Tara Brach - Stress and Everyday Nirvana - Part 2 (2016-07-06)

Episode Date: July 9, 2016

Stress and Everyday Nirvana - Part 2 (2016-07-06) - Our habitual view of stress is that it is a bad thing, an obstacle to healthy living and spiritual realization. These two talks look at how our way of relating to stress determines our happiness, and invites listeners to engage with practices that radically shift our response to stress and bring a healing and freeing evolution of consciousness.  Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara  

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really matters. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Some of you might be familiar with an experiment that took place in Arizona in the late 1980s, creating a biosphere, a closed structure to then look at how living systems could interact in a closed structure. This was for the sake of space colonization. And the experiment only lasted a few years, and it had trouble for a number of reasons, but one of the main reasons was that there weren't winds that blew through it, so the trees couldn't grow. And what scientists discovered is that trees need wind for the heartwood to be strong enough for trees to grow. And I've always loved thinking about that since I've heard about it, because

is so relevant to what we need in our own lives to develop strength that clearly hurricane force winds will uproot us, but we need a certain amount of challenge or stress to develop our strength, to develop our inner resources. I often think about butterflies. Their wings are not going to be strong enough to really fly until they have that struggle against to break through the cocoon. So it is that when we have struggle, when we have stressors, and I spoke about this in the last

class, our reflex is to think that something's wrong, that this is a problem. And then we resist, and that creates more stress. And it actually undercuts our capacity to grow the heartwood, that process of resisting stress. I mentioned one day, teacher Joseph Goldstein, who, and I've remembered this for decades now, he said, every time I think I have a problem, I decide there isn't one. And there is a tremendous wisdom in being able to reframe our sense of, oh, this is a problem into, okay, this is a domain that's asking for a more evolved response from me. Amazing power to that. It really brings forth our creativity in our heart. So, the last class that I taught in this one, the exploration is really

when stress arises, our happiness and our freedom is determined by how we're relating to it. And it's completely natural that the first reflex is, something's wrong, I don't like this. But there can be less and less lag time. And we tell there's something in us that goes, oh, okay, These are the winds that are blowing. And if I'm available to them, if I'm not resisting them, this can strengthen the heartwood. So the big inquiry that we have as we begin to watch ourselves and we're watching ourselves navigate is when change comes,

when there's something that seems oppressive, do we get rigid and blame ourselves or blame others? Do we snap when the winds get strong? Or do we have some agility and inflective? flexibility in terms of our responsiveness. A story that is illustrative is when a bank president was being interviewed, a very successful guy, and the reporter said, so, sir, what's the secret of your success? And he said, two words. And the reporter says, okay, what are they?

And he said, right decisions. Well, how do you make right decisions? One word, he said. And sir, what is that? experience. And sir, how do you get experience? Two words. What are they? Wrong decisions. You could see that coming, right? But we kind of know that in a deep way, that we have a habitual reactivity. We all have patterns and we have to encounter them a certain amount of times until something in us goes, wait a minute, this isn't work.

and then we adapt. And it's happened through evolutionary time. I mentioned last week we adapted from flippers to arms and many other things and it happens within a lifetime also and it happens within a culture, within a society. And so I often think of it as the movement from, you know, and this is in terms of our species development of consciousness, from an egoic level where we're very focused around me and mine and what I need and I want, and our response from our limbic system when we get stressed

is fight, flight, freeze, we're shifting from that identity to a much larger sense of beingness that feels a sense of belonging with other beings. And rather than fight, flight, freeze, the adaptive, evolve response is attend and befriend. It's to be able to pause. and really notice what's there and open our hearts to it, befriend it. So this is one way of describing, evolving to our full potential. And again, that metaphor of the chrysalis, when we experience pressure, it's really a signal that there's some larger quality of consciousness or being

that we're invited to inhabit. it's a sign that we're living in too small an identity for our comfort. So there's one way to consider it is that awareness wants to realize itself, it wants to manifest its fullness and anything less than that's going to feel like stress. And we're going to keep on feeling tension and tightness whenever we're identified as a separate itself that's caught up in wanting and fearing, because awareness wants to live in a larger, more awake space. Wherever we're unfree, we're going to feel stress. And if we can shift from going, oh, something's wrong to, oh, this is a signal that there's some freedom possible.

