Tara Brach - That Bird Got My Wings (2015-07-22)

Episode Date: July 24, 2015

That Bird Got My Wings (2015-07-22) - This talk looks at how we are imprisoned by a limited sense of who we are, and how the wings of mindfulness and heartfulness enable us to realize the spirit that is our essence. We then look at how we can bring the wings of freedom to our engagement with others. The talk’s title is the name of a book written by Jarvis Masters, a deeply wise and inspiring African American man currently on death row at San Quentin prison. 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. With thanks and love, Tara www.tarabrach.com

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Namaste and blessings. I'd like to begin this talk with a story told by a man named Jarvis Masters, who is someone I've come to admire really greatly. Jarvis has been on death row at San Quentin for quite some time now, and a good number of years ago he became a Buddhist and began meditation practice which has really been at the center of his life there he took the bodhisattva vows of compassion and he wrote a book a memoir and this is from the memoir that I'll be telling you he tells a story of being in the prison yard one winter day and a seagull landed in a puddle and a big young inmate next to him picked up a rock to throw at the seagull.

And so following his vow of compassion, Jarvis instinctively raised his arm to stop the thrower. And then the young man, of course, inmate shouted, what are you doing? Because, you know, you're not supposed to interfere with other people. You do it at the risk of your own life in a way. So Jarvis describes looking back and spontaneously responding, that bird got my wings. That bird got my wings. and so with this the young men looked at them really quizzically

and lowered the stone and everybody else relaxed because they were waiting to see some real violence go on and Jarvis recounts how afterwards for the next number of days different inmates would come up and say well what did you mean by that and he didn't say anything he didn't he didn't tell them it was like a Zen Cohen you know but and yet everyone knew what he meant

and we all know that bird got my wings that in some way we all have these wings of awareness and love that can bring us to freedom we all have that and

Jarvis knew it he was speaking to this capacity in us so I'll be coming back to the memoir and a little bit more about him that in the memoir he really talks he's an African-American man who there's such disproportionate

number of African-Americans in jail so he talks about the institutionalization of racism and the system and he also talks about on the personal level and on the societal level what it takes to become more awake and free beautiful, beautiful book

so the Buddha's in an elegant and simple way the Buddha basically said, if we're suffering, we've forgotten those wings. We're living in a very imprisoned sense of identity. We're living in a very small sense of who we are. It's like we're living in that sense of I'm the inmate or I'm the victim or I'm the aggressor. If we're suffering, we're living in a small sense of who we are.

And the teaching is that we each have this capacity, these wings of let's call it mindfulness and heartfulness. We each have this capacity. It's part of the hardwiring in our brain and it's part of our capacity in a spiritual way to wake up from that limiting identity and get a glimmer of and more and more trust who we really are, a larger sense of our being.

So Jarvis is exceptional because he is discovering that spirit in a very oppressive external prison, but we all have external and internal prisons that we're working with, and he understood that. So it becomes really important to sense how we've constructed our identity, what we're believing in. It becomes important to look at it, whether we're the stressed one or the one that's living with too many demands, the one who can't do it right, the one who wants to control. You know, what's the identity we're living in? And we're going to explore some of this in this class. Like, what have we hitched our sense of self to? What's that

prison of identity? And then how do we bring these two wings of mindfulness and heartfulness to remember or reconnect with that spirit that Jarvis was pointing to? First to say, the forgetting of who we are, the getting small-minded, it's not a mistake. I read a lot of spiritual literature that there's something bad or wrong when we're caught. And it's really part of evolution. We are designed to forget. We're designed to narrow and get limited. We incarnate and we kind of sense a set of waves as me

and we forget the oceanists and that's part of it. And if we get arrested in what's called the egoic level where we're thinking, oh, I'm a separate self and I have to do this and this is bad and this is good and others are less or greater. If we get arrested there, we suffer. And as we'll look at together, that suffering, we can either lock in and really become a suffering self.

That suffering can be your wake up to deepen attention, to wake up the two wings. And I can look at every life, including my own, and sense that every one of us, we get caught in feeling we're smaller than we, we are, we have suffering, and sometimes we compound that suffering by getting reactive. And other times we go, wait a minute, and we let it be a wake-up. Okay? So we're going to look at that some more.

