Tara Brach - Spiritual Hope (2021-01-27)

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

Spiritual Hope (2021-01-27) - Spiritual hope opens us to possibility and energizes us to manifest our potential for love and wisdom. In contrast to attachment or egoic hope, which is the grasping for what will benefit a separate self, spiritual hope arises from trust in the openhearted awareness (bodhichitta) that is always and already within us. This talk explores how, as individuals and as a society, we can nourish spiritual hope, and create the grounds for healing and radical transformation.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and blessings. Welcome. And it really is a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you for joining in. People listening often send me different bits and pieces through the weeks, poems and quotes, and a lot of cartoons. I'm thinking that the community is trying to serve my deepest needs. Especially in these last weeks, I'll just share one that came in basically said,

so far, 2020 is like looking both ways before crossing the street and then getting hit by an airplane. Another was a shopper saying, I've decided to return 2020. It just didn't meet my expectations. And then, of course, there's been countless stakes on the restrictions of confines of being at home, sheltering at home. And one then just showed a dog on a psychiatrist's couch and the psychiatrist saying, So, when did you start seeing an invisible fence? So thank you for whatever you send to me.

I enjoy these. The background theme, of course, of all of them is the... intensity, the trauma, the anxiety, the uncertainty of these times. And then with that, of course, for so many of us, this continuing inquiry, which is so central, which is really how can our hearts hold it? How can we respond to what's going on for ourselves and for others and our world in a way that serves? So a part of looking at this, or as a way of looking at this, I wanted to start with a story and it's a kind of a classical teaching myth that you find in many different traditions and it's one that I've always really

loved. And so you might sit back and listen. In the clouds of the distant past there was a monastery that had fallen upon difficult times. There were conflicts and power struggles between the monks. There was disrespect and tension between monks and the nuns. Due to a drought, the vegetable garden had started going down now. There was no effort to revive it. The monks and nuns just weren't taken care of each other or their land. And many of the monks were elderly. It was really a dying order.

So very dispirited, the abbot went to seek guidance from a well-known sage, a wise woman who practiced. lived in solitude in the deep woods in nature. And he asked her what might save them, what might save the monastery. And they meditated together and she said, well, I don't have any advice to give you, but what I can say is that the bodhisattva lives amongst you. Now just to say a bodhisattva is an awakened being, a being with an awakened heart and the awakened heart's called Bodhi Chita. So a Bodhisattva lives amongst you. So he returned and told the monks and the nuns that there was no solution but just to let them all know what she had said that the

bodhisattva is amongst us. And interestingly, in the days and weeks that followed, they started pondering this and their spirits started lifting with a kind of fresh hope that the way they were relating to each other changed. Like, wow, maybe you're the bodhisattva. So they became more respectful and caring and curious, like maybe there's something I can learn from you. So they started treating each other differently. And on the chance that maybe they were each, the bodhisattva, they started being kinder and more respectful and more attentive to their own inner processes. And it extended to the world around them, knowing that bodhisattvas have many different types of incarnations.

they actually started treating the wildlife, the animals, the gardens, the land with increasing care. Well, people that came by started noticing the changing atmosphere and felt drawn to the radiance and the vibrance that was emanating from the monastery and more and more of them wanted to move in and be part of it and join. And within a few years, the monastery became again a very thriving order filled with service to the wider community and celebration and love. So that's the story. And then we ask ourselves, what happened?

You know, the sage had reminded them of something. And what she had really done was reminded them of their own potential, of the light and the love and the potential for awakening in each of them. And that gave new meaning. it gave hope that then led to creating the community that expressed that light and love. So as individuals and as a society, some trust in our potential for love and our potential for awakening is intrinsic. It's intrinsic to transformation.

The value of a spiritual figure like a Jesus or Buddha that's, that's, you. sage in the story, Muhammad, any authentic teacher and leader really points us back to our own potential, to, it's a radical kind of a pointing back to the fact that Bodhi Chita, this love, this light, lives in each of us. And it's here and now, and it can be manifested. So the more we trust, it, the more hope we have on our path. And I often think about different spiritual leaders like Gandhi or Mandela or Martin Luther King, they wouldn't have generated movements for great societal change unless they had this spiritual hope, this revolutionary vision, this dream of what's possible. They had to trust our collective potential to start these movements.