This could be a portal. Then we become available. So when we're triggered, we actually have two evolutionary poles. You can begin to see this. It's sometimes called as the the big squeeze in any moment. And one is to continue with the habitual patterning, and it's a really strong pull to be defensive or aggressive and obsess to numb ourselves. To stay in the cocoon. Because in some way, even though it's uncomfortable, we're more comfortable with something familiar up until a point.

And then the other pull is really the pull of our potential, of the who we're becoming, just the way the flower has a draw to unfold itself and blossom, we are drawn to blossoming. And sometimes it can be considered that your future self is calling you, or that you're, in the Tibetans describe it,

that our awakened heart is always and already here. There's an enlightened consciousness here. It just hasn't been realized. and that's what's calling us. So whether you like thinking of it as your future self is calling you or your awakened heart is calling you, there is a pull to evolve. So as I mentioned, you might think of it as a tug of war.

There's both very, very deep, strong poles and we can begin to become more awake to the pulls of our past patterning. We can begin to see the limiting beliefs just over and over again what we're telling ourselves. about what's wrong with us or what's wrong with others or what's not going to work in our life

or we can watch ourselves replay our patterns in relationships and people often will share with me that the greatest sense of despair is to realize that they're redoing the same pattern they did when they were teenagers in terms of needing to be special and rejecting people because they were making them feel in some way insecure or grasping on or judging and creating enemies that way. We play the same patterns out.

And after a certain amount of time of replaying, if we're paying attention, if we're paying attention, we'll begin to choose presence, we'll begin to choose what's more adaptive rather than replaying. That's when we really are registering. this isn't working. I'm losing my life to being defensive or being judgmental

or numbing myself. When we really get it, then we adapt. Ovid put it this way. He said, difficulty is what wakes up genius. Okay, so one version I like of this when we're backed up against the wall, how we get creative, an elderly man lives alone in New Jersey

and he wants to plant his annual tomato garden but it's very difficult work because the ground's really hard so his only son Vincent who used to help him every spring was in prison so he's in a it's a conundrum and he writes a letter to his son and explains his predicament he says dear Vincent I'm feeling pretty sad this year because it looks I won't be able to plant my tomato garden and it's given me so much pleasure

I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot I know if you were here my troubles would be over I know you'd be happy to dig the plot for me like in the old days love Papa a few days later he receives a letter from a son Dear Pop don't dig up that garden that's where the bodies are buried

love Vinny okay 4 a.m. the next morning the FBI sweeps in with local police they dig up the entire area and don't find any bodies they apologize the old man and they leave that day he receives another letter from his son Dear Pop, go ahead and plant the tomatoes now That's the best I could do under the circumstances

Pretty creative response to stress, wouldn't you say? So it's fun, but in a deep way Our realized self is already at the source of our consciousness just the way an acorn already contains the oak, it's already there. So do we play out the old patterns or do we pause and listen more deeply? And there's a growing body of research and it's fun because it makes these practices more inviting to a larger amount of the public. There's just a growing realm of research that's demonstrating how,

cultivating mindfulness affects our evolving response to stress. And you can see it on a lot of different levels. In the last class, I described different triggers. And it could be physical threats for some of us or emotional threats where we're afraid we're going to perform poorly or we're not going to be able to meet a budget or rejection and relationship. The things that really can get us, whether it's a physical, threat are the emotional threats, the same biological process kicks in.

Okay? And so whether it's a rattle of a snake or hearing that you've been backstabbed by a colleague, your body kicks into fight-flight and there's a chemical reaction, a basic chemical reaction that kind of goes on. And when this is happening on a cellular level, the genes turn on in a way that creates inflammation. This is what they're discovering, is that inflammation is the bottom line reaction when we get stressed

and the body's protective immune response to any toxin or injury. So you can think of it like a fire in your cell. We kind of just, we get heated up. And when that's chronic, when we're regularly triggered, and when that inflammation is chronic, then we're inclined towards chronic disease. There's a whole range of them, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and others. And three out of four people and develop modern cultures get these chronic diseases because

we're stressed, we lock in, the on button gets jammed, we're constantly in that inflammation process. It's 86% of all health care costs because the on button gets jammed with stress. and it also accounts for anxiety and depression. There's a complete correlation between inflammation, anxiety, and depression. So what does mindfulness have to do with that? Mindfulness affects this inflammatory response and neuroscience is showing that a lot of different levels,

that mindfulness activates the left prefrontal cortex and it calms down the limbic system. So right there, rather than just going right in a fight-flight freeze, there's a little bit more of a pause and a space and a chance to access the parts of your brain and your mind that get cut off usually when we're in a limbic hijack. I find it really interesting that the word nirvana literally means to cool.

