Tara Brach - The Freedom of Yes

Episode Date: September 12, 2012

2012-09-12 - The Freedom of Yes - How do we accept ourselves or others when our actions are causing harm? Does acceptance mean passivity? Does it undermine our efforts towards change? This talk responds to these questions with a simple, illuminating and challenging principle about genuine transformation: Acceptance is the prerequisite of true healing and awakening. Only when we've paused to recognize and allow this moment's experience to be fully as it is, can we respond from our intelligence and compassion to prevent future suffering. 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!

About 10 years ago, I was on book tour for radical acceptance. And one question came up more than any other question, and I really want to focus tonight on that question. And it was, how do we accept something that really seems harmful? How do we accept something that maybe that we're doing that seems harmful? If say we're addicted to alcohol or drugs and we're ruining our body and our life and so on, how do we accept that? Or how do we accept when somebody else is being harmful? It's being emotionally abusive to us or physically abusive to us.

How do we accept that? Or how do we accept things that happen in terms of social injustice or policies of our country that we know might lead to more? suffering, more aggression in the world. How do we accept this thing? Is it good to accept? And then the questions really, does acceptance sabotage the possibility of constructive change? So that's the inquiry and really it was the number one question and it's still the question I get the most on acceptance. So what I'd like to do is explore a very simple yet basic principle that is incredibly challenging in practice to work with, and yet there's truth to it, and that is only by radical acceptance,

and what I mean by that is fully allowing life to be as it is in this moment. Radical acceptance. Is genuine transformation even possible? It's like everything we're worried about. our own behaviors, others' behaviors, the world, it's through radical acceptance, this moment opening our being to the reality of what is and allowing it to be just as it is in this moment. Do we contact the inner resources, our own mindfulness and compassion in a way that allows us to then respond and not react to the world? So it's the necessary first ingredient to being able to bring about genuine change. Acceptance isn't passive.

So I want to explore that and really explore how the starting place of all real healing is when in some way we're encountering something difficult in ourself and we say yes to it. And by yes, I mean, we give it permission to be there in that moment. Are we encounter somebody else that's treating us in a certain way? And on some level we're saying, yes, meaning not I like this, not I want you to continue this, but I completely give permission this moment that this is how this is. I acknowledge it. I get the actuality of it.

So that's the nutshell summary of the talk. You know, I'm titling it, the freedom of yes. And I'll mostly be applying it to, you know, how we can respond to ourselves and each other from this wisdom. I'd like to begin with a story that struck me. I heard it some years ago, Lester Levinson, and he's the founder of the Sedona Method. And when Lester was in his 40s, he became really, really sick. Just almost every part of his body was failing in some way. He had congestive heart failure and I think colon cancer and so on.

Well, his doctors basically told him to go home and not move much, and there was nothing they could do. And if he moved much, he'd set off a heart attack. So that was it. He was in his 40s and on his way out. It was a death sentence. Now, Lester was incredibly educated in many degrees. It studied all different philosophies.

and this is where it landed him. So it made him kind of say, okay, drop it all. Drop all my ideas about how things are. And let me really look more closely. And so what he did was he asked the place of disease in him, the places where his body was really in failure. What is your view of the world? And what he found?

This is across the board. was the view was a demand that things be different, that his way of moving through life was, life isn't the way it should be, I'm not the way I should be, you're not the way you should be, life, and there was this constant demand that things be different. Now, what Lester was discovering was really the basic truth that the Buddha had put forward

2,500 some years earlier, which is that our suffering comes in any moment that we want things different. Any moment that we reject what's happening here, that we say no. This is what he was finding. So for him, this kind of lit him up, and he realized he hadn't gotten very far

with all his other bright ideas. So he did this three-month sadna, that's what I call it. It's a kind of a training, where whenever he would recognize that know in him, that demand to be different, he would pause and he'd just let go of that demand

and then open to how it was. And in that letting go and opening, he healed. And he healed so much that, let's see, he was healthy for 42 more years. Okay, he healed himself. And he developed the Sedona method, which is a very powerful tool.