And we can sense the inspiration of that trust. I think of John Lennon saying you may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join me and the world will live as one. We kind of know what that can do when we really let that in. So hope in what's possible inspires us. it calls forth the best of us, you know. And you can sense it in black spirituals, you can sense it in mystical poetry and arts.

And really, you wouldn't be here right now. You wouldn't be drawn to meditation practice. If you didn't have some intuition of that potential in your own being, some openness to it. So this is what I call spiritual hope. It comes from a trust that there is some potential in us towards love, towards wisdom, and with that there's openness to its unfolding. We're available.

Spiritual hope. And so this will be tonight's reflection together on spiritual hope. It's the hope that really serves our path, serves both individually and our collective freedom. And as we'll explore, this isn't the hope. that painful losses won't happen or that there won't be conflict. It's a qualitatively totally different domain. It really has to do with manifesting our deepest potential as humans. So I want to pause here and invite you just to reflect.

And if it helps you close your eyes. And imagine for these moments and if it feels as if it feels as if, that's fine. But imagine that you're sensing your lifespan, you know, how you've evolved through this lifespan, and you're totally acknowledging all the conditioning of your human personality and wounds and neurosis and insecurity, but you're sensing your lifespan and sense how that essence of awareness of love, what I'm describing as bodiceita, how you're sensing your lifespan, how it's actually becoming more conscious and manifest. Sense over time how your heart's waking up.

In the midst of the storm you may have a way to come home a little bit more easily to some calm. How over time perhaps you're better able to relate with less judgment and more kindness to others. over time you're more touched by suffering and more responsive with caring and sense that and you which senses how this will continue that this is your evolutionary direction towards manifesting your potential and as you do just notice what is the effect of trusting this of knowing this of spiritual hope how does your body feel

your heart, when you sense that you're unfolding towards more love, more wisdom. And how would it be if you remembered and felt this hope in the moments approaching your meditation practice? That this is for the sake of continuing to be who I can be. That you remembered this awakening heart right as you were approaching an important talk with a loved one. The morning you reflected and sensed who you were becoming and how that would affect how you prioritize your day and how you respond to the world around you, to the trauma and suffering of the world. You might widen the reflection now and sense a growing trust

that this heart is waking up in others too, that it's the capacity of beings everywhere and sense the possibility that this awakening of bodiceita may be accelerating through these times of collective trauma so what's it like to feel that our collective caring has the potential to fuel true transformation what's it like to open to that hope that spiritual hope that we can create the world we long for just notice what happens if you let yourself open to possibility. Okay, so opening your eyes. Maybe as you reflected, you felt a sense of hope and you could feel how it energizes and opens and makes you available. For some, maybe you became aware of really how hard it is to hope. Maybe you became aware of how little you have

trust in your own heart or others' hearts. And it's important to name that too, because that's really the beginning of cultivating trust to see where we feel in some way cut off from that trust. Because it's natural when there's been trauma, when there's been wounding, when there's been a kind of severed belonging. We're going to explore this. That it takes a lot of patience to be with that, with a healing attention, but that's the very thing that nourishes are trust. So it serves us to intentionally nourish hope. This is where I want to spend some time that when you open to possibility, when there's spiritual hope, it energizes you. It actually recruits the power of your heart and mind to continue evolving. There's extensive science

on hope, which is so interesting to me. It's mostly in the form of the studies on placebo. But hope is really described as our brain's superpower. And those who hope for healing, heal better. Hope is like all mind states. It affects your neurochemistry. So if you're hopeful, that releases brain endorphins that reduce pain. It strengthens your immune system, your respiration, circulation, your motor function. So the placebo effect basically says that our mind state, our attitude, how hopeful we are, how open we are to possibility impacts healing. It actually influences the outcome. If we have no hope, it actually we lose the will to live.

And so, of course, it's a matter of degrees. But for many it expresses as depression, a loss of a life force. Studies also show, and I think this is really important, that when we're hopeful, we actually engage in the activities that move us towards our life goals. Like being open to the possibility of more health, and then as studies show, we include more fruit and vegetable in our diet, more regular exercise. If you're hopeful about intimacy, it'll actually have you be more disclosing. be more willing to be vulnerable, listen more deeply.

