Tara Brach - The Healing Power of Imagination: Transform Yourself and the World, Part 1

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

This two-talk series explore​s how spiritual imagination can awaken us to our deepest potential for healing and transformation. ​​In times of fear and division, our imagination often contracts, fueling separation and suffering, yet through mindful presence we can reconnect with our basic goodness and the goodness in others. Through inquiry and story, ​w​e can imagine what's possible—personally and collectively—when we trust in our shared capacity for change, belonging, and wise hope.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome friends. A few weeks ago, my sister handed me an old yellow newspaper. It was from 1955. And the headline was Query Brock's Ties. and my father was on the city council where we lived, and opponents were challenging him, questioning if he should be in office due to his friendship with a man who was in the Communist Party, actually a very close friend.

So my dad was a left-leaning Democrat, and he had people questioning him, and this was the time of the Red Scare. This was McCarthyism in its peak, and fear was being stoked by leaders in the media, that communists were infiltrating everywhere, you know, schools, Hollywood, government, and threatening our American way of life. So it was crazy time. You know, facts were irrelevant. Rumors were treated like truth. You know, people were imagining hidden enemies everywhere and careers were destroyed. Lives were ruined. Communities were turning on each other. A lot of dividedness. And he survived just fine. And that particular

scare, the red scare, that imagined world faded. But our habitual trance of bad othering, our vulnerability to that is of course very much intact. And it collectively intensifies during times of uncertainty and fear. So back then in the United States it was communism that was the threat to our American way of life and now the threat is woke leftists or Maga or pro-Palestinian or immigrants or LGBTQ, trans, non-Christians, non-whites. The collective trance of enemy out there leads to violence. It leads to political violence. We're seeing it and it's tragic.

It leads to ethnic violence. It's pervasive and horrific. Leads to wars. We're watching it all. And even in our personal lives so many have talked to me about this, those that are politically have different views, different cultural views, there's a sense of that person's in some way scary or dangerous. They represent something threatening.

So when we're in a trance of bad othering, we're not just disconnected from them, we're also disconnected from ourselves. We're not living from our full being. were contracted, cut off from our hearts. And so we've explored many times together because it's a theme that has felt so important that the pathway out of trance, it begins with mindful presence. Okay, let's recognize what is happening here inside and to recognize the fear and the judging and the old stories that are moving through and the feelings in our body when we're

divided from others or ourselves and just meeting that, learning to meet that with kindness with presence. So mindfulness is our superpower and it does bring space, it brings clarity, it opens the heart. It lays the foundation for another superpower that we're not often aware of but has a very huge impact on our life. and that's imagination, spiritual imagination, what we can really imagine or sense as possible. So when we're afraid, our imagination contracts. We envision danger, disconnection, no way forward.

But when we're mindful, this larger reality becomes available and we start imagining what's possible. We can imagine love. we can imagine belonging, we can imagine others as part of our own heart, we can imagine and begin to sense who we truly are beyond the limiting stories about ourselves and we can sense our collective potential for creating a better world. So that's spiritual imagination, this capacity to glimpse a deeper truth or possibility that's always been here. but it's not yet been fully seen. So today's reflection, and this will actually come in two parts, the second part will come

when it's ready, but it's on spiritual imagination, this imagination of our full potential and it's inspired the greatest leaders. It's the essence of Martin Luther King's dream for us. It's the possibility of growing compassion and respect and justice and harmony in our world. And on a personal level, this imagination has to do with the possibility of living from our true nature, really living our lives in more spontaneous and loving and wise and creative ways. So we'll be looking at the unseen role that imagination plays in each of our lives, both how can keep us either stuck in trance when it's fear-based or if it's grounded in presence,

how it can open us to a radical kind of healing and transformation. And we'll explore the practices that activate it. The practices that activate imagination in a way that can deepen our relationships and free our hearts and guide us in how we can bring healing to the world. So this will be hands-on. A real key tool that activates imagination is inquiry. you ask questions, it actually brings alive our imagination. And when we do it with real curiosity, it can be really very alive.