Please look into it for challenging beliefs and for, you know, really, empowering yourself, letting go of limiting beliefs. Now, the core limiting belief that gets us in trouble is that something is wrong. And that doesn't mean that we don't take the signal

when there's pain that we need to do something, but there's a belief in wrongness, in badness, that something should be different. Should is, as I say, often your flag. Pause when you when you get this thing that you shouldn't be like this,

or I shouldn't be like this. It's this belief that something's wrong that's behind all the different ways that we go to war against ourselves or that we deny things or that we avoid things or that we hide. Now, it's a matter of degree. I mean, we carry it around to different degrees, each of us. I mean, for many of us, there's seasons or parts of each day

where we might not be in the sense of thank you for everything, this is perfect, I could die this moment. I mean, that might not be what's going on. There might be some sense of wish, want this, this is uncomfortable, that kind of thing. But we're not really in the grip of this is wrong. Something's wrong. And during those moments, we still have some access to what we might call our more mature, or evolved, or true nature.

We have access to our humor. You know, we still have access to. a wider perspective and we have access to our hearts we're what I consider fundamentally more flexible and by that I mean something comes up we have a few different options and how we respond okay and we all know that we have a kind of a toleration point and when we go past that comfort level we go past our zone of toleration we go into reactivity and we no longer have access.

That's when we're in the no. That's when we're in the something's wrong. When we're past our toleration point, it feels like something's wrong with this, and we're in reactivity. We're no longer able to respond. There's a kind of rigidity that sets in. So if we paid attention and really watch,

we'd see all the ways that we're saying no at those times. And it's really interesting, and I'm going to ask you to pick, of course, an area where you know you go past your this is tolerable point and examine so. But when we're in that, our body is constricted. We're in fight, flight physically. Our mind either speeds up or freezes. There's usually some, in the content of the mind is usually judgment or blame or

are kind of a panicking, you know, a frenzy planning. There's a rigidity. we no longer can attune to how to respond best to move things in a way that's healing. We're in reaction, we're in the grip of very old conditioning. And then we react in a way that is very, very familiar and creates all the same conditions to re-happen or re-happen. And then we wonder why our lives are running through similar patterning.

So we're talking tonight really about the tendency to get caught in that looping of something's wrong and saying no to how it is. And it's very much a part of the design of our survival brain. So don't take it personally if you're thinking, yeah, I go into that a lot. We all are rigged that way. In fact, we all are rigged. I've mentioned this. We have a bias towards a negative.

When something unpleasant happens early in our life, for the sake of survival, we fixate on it, We remember it. It imprints. We look for the same thing happening again. You know, it's the Velcro for bad stuff, Teflon for Good Stuff thing. It's really the way our brain works, you know. So that's part of it. And, you know, it's got a feeling of life as a problem to be solved. It's like we're trying to make it through the day when we're in that. And as I mentioned, there's degrees. We're not always in the complete rigid reactivity, but there's degrees.

but there is a sense that something's wrong that kind of bleeds through everything so then you get the cartoons like one with the two Jewish mothers sitting on a park bench and one's saying oi and the other response oi

and then the first one says all right enough about the children but you get the idea so sometimes the bias is where we sense that something is wrong with you and some people are rigged that that's where it goes right away that something's wrong and it goes like an outward and at-word kind of blaming and I thought I'd share with you because we're consistent through our lives and people that blame when they're

young tend to blame when they're old unless they start meditating you know and so I was reading this book and I have no idea where I got it it's called famous last word So I thought I'd give you some examples. So this is the bias with something is wrong with you. And the famous last words of Ramon, Maria, Norvez, Spanish general and political leader. And he was asked by a priest on his deathbed whether he forgave his enemies.

This is his response. I do not have to forgive my enemies. I have had them all shot. True. Last words. You imagine those are your last words? It does not forebode well. Okay.

So, and then, as we know, for many of us, this negative bias fixates on me. Something's wrong with me. And that's our filter. You know, whatever's going on in some way it lands, this is an indicator of I'm bad and I'm wrong. And, you know, we might get a mess of compliments for a job that we did. And one person gives a kind of disgruntled complaint.

That's all we remember. remember. Really. So example number two, this is the last words of Leonardo da Vinci, artist, inventor, all around resonance man. He said, I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. So if you're feeling bad about how you're doing, I thought that was kind of a gift, you know.

