Tara Brach - The Barriers to Loving Presence

Episode Date: January 9, 2013

2013-01-09 - The Barriers to Loving Presence - You might reflect on someone important to you, and ask: "What is between me and loving fully?" Notice what happens. This talk explores the ways we create separations from others, and the power of inquiry and presence to awaken an unconditionally loving heart. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

So I wanted to start tonight the talk with a story that I've always loved. And it is written by Lorne Isley, and it starts once on ancient earth. There was a human boy walking along a beach, and there had just been a storm, so there were starfish scattered along the sands. And the boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But of course, every time he threw one starfish in, another one would appear somewhere else, and an old earth man happened to be walking along and saw what the boy was doing and he called out, you know,

why are you doing this? The boy said, well, I'm trying to save the starfish. I'm getting sirens in the background to give us a little more drama here. Save the starfish! The man said, but your attempts are useless. Every time you save one another returns, often the same one. You can't save them also, why bother trying? Why does it matter anyway?

The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand, he answered, well, it matters to this one, and he flung it back into the sea. There is something about the consciousness of being with anyone that we're with, any being, any creature, including the life within us, and really getting that life matters to this being. That when we get, that each of us cares about being alive, there's immediately a resonance in the heart. The core of most spiritual paths that I've encountered

is a hymsa, is this non-violence, is this kindness. And it's unconditional. It's a kindness to all beings. It's all encompassing. And in the teachings of true refuge, which are really the teachings of realizing our true nature, this capacity to care about beings, care about life is considered to be a key expression of our awakened heart mind, this caring.

And yet if we reflect on our own lives and I'm going to have you reflect, of course, as part of this class, most of us are aware of how we hold back our loving. not exactly the mechanics of it but we're aware that there's this potential we've touched it I mean we know what it's like to feel tender and warm and open and we're aware of the difference between that and how many moments of our life were kind of on automatic and we're not so warm and receptive we kind of know that we hold back loving and under that what we start discovering when we meditate is just this very strong conditioning to narrow ourselves, to be caught in reactivity, to be judgmental, to be on our way somewhere else, to be speeding

along, to be preoccupied with how others are perceiving us, try to get ourselves more comfortable and secure. We know the self-centeredness. It's not, I'm not saying this like we're bad. It's just we know that's our strong conditioning to be living in a sliver of who we are and not inhabiting that open-heartedness. So we know that when we check it out. So here are some words of Rumi that have been a real inspiration in my life that I want to share tonight and really have our entire reflection in a sense circling around these. Rumi writes, your path is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers

within yourself you have built against it. So let me say that again. Your path is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself you have built against it. So I find this extremely powerful because it's a teaching and it's a purpose. practice all in one. It presumes that love is already here, that we're not seeking for something, we're not cultivating something, that the love is already here, it's intrinsic to what we are. In fact, the spiritual path is kind of an uncovering of what's clouded

it over. So that's the presumption in that teaching. And then there's a practice, a prescription, which is bring your attention to where the barriers. are, find them. Bring them into conscious awareness. And again the understanding is the more we are mindful of the ways we create separation, the more we have some choice about it. So really this inquiry in any moment and I invite you to explore it right now of what is between me and loving presence.

What is between me and loving presence? The power of inquiry is to bring our attention to what we might have in our trance not been noticing. And you might right from the start, right at the beginning of our reflection, just close your eyes and

close your eyes and bring to mind perhaps someone that you care about and you know there's more distance than you want And just for a few moments, let that relationship be in the foreground of your attention. And in an intuitive way, just sense into it, what are the barriers that you've created? How do you make distance here? What's between you and loving presence in this relationship? You might keep this relationship in the back of your mind as we reflect a little together

on some of the most common ways that we all do it, that we all create distance. But again, what we're doing tonight is looking at how asking questions, how inquiry energetically brings the attention to the places that we haven't been noticing, the unconscious ways that we make distance, shines a light. So, what is it that, just to step back a bit, how come we armor ourselves, how can we even do that? How can we have barriers to loving? That's one of the beginning questions to say.

