Tara Brach - The Heart Crosses the Abyss - Three Inner Trainings (2020-07-08)

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

The Heart Crosses the Abyss - Three Inner Trainings (2020-07-08) - In the moments when we either resist or get possessed by our strong emotions, we are in a trance, and cut off from openhearted awareness. This talk explores the truth that "it's not what's happening, it's how we're relating." We look at three key trainings that help us relate to difficult emotions with a wise and compassionate presence.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome and thank you for joining me for this week's reflection. I'll begin with one of my favorite prayers which goes like this. Dear God, so far today I've done all right. I haven't gossiped or been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish. are self-indulgent. I'm very thankful for that. But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed. And from then, I'm going to need a lot of help. So it's a prayer to begin us because there is a lot of energy we exert towards monitoring how we're doing and really guiding ourselves, managing ourselves. Some years ago, Ram Dass, who you might know wrote, Be Here Now, and he passed

away recently. Well, he was in D.C. and I attended something he was offering. And he said that when he first started practicing, he said, I was filled with judgment and craving and anger and judgment and impatience. And he said now after decades of meditation and prayer, I'm still filled with judgment and craving and anger and impatience. But he said the difference is, now they're like these little schmooze that come and go. They don't really bother me. So this is the proverbial bad news, good news. Bad news is that most of the core challenging emotions that you experience like fear, like aggression, like feeling deficient, will probably continue showing. up for the rest of your life.

The good news is that if you deepen your capacity to meet them with an honest and compassionate presence, they may be unpleasant but they won't cause you real suffering and they won't cause suffering to others. So why is that? Well this is one of the deep truths on the spiritual path. is it's not what's happening, it's how you're relating to it. It's not what's happening. This emotion's arisen.

It's how you're relating. And when we're not mindful, when we're not relating with the quality of presence, we get hooked. We stay in limiting beliefs, we stay in feeling small and separate and reactive. And in contrast, when we can regard with presence, it keeps us connected with a larger space of being really, where there's perspective and wholeness and we might still feel the different currents moving through us, but they don't possess us, they don't take over and they don't define us.

Our sense of who we are does not get imprisoned in them. Instead they're like Ram Dass' schmooze. just experiences that are impermanent, they come, they go, they are part of us, but they do not contract our being. So this will be our focus tonight and it's one that I feel like deserves regular revisiting how to respond to the difficult emotions with that honest and loving presence. and I'd like to keep it simple and we'll have time to practice together. In a way, I feel like one of the best quotes I know that can guide us as we look at this is RELCA. This is really classic. Many, many will remember it. He writes, perhaps all the

dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting, to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is in its deepest essence something helpless that wants our love. Something helpless that wants our love. So consider that the dragons, greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, when they appear they don't seem like helpless princesses, yet if we deepen our attention, we'll find that every emotion arises out of a vulnerability, out of an unmet need. Every emotion is an urge to protect and enhance our life. In the deepest way, it's our love for life that's trying to move us towards taking good care. But as I said, it doesn't appear that way, the way they actually come through in form and our challenge is

that when strong emotions arise, anger is one of the great examples, we go into a trance. We believe the beliefs, we feel the feelings, we act on them, we get possessed. It often takes over. And if we don't get possessed, it's often because we're in a trance and we dissociate, we pull away. Either way. Either way. What the trance means is that we've contracted into a false sense of who we are. We're no more living from that larger sense of being. We're cut off really from our wisdom and from our creativity, from our love. We're cut off from that sense of belonging, being part of our world.

to relate wisely begins by recognizing the trance, by having a strong emotion come and sensing, well, how am I relating and seeing how we're relating to the dragons, to these more primitive layers of our emotions. We start finding out, do we instantly try to get rid of it, try to push it under, try to ignore it, try to deny it? Or maybe we find that. mind because if we're doing that, we'll notice we're going online all of a sudden, or we're checking our email again, or we're aiming right for the refrigerator, we're getting busy. So you can sense something comes up and immediately you're just trying to get away. I sometimes think of it like we're on a bicycle and we're pedaling.