So in that spirit I thought we'd start, I'd like to ask you a few questions to invite your imagination into the room or space you're in right now. So let's begin first by consciously arriving. call in that superpower of mindfulness, wherever you are, just sense the possibility of becoming a bit more still, perhaps taking a few full breaths. And with each out breath, sense that you can let go a little, letting go of unnecessary thoughts. Nice, deep, full in breath and a slow out breath, breathing out and letting go of tension in the muscles, perhaps the areas of the shoulders, perhaps a softening there, letting go and relaxing your heart, and then widening the

attention to feel a sense of your whole body, hear breathing, noticing the quality of presence that emerges with just a few moments of paying attention. And so inquiry, a Imagine yourself, your ego, your personality, your thoughts and your feelings as a kind of covering and that beneath it your true essence is light. It's what everything's made of. Light, aliveness, love. Can you imagine that, that like the Golden Buddha, your essence is spirit, is basic goodness? And what if this basic goodness is something you can intentionally invoke and remember and

trust more and more? Imagine that. Imagine how your life might begin to change if you really trust it in your basic goodness. And imagine that the same light lives through everyone, your family, your friends, even those you struggle with. All beings, can you imagine that no matter how clouded, this basic goodness or spirit is there? It's our shared essence. And can you imagine a world where more and more of us had the courage to look for the goodness in each other? To regard one another with generosity, what would that be like? And what if you live the rest of today with?

that intention to look towards the goodness in others and in yourself. What might that be like? What if you trusted that we are inexorably connected? That all that you touch you change and all that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change in this interconnected world. And what if you believed, you truly believe that it's possible to help create a more just and loving world. What if you believe that, even given the suffering of today's world? What would that change about how you show up? And for a moment you might sense the capacity of your

imagination to give wise hope, the hope that carries us forward. If your eyes are closed, feel free to open them. So there's a well-known quote. This is King James' version of the proverbs that without vision, the people perish. That vision, imagination, it's what energizes our evolving, both individually and collectively. Our trust in our capacity to evolve, evolves us. You know, I heard a story that moved me and was John Lewis telling it, he's most of you know, lifelong civil rights leader, congressman, champion of nonviolent change. So he was on his way to Montgomery was on a civil rights pilgrimage across Alabama in 2011, and he was talking to a young aide. And he told the story to the young aide. He said 50 years earlier, 1961, he talked about

how he and a colleague were at a bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina, when a group of young white men attacked them. And they were beaten with baseball bats, badly injured, bloodied. But Lewis and his friend didn't fight back. They didn't press charges. They treated their wounds, they got some rest, and kept going with their civil rights work, as John Lewis did for the rest of his life. And then he told the young man what happened nearly five decades later, 2009. He said a white man about his age, Lewis's age, walked into his capital hell office accompanied by his middle-aged son. And he said, Mr. Lewis, my name is Elwyn Wilson.

on one of the men who beat you at that bus station in 1961. I want to atone for what I did. I've come to ask, will you forgive me? And Lewis said simply, I forgave him. We embraced. He, his son and I, we all wept, and then we talked. And as he finished telling this story, he leaned back in his chair and looked out the window

because they were passing through countryside that had once been a killing ground for the Ku Klux Klan, a group that Elwyn Wilson had belonged to, and then Lewis spoke again, he softly kind of to himself, he said, people can change. People can change. I share this because his vision of our potential to change, our potential for goodness, to keep evolving, that's what kept him walking forward all those years. He was manifesting spiritual imagination, despite everything he'd seen that spoke to our capacity for cruelty, for injustice, for hate. So imagination or vision of our potential is what us gives us hope and resilience.