And if you're open to spiritual awakening, the possibility you're more drawn to the practices that wake up your heart and mind, meditation. And when you're hopeful about societal transformation, you're more likely to engage actively towards that end. And when we all do that, when we become collectively more hopeful, there's huge potential for revolutionary change. Huge potential. So before going further, many of you might be wondering, well, what's the difference between

spiritual hope and the kind of garden variety of attachment that things are going to go our way? So I want to spend a little time on that because actually that attachment gets in the way of spiritual hope. And I think it's probably most clarifying to think of it developmentally that there's egoic hope and it comes from a sense of a separate self that needs something to go a certain way. We need things to work out okay for us that will get the respect we want from others or the job or that things will go well for our children or we'll get the partner we want or our body will change the way we want it to. And we know that. So that's kind of an

egoic level of hope. And what happens is sometimes things go our way and some things don't on the ego level. I've always loved this book. It's called Children's Letters to God. One of them says, Dear God, thank you for the baby brother. But what I asked for was a puppy. Joyce. And then another similar from Bruce, please send me a pony. I've never asked for anything before. You can look it up. So sometimes our egoic hope is that we'll get something, or that we'll protect ourselves from something, from danger, from trouble, from somebody's anger, from illness, from injury. And one of the Mullah Nazardine stories,

which are wonderful stories about the Sufi saint who's both comical and wise. He was resting under the shade of a tall, luscious walnut tree. And as he sat daydreaming, he noticed these huge pumpkins growing on these delicate vines that were snaking along the ground. And he looked up and squinted to see these tiny walnuts growing on this magnificent tree. And he said, how strange Mother Nature is to make plump pumpkins growing on spindly vines, while little walnuts have their own impressive tree. Well, just then, a walnut fill from above and landed like, you know, on his head.

And he rubbed his sore head and picked up the fallen walnut and looked high up towards the branches of the trees. and he looked over thankfully at these swollen pumpkins that were growing safely on the ground. He said, oh, Mother Nature, you are so wise. We want a world that will protect us. We want to be safe. We want this body to survive. So egoic want comes from the survival brain

that wants the ego self to have good things and avoid bad things. And ultimately, we suffer. when we hold tight to our egoic hopes. When being okay depends on staying healthy, for instance, or when being okay depends on our relationship staying harmonious, when being okay, or when being okay depends on those that we love, you know, not having trouble. Because in this impermanent world, things don't work out. So if we're holding tight, if to be okay, things have to work a certain way, we're in trouble.

And I think often of Zen master Suzuki Roshi, he wrote that this life is like stepping onto a boat, which is about to sail out to sea and then sink. And think of it. You know, egoic hope is fueled by this primitive brain that really wants what it wants, and the more it grasp after it has to have things a certain way, or has aversion or fear when things don't work out, the more we're just caught in a roller coaster of hopes and fears. So that's why so many spiritual teachers warn against hope, because they're talking about the kind of egoic hope that's fixated on having things a certain way for this separate self.

And you can hear that in T.S. Eliot when he said, I told my heart to be still and wait without hope. For hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Maybe we'll pause here again because most of us, most everyone I know, has attachments, has some level of egoic hope. And it really just helps to shine a light on it. so you might close your eyes and take a few breaths. And you might sense where is this so for you? Where do you have the ego-level hope that fixates on things being a certain way? Maybe keeping your health.

Maybe financial security. Maybe it's the permanency of a relationship or how your child's life is unfolding. And the way you'll know that it's egoic hope is if it doesn't work out that you seize up that life's not okay. So your well-being's hitched on things going a certain way. Notice someplace where there's egoic hope, where you're holding on to things going a certain way. And take a moment to sense your experience of who you are

when you're on that roller coaster, when you're wanting things a certain way and fearing that they're not going to be that way. And what you might notice is the suffering of egoic hope is that it reinforces being a separate self that's looking ahead, that's contracted, that's holding on, and it takes us from the very presence that gives rise to spiritual hope. Okay, so opening your eyes, if you had them closed, and let's now look more at what this evolved or spiritual hope is, it's really a longing from our awareness, from our being, to manifest our potential for beauty, for loving, for creativity, for wisdom, for wonder.