And when these strong emotions come up, we pedal even faster to get away from the unpleasantness of the present moment. So that's one way that we're relating, is trying to get away, dissociating. And then another way we may turn it against other people that are feeling anxiety and next thing we know we're in some way irritated at those we're with, we're lashing out.

I heard the story of a woman who was in a job interview and the interviewer asked, you know, well tell me what you think your biggest character defect would be and her reply was, well, to honesty. And then the interviewer said, well, I wouldn't consider honesty a defect. And applicant responds, I don't care what the hell you think. And I know it's silly, but for so many of us, the habitual way is to have a bad feeling and then to project the badness out.

And then, of course, and I think this is perhaps the most pervasive, way we respond is when we get possessed, let's say, with a feeling of anger, a real aversion, the undercurrent is, I'm bad for feeling this. We flip from this feels bad to I am bad. I'm the owner of this feeling. I made it happen. It shouldn't be happening. And it means I'm bad. I heard another quip where one psychologist told the client, these feelings of unworthiness are common amongst the unworthy. You might be familiar with this when we talk about the second arrow, that the first arrow is that painful feeling, and the second arrow that we shoot at ourselves is an arrow of condemnation for having that feeling. This is really common.

I think it's helpful to remember that the second arrowing, the shame about strong emotions is not a personal pathology. It's pervasive because it's actually built into our architecture of our brain. We all have that survival, the reptilian brain that generates the fear and the aggression. And then we have the shame and the guilt that makes the reptile wrong. You know, we're pack animals. So shame and guilt are installed to get us to behave so we don't threaten our belonging. So these motions come up and then there's a part of us that says that's bad to feel

that, that's going to get you in trouble and then we condemn ourselves. So that's our predicament. For many of us we're at war with the dragon part of our nature. I often think of Jules Fifer. He said, I grew up to have my father's walk, my father's posture, my father's manner of speech, my father's opinions, and my mother's disdain for my father. So again, it's not what's happening, whether it's fear, anger, jealousy, it's how we're relating to it.

pause together here and we'll take some moments to kind of investigate well how do I relate when these intense emotions come up and so we can observe a little and you might close your eyes for this reflection and take a moment to remind yourself of which of the more painful emotions as a regular visitor which one do you experience more regularly than others perhaps Is it anger? Is it fear? Is it hatred or aversion? Jealousy?

You might choose whatever seems most predominant in your life and bring to mind a recent experience where this was triggered. You might see the setting. There's another person you're interacting with, expression on their face. What words were exchanged, if words were exchanged, just to help you get in touch with it a bit. You might remind yourself of what you're believing when this emotion's going on. Are you believing that you're failing, that you're not loved, that you can't trust others? What's the belief?

How are you behaving? What are you feeling? And then with some interest, when you're experiencing this, when you're in it, how are you relating to what's going on? What's your sense of yourself when you're feeling this emotion? Is there judgment, dislike? Are you wanting the emotion to go away? You're trying to make it go away in some way? Is there a sense this shouldn't be happening? Or perhaps noticing, is there, mindfulness there, when this emotion comes out? So there's some sense of kindness towards what's going on. Compassion. Okay, opening your eyes. So for some you might have investigated

how you're relating to difficult emotion and found some mindfulness and compassion that, let's say, fear came up and some part of you remembered, okay, this is a wave and not pushing it away, not judging yourself for it, not at war. But for many of us, rather than being like Ram Dass schmuz that come and go, there's a sense that this is the world right now and this is who I am right now. This is especially when the dragons are strong. So rather than seeing what's going on as coming from a helpless or vulnerable place and it belongs, we contract.

We feel possessed. We feel imprisoned by the unpleasant feelings and thoughts and we turn against ourselves, or we turn against others or life. But the bottom line is, when we're not relating with mindfulness, we forget our belonging. We forget a larger truth of really who we are.

We forget the presence and the love. We forget the... consciousness that's here. And in that forgetting, we then act in ways that deepen separation. We cause trouble to ourselves and others. So this exploration on how we relate to emotions, to the dragons, is really essential if we want to be intimate with our inner life and if we want to be close and open and connected to each other. And it's also crucial in creating a more loving just world. I think we can probably feel that unfaced greed, unfaced shame, unfaced fears are the cause of violence and war in society. They make us dangerous.