There's a Tibetan teacher who taught never give up on anyone. And it doesn't mean that change happens on our timeline the way we expect. More it's that all beings have Buddha nature, have this essence of spirit and it's possible to manifest. people can change and that of course includes ourselves. The more you can imagine your own potential to keep evolving, the more that potential is fueled, is nurtured. Here's an essay some of you might remember. It's called spiritual fitness. If you can start the day without caffeine or pet pills, if you are cheerful ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles, if you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time, if you can overlook when people take things out on you when through no fault of yours, something goes wrong. If you can take criticism and blame without resentment, if you can face the world without lies or deceit, if you can conquer tension without medication, if you can relax without liquor,

if you can sleep without the aid of drugs, then you are probably a dog. I have always loved that, you know, and I figure if we can learn from our dogs, that's a step towards manifesting. So, the more we imagine our potential, the more it waters the seeds of awakening. Thomas Merton puts it this way.

He says, life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or fable, it is true. The truth of who we are, that sacredness gets covered over by stories that we tell ourselves and we can use our imagination to go beyond them to reconnect. So let's pause because we'll just keep practicing a bit with our imaginations as we move through this. so let this be a time where you pause and again arrive right here in your breath and your body

and as I continue to speak if there are words I use that don't match your experience whether it's the word divine or I often speak about our true nature as love light or as loving awareness feel free to change words the gist is that you use your imagination to sense what's possible. So breathing, feeling the aliveness through your body, you might take a moment to feel your hands and soften them, feel a tingling there, feel your feet, feel your body as a field of sensation, relaxing with the movement of the breath. And again, take a moment to sense how you might habitually view yourself.

your ideas about yourself, your ego, your personality, your body, how you're doing, your career, your relationships, the covering over the Golden Buddha. And then allow yourself again to sense that deeper truth. Imagine and sense that there's a fundamental aliveness or light or awareness. that is animating your being living through you, that it's pure as much natural expression is love, that it's inside your heart and inside your body, your hands, your feet, it's everywhere, this awareness, this love light, it's filling you and it's around you, it's everywhere. You might sense the space around you filled with this love light and bathing you permeates

all the spaces inside you and through you. sea of love light. Just rest in that sense of your essence, allowing the different waves of feelings and thoughts to arise and pass. So you're resting in the ocean and cradling the waves that are made of ocean. There can be a sense that love is always loving you. Whatever the waves, the ocean's always holding and cradling them. You are made of ocean, of essence, of love light. more true than any limiting story. In this life it's possible to be guided by this basic goodness, to live from this basic goodness more and more.

Imagine what that would be like tomorrow, next week, to feel guided by loving awareness, to feel your life is expressing it. You might even imagine one particular way that your life is expressing loving awareness in the near future and sense that just by imagining it you'll be more drawn to manifesting. Okay, taking a few full breaths, if your eyes are closed, opening your eyes. So in times of darkness where there's really a shadowy atmosphere in our collective human psyche,

so much fear, so much reactivity. This imagination and vision of the light of the sacred is essential. Wise hope is essential. People can change. We can evolve. Spiritual imagination has soul force, as Martin Luther King taught. It helps us to open to and align with and move towards the light. And it helps change the world.

Bell Hooks writes, Imagination creates the future. It is not a passive mirror. It is a tool of transformation. So you might try that on just to think of imagination as a tool of transformation. Now, the challenges that individually and collectively, when we're in the thick of pain and suffering, when there's a lot of fear, when there's a lot of unmet needs, trauma, uncertainty,

as there is in our current world, the survival brain takes over. As I mention often, it's a limbic hijack. We're narrowed into flight-fright freeze. It's not so easy to arrive in presence and to evoke imagination. It takes intentionality, which is really my motivation in reflecting on this with you because if we get more on purpose about imagining, we all of a sudden discover we have tool for transformation we didn't know we had. So like mindfulness, imagination's a more recently

evolved capacity. It's one of the gifts of our prefrontal cortex or higher brain. But when the survival brain takes over, we lose contact with presence, with tenderness, with compassion. These days, there's some people that are considering empathy a sin. I mean, we lose contact And imagination sensing what's possible is a huge casualty and it goes hand in hand with losing hope. So if you've been feeling that, it's in the wider culture. We're kind of cut off from the imagination that actually gives us hope. So again, it's an essential ingredient in human evolving to be able to imagine.