I often think of it like, you know, the acorn with the urge to become the oak, and it has that urge because the oak is already within it. So we're longing to become what we are. We're longing to manifest what's already within us. This bodiceita, these seeds of the awakened heart, loving awareness. And if you consider it, you can't hope for something that you don't already have a sense of. You can't hope to be loving if you don't already have a sense of what that is. or you can't hope to feel a sense of belonging if you don't have some taste.

So trust and hope for manifesting our potential arises through a presence that already knows about it. And every time we come into presence and really sense open-hearted awareness, it actually fuels that hope. Because when we're present and we feel our heart, open, it actually feels like we're coming home to more who we truly are than any of the stories, any of the personality, any of the aggression or fear or defensiveness. And every time we come home to that sense of who we really are, it deepens our trust. Oh, okay, Bodhita is here.

This awakening heart is here. This goodness is here. And then that hopefulness actually energizes us to drawing it forth more in ourselves. Often, and I'll speak from myself here, often I find that the gateway to reconnecting to that trust and hope are the moments that we get kind with ourselves. And I'll speak to that more when there's just a moment of just a gesture of kindness. There's a part of us that goes, okay, goodness is possible. We dissolve the armoring of it.

A couple of other things on understanding spiritual hope. It's not on a timeline. It's not like, well, my spiritual hope is I'll go to this month-long retreat and I'll experience this openness and presence and emptiness and love and that forever after I'll be living from it. It doesn't have a timeline or conditions placed on it. supposed to happen by when. Many of you are familiar with that phrase the long arc of the moral universe. It came from an abolitionist, Unitarian minister, and then Martin Luther King preached

sharing that wisdom, and Obama liked it so much, he had it woven into a rug in the Oval Office. But that's the wisdom of it, is that our hope doesn't have it's outside of time. It's not to be quantified. It's just in this potential that is in every human heart to wake up, to remember our larger belonging and to live from that. It's trust that that's possible. So, final piece I'll name in terms of the understanding of spiritual hope is that it doesn't arise because we turn away from the shadow, which is the conditioning we all have, to be greedy, to feel hatred when we're provoked or our anger, to shut down, to judge.

I mean, it's not that we turn away from that or in some way overlook it. spiritual hope is this greatness of heart that includes, it fully includes the reality of suffering and yet it remembers that there's something larger. There's a larger truth. It's like seeing all the waves on the ocean of all the suffering that we humans go through, but remembering the ocean nests that were bigger, that there's a spirit here that can wake up from that reactivity. So it's really the courageous presence with suffering and separation that deepens the poignancy and the power and the vitality of spiritual hope.

Let me give you an example that really struck me. I was looking at pictures of the Junetee celebration and I was so moved. I was looking at the ones from Dallas, Texas, and there were thousands and thousands of people gathered and they all had yellow umbrellas. Now, yellow is the color of hope. It's the color of creativity, of new life of what's unfolding. And each of these yellow umbrellas

had the name of a person, a black person whose life was lost due to police violence. So those yellow umbrellas that acknowledge the loss, and yet in the face of that loss, still had that hope in who we can be. Martin Luther King said, we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

It's through our presence with the suffering, with the disappointments and with the great losses, that often are the starting place for reconnecting, to spiritual hope. And we're going to unpack that together. That in the moments that we actually have the courage to be with the suffering, it wakes up caring and it reminds us of who we really are. And that's the hope. Every time we remember our potential for caring, for kindness, and then we remember it collectively, we can see that hope collectively, wow, we humans really can care. Then we sense the possibility of a movement for racial justice, for freedom. Hope makes a

difference. I observed for many, many people as I were supporting people on the spiritual path, the way that just beginning to really trust the goodness inside us, energizes us on the path. And I witnessed it very, very powerfully with my friend Sherry Maples, who I've talked about before, wonderful being dedicated her life to social justice, and also on the personal level was just a very vibrant, alive, athletic, loved life person. Well, she had a breakup in a love relationship that devastated her. she couldn't find any trust in anything. She had no trust that love was going to be possible again and she didn't have what she would

call hope. She went into a huge depression. But gradually her practice, which was be present and have the intention to be kind, her practice kicked in. And over the months, and I spoke to her often, over the month she increasingly, brought kindness to that devastated place in her. And between that self-kindness and the care of others, she came through with what I would call a very much deepened kind of spiritual trust, that love was here no matter what. And it was inside her. And when she re-engaged, it was from an amazingly passionate, vibrant, steady heart.