And I'll just name that there are really three evolutionary facets of conditioning, that through our history humans have had that. is part of our survival and one is to avoid harm. The other is to move towards whatever we think will give us pleasure and reward. And the third is to attach. We've got something we think we want or is going to help us to grasp on. Okay? And if we start investigating our barriers to loving, we're going to find elements of these. So these are, I'm just trying to create a little bit of a conceptual framework. So avoid harm. How do we go about that? And how does it affect us in relationships? Because we do it, we do it just the way the armoring of our

heart is no different than a turtle would have a shell or a porcupine would have its quills or an octopus puts out its ink. I think of this image of writing on a tablet with a quill and ink now, but you get the idea. It's like this is just our way of protecting ourselves. And the more we've been in this life in our own personal lives wounded, the more there's going to be armoring to protect because the heart is this organ and nexus of great sensitivity. And some of the woundedness makes the sensitivity feel excruciatingly raw. So we protect. So the different ways that it shows up, if we start looking at how we protect the different

ways it plays out is that there's some core beliefs that emerge. that come from our history, that either I'm unworthy of love, so we protect ourselves because there's this belief and that tells us we're going to get hurt. I'm flawed. You know, I'll be rejected. The world is not trustworthy. It's a dangerous place and others will suffocate me, will take advantage of me, will overwhelm me, will abuse me. So we have a belief system put in place. Makes that armoring stronger.

So how it plays out. of the big ways it'll play out if we, for some of you as you were saying, okay, well, how do I create distance? Well, I create distance because I spend a lot of time blaming and judging. I know we don't even have to do a hand raise I'm always inclined to, but we know it, you know, we do that. Remember in last year in the New Yorker there was a couple facing off and he's defiantly saying, yeah, well, the Dalai Lama didn't have to put up with your whining, you know. So, you know, so there's this blaming and our insecurity also, and we can see how this

happens when we're insecure, something's wrong with me, the other person, we kind of project that they're judging us. We have what's called a negative bias through evolution where our mind fixates on where we see something's wrong or problematic. You can just watch in our relationships how often rather than enjoying and saying, oh, you know, life is so fleeting, let's enjoy each other, we fixate, we fixate on what's wrong. I think of these two women on a bench talking and one of them says, oi. And the other one goes, oi.

Then the first one says, okay, enough about the children, you know. It's that kind of thing. It's like we're just, it's a kind of a complaint thing that's a real habit in our mind. And so, and then another way that we could might have noticed. with in relationships is in some way we feel a victim like in some way we're being manipulated taken advantage of and we lock into that role this is just another way it plays out that just to be aware of how do we create a barrier ah I'm the victim some of you might remember the story of a devoted wife it's been a lifetime taking care of her husband and now he's slipping in out of a coma

for months, but she stayed by his side every single day. When he came to his sense as he motioned for her to come closer, she sat by his bed. He said, you know what, dear? You've been with me through all the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When the business failed, you were there to support me. When I got shot, you were by my side. When we lost the house, you gave me support. When my health started failing, you were still by my side. You know what? What dear, she said gently, I think you bring me bad luck. So, again, in a way we have to be light about these, because every one of us has barriers. We all erect defenses from being hurt. But the way we do it, we each have our ways, and being

a victim's a big one. And then, of course, there's ways that we defend ourselves by pretending. We pretend to feel one thing. We pretend to have things going better for us than they're going or worse for us than they're going actually. There's lying, there's hiding, there's moving away. There's not being willing to communicate. And we know that, that we have, out of our fear we back off. It's like Jules Fifer has a cartoon where the woman saying, but I love you and he's saying, don't you threaten me. You know. But it's that kind of thing, not wanting to go where it's difficult. Then there's the ways that we disengage in some way preoccupy and get riveted on some comfortable substitute that keeps us absorbed, whether it's

video games or TV or overworking, so we're just not there. We know that one. We can sometimes act like we're really accepting what's going on with our, with people that are close to us when there's not connection, but it's not really acceptance. It's kind of a false resignation, or its indifference. And I think that's really important because the word radical acceptance is out there, not just from Tara Brock, it's out there, it's like, you know, as part of different therapy processes, DBT and others. And acceptance is really tricky. Acceptance can really be in some way a masquerading for a fear and inaction. Just not going to deal with it.

You might have also noticed this is a whole different realm when you checked out that relationship that there's some way that you're unable to settle in and pay attention and be close because you're restlessly seeking something more and something different. This is the kind of pursuing advantage, reward. And it's that kind of thing where this isn't it. I'm not getting the love any.