it's shaped every leap in human consciousness from fire to language to civil rights to quantum physics. So, so many stories I think of Albert Einstein. So when he was a young Peyton clerk, he imagined what it would be like to ride alongside a beam of light. This is an act of pure imagination, unconstrained by existing physics. And that's what led him, this imagining, led him to the theory a special relativity which transformed our whole understanding of time and space and motion. Imagination, he later said, is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination and circles the world. Another example. I love these, so I'm sharing them with you. In the 1840s, Ignace Semmelweis, he was a Hungarian physician. He noticed that women were dying

in much higher numbers in hospital maternity awards than in midwife-run clinics. So he imagined, and this is radical for the times, that invisible particles on doctors' hands might be the cause. Germ theory hadn't been developed yet, but he required doctors to wash their hands with chlorinated lime before examining patients. What do you think happened? Maternal deaths plummeted. And at the time he was mocked.

but his act of imagination, you know, believing in an unseen cause and acting as if it were real. Those two things paved the way for the discovery of germs and the transformation really of modern medicine. One more. In the 1500s, Nicholas Copernicus, he dared to imagine something unthinkable in his time that the earth was not the center of the universe but that it revolved around the sun, right? So, this was not based on new instruments or data. It began as an inner vision, a reimagining of cosmic order that went against centuries of doctrine.

So imagination that's grounded in presence, not fear, allows us to picture unseen reality. I mean, how could we have crossed oceans without imagining land beyond the horizon? or how we could heal from trauma if we don't have some imagining of ourselves as more whole? Or how could we have developed some semblance of democracy without imagining equality among those caught in hierarchies of power? How could we forgive without imagining the humanity in someone who's caused harm? And really, how could we begin to repair our plans? without imagining a future where life can thrive again. It's the key to all evolution,

including spiritual unfolding. I mean, you would not be drawn to the spiritual path. You wouldn't be here listening if you didn't have some intuition, some imagination of a love, a light, a truth, a connection, and awareness that's larger than the egoic self. People, All of us can change and evolve. We can awaken to a larger truth. So the remainder of reflecting together will explore the role of imagination and practices that activate imagination in our personal life. And then the next segment, when it's ready, and these things are organic, they have

their own timing. This is a new set of talks. We'll expand it to include the practices that activate imagination and serve our relationships and our collective psyche. Okay, so again, that quote, where there is no vision, the people perish. It's true also in our personal life. I mean, consider when you have felt most stuck in suffering, whether it's recent or more distant past, when you've been caught in the trance of unworthiness, caught in depression, despair. As you know, when we're in it, we feel like there's no way out.

It's like things will never change. We're flawed to the core. We'll never find love, we'll never be happy. So it's this imprisoning doubt that we can't have a good life. And it paralyzes. In those moments we're cut off from imagination, from the part of us that can see new possibility and a brighter future, the part that gives hope.

So the shift is two steps. The first, as I mentioned, is the superpower of mindfulness, bringing a mindful and kind presence to what's here. And then from that presence, once we've truly arrived, we look towards what's possible. One of the ways that I found in my own life is most direct and powerful in a daily way at cultivating my imagination is through prayer.

What happens is that imagination makes prayer stronger and stronger, and the stronger our prayer, the more imagination grows in different areas. And the reason is this, that what we're most deeply praying to, in some ways, a larger field of belonging. and what we're praying for often is love or peace. And those are all already here. They're just not visible. We're praying to experience something that's here,

but temporarily out of reach. So that when we engage from prayer with presence, and we get in touch with our longing, let's say our longing for love, we're actually imagining and calling forth what we're longing for. That's why I love the quote from John O'Donoghue, that prayer is a bridge between longing and belonging. I mean, think of it. You can't imagine love.