And the reality is most of us spend huge swaths of time and what I'm calling the egoic level of identity. Even if we've meditated and gotten glimmers of a larger sense of belonging or a deeper soulful essence. We spent a lot of our day caught up in some way comparing ourselves to other people, judging ourselves, chasing after what's going to make us more comfortable with the kind of grasping, defending against what we're afraid of with the tensing, worrying about what's around the corner. And the biggest indicator is most of our narrative circles around a sense of a protagonist, me.

We know that. I mean, it feels embarrassing sometimes when we don't really acknowledge it with each other, but we know that, this self-centeredness, and we also know that it actually causes pain. So this ego identity

is organized around grasping after what we think we need and want and pushing away where we're afraid of. And the defining features are shaped by our culture, and that becomes important to look at. If we take it all personally, on a personal level, we miss the larger forces at work.

That our culture, and this is set, and their standard set by the dominant culture within our culture, which is white and often male, that makes us competitive, makes us aggressive, makes us have standards of achievement that really are very particular, that if you are To be respected and esteemed, you have to kind of achieve in a certain way and has a financial component. And we have standards of how one should look, the best ways to look, and how bodies should be, and all sorts of other things. Then our parents become the messengers of the culture, and because they want for us to do well,

they kind of in a very, often in a very critical way, let us know, how we should be. And the more our parents have unmet needs for feeling loved and seeing, the less they're able to love and see us. And so the message gets passed down, and this is, again, formation of identity, that how you are is not okay and you need to be different. And that's a very core part of most of our identity. That if we look really close in at our sense of ourself, there's a sense of a self that should be more and better and isn't really enough as we are. And I'm curious, how many of you have noticed that?

Can I see? Okay, okay, so I'm preaching to the choir. Sometimes it's really blatant how the criticism happens and the messages get conveyed. Sometimes it's more subtle. I'll read you one story from Deborah Nice to. that has always impacted me. She climbs easily onto the box

that seats her above the swivel chair at adult height, crosses her legs, left ankle over right, and smooths the plastic apron over her lap while the beautician lifts her ponytail and mocks. Coorses as a horse's tail. Then as if that's all there is to say, the woman at once wax off

and tosses its foot and a half into the trash. And the little girl who didn't want her haircut, but long ago learned successfully how not to say what it is she wants, who even at this minute cannot quite grasp her shock and grief is getting her haircut. For convenience, her mother put it, the long waves gone that have been evidence at night when loosened from their class, she might secretly be a princess. Rather than cry out, she grips her own wrist

and looks to her mother in the mirror. But her mother is too polite or too reserved or too indifferent to defend the girl. so the girl herself takes up indifference while pain follows a hidden channel to a place almost unknown to her convinced as she is that her own emotions are not the ones her life depends on. She shifts her gaze from the mother's face

back to the haircut now so steadily as if this short-haired child she sees or someone else. What I find powerful about that is that there's so many different ways, that when a parent is caught up in their own agenda, the not seeing of the subjectivity and realness of a child. And then when that happens, when we're not seen in our realness, we stop paying attention

to what's there. And we instead adopt an identity that'll meet others' approval. Now, there's we abandon ourselves. And I found in working with myself and many others that so often it happens that it's sometimes on a subtle level the messages we got, but that in some way we got the sense that we needed to be different

and so we stopped being in touch with what really is here and what really needs attention. So the loneliness or the loneliness or the sense of the fear or the shame just got kind of deserted, not attended to. So this again, it shapes the identity. Whatever we are not paying attention to is really a bind in our identity. So if there's an unmet need, if there's a sense of, I don't really matter to someone else, I'm not special.