There's something more somewhere else. I'm not getting the entertainment. I'm not getting the fun. I'm not getting the soothing. I think it's so interesting with the personals, how you know, we see these descriptions of other people and they sound

a certain way in paper that matches our ideal because we go around with these ideals of how people should be. And then in person, does it match? Rarely. Single black female seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I'm a very good-looking girl who loves to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping, fishing trips, cozy winters, nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand.

Rub me right way and watching me respond. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work wearing only what nature gave me. Kiss me and I'm yours, call and gives a phone number, and asks for Daisy. So thousands of men have called up the number. It was the Atlanta Humane Society. Black Lab. So again, the idea is that we have an idea about how others should be, and they don't match it.

And so we're seeking things to be different. So then finally there's the attaching that we have something that we like or want, but we hold on real tight, try to control to make sure we get to keep, and then there's jealousy and possessiveness. So these are just all the different ways that we create barriers. And it's interesting and I invite you to check it out, to watch your mind when you're in a relational situation, especially ones that matter to us. And you'll notice that it's a rare moment when we're not trying to move towards something else, make something happen, get away from something unpleasant, or hold on tight.

There's a rare moment when there's just open, loving presence. We have deep conditioning to these different ways of pushing away, grasping. So again, just to take a moment to reflect and let your inquiry go a little deeper, just to bring that relationship to mind, how do I create separation? Is it through judging my pretending to be other than my authentic self, my grasping after more wanting something to be more or different? if you have a good sense of what you do to create distance, you might put yourself into the situation in your mind's eye and sense what your body feels like when you're playing

out the activity of either avoiding something or grasping after something, judging, blaming. Notice how your mind is when you're in that mode of either judging or judging or grasping or wanting something more preoccupied. Just the size of your mind, the space of your mind. Just sense if you can tell that there's a narrowing of being, there's a way in which you're narrowing away from your wholeness, cut off. And just honor this inquiry with that sense that it matters and you can keep on exploring this.

You can keep on posing this question in any moment. in any moment, how am I creating barriers to love? So what we'll do now is I'm going to share with you a few stories. Several of them are my own because this has been such a live and juicy inquiry for me. I love posing questions. I mean, I find that it just all of a sudden more truth opens up. And the basic understanding is what dissolves the armor is recognizing it. But recognition has different levels.

You can recognize it in kind of a glancing blow and go, oh yeah, I'm judging again. Or you can recognize it in a deep way and really sink in and begin to unpack what's there. So for me, some years ago I really got it that judgment and blame created distance for me. And it wasn't the kind of judgment of, you know, oh you're a wretched person. kind of judgment. It was much more subtle ways of a person just not matching up to what I thought they should be doing in that moment or whatever. So I made a commitment to bringing rain to blame because rain, as many of you know, it's just a very simple way of bringing mindfulness to a situation. The letters of this acronym help to slow us down so we can really bring presence.

recognize. A is allow. I is investigate. It's this inquiry. And you investigate with kindness. It's an intimate investigation. And the end of rain is the freedom where you're no longer identified with that small sliver of yourself. You're back to that natural, open-hearted being presence. Okay? So I decided I was going to bring rain to blame. And what that meant was whenever I caught myself in the act, you know, if I was in the middle of a conversation, and it wouldn't be able to do it. But whenever I recognize it, I would try to take a little space

and unpack it with this kind of inquiry, knowing that this is one of the barriers to love him. So very soon after I made that commitment, I was with my family for the holidays. So you know the story. It's like, what else? Of course, we all regressed into our old roles, and of course I had judgments about that.

And so one night it was really, you know, very obvious. And I kind of said, all right, I said I'd do this. So I kind of put on my park. I went outside and aside and I was going to do rain to blame. And started, you know, first with rain, it's just recognized and allow, okay, judging. You know, I was judging everybody. I was even judging the dogs for how they were begging. I mean, I was like, it was very pervasive.