You can't pray for love or peace or anything unless some part of you's already had a taste of it. So the seeds are here and the prayer waters them. Let's just practice a little with this because I think practicing is what gives us a taste best. We'll just explore a little bit of prayer and spiritual imagination. And to do so again, if you're doing something else or your attention's distracted, you might create a little bit of a space right now. And in that space, you might close your eyes or lower your gaze. and let your attention turn inward and become aware of what's inside you right now,

sensations, feelings, the mood of your heart, and set your intention to be open, to explore this in a sincere way, and to imagine yourself at the end of your life, that you're looking back, but you're at the end of your life, and you're bringing to mind a relationship that, you deeply value and also feel some distance or disconnection in, some conflict. So bring that person to mind, a person you care about but feel some distance from, and just ask yourself looking back what would most matter about how you engaged in these current times. What would most matter about what you experience with the other? So letting

yourself feel about the pain of the distance and the longing for connection, what you're wishing for. And feel this as a sincere longing. Prayer is just the words we use to kind of embody and express that longing. You might mentally whisper and you can address it to the universe, to God, to high self, to whatever you sense is the larger belonging. Just address your prayer. It may be, may we be close, may we be caring, may we be tender, more real. Just whisper your prayer. It may be please, may I love and be loved.

How you might invoke the person and say their name, may we remember our loving, may we live from that loving. Imagine it happening, imagining, getting closer. more open-hearted, warmth, the tenderness, both of you creating a space to be real, and sense that the loving is already here and that you have the possibility of living into this more and more fully. What if you regularly imagine this, this loving connection, growing, deepening, how would that impact your relationship?

Okay, take a few full breaths if you'd like, if your eyes are closed, open them. So we're just exploring how imagination, actively picturing and evoking, can energize us towards manifesting more full reality. Again, bell hooks, imagination creates the future. It's not a passive mirror. It is a tool of transformation. So what we know is that when, imagination is blocked when it's commandeered by fear, they're suffering and we can't evolve. And this is what's happening when we're most stuck. We're just caught in this trance of feeling separate, deficient, fearful. And the way our minds are imagining is fear-based. It keeps us in prison. So let me just take a moment to explain how that's happening a little more

because it's so interesting. I mean that our brain is a predicting machine. That's what our brain does, it brings images of what's going to happen and it's based on past experiences. So, it's constantly guessing what's coming and filtering the world through those expectations. So in this way, it's constantly constructing reality. We just don't see what's there. We see what we expect to see. So the brain is always imagining and given the dominance of fear, given our negativity bias to latch onto what's going to go wrong, we're often imagining a threatening world and an endangered self. It makes sense, right? I often think of the son and a mother together and the son is saying to the mom, pretend you're surrounded by eight hungry tigers.

What would you do? And she said, I don't know, what would I do? And then he said, stop pretending. ending. So we just keep generating these fear-based images of what's going to happen. And we can live for days and for decades in a world based on those limiting stories. I heard this something about it. This was on Spanish TV about this gentleman who knocks on his son's door. Jamie, he says, wake up. Jamie answers, I don't want to get up, Papa. And the father shouts, get up, you have to go to school. Jamie says, I don't want to go to school. Why not ask the father? Three reasons is Jamie. First because it's so dull. Second, the kids tease me. Third, I hate school. And the father says,

well, I'm going to give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it's your duty. Second, because you're 45 years old and third because you're the headmaster. So here's what's interesting to me. We're hardwired for fear, for defending, for aggression, for revenge, for othering, for being stuck in a small world of the survival brain, we're also wired to perceive our belonging and to celebrate that belonging and to serve each other on behalf of that belonging. In other words, we're wired to realize a larger reality and how we pay attention determines whether we stay stuck or we evolve because what we practice gets stronger. So, I was working with one meditation student who was very, his life was very contorted

and twisted by social anxiety. A lot of people, a lot of us have it. And so based on past experiences and beliefs during business, when he'd approach a business gathering, conference, social events, his brain would automatically predict, I'm going to feel awkward. This probably won't, people probably won't like me or respect me. I'll say the wrong thing, I won't belong. And his body would go along with that, tensioning, his mind would be small and tight. He'd arrived prime for disconnection basically. So, this was his prediction of the moment, fear-based imagining. That's what he was practicing over and