So where stress is inflaming and heating up Nirvana has to do with really actually deconditioning, cooling. It's when we're resting in that non-reactivity. We're not caught in fight-flight freeze. And so when we're stressed, mindfulness helps us to chill. I mean just literally, on some level it does. And as I mentioned, it gives us more access to our more recently evolved brain. One of the most recent pieces of research I ran into, you know,

University of Wyoming, and also at University of Oregon, they observed 88 romantic couples as they discussed a conflict in their relationship. And they took saliva to test their cortisol levels, stress levels, just to see how it was changing. And so they tested before and after. And what they found out was that those that approached the conflict with mindfulness, they still got triggered with cortisol, but it got dissipated much more quickly. So they had their normal, you know, get agitated, but they cooled off more quickly. And isn't that what happens when we're physically fit and we exercise and we get our heart rate going, but then as soon, you know, you get going, you need the reaction. We need to have fight-flight freeze available to

us as living beams. But we don't want the on button to get jammed. So it's With physical exercise, if you're fit, your heart rate will go up, but then when you stop working out, it goes back to resting level. Same thing with mindfulness when you train your mind and your heart. That you can get activated, do what you need to do, but you can come back home again and you cannot live in a chronic state of resentment or anger or hurt or anxiety. In the biggest way, when we have that limbic hijack, when the on button is jammed, we lose access to empathy and compassion.

And we can see it in our lives that our compassion can get really abstract when we're speeding around and always feeling like we're solving problems and on our way to the next thing. We could read the newspaper and go, oh, I'm sorry that happened when we see something that's a tragedy like we see every day in the paper. But our hearts on a visceral level will not have that quality of tenderness. Even when a friend tells us what's going on in their lives, it's really challenging.

It's not our fault, but when we're stressed, there's some cutoff to the parts of the brain where the mirror neurons and the compassion networking lives. And we're just not, we just don't have the access to that felt sense. of care. So the rest of what we'll explore now is how we can shift from fight, flight, freeze to attend

and befriend, how we can begin to shift our response to stress in a way that really allows us to access our full potential. I'm going to give you two examples, and we're going to practice together then. after that. And one's got more complication than the other. The first example was a man of work with some years back a few years ago and his challenge was at work and his workplace colleagues that when they socialize he found they were making more and more racist and sexist remarks. And he was enraged. It was particularly enraged because this is when it became much more clear through

the media just how much violence there is against African Americans on the streets. And he just couldn't believe that his colleagues were so cut off from their hearts and so, and so bigoted and bias and so on. So he had one very confrontational outburst with a group of them when somebody had said something that was clearly diminishing or demeaning. And the guy kind of mocked him that he said, hey, you know, don't take things so seriously, you know, don't be so defensive. We're just goofing around here, you know. Well, it happened again soon after and he was so angry he knew he couldn't say anything. He knew that he was just going to create more reactivity. but he was a practitioner, meditated.

So he decided to work with it within his own body and mind. He did what I often call the U-turn where he felt this outrage. He felt hugely aggressive and angry towards those that were making these demeaning comments. And he then made the U-turn back to where he was feeling that anger and felt under it. And under it he could feel this enormous protection. attractiveness towards people that he cared about and fear, fear about the violence in the world and the ignorance, but got down to the place of caring. And that motivated him to join a group at his church that was really examining the whole realm

of racism and white privilege and so on. And it was very useful to him because what happened through that was he really got it that it doesn't you can't wake people up to their biases by guilt-tripping them people don't want to feel bad about themselves he really got that people don't know what they don't know okay

and that was helpful for him for not having the same level of anger and blame and it was also helpful because then he felt like he started to have a capacity to have a conversation where rather than making somebody defensive, he could actually bring the inquiry up of, well, what's going to create more of a sense of connection between the races?

And of course, more and more was happening. This was about a year and a half ago now, with refugees and with, you know, blocking our borders against refugees when what we need to do is what Canada's doing, you know, opening our hearts. So he began to have a few conversations that didn't evoke defense. And what he learned, he put it this way, he said,

Tara, inflammation is contagious, that when somebody was speaking in a racist way, his response was equally violent and that wasn't going to help. It doesn't help to get righteous and put other people down. So that was, he started getting that, that response to stress, of more, he was still in fight-flight freeze. And what he's gradually learning to do, and I think it's gradual for all of us. I can see in myself the first triggering is always in some way wanting to push away or grasp,

you know, judging, thinking something's wrong. But there's less and less lag time as we begin to practice these ways of paying attention, more and more space where we actually that beautiful quote from Frankl, Victor Frankl, between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. And in that space is our power and our freedom.