You know, how we live today, they say, is how we live our life. So these biases, you know, we just keep using the same filter. I thought I'd share one more. I'm not sure quite where it fits, but this was an English adventurer. His name's Alexander Blackwell. He's about to be executed. And he laid his head on the wrong side of the block, and this is what he said. I'm sorry for the mistake, but this is the first time that I've been beheaded.

So when I'm talking about, about a negative bias sorting for what's wrong. It's really a version of saying no and it's very much but we each have different degrees of it and it's very much exacerbated by our genetics as you might imagine and our culture and and also very much our personal history and to the degree that we had severed belonging is the way I put it you know psychology calls it poor attachment bonding to the degree there was not attuned men and resonance in our early years, our very, very early years, to the degree we might have been neglected or abused, to that degree there's a stronger bias towards the negative, towards something's wrong, towards no, towards the body having no, the mind having no,

the heart being tight. So a story, and I'll carry this through tonight, some of one woman I worked with her, She was the middle child, I was going to say the middle child of four, and I'm not sure what that means. So you can figure it out, but she was either second or third. Her mom was very stressed and preoccupied, and she would be very unresponsive and then unpredictably lash out with anger when this woman was a little girl and wanted her attention. And so she grew up as she discovered in therapy with the belief that my needs are bad, I shouldn't have them. and they'll evoke a negative reaction, a kind of yuck response or an angry response.

That was her feeling. You know, neediness is a shameful thing. And she also kind of got the message that my hurt and anger about not getting my needs met is bad. So my emotions are bad. I'm basically too sensitive, and I should be different. And so as an adult, she kind of would hide her needs, but then they would pop out in anger,

so she would find herself lashing out at her three-year-old daughter. That was what brought her to want to explore this. But also she felt very, she was having a real sense of distance from her partner and felt very much neglected by her partner. So history was repeating, okay? And her experience of history of her situation was a big, no. This is bad, I am bad, my husband is bad,

the way that I end up satisfying my unmet needs through overeating is bad. You know, it was like kind of everywhere she was paying attention. It was bad. So you might consider, this is a friend of yours, she comes to you, she tells you, you know, I've always been this way. I don't know if this could ever change. And you know something about meditation, and you wonder, well, so how might she practice in a way that could take this,

that deeply ingrained reflex of no, I'm bad, you're bad, this is bad, and begin to create a little more space because there's a lot of rigidity. So I sometimes in my mind go back to, I think contemporary science has really given us a gift of a way to mentally hold this, this actually gives hope. And neuroplasticity is the key. keyword now. It's been out for about 20 years. In fact, most everything we know about neuroscience is the last 20 years. It's very new. And what we know is that any experience causes neurons to fire and repeated experiences cause, like, mom's angry at me for pestering her and I am bad, causes neurons to fire repeatedly. And neurons that fire together, wire together, which

means that if we have repeated firing, it strengthens a neural connection. And neural connections become neural pathways and networks, which means that after a certain amount of time, we have a pretty set-in, well-groomed neural patterning, whereby we have the thoughts and the feelings of, I'm too needy, I'm bad, I shouldn't be this way, and you shouldn't be this way for making me feel bad. You know, it's all set in. Now, the good news is, because we usually think, oh God, it's so deeply grooved, how will I ever change it? And the good news is we have a capacity to come into presence and actually have a new kind of neural firing

that creates new pathways. What is conditioned can be deconditioned. So I come back off into Victor Frankl's phrase that between the stimulus and the response, there is a space and in that space is your power and your freedom because that is where there's hope

that it is possible a historical feeling a very very familiar feeling comes up of that somebody doesn't like you or you're being judged and you feel that feeling and it's possible rather than going into the tumbling forward of the thoughts and feelings and reactions that you would have

it's possible to train yourself to pause and in that pause to relate differently to what's going on. You can relate to it, not from it. And this is where the beginning of the shift from no to yes comes. It's in this pause. It's in this space. The deal is that we need to slow it all down.