over and over again. So, and as we know, when we anticipate being fearful and insecure, it impacts how we act. I mean, what actually unfolds. I, Gandhi said it so clearly that our beliefs create our actions, which create our character, which create our destiny. I abbreviated that, but it's so powerful. What we believe creates the reality. So for this man, most gatherings, even though it's meant for deep emotional healing when he do gatherings with groups and so on, he felt like an outsider and he wasn't so easy to approach. So, as we know with trance, the beginning of healing is really deepening a mindful, a presence to what's happening, see the old fear patterning and pause and open to what's here.

And so for this man, we practiced together. We practiced together a few times before actual events. So he started training himself before going places to pause and to come and presence so he could breathe and feel his feet on the ground and name what was happening. The I won't belong story, you know, and then investigate and feel the vulnerability with that. And the deep belief, I don't matter. I'm invisible to others. And feel the clench of a small, lonely self, real squeeze in his heart. And with that, a sense of compassion towards that.

And I asked him to imagine. I said, okay, from the view and the heart of a compassionate witness, you're the compassionate witness, just view that your inner life, what's going on. Just see yourself. So he's becoming visible to his own higher self. And what do you see from that view? And in addition to seeing someone who is hurting, he also saw someone who's incredibly sensitive. aware, kind, bright. So I asked him, what's your prayer from that place for yourself?

And it was in some, his own language, to trust his goodness, trust his decency and his sense of humor and his brightness. So we further engaged imagination. I invited him from that place of trusting and imagining trusting to then visualize himself. more at ease and curious about others and speaking authentically with others, you know, connecting with his kindness and his alertness and presence. I invited him to imagine being with another person who is friendly and open, maybe nervous too. So I want to step back and say, this imagining, it's not fantasy. It's a simulated possibility that helped his nervous system settle and gave him

body a new script. One actually was more essential truth to follow, more following the truth of the Golden Buddha than the coverings. He was learning to practice something freeing, not fear-based. And for him, it took many rounds. But imagining helped him come home to a larger sense of who he was. And to trust that as more the truth. So the challenge, as many know, trying to release very core limiting beliefs, the brain is pretty persistent. It likes to stick with what it knows, you know, has a bias towards fear thinking, as I mentioned, and it's actually more efficient to do what it's familiar with. It was more efficient for him to just anticipate being awkward and an outsider, but that's what keeps us stuck. Sometimes we have to go beyond what is brain

efficiency. So mindfulness is a key. Mindfulness helps us to pause and create. more space to then be able to sense possibility. We really need to pause. I mean, you know that wonderful quote, Victor Frankel, between the stimulus and the response, there's a space and in that space is your power and your freedom. It becomes a space of imagination. Now I want to emphasize here again

that for that imagination to be spiritual imagination, to draw us towards a deeper truth, we need to be in an embodied kind of presence. Otherwise, imagination becomes untethered. It's spinning in fear, fantasy, or reactivity. It's not grounded in. It doesn't bring out a deeper reality. It loses its power to reveal a deeper truth because it's not grounded in present moment awareness. Okay?

So the trick is, to use a different metaphor, we need to be fully present with the waves, and then we become able to imagine the vastness and the luminosity of the ocean. Let me share another story because that gives us such a feeling for the power of imagination, especially undoing old beliefs. One woman I worked with, she was in her late 40s and she had a huge amount of guilt and regret and self-hatred really for the way she had parented. She had been drinking when her daughter was growing up very, self-centered, self-involved, and not attentive.