When we haven't faced something, we act out. So the unwillingness to pay attention to all this cluster of energies, the unwillingness to pay attention has fueled the continued violence of racism, of all caste systems. And we work hard not to pay attention. It takes intention. I mean, Dalai Lama, I just loved the way he put this. He said, if every eight-year-old was taught mindfulness, was taught meditation, there would be no more war in the next generation. Sometimes I talk about the circle of awareness and the line that goes through it and everything below the line is outside of our awareness and everything above the line is in awareness and if we're possessed by an emotion or if we're avoiding feeling an emotion it's below the

line and whatever's below the line controls us. It controls us. So the deep inquiry is how do we change our relationship with the dragons? How do we free ourselves from the trance that something's wrong, either with me or you or a life? And what I'd like to do for this kind of last segment of this exploration is offer three classic inner trainings that radically shift the way we're relating to these people. primal energies. And each of them is a support as we practice rain, but I want to explore this in terms of three separate trainings that really strengthen our capacity to really wisely. And each of these trainings helps us to evolve our consciousness, and it actually

creates the grounds for living then with a wise heart. The three are this. The first is learning to let go of the storyline. The second is to feel the feelings that are here and the third is to regard them with kindness. Each is a training, letting go of stories, contacting feelings and regarding them with kindness. There's a quote from one of the most important teachers in my life, Srinargarata. He wrote, I am that. It's not for everybody but it's a book I actually read a bit from every day. And he, in a very beautiful phrase, points to the need for these trainings. His phrase is this,

The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. So the mind, meaning our thoughts and our thoughts are primarily fear-based are the beliefs that really cause trouble, our thoughts end up creating separation. We have so many thoughts that in some way something bad's going to happen. Are I'm bad? Or you're bad? You know, we internalize all our caregivers' messages about how we shouldn't be and we internalize society's thoughts about who's more valuable than who.

And if you monitor your thoughts, and I really invite you to, you'll see that there's an undercurrent of anticipating problems and of judging and of blame. Also, we find a lot of our thoughts are self-justification because we're trying to protect ourselves from feeling bad about ourselves. So many of us are swinging between thoughts that are confirming our badness to thoughts that are defending our rightness. But either way, they create separation. The reason we hold so tightly to our narratives, and this is important, is because stepping out of fear thoughts or blame thoughts actually connects us to the vulnerability underneath, the vulnerability

that's driving our emotions, and it's uncomfortable. So we're trying to avoid that uncomfortableness. It's easier to stay in our thoughts. But to cross the abyss to really know our belonging and trust our belonging, we need to relinquish a narrative to honestly feel that vulnerability and relate with compassion. So if you think of it in terms of what maintains our identity as a small, small and separate self, the way we do it is by staying in our thoughts, resisting our feelings and keeping the heart armored. So the power of these three steps is they undo all of the

habits that keep us stuck. They allow us to cross the abyss. So step number one, coming out of thoughts, two, feeling feelings, and three, regard with care. And it may sound some simplistic, but it actually takes us to the heart of spiritual transformation and it's a lifelong practice. So I'll share an example or two and then we'll practice together. About a month ago, I was supporting a friend who's having a tough time. She has a autoimmune disease, which of course is really hairy in the age of COVID. And fortunately, both she and her partner were able to shift their work online, but her partners' hours were reduced, hers were some, her daughter's at home now from school, and she just described having no emotional bandwidth. Worry would come up and it would

possess her and she'd feel like she was obsessing and just turn on herself. You know, I'm not very good to be around for anybody and here she is in these close quarters with her daughter and her partner. And no end in sight which actually intensify the sense of anxiety and hard time sleeping. And even as I say this I can imagine many people would be nodding their heads because this is a time that brings up intense emotions and they can take different shapes. For some it's we turn on ourselves and feel like we're falling short and others is feeling angry at others. But either way, for her, she was irritable, but she felt like she was turning on herself. I suggested in her morning sit that she just keep it as simple as, okay, can I wake up out

of these thoughts? Can I feel what's here? And can I be kind? So she would do it. And I want to take them one at a time because she found that when she tried to open up out of thought, soon as she'd come back to her breath or to trying to feel what's here, her mind would just plunge right back into the storyline of what was going to go wrong and what she needed to do and so on. So we explored how her inner coach could help her. And one of the biggest helps for her was when she was noticing the thinking, it's just to whisper, I don't have to believe these thoughts. I don't have to believe these thoughts. And then she was, just sense, okay, what's really asking for attention right now and move her attention like about