So, but, you know, it was my son, my father, my mother. So I, you know, I just said, okay. said, okay, judging and let it be there. The A allow is really important because if you don't make room for things to be as they are right now, you can't begin the inquiry. You're in reaction. Okay, so the pausing, the A is really important. And then I began to inquire and I started saying, okay, so what's really between me and loving presence and I found this really tight squeezing knot-worthy in my body that related to the judging. And so I started breathing with it and I allowed that to be there and I just said, you know,

really be as much as you want to be and it was very intense. And then at the inquiry was really, well what's the belief or view of this place in me that's all squeezed? And at first it was, well everybody's doing things wrong but as it unlayered it was really I don't like myself. You know, it was, I'm not doing this right because everything others were doing in some way translated to my own failures. I wasn't being the peacemaker I should be.

I wasn't being a good enough mother, you know, I was, it was me. So, recognizing that, okay, that was between me and loving presence, bringing that more attention and sensing how many moments in my life has that created a sense of distance. How many moments being down on myself has separated me from others? And then there was a kindness and I put my hand on my heart because that's what I often do when I'm bringing that intimate attention in the eye of rain. You know, I'm inquiring, bring present. And gradually there was this tender opening which is what happens.

Space opens up. It's a shift in identity. I'm no longer in that, I'm wrong, you're wrong. place, it's like the space that's paying attention and kind. And so that was the end of rain. And interestingly, it started raining. It was funny, so I kind of was scurring back home. But I started bringing to mind members of my family one by one and they were still doing

quirky things that, from discriminating wisdom, they could have done it differently. Didn't matter. Didn't matter. They were in my heart and I was in my heart and there was the heart space open. rain on blame, really, really powerful. And for me, it's been this ongoing commitment that when I sense distance, I'll say, okay, what am I doing to create a barrier? And very often it's still judgment.

But the difference now because of that commitment to inquire is I catch it much, much more quickly and I don't believe it so much. Like the judging is going on as a matter of just rolling through, but it's just a habit. It's just like a little narrative that I'm not taking us seriously. Now there's different ways that this inquiry that Rumi poses can help people. One person I wanted to share with you is a friend of mine who had had a number of failed romantic relationships in a row. And she was just entering into a new one and really afraid she was going to sabotage it

and all the way she always sabotage things. She really liked this guy. So she took on the question and the question is really, you know, how am I creating distance or separation? She committed herself to what room he said, find the barriers to the loving. And she started noticing the ways, the activities that created distance, how she was kept on testing him. She was so insecure she kept testing him to see, you know, she would

pretend disinterest and get busy and see if he would, you know, come forth and, you know, she latched on to judgment, his way of driving. Of course, that's going to be a big one. She was critical of his favorite movie, which at that time was Fight Club, which I actually think was a good movie, but she was critical

of it. You know, she was projected that he was judging her times when she confessed to being really angry at her sister for something stupid. So, you know, she just found herself doing these things. But each time she would pause and say, you know, ask this question, how am I creating distance? And she'd start investigating them and find that underneath them was this belief,

I'm going to be hurt. Same belief, I'm going to be rejected. Anybody that gets to know me will reject me. And then underneath that, the fear. So instead of going ahead and playing out her behaviors, she was pausing and being with that fear. And she gradually started sensing that she could be a compassionate presence to that fear and not necessarily act each time she had this impulse to, you know,

go ahead and follow up on her judgment or her distancing behaviors. And the good news is, and they were both meditating, so they both had this capacity to name and investigate, it takes a certain amount of mindfulness training. They started sharing with each other the ways that they became aware that they were creating separation. And if there's any recipe in the world for intimacy, it's that kind of truth-telling. This relationship continued.

So discovering that our path is not to seek for love, we're not trying to cultivate something, rather we're looking to see what's happening to make distance. Now, sometimes that inquiry can unravel in a way that surprises us. And I share a story, I think a few years ago I might have shared in one of these classes. I was going to do a presentation at a conference in San Diego. and the hotel was about a half an hour out of the airport. And this cab driver, I asked him if he knew where the hotel was. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I know.

It's a Latino man who's very, you know, kind of very poor English. You know, I saw, I read that the airport was 25 minutes, something like that. Well, at about 45 minutes, when we were going around this industrial park and circling around in parking lots, I realized he had no idea where he was. who was going and then at around 55 minutes I started really, you know, asking him questions. Well, he was pretty freaked out himself, you know, who was increasingly distressed. And at one point he was driving faster and faster. I noticed that headlights were coming right in our direction.