And so as a young adult, her daughter really struggled a lot with anxiety and depression. She was in recovery for addiction and the woman, you know, my fault. I did this to her. So that just kept her in self-aversion. And with her daughter, because she was so down on herself, it was difficult to connect. She always in some way was defending or protecting. herself because she felt so bad about herself, she basically felt unforgivable. Her belief

was, you know, I feel as a parent I let down all who I love. And I'll just step back and make a comment that the belief that were unforgivable when we're not able to imagine basic goodness is such a prison for so many. I think of Carl Menninger who founded the Menager Clinic. He said that if he could convince patients in the psychiatric hospital that their sins were forgiven, he said 75% of them could walk out the next day. If we can shift what we experience from unforgivable and bad to the possibility of trusting goodness, that's the radical shift that can heal our lives. So for her, we began with mindful presence. using, we used rain for that so she could feel in an intimate way, that whole cluster of

believing that she was failing, she was falling short everywhere and hating herself, you know, just the feeling of hating herself and that others couldn't possibly love her because of her being so flawed. And she got in touch with never being at home in herself that that basic kind of pressure and weight on her heart that felt like something was always wrong. And when she got to that, because I asked her, you know, how has it been to be living with self-aversion, that was the moment of a real out that she could never feel close to others or at home with herself. And it brought up what I often describe as a soul sadness when you see the landscape of your life and how many moments self-aversion has blocked

the capacity to connect with others or to enjoy a moment. And so she felt that kind of washing through of grief. She was being fully present with the waves. So that's the mindful presence as a superpower. Then we shifted to imagination. And I invite her to view all of this from her, why is this most compassionate self to see the suffering and to see what she saw about herself behind all of it, the who she really was.

And she said, I see that I love imperfectly and I love. And my daughter knows it, some way she knows it. And then asked her, what do you wish for yourself? What's your prayer? And she said that I could trust that I'm a loving person, an imperfect human. But there's not badness, there's a good heart. Then I asked her to imagine, what would that be like if you trusted that? If you trusted you had a good heart.

And you can consider this for yourself as you listen. Like, what would it really be like? Who would you be if you didn't believe something was wrong? That's a question for our imagination. And she knew. She said, I'd be free. I'd be more spontaneous, I'd be more real, and I'd be closer with my daughter.

She began weeping at that point. Now, part of training imagination is to stay with and really get familiar with what we're imagining. So I invited her to stay with that imagining of who she'd be if she really was trusting her goodness, that freedom to be natural, to be close. Because the more familiar we get, the more we trust that possibility and we trust it more than the old stories that we've been living in.

I shared with her another quote from Weinstein that I like, which is imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. Because here she was, she was imagining some possibility of freedom. So for her, like all of us, it took a lot of practice. She had to do many rounds of opening to the waves and the pain and then imagining and sensing the goodness, the basic goodness, that she really wanted to trust. And also many rounds of imagining being close with her daughter. She started imagining that she could let her daughter know how much she loved her and admired

her. And then at some point after imagining enough she felt called to do it, she felt brave enough to be vulnerable with her daughter and began expressing more. She honored her daughter's dedication to recovery, the way she was helping others, her courage. You know, she shared her trust in her daughter's path and her hope that they could deepen walking together. And I'll share with you that when she did that, her daughter was so touched because her mother, she knew her mother loved her and yet her mother had felt so so pulled off, so distant, and somehow now she was more available. And that is the gift of presence and the courage to imagine.

We become more available to be who we can be. Relationships can evolve. Rebecca Solnit writes, We live inside imagined worlds. The task is to imagine better ones. This woman, she was imagining a more loving world. So as we're exploring, people can change and often the grounds of our work, we can wake up from ways that we self-other and make ourselves bad.

And for many of us, the most challenging world to imagine is one where we truly hold ourselves our own lives with tenderness and love, with the same kind of cherishing that we hope to hold others with. And you might ask yourself, you know, what would it be like? If right in this moment I could hold this very life with love, with tenderness, with reverence, what would it be like? I want to read one of my favorite verses in the world to you. This is written by the poet Raymond Carver.

He was dying of lung cancer and this was his final poem. He writes this, he says, and did you get what you wanted from this life even? Even so. I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved. To feel myself beloved on the earth. And did you get what you wanted from this life? Even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved. To feel myself beloved on this earth. For me, what gives this short poem such power? Part of it's those words, even so, that he's acknowledging all the waves of imperfection. He's saying, even so, even with all the waves of judgment or anger or jealousy or loneliness or fear, there's something deeper, more true about who we are.