But we're not paying attention to it. Or if there's loneliness or if there's fear. That fear and that loneliness and that sense of lack of importance, that shapes our identity. That's deep down the sense of who we are. So then what we do, because we're wired to not want to sit down in a not-okay self, is we take on strategies to be better. And they become part of our identity too. And I call this the spacesuit self because we enter a difficult environment.

and most of us in some way are trying to shape ourselves to get approved of and to get love. And if you look at almost any conversation you have with another person, it's rarely spontaneous. It's usually got some presenting of a self in a way that hopes for getting a certain response. Does that resonate for you? So rather than our spontaneous energies coming

and our passions and just authenticity, we present a self, and that becomes, again, we think that's what we are. Our identity gets hitched to it. So the space suit self is going around trying to meet our needs and trying to prove things and defend us. And there's a lot of different strategies,

but some of the main ones is that we try to sue themselves by chasing after pleasure. And so we all have our versions of what we get attached to, to comfort and soothe and please ourselves. And when it's strong, when there's strong unmet needs for security and love, then the attachment becomes addiction.

Okay? Does that make sense? The stronger the unmet need, the stronger the false refuge. So then we get addicted. We get hooked on, like as a society, because we have not faced our fears, we get hooked on over-consuming. We get hooked on oil.

We get hooked on ways of trying to consume and in the process destroy our environment, our natural, the body, our larger body. And we do it personally too. We destroy our bodies and our minds by the kind of trying to consume in a way that will soothe and comfort us. And then we get addicted to our possessions

and to money and to things that it's as Therose, said, we spend our life fishing only to find it wasn't fish we were after. I like this story of a young man who asked God how long a million years is to him. And God says, well, a million years to me is just like a single second in your time. And then the young man asks God what a million dollars is to him. He goes, well, a million dollars to me is just like a single penny to you. Then he gets up his courage and says, God, could I have one of your pennies? And God says, sure, just a second.

a little bit of a sleeper but we know it we know how we get fixated on a substitute pleasure we know that another little saw a little headline saying executive quits fast track to spend more times

with his possessions you know so we get hooked and in that getting hooked we actually can't address the deeper need for love and for belonging that's there You might just pause for a moment. In each of these places of how our identity gets shaped,

I'm going to pause for a moment. And you might sense the identification with the wanting self, where you get caught in, where you're hooked on something, whether it's getting approval or having more money or more possessions, or when you get hooked on food, or something that's mind-altering, marijuana or alcohol. And just take a moment to sense when you're chasing after and just be real honest with yourself.

What's it like in those moments when you're in the pursuit, when you're grasping on, when you're wanting that second bowl of chocolate ice cream, or when you're really craving for somebody's attention or angsting over, possibly getting that raise or how the stock market's doing. And sense the wanting self, that identity, and the feeling of it,

the felt sense of who you are when you're in, when that part of the space suit self is activated. Just keep that in mind, because we're going to just review a few different ways that we do substitute-seeking and to try to satisfy needs and how they shape our identity. Another one is that we try to control things. We try to control ourselves and we try to control other people.

And again, we have this deep, the unmet need is for feeling connection and feeling security, feeling of fulfillment in relationship. But when it's not going our way, we get tight. And then we use guilt. That's one of the big ones. We use threats. We use punishment. Sometimes it's passive.

We withdraw ourselves. Because my background is Jewish from all sides. I get to read this one. A Jewish man calls his mother in Florida. Mom, how are you? Not too good. So the mother, I've been very weak. The son says, Mom, why are you so weak?

She replies, because I haven't eaten in 27 days. The son says, that's terrible. Why haven't you eaten in 27 days?" And the mother answers, Because I didn't want my mouth to be filled with food if you should call. So we'll pause again. We'll take a little pause again here. We all have our strategies,

but take a moment as you pause just to sense for yourself, some relationship with someone who's close to you, who you want to be different in some way, where you have some agenda that you want that person to change. treat you differently, treat themselves differently, do something different, where it matters to you. And sense how you try to control, whether you withdraw affection, whether there's coming in sideways with your criticism, whether there's some threat or some guilt, whether you close off in some deep way, how do you control?