You know, it's not just a nice idea to slow down our lives. The embedded neuro pathways that are causing trouble are part of our limbic system, activated through our limbic system, which is part of the fast-thinking part of the brain. It goes instantly to its impressions,

its conclusions, and its messages. If we want to access the higher centers of our brain that correlate to mindfulness and compassion, we have to slow. down. Those are the parts of the brain that require kind of a deliberateness and an effort to be present. Half to pause. How would this look? So I'll read you one of my favorite poems by the poet Kaviri Patel. She's a wonderful poet. You might track her down. She writes, there's a monkey in my mind, swinging on a trapeze, reaching back to the

past or leaning into the future, never standing still. Sometimes I want to kill that monkey. Shoot it square between the eyes, so I won't have to think anymore or feel the pain of worry. But today, I thanked her. And she jumped down straight into my lap, trapeze still swinging as we sat still. Isn't that lovely? That we can have this familiar patterning of worry thoughts. And instead of either believing them, are being, you know, down on ourselves for being so neurotic, we can just pause in some ways say thank you very much. And we have created a different form of firing and different neural firing. We're beginning a new pathway. And if we said to ourselves, you know, here's a thought I have a lot and it causes me trouble, I'm just going to have the

intention to try to pause and remember and just say thank you, you know, rather than believe it. And if it happens one out of five times, we're actually, it's a radical shift. That counts. Now, that's a very simple example, and it's a bit simplistic because if the no thought, if the pattern that we're trying to wake up from is really sticky, and you know what I mean sticky patterns, right? It's not so easy. The movement from all the whole swim of aversiveness we're in to thank you, it's got some steps. You don't just all of a sudden flip into thank you.

It's a different biochemistry almost. So there's steps. And that's what I want to go through with you. Are the step, it's like, you know, getting to yes, you know, that book. Well, this really are, these are really the. steps to really fully giving permission to this life to be as it is, wholeheartedly. And we have to slow it down. So we'll just use rain, because rain is your basic template for mindfulness,

that to prepare to recognize something. And this is where you might be considering in your own life. You know, where is a place that you know, you go past the comfort zone, the tolerance zone, and you know you go over and that's where you want to wake up. You identify it and you do it in advance. This takes some premeditative deliberateness, okay? So you do it in advance. And then you say it may be something with your partner

or some physical discomfort where you go over the edge or your child's behavior, but you set your intention to notice. So then it comes up and then you're able to say, okay, this was the one I flag. So that's recognizing. Now the key juncture here is allowing. And for those of you that aren't familiar with rain, rain is an acronym and it goes recognize, allow,

investigate with kindness. Bring an investigation and a kindness to what's there. And in that process, the end is the freedom. It's not identified. No longer caught up in that fearful self or angry self. We're back to our natural awareness. natural compassion. So the R is recognized, and we've just talked about that, A is where I want to spend time, because the A is where we begin to sense the possibility of really giving permission to our life.

And it starts with a pause. When we've recognized what's going on, we need to pause, and you can intuit how come that when we're in reactivity, it's like we're tumbling into the future. The metaphor I like to use is we're on a bicycle and we're pedaling away from the present moment and we do it faster and faster when we're upset. Our mind goes faster and our body tightens up and everything speeds up. To come into presence and begin to learn to say yes,

we need to stop pedaling. Just stop. So there's something in you going to say gently and firmly, just stop. It's a gift. So we stop And we get We understand that that's the thing to do

I mean I suspect every one of you can Sense from your own wisdom that That's stopping is so important Because that's where the space opens up That gives us our power and our freedom So we stop And then You know we've decided on recognizing the pattern

We've paused Then the pausing deepens into allowing. And here's kind of how. First of all, we have the intention to allow. We already know that being at war with our experience doesn't serve. So there's a sense that we want to say yes, but as so many people have reported, when it's a strong and painful feeling, it's almost like we're going through the motions. We're saying, okay, allow, I'll let it be here. But there's another part of us is just waiting for it to go away, right? Isn't that true? We don't like it. So how do we deepen the allowing? And I'd like to give you

some what I think of as practice tips on how allowing can become genuine, okay, from just perfunctory. So the first thing is that when you arrive in the pause, take a moment to establish presence. Take some long, deep breaths. Long deep breaths. And this you've probably when you're, you're probably when you your child, you know, take three long deep breaths before you say that edit at your sister, you know, whatever. Long deep breath stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. They help to chill out the sympathetic nervous system, fight flay. So just a few deep breaths will actually alter your state some so that you have more chance at allowing. The other things that are helpful, especially if there's a lot of anxiety, is grounding yourself. In other words,