So he's basically saying is that feeling ourselves as beloved, as feeling our spiritual heart, awakened love light, requires embracing our human heart. It means including all the conditioned waves of the self, impermanent, imperfect waves, and remembering they're part of spiritual heart space. The waves are part of the boundless sea. They're actually the particular ways that spirits taking form in any given moment. I mean, that's what we are. We're love light and it's manifesting with all its conditioning in the different forms. of our existence, even so, and we're made of love light. So here's the thing. If we truly feel ourselves as beloved, that tender heart space by nature includes the whole living

world. So our final practice now will do a practice of presence, contacting the even so, the imperfect ways, and calling on our imagination to sense with deeper what's always and already here. Again, it's not a long practice. Take a moment to put aside whatever else might be distracting you. You might sense that as you breathe with every out breath you're letting go a bit, letting go of unnecessary thoughts. Nice, long, deep breath, letting go of tension that you don't need to hold.

softening and relaxing, letting go into presence. And take a moment to scan your life and choose somewhere that you feel like you get stuck where you turn on yourself in judgment, where you feel deficient so that you're living in a kind of confined world. Might be something to do with work, might be relationships, lifestyle habits, addictions. so that in those moments you're not just feeling like an imperfect human, you're feeling bad in some way, unacceptable, unforgivable, and choose a situation where this occurs. And bring it close in so you can actually see and sense what's happening,

what brings up the feeling of bad, unacceptable, since the worst part of this, so you get in touch with the feelings, and you might sense what you're believing in those moments. And when you're believing this, when you're really believing it, as we do, what goes on in your body? Where's the sinking feeling or the tight feeling or the squeeze? Where do you feel most vulnerable? And you might let your facial expression and your posture kind of be a reflection of how you're feeling when you're feeling stuck, when you feel bad.

And you might ask yourself, when I'm believing this and feeling in this way, what's the impact on my life. How long have I been going into the experience of bad personhood? How has it affected my relationships? My spontaneity, my capacity to enjoy, to relax. So how is this story and belief and feelings cause suffering? And you might put your hand on your heart as you do this, you begin to bear witness that this is presence with the condition waves, the stories, the feelings of not enough self, bad self. This is the even so, the condition waves, even so. And to begin to imagine now, calling on the most wise and loving part of your being, you

might consider it as your future self. 20 years down the road, whatever, where there's more of a free flow of loving where your wisdom is shining through more or just that loving bodhisattva inside right now. Just call on that. To bear witness.

To bear witness to the waves of pain, the vulnerability, and also the gold, the basic goodness, that in you which wants to know truth, that wants to love and be loved, the light that lives through you. It's the holding that inner life with compassion. Sense what your prayer is for your small self, for your human heart. Maybe it's to trust your goodness, to feel loved, loving, to feel safe.

What's your prayer? And whatever your prayer is, imagine it coming true. Imagine the possibility manifesting. So if you're wanting to trust your goodness, how would your life be different if you trusted your goodness? If you really trusted the purity, the light of your heart, how would your life be different? Relationships, just moving through the day.

If you didn't believe something was wrong, who would you be? Take some moments to get familiar with who you'd be, the embodied experience of who you really are, yourself as the beloved. Use your imagination, sense the aliveness and openness, the radiance, the care, the awake awareness. And sense yourself is resting in that, that you are that sea of love light, you're cradling the ways of your being. Truly tender, your spiritual heart, holding your human heart. And did you get what you wanted from this life?

Even so. I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved. To feel myself beloved on the earth. Once you know the pathway, through presence, through imagination, it's possible to return again and again, to live from a larger, more true reality.

even the idea of feeling yourself as beloved begins to water the seeds of a deeper truth if your eyes are closed opening them taking a few breaths and i want to thank you dear ones for your presence and your care i look forward to continuing this in the weeks to come okay blessings and love