And most important, as you're controlling, what's your sense of self? This is the space suit identity, the controlling self. Just to get familiar, what's it like when you're operating from your controlling self? Can you feel the confines of that identity? We'll keep going and I'll name one of the other what I call false refuges or ways that the space suit self operates and this is the main one. It's really an extension of controlling which is judgment and we use judgment a lot lot when we have unmet needs for feeling loved and secure we'll use judgment to

try to make ourselves a better person a more lovable person it's got a good intention it doesn't work very well especially the more averse of the judgment is the more it confirms in our mind the sense of bad personhood and that identity Lily Tomlin put it this way he she says self-knowledge is not good news and then she goes on she goes on to say I always knew I wanted to be somebody but I guess I should have been more specific. So we get on our own case. And then it's again, this is part of the egoic design to sense hierarchy. We feel either better or worse. We constantly comparing. And it's really interesting to review relationships and sense on a subtle level how

we're comparing and looking to see if we're less than or more than. And we do it. We want to be better, we fear that we're worse, and it happens a lot in a more institutionalized way in terms of class, race, and then of course we can see it in religions to do with beliefs. I've always loved this story of a Confucius master who sits naked in his cabin meditating, and there's a, the Taoist master's meditating, and there's a group of Confucianists who are very upset about it. So they hike up the mountain to his hut to give him lecture about the rules of proper conduct because they know better than he had to conduct one's life. And when they see him sitting, the sage is sitting naked in his hut, they're re-shocked. They're shocked again. They're

saying, what are you doing sitting in your hut without any pants on? And the sage replies, he says, this entire universe is my hut. This little hut is my pants. What are you fellows doing inside my pants? So again, we'll pause to review this because I want you to look at the identity that shapes around judgment because it's so deep and so pervasive. So if again you might close your eyes, we'll do it in a very simple way. I want you to think of if you can, someone who you were with today or yesterday

or you spent some time with where you might be aware that you are in some way rating as superior or inferior. Someone you were looking to be, down on in some way, whether some disdain or someone that was inflated in your mind, see how honest you can be with yourself, where you're feeling either more important or less important. And again, sense the identity that comes with that. What's your sense of your own being when

in some way you're feeling better than someone or less than someone? So you've kind of tapped into a bit of what's the sense of yourself, your identity, when you're wanting, when you're grasping after things, when you're aversive or trying to control people, when you're judging, when you're superior or inferior. And these are just some of the strong ways that the space suit self takes shape. And the real inquiry is, can you sense the confinement of it as a caterpillar might in a cocoon when it's ready to burst out. Can you sense how small it makes you? But it's not really who you are, but it makes you feel very small, small-minded. Can you sense the prison of identity? Because the more you can mindfully recognize

when your strategies are in action, when you're in your space suit self, the more you can actually start getting that that's not who you are. The suffering is when we actually believe we're the defenses, the aggression, the wanting, the judge, and forget that we're really the awareness looking through the eyes that are seeing and we're the awareness that's listening and that tenderness of heart. We forget. So we're moving now to sense, okay, so that's the prison we're in. I mean, there's all sorts of external prisons in this society and imprisoning institutions and so on, but the internal way we imprison ourselves is by buying into an identity that's small, identifying with the wanting self, the fearing self, the judging self.

And in order to open beyond it, we need to begin to activate the two wings. We need to be able to see what's happening, that's the wing of mindfulness, and bring kindness and compassion to it. That's the wing of heartfulness. Mindfulness, that's really understanding what's going on. Heartfulness, that's the care that we bring to the moment. This is Pema Chodran. She says, behind all the hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart,

there's always fear. But if you touch fear behind the fear, there's a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungrassable, and unbiased, that which can support and awaken us at any time. So I feel like this is a beautiful description of bringing the two wings to the rigid identity to the place that we're stuck. We bring it and we find the fear behind that and the vulnerability.

and then deep down we find the space, the awakeness that Jarvis pointed to, the two wings that really allow us to be free. So I'd like to do is a brief guided reflection on just that. I'm going to invite you to pick a place where you get stuck, where your sense of your identity is small, and I'll give you some more guidance on that. We'll just practice a little with the two wings, and then we're going to open it to bring the two wings to other people.