just as you're sitting here, just feel, you might close your eyes and feel the pressure of your feet on the floor, have them flat on the floor, so you can really feel them that you're touching the floor and the earth. You might feel the pressure of your bottom on your seat. And sense the earth beneath you sense yourself supported sense gravity that's grounding and then you can

more arrive in a pause by just being aware of your senses and just noticing and here's where you open your eyes just notice what's around you notice sounds color form so you establish a quality of heerness and that makes it a lot

it creates an atmosphere that's much more conducive to true allowing Now the next tip is to start saying yes to what's actually here. And you might find that there's a lot of different currents going on. So at first you might be just saying, okay, yes to this anxiety and yes to these worry thoughts and yes to this heart pounding and you might just be noticing yes to this embarrassment that I'm getting caught in this right now.

You know, yes to my anger at that person. So there may be a number of things. And in a way, you're saying, this two. Oh, yeah, and this two. And this two. So you're kind of allowing the whole field of what's here. Because it's not like when we're in reactivity that there's always just one thing, right? Does that make sense?

So these are some tips to have the paws become an authentic allowing. A few long deep breasts, grounding yourself, including all the things. including all the different elements that are here right now. Now let's say one of those elements is so big, like let's say it's really strong fear, that another element is absolute aversion and not wanting to be with it and not wanting to allow it. This is where we get to the real point.

Okay? What if you hit something that you're saying this to and this two and this two, and everything in you says, no, not this. You know, this is the thing. This is the one thing. I do not want to feel this. It's too raw. It's too deep. It's too much. The this too

is a way of saying yes to your no. And please remember this. That you can say yes to your no. In fact, that might be the end of your session so to speak. That you agree with your no. You say yes

to your no. No. Okay. Not going to be with this. You're saying, yes to the experience of not wanting it, you're even agreeing to not go further, that's okay. There's a power to recognizing and saying yes to your no. It creates some space too. You're a little more present, you're a little less identified. I'm just looking around, does that resonate for you? Okay. I bring this up because there's times that the aversion to what we're experiencing is so great that by forcing us to ourselves to experience it, that's not allowing.

By even agreeing to let it be there, all we can do is agree to the feeling that we don't want it to be there. So try to be on that one. I say this because for many of us, we have a lot of trauma locked in our bodies. And when we're asked to say yes to the trauma, it feels like too much.

And it's incredibly compassionate, just sense the too much and say yes to that feeling. I had a woman I worked with on the phone this week who has trauma and has panic attacks and was approaching a deadline at work, feeling of not going to be able to make it, a feeling of rising panic. She had just been to a meditation class

where her teacher had said, when it arises, lean into the fear, be with it, open to it. and I invited her to sense how she was relating to the fear, and it was like, no, this is not a good thing for me to be with. So I did exactly what we're talking about. This too means, okay, honor that. That's, thank you very much.

Yes to the no. And she said, and she agreed with herself to turn her attention elsewhere, to listen to music and to plan the week and to do some other things. And she described how, when she did that she found herself getting after she had listened to some music and plant fluke she found herself getting quiet and then she began to pay attention and she had a lot more space and she was able to bring a lot of compassion to that place that have been so panicky she was able to respond not react now it doesn't always work

that way sometimes you don't even come around to being with the panicky place but still you've created a new neuropathy because you've said yes to an experience which is what where the power is. Okay, to repeat, we pre-select where we're going to be paying attention, where we have all the signposts of a big no. When it comes up, recognize, pause, breathe some, maybe ground.

Then begin to sense what's there, yes, to this, and yes to this, and this two to this. I think of the deepening then is to, this is really if there's one takeaway from tonight this is what I hope you'll take away is to actively audibly it may be mentally

whispering or actively whispering where it's really tough the center of where it's really tough saying yes to that I give this permission to be here permission to be here permission to be here from your sincerity now again

it may be that there's trauma and you can't but if you can that's the next step of deepening allowing. Just like when you're feeling love for someone, if you look at them and you say, I love you, you actively say I love you, the love comes more alive. When you say giving permission, are yes, are this too, and you're really, really saying it from your full intentionality, the space becomes more open. It's very powerful. Example. For me, this last few weeks, I'm training in my dog, Katie, which is letter K, D, cute dog.