And I yelled out and he went like this with the wheel and went over the median and got us going in the right direction. He was going, he was so confused. he was going against on a highway. So I went from being, you know, I had yelled and I was terrified to this kind of surreal calm. He got to the hotel and I was almost like I was detached. And I remember, and I looked at him and I just said very gently, you know, well, you understand I can't pay you for this. You know, and, you know, it was, it was like, um, how?

how to say it, that, you know, this errant man and it was just a destiny, like I just, of course I wasn't going to pay, and he just kind of gave me a kind of look and we left. So I went upstairs and my surreal state kind of dissolved and I found that I was very agitated, really agitated. So I kind of, the inquiry, okay, so what's between me and presence or me and being okay, being happy, whatever. And I realized, and it was very, very quickly, you know, I kind of put aside the story of what just happened, that I had a huge amount of shame.

Huge. And I felt really mean, I felt bad, I felt punitive, and so I started inquiring. I said, okay, so, you know, what happened? What was between me and loving presence? you know, like what really went on? And I started discovering these beliefs that I had been inside in this kind of a trance of, you know, he's supposed to know his job.

I'm supposed to be treated a certain way like I'm the passenger and I should be taken where I'm entitled to be taken to where I'm supposed to get to in a certain amount of time and my life is not supposed to be at risk. You know, I had an idea of how it was supposed to be. And it was almost like I went into this role of this entitled, offended person who of course wasn't going to pay, but there was a kind of superiority at it. And I think of it in retrospect as kind of a cultural thing too. It was like I was in this state where I was being kind of gentle and a little bit like,

of course I can't pay you. It's like this child, you know, you need a time out. You know, it was superior, you know. And in a way it was the blindness of white privilege. It was very cultural, it felt like deep shame. And I feel even in sharing this story, I share a lot of stories about myself, and often I'm no longer can feel in my body so much the yuckiness. But this one, it was very painful. It wasn't that long ago.

It was just a couple of years ago. It's easier when I say, oh, about 15 years ago I did this dumb thing, you know, but it's not one of those. So the barrier I created was the story of who I was. and this kind of entitlement of, you know, how I was supposed to be treated that blinded me to his vulnerability to the fact that he was poor and scared and knew in the country and struggling and probably had a family that needed, you know, I could afford to pay it.

My point in sharing the story is we go into a trance that really cuts off the sensitivity of our hearts. and if we want to be free, this inquiry, and it's an inquiry to ask over and over and as much as we can remember, what is between me and loving presence? Share with you at an interesting kind of update on this story tonight. I came into the parking lot. I have a spot that's usually saved for me. There's two cones because I sometimes get caught in traffic and I need to get here and be able to settle

So Janet kindly, Janet and Gary put out the... So I went to my, drove to where my spot is, but the cones were put aside, and another car was there. And I got this wave of right, you know, I'm the teacher here, and I need to get in, and I have a job to do, and somebody took my space. You know, so I parked, and I ran into my friend Barry, and we were laughing about it, because it was really no different.

Sure. You know, it's good for me to have my place there, but I'm here. And the fact that I snapped into this kind of entitled righteous outrage thing, that's a reflex that's trance. That was between me and loving presence until I, you know, recognized it some. Now if you happen to be sitting here thinking, oh I was the one. I just want you to know I did take your license plate, but I'm kidding. It was a gift in disguise. I got to hang out with a good buddy for a few minutes. So sometimes the barriers because we feel like a victim, sometimes the

barriers because we're in the role of the, you know, of the persecutor, you know, either way the oppressor or the victim, either whether we're fighting or feeling attacked, we are still creating a barrier by living inside that role. I got a a beautiful letter from an American man from India, family from India, and he was telling me about how many years he spent in that role of victim. He said he tried to out America, everyone else, yet still felt cut off from this place he called my country. He said, where me was the victim, the oppressed, the undesired, the ugly, there's something wrong with meness, and the other was the victor, the oppressed, the desired one. The beautiful and straight.