We begin by becoming still enough that we can feel we're taking a bit of a pause. This is an opportunity, even in just a few minutes, to get a taste of freedom, of some healing. And more gives you a template that you can carry forward. So we've viewed a few places where our ego identity gets tight. and you might bring one to mind where you feel you get addictive and you become the wanting addictive cell or you get controlling and you become the controlling cell

or you become the judge you're kind of inflated or punitive or maybe you're the deficient one the less-than person to pick one of those identities and a situation that brings it up where you get caught in a space that you know is small, where the cocoon is really tight. And let yourself go right to this part of the situation where you're most activated,

where you're feeling most craving for the ice cream, or most controlling and upset with another person, are most caught and feeling deficient. And sense, as you do, behind the behaviors, the unmet needs, that vulnerability, what you're afraid of, what's missing, what you're yearning for, what you're afraid of. Just see if you can sense behind the identity, behind the behavior, that fear, that vulnerability.

You're beginning as you do to bring the wing of mindfulness, to recognize, as if you're looking through the eyes of the wisest being in the world, in the world to recognize behind that space suit that there's some fear. And you might put your hand on your heart as you continue to activate the wing of heartfulness to just start offering to that fear a very gentle presence. All you're doing is offering a gentle presence so you can sense really what Pemma calls the soft spot, that there's a tenderness inside us. There may be a message you feel you want to offer to the unmet need, the fears in you.

You might simply just offer the language of I'm sorry and I love you. So this is the wing of heartfulness, mindfulness and heartfulness. As you bring these wings to this sense of what's underneath the space suit, sense your own experience of your own being right now? Can you feel a bit more space or openness, more tenderness? That bird got my wings. We each have these wings of presence of heartfulness and mindfulness that can free up our identity. They can help us shift from the ego self that has to have something our way or has to control. or judge to this more open tender space.

This is the freedom that's possible. And as we close this particular meditation, you might just let yourself know that intention, the next time this particular version of suffering arises to awaken the two wings. If right now you set that intention, you'll be more inclined to bring a healing presence, the next time you get stuck.

Okay, so if you'd like to open your eyes, please do. Now, if you were one of those people that had a hard time finding a situation and then the instructions came too fast and you didn't feel in touch with your body, please don't judge yourself because this is a very brief little dipping in. But the, again, the template, the process is yours.

That bird got my wings. You have those wings. if you let the situation be a wake-up, that's the key. Let whatever goes on where you feel that tightness, that tightening, that your sense of who you are is getting small. Oh, these wings of mindfulness and heartfulness, can I bring that attention? Can I bring that attention right here? Okay, now, what happens is that the more we do this, the more we begin to see

sense the who we are that is much vaster and deeper and purer than any version of the space suit self, we start sensing the spirit that shines through. And then what happens is we start looking around and instead of seeing other spacesuits moving around, we start seeing who's looking through the mask. We start sensing the spirit shining through all those other beings too. In other words, the more we're identified as ego itself, the more we see others' egos

and fixate on them. The more we sense the light, the tenderness, the heart that's there, the more that's what we can pick up in others, and we can mirror it back and bring it out of them. So this last piece that we're going to explore is that. How do we, when we encounter others that are caught

in their smaller cells, they're forgetting, how can the two wings help us both not to react within ourselves and also to hold the vision and the sense of who they really are?

Because that's part of remembering our wings. We can do it for others. Jarvis, and this is the reason I'm so inspired by him, it's amazing the effect he's had on other inmates in prison.

It's amazing. So we begin to sense that. When we're living in a small sense of ourselves, others become what I call unreal others. What we see in others then is that they're wanting, are they're fearing? And what happens inside us is we encounter the unreal other and either we want something from them,

they have something to give us. Are there in some way an obstacle and we want to push them away? Or they're threatening because they make us, feel bad about ourselves and we get defended. But we're reacting as if the other is an object. We cannot see the dimensions of that being. We're reacting to a space suit. And I sometimes sense this with driving, that the other cars like a representation of the person, and I'm almost sensing that the person is their car. I don't know if any of you have that,

but I create this unreal other. And so, you know, we have our categories of cars, or it's a Porsche or an old Ford pickup or whatever, a Hummer. And we hitch the occupants to the, just like we do with the spacesuit self. We think that people are their spacesuit. And I notice my reaction when I'm going in front of somebody that is really, really going slow and how I'm reacting to that person then or when somebody's behind me and they're trying to,