And she's got a lot of border call and other stuff in her that makes her really, really active, really hard to train. Her name's Katie, but we joke that she's KD, you know. She's really all over the place, you know. And so, you know, and I've been to a trainer and I've learned how to, I've got the basics. and she's doing much, much better. Thank you, Katie. I just want to honor her in case she's listening. But she still, when she gets excited, we'll pull some.

And my joints are such that I get hurt with pulling. So it's, you know, I really get injured. So when she starts getting really excited and distracted, I get really angry. And my voice, I'm no longer using the commands and, you know, so on in a way that I've been trained. I'm angry and my pitch raises and I lose my cadence and sometimes I tug at the leach in a way that I feels violent. It's like I'm doing it from anger and it's really awful to me. And so that became the place that I said okay you know it's tripping me over my tolerance thing. You know I get into a very self-protective and then anger reaction. Now this is an example that most of us have

with child rearing and with a million other things. So it felt important to name it, to look for it. And then the last bunch of mornings when I've gone out, I've had this thing where I start feeling, when I sense it rising, I will pause, I'll breathe, give her permission to be as she is. Doesn't mean I like it. It doesn't mean I don't have a plan for her to be different.

Just telling you. But in that moment, this is how it's okay. You are just as you are, permission, because it wasn't help me to be blaming her. Okay, it doesn't help me. Then I give myself permission to feel the anger, to feel the frustration, to feel that kind of helplessness, the fear of my body getting hurt. I just do the, I just kind of forgive and give permission. And something opens up.

And then I'm able to resume and do the training. in a more intelligent way. In other words, I'm able to respond to the situation and not keep reacting and tugging and raising my voice. It's an example for you and the challenge, and I want to go into another hard place, is when it's another person, they're doing something that ends up, we have an experience that's really, really bad and something in us goes, but it is their fault. It really is their fault and they should be different. And it feels that way, and it feels that way really strongly. And I suspect every single one of us knows that experience. I mean, it's one thing when it's a dog, you know, Katie, cute dog doing her thing,

and it's easy to kind of see through and get this as a conditioned creature. She's just doing what her breed does. It's another thing when it's, you know, a partner, and especially in intimate relationships where there's so much more attachment and fear, and fear, it's really quite difficult to get out of the thing of it's your fault. Somebody sent me this. George exclaimed to his friend, I just had another bad argument with my wife. Oh yeah, the friend said, and how did this one end? When it was over, he replied, she came crawling to me on her hands and knees. A friend looked puzzled. Really? Now that's a change.

What did she say? I think she said something like, come out from under the bed, you've got weasel. I know I'm being, that's a bit silly, but there's this inquiry if we really say, well, who do we feel most intimate with? I mean, who do we really feel most intimate with? And we feel most intimate with those who accept us just as we are, who give us permission to be as we are. That's always the way. And yet for most of us, as we know, it's conditional. And to the extent that the conditions are pretty broad and we can talk about the conditions are okay, but there's usually these, you know,

sometimes unsaid conditions on what makes you okay and me okay in our relational dance. Another illustration is Jack waking up with a horrible hangover and a throbbing black eye. The first thing he sees is rose on the side table and a loving note from his wife. Okay, dear Jack, the breakfast is made. I've gone shopping to make you your favorite dinner tonight,

I love you. He stumbles into the kitchen, sure enough, there's breakfast. Johnny, he says to his son, what happened last night? Well, you came home totally soosed and got that black eye by tripping over a chair. So, why the rose, the breakfast, the sweet note from your mom? Oh, that, mom dragged you into the bedroom. When she tried to take off your clothes, you screamed, leave me alone, I'm married.

I love that. to the guys that are listening, forgive me, because I get this little targeted here on men, but it's both ways. So the understanding, and this is the most challenging piece when we're convinced somebody else is wrong. The understanding that can save us

is that by any moment we're focusing our attention on you're wrong, you should be different. In those moments, we are not able to access our own power and our own resourcefulness. It's disempowering. Anger and blaming is a false power. It's addictive because it feels good temporarily. Every one of us knows it. I mean, when that's swelling, burning, hot feeling, there's nothing like just letting it out.