In that space is where we tap our evolutionary potential, where our future self can call us in a direction of really inhabiting what's possible. that space. And that's what he got, that's what he got really from doing all these weeks of training and white privilege was there was more space. And he could then feel his caring and reach out but not with that same aggression and blame. It's probably one of the most necessary awakenings that we have globally is that if we respond to violence with violence, it just keeps the war going.

And it's really going to be those that for whatever reason, it's not because they're better people, just for whatever reason are blessed to be able to deepen their attention and break that patterning, interrupt it, so that when the violence arises, rather than meeting it with more violence, there's a space and there's an open-heartedness and a wisdom that leads us to a higher level of adaptation.

I sometimes think of it as ice cubes in water, and the ice cubes that start melting actually help the other ice cubes to melt. When we start softening our armoring, it helps. And that's the importance of our spiritual heroes. I think of whether we think of the Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, those that modeled this evolving response to stress

where it's possible to come from attend and befriend, from a compassionate heart. So we all have that. And maybe just to take a pause here and give you a chance to check in and try out a situation. Well, wait, actually, let me tell you one more story.

I promised you two stories. they have different feeling tones and this might help you as you're checking in. So let me tell you story number two. This is a mother-daughter story and very, very painful one because this is a woman whose daughter from actually a very young age was doing a lot of different drugs and became addicted to heroin probably by age of 16 or 17. She was in and out of treatment centers and, and, um, this woman was basically living with the fear that her daughter would die at any time

from an overdose and from being in the streets because she was in the streets. And so each time, each round that she got back into a rehab center, this woman would kind of save her. She'd bring money and make sure she got the housing she needed and take care of the treatments and so on. And so it became this cycle where she'd build up hope and pour herself into fixing her daughter and inevitably she would leave the facility and end up going back to using again. So it was very amashed, very codependent.

She knew it. She knew that it was enabling. And internally she was swinging between fear for her daughter's life, which is about the most gripping fear that a human body. can feel and a sense of rage that her daughter was constantly violating promises and breaking commitments and so on. So finally at some point after many, many rounds, and this is what we're talking about. We're all kind of destined to go through a certain number of rounds doing the old habits until like that, you know, the caterpillar in the cocoon, just the pressure of it is

worse than the comfort of staying in a familiar way. So finally, the pressure got so great. She really got it that she couldn't control this and that her way of trying to control this and trying to save her daughter each round wasn't working. And in a way, she was trying to protect herself from something. She wanted to feel she was doing something. The idea of not doing would be too painful to bear, so she thought.

but that's when she decided to change the habit and to not do. In other words, to surrender, to stop trying to control things. And this meant just recognizing it's out of my hands. And so she did what, I sometimes think of it as handing it over. She kind of called on the love in this universe

and said, take this, do what you well with it, kind of as I'm doing with my hands, you're just offering it into something larger. which is a profoundly adaptive, evolved approach, to know that this self can't control, to just sense something larger and offer it. That's what she did over and over again, this kind of letting go. And it was like unplugging a bottle, and what surged up was all the grief that she had been hiding from,

the grief of facing the sense of loss that was already there. It wasn't like she was going to wait till her daughter died to grieve. The grief was already there of this life that was being spent in this way. She felt like it was an ocean of grief and it would take forever to grieve it, but she grieved. And the fear was still there and the grief was still there, but in time there was just this huge tenderness. She felt like she had shifted her identity from this controlling mother who was caught in fear and caught in rage to this open, tender space. And it was from that tenderness

that there was a natural wisdom that she knew how to create boundaries and she knew how to reflect what she saw in the depth of her daughter, truly the spirit of her daughter. She could reflect it and keep those boundaries. And it took a while, but actually within about a year and a half

her daughter got on a track of actual recovery. And I'm feeling it right now because I know them and I don't think it could have happened if she stayed doing the old style of responding to that horrific stress of the situation with controlling. It took that surrender, that higher level response to create an atmosphere for more,

more deep healing. Every one of us, until we're free, there's some level of a cocoon that we're inside, a way that we're living in a virtual reality, we're not seeing directly. Our hearts are armored against ourselves or others. There's still something and that creates a stress. And for each of us, when we keep on paying attention, we have more and more possibility to pause, to step out of the old patterning and to open really, to let that future self that's calling us, call us home to something larger, to inhabit a larger space of consciousness. So let's explore this now. If you want to shift how you're sitting or move around a little bit, please feel free.