10 inches down to throw the chest, the heart. This moving, and you can really feel it physiologically, the attention right down to here. This is where emotions generally present themselves. So that was her strategy. You don't have to believe your thoughts. Just what's really wanting attention? Well, she'd come into her body, but the what's really wanting attention was actually a kind of vague, confused blur. And some of you might have noticed this when you're asked to feel your feelings that it's not so distinct. For her, it helped to place her hand where she felt the most feelings, they were still vague, and just to breathe into that area and really invite forward what's,

there. You know, she kind of sent that message, I'm here, I'm listening, what wants attention. And I share this because I have found often that the parts of us that are most vulnerable, it's like they're shy creatures hiding in the woods and we're wanting to bring them into the light of awareness above the line. But unless we do it in a way that's really inviting, You know, I'm here, I care, I'm interested, just the way a friend might encourage you to share something that you feel uncomfortable about. We need to do that to our inner life. So for her to send that message, I'm here, I'm listening, what wants attention, actually

drew out some feelings and some beliefs. The beliefs were, I'm about to fail. I'm going to fail in my job, but more, I'm going to fail as a parent. I'm failing with my partner. And then when she got in touch with that, she could feel her body more fully. And it was like a clawed fist, kind of twisting and squeezing at her heart. And she could feel it as a very young feeling, something very familiar, a feeling rejected and bad.

And she asked that beautiful question of, well, what is this place most need? What is this place must need? and she didn't know. She didn't know really how to offer care. So I asked her a question and I'm sharing it with you because you might try it also. I said, well, if somebody you really trusted was to say something to you that would really make a difference, what would they say to you? Well, that she knew. She said, you're deeply good, you're lovable. I love you. Say that to yourself with as much sincerity as you can. So that was her practice.

She'd put her hand on her heart and she'd say, please, may I trust my goodness that I'm lovable? She did it over and over. And about a week or two later, she said she described to me the kind of shift that she still felt the squeeze in her heart, but rather than just being caught in it, like she was the squeezer and the squeezed, you know,

really inside it, there was more of a space of a compassionate witness. And that was the space she needed. And that's built over the last weeks, but it's a life practice. It's not easy to get out of obsessive thoughts. It's not easy to really feel our feelings. And it's not easy to learn what's my pathway to nurturing. So a few more comments on these three steps. Most of us need to train to wake up out of thoughts. That's really a lot of our meditation practice is becoming mindful of thoughts and that mindfulness kind of unhooks us some. So we're resting in something larger than the thoughts. And I've had many people that when they deep in practice, let's say they come to a retreat, the biggest takeaway, I'm not my thoughts. I realize that. And that's a sign of resting a

little more in the mindfulness and less in the narrative. So to send yourself that coaching of you're not your thoughts, you don't have to believe your thoughts can help to unhook you. Sometimes you can communicate with the thoughts. Many people have found just by saying to fear thoughts, thank you for trying to protect me. But I want to really come to a deeper kind of refuge right now, or I'm all right right now, are just to inquire, as she did a bit, what really wants attention can help to bring us into our bodies? I love that inquiry. What am I unwilling to feel? Because that brings me those 10 inches from my mind into my body. So waking up out of thoughts and then feeling what's there.

It does help to bring our hand to wherever we feel strongly, partly because it steadies the attention in the body, and partly, as I mentioned with the shy creatures in the woods, is it's a gesture of kindness. It's invitational. It makes it safer for the parts of us that are in the best of us that are in the best of the background and not used to expressing themselves in a more direct way to be known. It also can help when you're feeling feelings but it's all vague. Let your face express the feeling.

You know if it's grimness, let the brows nod or the jaw clench and your posture too and you'll find by embodying it in this way it gets you more in touch with the actual somatic experience. You can come back to it. But again, the key thing is that attitude. I find that sending a message to feelings, I'm here, I care, I'm listening, actually creates a beautiful safe space for what's there to come forward. Now here I'd like to make a note, which is, if the feelings are traumatized feelings, if they're panic, if they're really, really strong, then there's a wisdom in not feeling the feelings directly. I want to say that again.