You feel power temporarily. Deep empowerment, deep access to your wisdom, to who you are, not possible if the pattern is to blame the other person. You just can't get there. And something in us gets that. We really do. As much as we think that other person should change, we get it, that we're not coming from our wholeness. We're not coming from our strength. We get it. So that's one piece. The other piece is that in any moment that we're evaluating the other person as you should be different, it's your fault, you're bad, we're arguing with reality.

We're not recognizing the 10,000 currents of causes that create this moment. And every one of us is the way we are for a reason. You know, I use the metaphor often of the dog that the guy sees in the woods and, you know, he goes to pet and the dog springs up and growls and bears its fangs and he goes from wanting to pet the dog to being really angry and you know what an awful creature and then he sees the dog has its leg in a trap okay and then he goes from that you're bad to all you poor thing if we could see the patterning if we could see the experiences that set in place another person's what we think of is badness people

don't want to be bad. They don't want to act in ways that are hurtful deep down, but then they do when they get hurt enough because that's the only way they find relief. Everybody's got their leg in a trap if they're causing suffering. It's said, and, you know, you didn't, if you, if you're struggling with an addiction to food or if you're struggling with your own anger or your insecurity with other people, it's not your fault. Genetics, early history, that doesn't mean you can't find a way to wake up from it. It just means that up until this moment, the causes and conditions of things you never chose are acting. It's the same with others. So we can't control others. We're in a mutual inter-influencing dance,

and the only place we have any power, only place, is in the moment we withdraw our blame and give permission. You've got permission to be as you are in this moment and offer that permission to ourselves and then begin this process I've been describing of saying yes to our own experience,

yes to the anger, yes to the fear, yes to the rage, really offering it. inward. The woman I described in that relationship or her partner, she said he doesn't make me feel special. He doesn't give me time. It's distracted when I talk. And so she was doing a lot of blaming, but she read radical acceptance and she really wanted to free herself. And we were working together at a retreat when we actually dropped it deeper. And she asked her for a classic example of when she went over that toleration level and got reactive.

And it was that they had agreed about a week ago to take the evening off together and they were going to go out to dinner and then they were going to come back and watch an episode of Mad Men or something. And so he came home late, too late for them to go out for dinner. They have dinner at home. Then a friend from college, an old college buddy calls. And he doesn't stay on that long, maybe 20 minutes, but she had just hit she hit it she took a bed and she went to bed took a book to bed when he came to

bed she couldn't say why she was so angry she had too much of a knot she certainly couldn't be affectionate carried into the next day that she was just completely armored couldn't say anything so that's where we worked and you know I said okay go to the point that you went over the edge and it was at some point during that phone call where she just exploded and that's where I had her pause, breathe, say, okay, permission to you to be exactly as you are, permission to me. And then she started experiencing just where she was, you know, yes, to the place in her, to the fear, to the hurt, to the anger, to the deep, deep sense of unlovable, you know. She went very deep.

She even had an image of herself as a three-year-old kind of chasing around her mother and her mother, you know, mommy, my mommy, and her mother turning and giving her a furious look and all of a sudden, that feeling. So it was deep work from that yes. And what her practice became with him, and we kept an email touch, was that whenever she'd hit that place where she felt like she wasn't, that she just didn't matter, permission to him, permission to self, she'd hug herself, She'd hold herself, she'd actually be holding the three-year-old. And eventually she could deepen her attention and see him and see where his leg was in a trap, that he was this kind of guy that never could be enough and was always extending himself to everybody

and always felt like he was guilty and falling short. But she had enough of her own empowerment to be able to start the conversation, not from a place of your bad, but here's what's going on. so they could respond to each other and they started a kind of dialogue that really allowed for a shift so this wasn't passivity by saying you have permission

it got her to a place that she could respond to their stuck place rather than react and it all came because in some way she said okay you really have permission to be as you are I mean she really said that This is roomy.

Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled. So wildflowers will come up where you are. You've been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender. So we begin tonight to look at one piece of this process of healing and freedom,

what we call saying yes or giving permission. And we know that we can't do it right away many times. There's a very gradual process. And if there's trauma, often with the support of others, to make the space.