And take some moments just to honor the pause we're in right now. your breath, the sensations, your body, just sitting here. From this place of presence, sense a situation in your life that repeats itself, that we're calling stressful, meaning difficult, challenging, brings up fear or anger, hurt. a situation where you find you habitually react in a way that isn't really serving so well that could be a situation with others where you get into a kind of a relational tangle conflict or a situation that involves addictive behavior on your own could be something to do with work family friends and allow your own

to go right inside the situation and sense when you're what it's like when you're in your reactivity, when you know when your limbic system has taken over, when you're feeling the emotions and playing them out, saying what might not be so wise, behaving in the way that might not really express who you can be. Just let yourself be aware of what it feels like when you're in it, the contraction, the tightness, the fear, hurt, or anger, perhaps a sense of shame or not liking yourself, how your mind is narrowed, living in a limiting belief, limited world. And imagine that you could float out beyond this particular self and body so you can view from the outside a bit

and just sense that like all humans this nervous system is playing out fight-flight freeze you've been rigged for tens of thousands of more years see if you can just remember that there's a possibility

to frame this differently it's not a problem this stress in a way is your that you're feeling is the future self calling you. It's really your awareness, your awakening awareness calling you to respond in a different way, to open beyond that small self-reactivity.

And just feel your wish that may this serve, may this situation serve this evolving consciousness. May I listen to the call of my future self, of my awakened heart? Just feel that sincerity. The beginning of all change is that heart longing that really wants to inhabit the truth of who we are.

Just to feel your own sincerity right now. taking that back into the situation, you might step back in and sense all the different stressors, what's going on. But imagine the sense of being able to pause in the midst of it. Just imagine that. And imagine your future self's calling you is stepping in right now, that your future self is stepping in and filling your being with wakefulness and intelligence, with tenderness and care. Just imagine that your more evolved future self is

stepping into this situation. Feel how your body feels when your future self steps in, when your awakened heart is here. Feel how your heart feels, your mind, your view of things. And just imagine responding differently. Having access to the those two wings of awareness of attending and befriending, both your inner life and that which is around you. Imagine how your future self might navigate. And you can know and trust in the days and weeks to come that when this situation arises, that it can be increasingly possible to pause, to call on the most evolved part of your being, your awakened heart, your future self, and to have more and more capacity to respond in a way that really is aligned with your awakening

being, aligned with your heart. You can continue if you'd like with your eyes close or open your eyes if you'd like. So the shift we're talking about in these two classes and working with stress is that when we feel that suffering it's really a signal calling us to evolve and that if that's our intention, if we approach it not as a problem but, oh, may this serve awakening, then we're available, then we can pause, then we can attend and befriend. Now I want to close in these last few minutes with what will strength. and that evolutionary tendency towards really becoming who we can be.

I'm going to name three things. And the first is something very predictable, which is the regular practice of mindfulness. That every day that you formally give some time to training the mind, to come out of the habitual thought patterns, and to really notice what's right here, Just to notice moment to moment what's going on without judgment, you're actually strengthening a muscle that when you get stressed will help you to remember.

Because remembering is where it's at. If you can remember rather than having a lot of lag time, if you can remember, oh, okay, this isn't a problem, this is awareness wanting to wake up more, let me pause, then you have more potential to awaken. So the trick is in mindfulness practice is we begin to learn to stay with what we typically would be running away from, what we typically would avoid. We learn to stay and not only stay but not go into fight-flight-freeze. It's like Anthony de Mello put it, he says, Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.

Think about it. That stuff comes and either you can resist it, these waves that are arise or you can allow it. Now that doesn't mean that we don't respond in our life and be active and seek to change and heal things that need attention, but the question is, where are we doing it from? Are we doing it from limbic reactivity or from the wisdom of an awake heart? And if we begin with absolute cooperation with what's right here, we arrive in the presence that gives us access to our full intelligence. Then we can respond.

Okay? So that's part one is practice, a regular practice of mindfulness. And mindfulness also means heartfulness, which means inevitably you're going to still regress. You're going to still get caught up in the old habits. Every one of us. Then the question is, what then? Because that's a stressor.