It's wise not to go trying to contact directly because we can get overwhelmed. It's not safe enough. There's not enough space to do it. So in those cases with these three steps, you just notice that the feelings are there and acknowledge them rather than going deep into them. There's some recognition, okay, strong feelings here, but go right to nurture. Because nurture, I mentioned how the hand on the heart makes it safer, nurture is what creates the safety.

Nurture is what gives us a container to wake up from resisting the dragons or getting possessed to having more space, more presence. So go right to nurture, which brings us now to the third step, which is nurturing. There are many different pathways to learning to bring kindness or care to yourself. And I can say for my own life that it's an ongoing experiment. You know, what works regularly one season might not be so direct in another. So a key reminders is to keep it fresh. You know, each time you're about to nurture sense, well, what will really bring care here?

What is this place most need for me right in this moment? So you keep it really, really fresh. Now, sometimes you won't know, and you might experiment as I do with my friend by sensing, well, if somebody else was going to offer you nurturing, what might they say to you or how might they hold you? And then once you have a sense of that, you can either imagine it from some other source and that's fine. It's not like self-compassion does not have to come from the self. The self is a bit of a construction. When we offer self-compassion, it's really from the most awake place in our heart. And if you're not feeling particularly awake, imagine it from

any wakeful loving source from a grandmother or from your dog or from Mother Nature through the trees or from a spiritual figure. I often will call on a sense of a formless vast presence that's actually quite intimate that in some way cares and is offering me bathing me in kindness and that dissolves a sense of separateness that helps. helps me to reopen to that presence that's really what I belong to. So experiment. We had a satsung just recently where for one woman just the message, please be kind, softened her.

Please be kind. It was the kind of act of care, just that reminder. There are so many ways for another person. person during this last satsun, it was remembering that others feel this too, that I belong to something larger. So, explore what reminder, what touch, what imagery helps you to feel nurtured. The suffering of the demons is not the energy itself. It's because we forget presence and get either possessed are dissociated. And then we go into a trance that deepens a sense of not belonging. So while we can use these three steps relating to ourselves and with a compassionate presence,

we also need to wake up to our belonging with each other, every one of us. We need to learn to feel the vulnerability together and our shared belonging. I'd like to, as part of closing, tell you a favorite story that I heard from Oriah Mountain Dancer. I read it. And I'm going to read you this story. She begins by saying at the end of a very long day, a small, thin woman in an oversized park introduced herself as Isabel.

Can I do this meditation on my own? She asked. Yes, I said. I'm sure you can, although many people find it easier to establish a meditation practice with the help of a group, it's just hard to keep up the discipline on your own. But what will it give me? What will I get if I do it every day? Her tone took on a whining quality and I felt my irritation rise as she continued, how fast will it work? Will I feel a difference after a week? How will I know it's working? This is exactly the kind of thing I detested, the quest for the

quick fix, the desire for guaranteed outcomes, the simple answer. Do this and you'll get that. My me and I wanted to go home. I took a deep breath. I looked directly at Isabel and set my knapsack down on the floor. I tried to slow down my words thinking that maybe if I spoke slower, I would feel more patient. Well, I said, meditation is more a process than a goal-oriented activity. It can help you become more aware of what's going on within and around you, and this can help reduce stress. My best advice is to try it and be patient with yourself. I picked a little bit of you. I picked up my bag and started to button my coat, I really did have to leave and I wanted to get out while I was feeling virtuous for not snapping her head off. But as I started to move away,

Isabelle suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm with surprising strength. But what I want to know, she said, her voice rising in a crescendo that bordered on real panic, is will it help me find God? If I meditate, will I have the experience of something or someone out there listening, something really with me? A wave of desperation slipped out from her through me, and I was surprised to find my eyes filled with tears. This woman wasn't looking for an easy answer or a guaranteed formula because she was lazy. She didn't want a simple plan because she was unable or unwilling to think critically about what would work. She wanted something she knew would work and work quickly because she was

hanging on by her fingernails. She wanted something that, would work in a week because she was afraid she simply wasn't going to make it through months or years. I put my hand gently over Isabelle's where it grip my arm. It's okay, Isabel. We all feel desperate at times. Nobody does it by themselves. We all need help.