white European person that everyone was attempting to emulate. I so wanted to be white ever since I was a child. So he writes about, okay, this was the role and this was the belief system he got into and the feelings that he was caught into. He writes, these white Europeans, the white Americans, to me they always were the protagonists and all the stories I read, all the movies I watched and all the places of power. And people like me were the uncivilized, the terrorist and the problem that needs to be solved. And then he describes the process of waking up. That same, okay, what is really happening in here and this willingness to touch viscerally

the pain and the shame and the self-hatred? Because when we start seeing how we're creating the barriers, that seeing leads us to open to experiencing what's there. It's the unseen, unfelt experience. that keep us in trance. He started feeling it. And he described he shifted his relationship with that sense of being a victim, that he was able to hold it with kindness. And he said, I shifted my relationship so I can feel belonging. He says, the more I access my experience of my country's culture, the who I am, the feelings with curiosity and compassion,

I'm able to transform into joy, pride, and self-love. And this insight's allowed me to hold and cherish my relationship with people who self-identifies white or European. In them I see my very own Buddha nature that is filled with the same 10,000 joys and sorrows. There is no longer an other. It is just us. So I bring this in because our investigation is

at one very personal and related to our personal history. and it also needs to be very much to do with our cultural biases, that until we begin to really take the time to sense how am I as a white person making assumptions that actually create distances and are hurtful, I'm not free. Or if it's a person that's been marginalized, how am I buying into being a victim?

Because until we all inquire, and have the courage to feel the uncomfortableness underneath it will still create the barriers and not realize that us, that us quality. So many of you know Einstein's words on this. They're quite beautiful. He says a human being is part of a whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings

as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures

and the whole of nature in its beauty. So this is our potential when we find refuge in love. To embrace all of the human, living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. This week, some of you might have read in the New York Times on the Opinionator blog, an article called The Myth of Universal Love. And I'm curious how many of you saw that?

I'm just going to look around. I'm just a sprinkling. Okay. Well, of course that attracted my interest, the myth of universal love. I was ready to disagree right before I even started reading it. But I found, so here's some of the points in it, that caring is a biological event, that we have a limited quantity of this resource of caring, that it would wear down our limbic system if it was overly stimulated, too regularly stimulated.

Basically, we can't possibly pick up all the starfish. And even if we could, by trying to pick up all the starfish, will dilute our, energy and our efforts and not be as truly available for people. And I think there's some really important truths in that. I think it's absolutely true that love for humanity can be usually an abstract idea and that care, true care, visceral care means we're having contact that we see a being and sense a being. Doesn't have to be a person right here, but we're we sense a being and our heart gets ah realness, beingness. Just like me this being wants to live and not to suffer.

So it needs to be visceral for care to be real. So it is a biological experience, it needs real contact, it's not an abstract thought. It's also true that we naturally pay attention to those closest to us. In fact that's the field where we learn to wake up our capacities for empathy and compassion. That's where we explore the barriers to our relationships most directly. That's our learning-growing field, those closest to us. That's natural and fine. So the big inquiry then is, does that mean then that there's a limit to responding genuinely

to others, more and more, wider circles, more and more different beings, different species with a genuine tenderness? Is there a limit to our capacity? My understanding is that to the degree we're identified with an egoic self, to the degree that our attention constantly comes back to me, mine, my fear, and to all the beliefs of how I'm unworthy or I'm going to be hurt, or I need this, or I'm entitled to that, to the degree we're circling around that egoic self,

then yes, we're limited and how much attention we can pay to really connect and sense our share. beingness, we're limited. And for so many people growing numbers every day, we are becoming intentional about waking up the parts of our brain, waking up this capacity for empathy and compassion. The trainings we do in mindfulness allow us to be present in a way that we can can feel connection. There's amazing research going on. I get these different online postings that, you know, just every day new projects showing this, that and the other thing. Amazing

research that shows how the parts of the brain that relate to the resonance circuitry, the compassion circuitry, get lit up when we learn to pay attention in certain ways. So we are in the process of changing the structure and function of our brain. and in an evolutionary way having increasing capacity to embrace widening circles. And evolutionary psychologist, I brought up Stephen Pinker the other day, his big book, Better Angels of Our Nature, which I'm just creeping through. But he and many others are showing how increasing collaboration, cooperation, not just between families or tribes, but between societies and less violence.

and more concerned about violence. We are becoming the beings you want to become. And that's, and we have that possibility. It's our potential. So if we get beyond theory, I can ask you to reflect, and I'm really interested in knowing this, do you feel, and this is a question, how many of you feel that you have become kinder over the years? How many of you feel that?