Then she had a biking accident, and she was paraplegic, and she knew she was never going to walk again. Eventually she died from that accident. But that last year of her life was a testimony to the power of spiritual hope. She wasn't hoping for a life where she'd be able to do the things she loved

in terms of the activity she loved. But she had so much trust and hope around the possibility of loving that every encounter that she was in, she just live so fully from presence and from connection, just an inspiration of the power of spiritual hope. It comes from trusting our potential for Bodhita, our potential for love, for caring. And as I mentioned a little earlier, it gets nourished daily in any moment that we come into presence and get a little kinder. I can speak for myself that when I become aware that I've gotten grim, I've gotten

small, judgmental, irritated, whatever it is, if I can remember to even offer myself a gesture of kindness. Even if I don't mean it, in some way say, be kind or it's okay, sweetheart, or in some way a gesture, and I'm putting my hand on my heart, I don't know if you can see it, it softens me just enough to remember that Bodhita is here, that this heart is waking up, and it's more the truth than any of the stories I had that were keeping me grim or judgmental. There's a real power to any pathway that brings us back to presence. and kindness. And again, I'd like to invite you to reflect a little bit here because it can be so helpful to be reminded to close your eyes, if you will. This is a short reflection

on the self-kindness that wakes up spiritual hope. And you might scan and sense, is there anywhere you're feeling a bit caught in self-judgment, where you're feeling some self-doubt, where you're feeling down on yourself in some way, not trusting yourself. So let yourself be aware of this place of personal stuckness, whatever the level of suffering that goes with it. Just noticing the thoughts that go with it when you're down on yourself, the feelings. And then when you're turned on yourself, what it feels like inside, that place inside that feels bad,

that feels vulnerable, separate from others, not okay. We're recognizing and allowing that right now. And you might further investigate, and it helps sometimes to put your hand on your heart wherever you're feeling it just to stay connected here and to begin to bring in that kindness. How long have you been living with the feeling of not okay? of not enough, a failure, of some way of not trusting yourself. How does the feeling of not trusting your own goodness, how does that affect your life, your relationships, your work, how does it affect your sense of the future, your hopefulness,

and you're inside that place? And let your deep intention here be now to bring you. bring kindness to this place of vulnerability. You might call on your most away cart to do so, that inner bodhisattva, or you might call on anyone, any spiritual figure that's an outer bodhisattva that has an away cart. And you might sense, what is it you most need to remember to hear in order to trust your own goodness right now. What's the message? And who might it be from?

It would help you trust Bodhita that's inside you, this awakening heart. And with whatever comes up, sense that there's a message being sent from your own away card or from some outer bodhisattva, some message of care, some reminder to trust. And just as that sage said, the bodhisattva is living amongst you. The bodhisattva is living inside you, wanting to manifest. Can you trust that goodness?

If you even have a longing to be more loving, that is the energy of the bodhisattva waking up in you. Trust that. And just rest for a few moments in the presence that's here, sense the space of compassion. of caring, of kindness. And you might ask yourself, who am I when I don't believe something is wrong with me? When I'm trusting this basic goodness, Bodicita. Who am I? And what would my life be like if I remembered this trust? If I felt the hope of it unfolding more and more this goodness, what would my life be like? The moments we come into presence, the more moments of kind of kindness to ourselves, to each other, the more we trust that that kindness is intrinsic to

who we are. And that gives us hope. That gives us hope in our own life and it also gives us hope in others because we start sensing intuitively that if this heart's waking up, of course other hearts are waking up. We don't have a timetable on it, we don't have particular conditions on it, but we We trust that that's what's possible. And when we sense that, when you sense the possibility in others, you can help bring it forth. That's the beauty of it.