Her hand relaxed a little beneath mine and she started to cry. We talked for a while longer. There is no them. There is only us. When I left, I did not leave one of them. I said goodbye to one of us, a human being doing the best she can, searching for the home for which all of our hearts long. So in this reflection together that we've been doing, we're really exploring how we can relate to the difficulties the vulnerability, the deep vulnerability that we all experience, no matter how it's expressed, no matter how it's expressed. Just to know, underneath every emotion, there's vulnerability, there's an unmet need trying

to find its way towards being met. There's a life wanting to live fully. So we try to remember that and relate to the dragons with an unmeted. honest and compassionate presence to help carry us back to our belonging. We'll close practicing these three steps and the invitation is that you can choose something you'd like to find some more freedom around and then we'll extend our hearts in an inclusive way. So a meditation on meeting the difficult emotions with compassionate presence. presence. Please take these moments to close your eyes, to take a few full breaths, let the breath help

to collect you to bring you right here, and bringing to mind an emotion that you feel can take over at times. And it may be the emotion you reflected on earlier. Maybe anger, fear, jealousy, and you may have a situation in mind. Again, you can use a situation you had before where it gets triggered. Where do you end up feeling real aversion or judgment or anger, hatred, fear, blame? And the more you can connect with the experience, the more you'll get to really practice with the steps. So put yourself into it if you can. Remember again what it's like.

and what's really triggering you. So you're seeing your surroundings and whoever you're with, reminding yourself of what's going on and what's the worst part about it. When this is going on, what is it you're believing about yourself or about another person or about life? What kind of thoughts are you thinking? And the first step is to become a witness of the thoughts, to step out of the thoughts.

So in some way for you to note or name, okay, this is the thinking. I don't have to believe these thoughts to open the attention out of the thoughts. And you might ask yourself, well, what is the feeling here? What is it that I'm unwilling to feel that's underneath? And check your body. Come from the head into the body, the throat, the chest, the belly, perhaps reminding yourself of what's the worst part of this experience and then feeling where the reaction lives in your body you know what are you most afraid it's going to

happen what does this mean and then feeling what's it like to believe that in my body and to feel the feelings most fully it helps to place a hand where you feel them to steady the attention, to invite the feelings out, I'm here, I'm listening, I care, to let your face take the expression, your posture that helps you really get in touch with, oh, it's like this. And as mentioned, if there's trauma, to not go right in, but rather let the hand on the heart be your pathway to nurturing. But if there's not trauma to feel it as full as you can, you might even invite the feelings to be as big as they are, making it safe, bringing interest and care.

And you might sense how these feelings want you to be with it. Like what is the most vulnerable part of you most need right now? And if you're not sure, you might sense what would you want a loved one, a trusted one, to say to you? What would help? And then convert that into a message to yourself. You might say, may I trust that I'm lovable? May I trust my goodness?

May I trust my potential to find love or connection? Just offering the message that will most be comforting and with that to feel and sense care, compassion, washing through you, to feel care, going right to the place it feels most vulnerable. And sensing the presence it's here, the care and the presence, it's relating to the dragon, relating to the place of difficulty, of emotion with compassion. And you might even ask yourself, who am I when I'm not believing there's something wrong with me?

And widening the attention now to sense all the many others, who struggle with the same emotion, who also get caught in anger, who also get caught in fear, or dislike or aversion, and feel your heart space holding them, just the way you offer care to yourself, that that care, that tenderness includes them, the sense that this heart space can include all who are suffering, all the different ways, or that, you know, that you're, we sense that inclusion, the more we feel the boundlessness of the heart space. Sensing the possibility the next time strong emotion comes up of noticing, of noticing the tendency towards trance and inviting ourselves out of the mind knowing that the mind creates

the separation. The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. Thank you friends, thank you for your willingness to pay attention and deepen attention and open in these ways. It's really a pleasure to be with you and I'm sending you all my warmest blessings. Namaste. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.