Yeah, many of you have two hands up. Yeah. If we sense it in ourselves, we can trust it's possible and that it can keep going. I think it's important to trust that because that gives us energy to keep attending and deepening. This is Barbara Kingsolver. She said, 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. So we get in touch with our intention. And it happens sometimes when we are in a place. where we're really recognizing how short life is or we've experienced a big loss and we get it, love matters. For one dear friend in the Sangha, Jesse, a couple of years ago, he almost died of heart failure, heart disease. He had an 11th hour heart replacement transplant. And he described

when he hit bottom and he absolutely had no idea whether or not he was going to live and there was a good chance he wasn't, but he hit bottom. And he knew with that kind of clarity and certainty where you know you're right in the center of truth, he knew that all that mattered was feeling connection. If you imagine you're in the last few moments of your life, I can speak for myself and what is important, loving presence, just knowing the truth, belonging to it, knowing it as our deepest nature. That enlarge belonging gives us room for this living, dying world. Jesse knew that.

We get more intentional when we know it. That's why I'm bringing this up. Intention matters. Remembering that love matters is what will have us ask that question. Okay? So your path is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself you have built against it. So this is a path that we, I'm closing now this, you know, reflection that we bring right to the immediacy of our daily life, to our children, how am

I creating separation, and our parents and our friends, to our kind of the acquaintances where we haven't yet found out who each other is, the people we don't know so well. You can't have deep personal contact with everyone, but Ahimsa, you can sense and respect the life and subjectivity and beingness that's there. One woman writes, during my second month of nursing school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and breathed through the questions until I read the last one. What is the first name of the woman who's here each week and cleans the school? was some kind of a joke I'd seen her several times. She was tall, dark-haired in her

50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in the paper leaving the last question blank. Another student asked, will the last question count towards the grade? Absolutely, said the instructor. In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care even if all you do is smile and say hello. So I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy. So this regular inquiry again and again is really what's between me and presence. It's an inquiry that'll show us where we're tight in our bodies, where our beliefs are limiting, where our hearts are closed and it's an inquiry that'll in the obtain of attention naturally encourage a letting go

of the armoring. This is Mark Nippo who writes, we waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is a fear there will not be enough time. When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world. And often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness, which if not put down, diminishes our chances for joy. It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something

and then forgetting that we chose to put them on. We complain that nothing feels quite real. in this way our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye

feels like the lips of another being soft and unrepeatable so let's take a few moments now as a closing to inquire again again and with this inquiry, this final inquiry, we discover a deeper kind of a question that to me is one of the blessings of the path. And that deeper question is, isn't the love that I long for already here? Isn't the connection, the love, the fullness? The fullness.

that I'm seeking already here. So take a few moments and let yourself in this pause feel the life that's already here. You might notice if there's anything between you and presence with this life right here. Perhaps still chewing on some thoughts or ideas or perhaps just not having settled into your body.

So take a moment. Invite your awareness to settle in so you can feel the movement of the breath so you can feel the aliveness, sensations, perhaps relax the shoulders, soften the hands, perhaps soften the billy so the breath

can enter more fully into your being. Is there anything between me and full presence in this moment? Is there anything in this moment blocking loving presence? A love or a care or a time, tenderness towards the life that's right here. Love doesn't have to be in the traditional idea of it, it's a tenderness, a friendliness towards the life that's right here. Is there anything

between me and holding this life right here with tenderness, feeling intimate with the life that's right here? You might bring to mind someone that you care about, perhaps the person you're reflecting on before. And just sense, is there anything? in this moment between you and really having an open-hearted presence and care for this person. Perhaps asking this question, is it not true that the love that I long for is already here? Sensing in the background underneath the spaces between holding everything, this tender awareness, and already here.

As you taste, perhaps, this loving presence that's already here, you might absorb its sound. To sink into it, let it sink into you. You'll bathe by it.

No matter how many barriers we erect, this awake, empty, radiant heart is always and already here. Sense how much it includes, sense this heart that's as wide as the world, that everything you can imagine all of life, the beings in this room, your parents, whether they're alive or dead, your children,

friends, all creatures, all species, the earth are mothers all held in this heart as wide is the world. May we recognize whatever is between us and loving presence. May we awaken to the timeless and pure heart that is our deepest essence. May all beings everywhere awaken to loving presence and be free. Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.