We also know that it's not the end of the story. That we can open and surrender and say yes and accept this moment what's going on. And we need to really deepen our attention and sense what's needed so we can actively engage and respond. So it's not the end of the story. And there are times when you can

feel like it's impossible. And I always know that when I am giving, putting together a talk, that something usually comes up that reminds me of the deep challenge and the deep potential in this path. And I want to share with you as a part of my closing tonight what came up this week, which was today. And I got an email from a very dear person to me, African-American man, who, wonderful guy. And he had been traveling some,

and he got into a situation, that he wrote about whereby he was in a kind of white area and a maybe group of about eight young men in their 30s

with some with Swazica's shaved heads all the paraphernalia kind of surrounded him and started he got was being taunted and harassed and threatened

and traumatized he thought that he was going to be attacked somebody else had been killed you know the month earlier that he'd heard about by some of these gangs and and just because somebody else walked in I mean walked into the store there and and kind of broke it up and got him out of there it didn't happen that he was physically harmed but the scar and the pain of having that happen to him, reading about that, I said, okay, so how on earth do we say

to somebody who's taunting us and abusing us, okay, permission to be as you are? How do I say that reading that email? You know, how do we read the newspapers and sense the cycle that's going on in the world whereby, you know, we're aggressive, and then there's the destruction of 9-11, and then there's more aggression, and then there's more aggression back, and then there's the defilement of another, you know, groups' religion, and then there's an assassination,

and we keep, every group keeps blaming and having vengeance. How do we say in any point, okay, yes, you are as you are. How do we say that really? It's really hard. So that was what I was stuck with today. Like how could I say, you know, permission? And I did. I said to myself, okay, let's see what happens. Permission that this really happens. Permission that there's this kind of ignorance and cruelty and hatred. And then what that made happen, as soon as I gave permission, for these neo-Nazi gangs just to be, then all of a sudden I had to open very fully

to the pain and woundedness of my friend, and that broke me up. And I wouldn't have been able to feel how much I cared and loved him if I had continued to oppose the fact of these neo-Nazi guys. I would have had a more abstract compassion but it broke me up as soon as I said okay permission this is the reality it's here

it's in all of us but in these particular wounded guys it's more okay accept and then to accept the pain that a dear one goes through and yet something in me knows that I can respond more from a wholeness

by having said permission, yeah, permission, then if I had held that rigidity of, oh, that is, they are bad. Does that make sense? So I want to invite you to explore for yourself the power of giving permission, of saying yes. In those last few moments, we'll just, we don't have much time,

so I'll just give you a brief taste to come into stillness, sense if there's anywhere that you want to bring your attention to, anything going on in your life that brings you to a real reactivity, whatever brings up no, brings up that sense of this is bad, I'm bad, you're bad, this life is intolerable this way, that brings up anger or fear, so just sensing your intention when this arises the next time. to pause. And it may be that you're with other people and it's not possible,

but you can practice on the sidelines by right now, sensing the reaction, sensing all that goes into the reaction. You must feel threatened, violated, offended, facing possible failure of some form. What happens if this starts rising up and you pause? You say, okay, this is a pause. And just breathe.

Take a few full breaths even right now. Just to sense the space as possible. And that this involves another person. You might explore just saying the words, giving you permission to be as you are, or just yes. You're letting be. You're acknowledging the reality of you are as you are.

You're withdrawing your blame. You're not opposing. You might sense that your place of powers by attending inwardly and giving permission to whatever you're feeling, sense just with curiosity, what language works for you? Is it just the word yes? Sometimes yes, if it's said with real love,

immediately dissolves an open space. Sometimes just giving permission to what feels like shouldn't be there are saying, forgiven, forgive does it? Just explore the language. language, the effect is that in a cellular way you're letting be whatever is coming up in you. This too and this too. Just whatever right now might be most predominant and maybe you're not able to track anything in particular, just whatever you're feeling right now. Then it's fine. Whatever experience in this moment is most predominant, discover what happens

when you deepen the yes as far as you can so that your whole body the cells, the spaces between the cells yield and open to what is right here and now. What is the sense of your own being when you're truly allowing this life

to be just as it is? Close with a few words poem by teacher Donna Falls. It's called White Dove. In the shared quiet an invitation arises like a white dove lifting from a limb and taking flight come and live in truth take your place in the flow of grace draw aside the veil you thought would always separate your

heart from love all you ever longed for is before you in this moment if you dare draw in a breath and whisper yes 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.