they're tailgating me, my reactions. And years ago, I'd find myself when I'd get especially, when I was, somebody was in front of me going slow and I was in a hurry, really having a lot of annoyance and anger. Like that was an unreal other, but I wasn't getting it and I was really, I'd get really uptight. So I started this practice when I could, especially if there was another lane, of coming up alongside the car so I could actually look in at who was there to get a real human because it would dispel my unreal other thing, you know? And I remember one time in particular, it was around 2004, because it was shortly after my father died. I was trying

to get home. I had a conference call. I was particularly annoyed by this old Buick in front of me was plotting along. And then I pulled up and looked in and I had the most jarring experience of him looking really a lot like my father. And there is a Tibetan teaching that everybody has at one point been your mother or your father or your sister or your brother. And if we could look at everybody and see past the mask and get that this being that's looking out is the same awareness as is looking out of my eyes and we are in relationship, in a relational dance, it would entirely change our world. And there's something about having the unreal other of this Buick that was in my way and then having it become a being of a being,

like my father that really deepened my commitment to seeing past unreal other. But it takes a lot of practice. It takes the two wings because we do a lot of training formally with bringing the two wings to our inner life. We don't do so much when we're in relationship with another, bringing the two wings to our experience of another. So I want to share a story that gives a sense of how we start widening the circle of awareness and compassion, when we can not only bring it inwardly, remember,

oh yeah, that bird's got my wings, we can bring it to this, but we also can bring that mindfulness and heartfulness to another. And this, the story I'll share is one that, that I wrote up in True Refuge, and so the more, you'll find it more fully there, but it had, it had a big impact on me. And this is a friend of mine from college. This is an African-American man who became a photojournalist. And he married a Caucasian woman. And I lost touch with him, but he got in touch with me. You know, we hadn't seen each other for 15 years, 20 years.

And he got in touch with me, and he had been practicing in kind of Tibetan Buddhism. And he was now in a family situation where this woman's mother was openly hostile towards their marriage. and she was rude when they'd visit and so he was of course hurt and angry and his wife was outraged and she said you know we don't have to ever visit them I'm okay if we just cut it off but part of his spiritual path and he followed trunpa rimposhay was this

that he had taken the bodhisattva vows that whatever circumstances arise may it awaken compassion that was one thing and the second thing was Chogium Trunkpa teaches never give up on anyone. So between those two, he decided to keep visiting. But he wanted to explore with me because he was having such a reaction

and we explored it together. And of course it tapped right into both his personal wounding. Growing up as a child, he had the sense of not being seen or valued or not enough. His father had left when he was young and he could never be the man that could really take care of. of his mother, so I always felt kind of deficient, but he also had the wounds of our culture. He went to my college, which was a primarily white dominant population, and then into

photojournalism where again he was over and over again with the white dominant culture, with getting messages that come through the biases of our culture even when they don't seem overt that say, you're less than, you're not as important, you're not one of us. So to go into a family and receive that just ripped it all open. So what we did together was these two practices, two wings, of seeing all the levels in him, all the wounds that were there, that were hurting, and bringing that deep, deep kindness and presence to them and sensing what they needed, and they needed to feel protected and to feel attended to.

and one of the things that he decided out of that practice was that when he visited he was going to bring his camera and take a lot of pictures because his camera gave him a way of being a little more in the witness role one step removed a little more protected so their next visit was Thanksgiving and they went and he had his camera and the mother continued to be rude

and not respond to his questions and she refused to go out to dinner with them she didn't want her social friends to see them but he was more connected with himself and he was taking pictures and he felt like he could see her in a different way he could see her as a fearful person and a controlling person and the pain of her own tightness she was afraid of her daughter's unhappiness

he took pictures he beheld that and at Christmas they went back and there was a gift exchange and the mother gave him socks that didn't fit and she gave him a box of candies and he's a health food person and so on. Anyway but then she opens her present from him and he had given her

two frame pictures and people were kind of watching her open them and then she started crying and people crowded around and in those pictures he had captured her goodness. He

had captured her as she had this adoring expression with her new grandchild and just this very pure adoring. And then he had captured another picture where she had kind of fallen into her husband's lap in a way that was a little playful and kind of caught that. And she was weeping because he had seen her. Now what let him see her was first he had brought the two wings to himself. But then he brought the wings of mindfulness.

