest, your belly.

Remind yourself of what most triggers it, what most brings up your reaction, the sense of disturbance or anger, and then feel it in your body and put your hand wherever you feel it the strongest. Doesn't have to be exact, but it's good to bring the hand to the body to kind of connect with your feelings. And just sense, well, what's under this? What else is asking for attention? You know, if you let the anger of blame be as big as it is, what else would you find lurking underneath?

What would you have to feel if you couldn't stay in the story of you're bad or you're wrong? Perhaps you can sense under the anger of the blame, perhaps it's fear, hurt, sadness. The end of rain is to nurture whatever you're in touch with, is to let that hand that's touching your heart or your throat or your belly be actually a communication of care just sense that you're sending kindness in to the place in you that feels vulnerable you might send a message of kindness one message is I'm sorry and I love you or I'm here and I'm not leaving thank you for trying to protect me I'm okay right now or it might be trust your goodness

send a message that might bring some healing to the place in you that's hurting, or afraid. And it helps to sense someone you trust or love, offering care and support to this vulnerable place. Just imagine their love and energy is flowing through your hands right into the vulnerability, nurturing. Then in after the rain, sense the presence that's here. Noticing the difference between, between the blaming self and just the quality of presence that's opened up even if it's just by a few degrees there's a little more space a little more perspective a little more tenderness a little more presence you're resting more in the truth of who you are than any of the stories of blame and from this place this more awake heart look at the other person take a

few moments to look and wonder what's it like for them, what's difficult for them? How might this person be hurting? How might they feel afraid or threatened or hurt? And can you imagine next time you're together being guided by your more awake, wise heart, holding your own vulnerability with compassion and theirs, how things might be different. How might you put out blankets of forgiveness? How might you trust the possibility of feeling forgiven? What will help to remember the heart space that connects you with this other being? What will help you act as you wish you would have if you were looking from the end of your life back? And we close with one of our many people's favorite poems from Rumi.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there's a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. So, my friends, as we close, I want to wish you all blessings to take good care, to be safe, to be well, and to explore this week how you might open your heart in ways that can step out of that prison of blaming so that we can feel our shared heart space and live from that. Thank you, and I hope to see you next week. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list,

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