It's very contagious, this hopefulness, this spiritual hope. One Tibetan teacher teaches never give up on anybody. I think that's just so powerful, never give up on anybody. It starts with ourselves. Now not giving up on somebody else doesn't mean that you don't create boundaries, doesn't mean you necessarily interact, but your heart stays open to possibility. And not giving up on yourself doesn't mean you don't acknowledge when you've caused harm. It just means you don't give up on yourself. You keep open to that deeper unfolding of love that is living through you. The Bodhisatt is within us. So if we trust, we trust.

that we bring it forward in ourselves and we bring it forward in others. A story that I'll close with, and some of you are going to remember this, I just felt like it, for me, it so illustrates the power of this transforming hope. Some years back, and this took place in Washington, D.C., a 14-year-old boy shot and killed another teenager to prove himself to his gang. And at the trial, the victim's mother sat silent just until the end. And when the youth was convicted of the killing and the verdict was announced, she stood up slowly and she stared at him and she said, I'm going to kill you. Then the youth was taken away to serve several years in a juvenile facility. Well, after the first half year, the mother of the

slain child went to visit his killer. and he had been living on the streets before the killing, so she's the only visitor he had. And for a time they talked and when she left she gave him some money for books, for snacks. And she started step by step to visit him more regularly, bringing him food and small gifts. And near the end of his three years sentence, that was a sentence, she asked him what he'd be doing afterwards and when he got out what plans he had and he was confused and uncertain. And so she offered to set him up with a job at a friend's company. And then she inquired about where he was living and he didn't really have a place to live.

So she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her home. So for eight months he lived there and he ate her food and he worked at the job. And then one evening she called him in to the living room to talk and she sat down opposite him and she started, well, do you remember in the courtroom when I said, I was, going to kill you. I sure do, he replied. Well, I did, she went on. I didn't want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. That's why I started to visit you and bring you things and that's why I got you the job, let you live here in my house. And that's how I said about changing you. And that old boy,

he's gone. So now what I want to ask you, since my son is gone and that killer's gone as if you'll stay here. I've got room and I'd like to adopt you if you'll let me. And she became the mother of her son's killer, you know, the mother he had never had. So this woman had spiritual hope, had a trust that helped to call it forth in another. And it's important to acknowledge, it's a kindness to acknowledge that, For most of us we have a horrific trauma, a loss, we don't immediately connect to that kind of trust and respond. I mean, she's very an exemplar of truly a bodhisattva. But what we do have is the capacity over time to heal by bringing kindness within us.

And if we're patient, we start reconnecting to a heart space that sees the potential. the love behind our own human hates and fears and angers and behind others. But we need to go slow and we need to hold our own being with great kindness and we need to be held in the kindness of others to be reminded that caring is a true expression of our spirit. So this is the pathway to trusting Bodhita and to nourishing spiritual hope in what's possible. hope and what's possible. It's what frees us and you can see it in our society right

now that that kind of hopefulness is waking up, that there's a collective caring that has the potential to really carry us forward, that there is that kind of spiritual hope in the possibility of moving towards more justice, more freedom. It's what lets us carry the yellow umbrella. I think of Ruby Sales, we have deep, deep admiration for a civil rights activist, and she put it this way. She said, we have to be as clear about what we love as what we hate if we want change. So we have to open to what we hate, open to the suffering, open to the pain, and absolutely remember the depth and tenderness of the caring that can hold, that we have to be clear that that's what we love, that we want to wake up that

bodiceita and hold hands from that place of bodiceita and bring forth the world that really matters to us. So we started in the monastery, remembering the potential for this bodiceita, this kindness and caring, and touching into that spiritual hope that really can transform us. And I'd like to close with a short poem from Barbara Kingselver on Hope, and then we'll do a closing reflection. The poem. Here's what I've decided. The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope, not admire it from a distance, but live right in it. under its roof. What I want is so simple, I almost can't say it. Elementary kindness. And so for this final time, you might close your eyes and take a few full breaths.

Invite yourself right here. And in this presence, you might sense, what is it that you hope for? What's your spiritual hopes about your own unfolding? About what's possible? What is it you want to manifest? What are the qualities that matter to you of heart and spirit? And you might sense what are your hopes, your spiritual hopes for our world, for our larger society? What are your hopes for manifesting what's possible? Justice or compassion, caring for the most vulnerable? What do you hope for? And what does it mean to live inside that hope? to inhabit it, to let it fill your heart. What would it mean to live from that hope? We close with a shared prayer. May we each remember the loving awareness that's our very essence.

May we trust that loving awareness. May we be open to the many ways that it can unfold and express through our life. And may all beings awaken to this loving awareness as our shared essence. May we collectively remember our caring and trust in our caring, act from our caring, and create a world of peace, a world of justice, a world where all beings can express themselves, creatively and freely. May we create the world we believe in. Namaste. For more talks and meditations,

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