And if we blame ourselves, if we go, oh God, I'm just like, here I was, intending to move towards my future self, but instead I got caught in all sorts of blaming and resentment and so on. If we then add on self-judgment, that's more fight-flight-freeze. That second arrow is more of the limbic reactivity. So to interrupt the pattern, forgive yourself. If you commit to forgiving yourself for the regressing, you'll actually begin to have more space, more heart space for really becoming the truth of who you are. That's number one, mindfulness and heartfulness.

Number two is to bring that consciousness into the relational field because the more that you feel connections with the world around you, just the way the woman, the mother of the young woman who was addicted, kind of offered it into the field of the field of, loving presence, she felt that connection, the more that we can step out of the limbic reactivity. Connection frees us. The Buddha said that the truth of our separation, I mean the feeling of separation is great, but greater still is the reality of our connectedness, draw on it. And it might be that you draw on it, you know, how research describes that when we're

afraid and we hold hands with somebody that we trust, it really, really calms down the limbic system. So you might be drawing on it in the sense of your day-to-day relationships, or you might be drawing on it in nature, that sense of connection, or with a deity or a spiritual figure, but nourish that. A woman writes this. She says, my younger brother Alan had Down Syndrome and died four months short of his 50th birthday. He was terrible. He was terrible. terrified of thunderstorms. Our mom taught Alan that when a storm approached, he should put his hand over his heart and say, God's right here. After mom died, Alan stayed overnight with my family once a week. When a storm was near, Alan would come to us and say, God's right

here. Then he would calm down. Later, when the storm passed, he would come to us and say, Alan's all right. What a wonderful picture of faith Alan gave us. When the storms of life threatened, we can follow Alan's example and remember God's right here, right here in our heart every single day of our lives. And if we believe that as strongly as Alan did, we too will be able to say, I'm all right, even in fearsome times. So whether it's your relationship with God and the word, whatever it means to, a deity, a sense of a field of loving presence or connections with each other and with nature, The feeling of connection, the more we cultivate it, the more we'll have that choice not to get caught in a limbic hijack,

the more access we'll have to our more evolved self. The third, and that is become familiar with the moments of non-reactivity. Because each of us has moments when we're not in fight-flight freeze, but we tend to skim over them because they don't call our attention. So one of the trainings is to get familiar with what Ajum Buddha Dasa calls everyday nirvana. And everyday nirvana is that coolness when we're not in reactivity that happens in these small moments that we sometimes just skim over. And there might be a moment we just lie down to take a nap and before you fall asleep, just a sense of

you're not pushing, you're not pulling, it's just a resting in the moment. or you might be floating on a raft in a pool. Or you might just step outside and just take a few breaths. And it's before you're going, just not to go anywhere, just stand still. Or might be that you're watching a child or flowers or whatever. Just pause. Just get familiar with not being reactive. Get to know it really well.

So we've been really exploring how to have the winds of stress, strengthen our heartwood. And basically, it's to be able to, when we get activated, get the knack of shifting from this is a problem to this is a portal to freedom. So we'll close with just a few moments of a meditation because our three ways of strengthening our just regular practice of mindfulness and heartfulness,

deepening connectedness, and our final meditation will be this last one, just getting familiar with everyday nirvana. Notice the process of coming into stillness right now, that it's possible to soften and relax into stillness. and you might scan and sense, is there any place that you can relax or let go a little bit more in your body right now? Sense the possibility of letting go of what is past

and letting go of what's to come, letting go of what's happening right now. So there's no need to make anything happen. Just to be, just to sense the awareness that's right here, to sense the awakeness, that which is that stillness that can feel the aliveness, the silence that can listen to sound, sense of space that everything's happening in. You might inquire if there's no problem, then what's actually happening right here?

If there's no problem, what's actually happening right here? And then just let go and be what's right here. everyday nirvana is simply that beingness that's not pushing away or grasping onto anything. We'll close with a short poem by the poet Dana Falls and let it be an invitation to continue to rest, to be awareness. Just for now, without asking how, let yourself sink into stillness. Just for now, lay down the weight you so patiently bear upon your shoulders. Feel the earth receive you and the infinite expanse of sky grow even wider as your awareness

reaches up to meet it. Just for now, be boundless free, awakened energy tingling in your hands. hands and feet. Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really are, so fully tender and alive that when you open your eyes, the world looks different, newly born and vibrant, just for now. Namaste and thank you for your kind attention. We hope you've enjoyed these teachings. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule and special online offerings, please join my email list by visiting tarabrock.com.