and heart to her. And you saw her suffering or her controlling, and he also saw her humanness, her goodness. So that began to undo this landlocked identity she had of having to control and having to put herself above and having to put down. It took several years for it to really thaw out in a way that could relieve the tension. And I suspect it's still going on on some level. But to me what's really powerful is to sense that bird's got my wings that he had those wings available

in a really, really difficult situation to bring to his own life and to hers. Every one of us gets stressed and contracts and loses sight of who we are, every one of us. We get caught up in a smaller sense of self when we go around seeing the mask. We don't see what's there.

So it takes a real commitment to remember, to have the sense of tightness, the suffering be a reminder to pause, to activate the wings. And it also takes that same commitment. Can we look at each other, really through different eyes? Can we look at each other and see the goodness?

Can we look at each other, see the suffering? I was thinking about the story I shared with you after I got back. I was away for a week on the Cape with family, and part of it was my son, and he invited his friends. So we had quite a lot of people in one place for a week, which was a lot of fun and celebration, also moments of tension and stress and so on.

And Jonathan, my husband, does a lot of photography, so he caught a lot of pictures, and afterwards we were going through them. And I felt like what happened as we were going through them was a kind of continuation of the experience at the Cape where we were of seeing goodness, that we would look at people in kind of moments of, that were more spontaneous. And we just slowed it down. And each person that we had been with for that week, we just looked at these pictures and let ourselves take in the goodness. and it was really a beautiful way to, it was kind of like a finishing of time with others.

And it also reminded me of how we can do that on the spot, if we can slow it down enough to really say to ourselves, how is a spirit shining through this being? Nelson, Mandela, Nobel laureate, it never hurts to think too highly of a person. Often they become ennobled and act better because of it. So this class we've really been exploring the universality of living in a more imprisoning identity

and how we have these wings to wake us up. We have these wings to remember who we are and remember who others are. So we'll close with a brief meditation on bringing these wings to another person. And as you come into stillness, I've referred a lot to jar. through this talk and I really recommend I haven't read his memoir but I've read parts of it. He is I think in the process of being exonerated he was accused of killing a prison guard and he wasn't in the part of the prison where it happened and now the Supreme Court in California is reviewing it so if you look him up you'll find his story it's very powerful and you might

find it a compelling one to be following Again, it's Darvus Masters. Remembering who we are and seeing that spirit living through the form of others, seeing that goodness, taking a few moments right now just to feel the breath at your heart and let yourself bring to mind someone who's very easy for you to love. And just bring a full mindfulness and heartfulness as you reflect on this person, and sensing what it is that awakens that love. And since you're looking at this person as if for the first time,

so you're not being influenced by your past knowledge really or experience so much, look for what you might have missed because of familiarity. So you can love this person afresh in this moment by really contacting what is it that you appreciate? Is it the way this person expresses? love, the look in their eyes or face, and this person's curiosity or brightness, humor, vitality. Imagine letting the person know what you see and how that person might receive your appreciation.

And then bring to mind someone else that you care about. And again, try to see this person as if for the first time. We get hooked on a kind of story about others and we don't look fresh. So sense a person right here. You can see the person's eyes, how they look at you and they're happy or affectionate or feeling moved by something. Sense what you love, what you appreciate. Sense the goodness.

And again, imagine letting that person and know what you appreciate and what it might be like for them to hear your care, your love, feel that. And then bring your attention to your own experience of your own heart right now,

sensing the unfolding of these wings of attentiveness, this mindfulness and this heartfulness and just sense the who you are, that mystery and spirit that can shine through when you're present, when you're open, and to know this loving awareness

as your true home, your true nature, and that whenever you're stuck, it's that squeeze of the stuckness that can be the reminder, oh, I can awaken the wings of mindfulness and heartfulness and find my way back home again. Namaste, and thank you for your attention.

The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.