Tara Brach - The Mystery of Who We Are

Episode Date: July 20, 2011

2011-07-20 - The Mystery of Who We Are - The Buddha taught that we suffer because we don't realize who we are. This talk explores two pathways of awakening from the insecurity and reactivity that arises from a narrow sense of self. Listeners are invited to investigate the nature of awareness through several guided reflections. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

To begin, I find it a really interesting reflection to sense when we're feeling well-being, when we're really feeling happy, when we're feeling peaceful, what's going on at those times? You know, what are the conditions that give rise to that? And what we find is that the circumstances are really varied. We can be, feel a deep sense of peace or happiness when we're completely solitary. or we could be with the thousands at the Kalashakra or with a group of people at a concert or whatever we can be in nature, we can be dancing,

we can be reading, we can be immersed in a project, tons of different conditions or settings. And the common denominator, when we're really happy, is that there is a quality of presence. There's a quality of heerness, that we're aware of heerness, and there's some quality of beingness that goes with it. And interestingly, this is the kind of underpinnings of this presence, is what is our sense of self at those times? What's our sense of self in the moments when there's really a quality of well-being? and when we check

when we you know kind of step out a little and check we find it's just not so much of it's just not there it's vague it's airy it's spacious it's undefined that at the times that there's real well-being there's not a centralization

a fixation a narrative of self going on now there are kinds of happiness that are more, you know, narrow, are fleeting that, where we might, you know, be thinking about things we accomplished and get a burst of pride or something, but I'm talking about a very deep kind of happiness. In the Buddhist tradition, it's called sukkha, a sukkah that really arises from presence. So if we contrast that to times that we're not so happy when we're miserable,

it's exact opposite. There is a very solid sense of self. There's a centralization on self. There's a lot of stories about self. There's a sense of separateness from the world around us. Wei-wuai says, why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you do is for yourself.

And there isn't one. So we look and we sense that, well, at least we can agree that when we're unhappy, we're really fixated on a self. And even when it's not real misery, to the degree we're stressed, we're preoccupied with moi. We know that. So what I'd like to explore tonight is the sense of identity that we move around with. What is our sense of self? who are we taking ourselves to be. And the Buddha basically said that we suffer,

and this is a pretty elegant and simple understanding, I think. We suffer because we don't know who we are. We have forgotten. We suffer because we are identified with or subscribing to a self that is narrower than the truth, the wholeness of what we are. that we're living inside a role or we're living inside a sense

we're hitched to our sense of appearance I am this body or this appearance we're hitched to a sense of our personality or our intelligence so and usually it's a whole constellation but that constellation is smaller than the mystery of what we are it's smaller than

than who we are. I think it's important just to say that it's part of our evolutionary development to become identified as a separate egoic self. And that's not a bad thing. That's, you know, it's adaptive and it's the way we operate. It's the way to function on planet Earth. And it's part of our evolutionary capacity to see what's beyond, to see who we are that's beyond that and if we don't keep evolving we have a developmental arrest you know there's a developmental arrest because we get stuck in a kind of identity that's less than what we are and the flags of that arrest is all the whole array of suffering we go around discontent or anxious there's a sense of something's wrong? Whenever there's a sense that something's missing or something's wrong, in some way,

we're caught in an identity that's less than the fullness of who we are. And the Buddha basically said, and this is, I'm speaking of the Buddha, this is every mystical teaching that exists, is that it's our capacity to awaken beyond that ego excel, to realize that that oneness and that freedom. One of the stories I've just always loved, I've shared with some of you here, came from when my son was in a Waldorf school here, and it just hit me so strongly when I heard it of him being,

the children were at an art class, and they were all at their different tables, and working hard at their projects. And one little girl was particularly diligent. So the teacher stood behind her and watched for a while and then asked her what she was drawing. And the little girl said, I'm drawing God. And the teacher chuckled and said, you know,

but, huh, no one knows what God looks like. Without skipping a beat, without even looking up, she said, they will in a moment, you know. So one of the things we start wondering is what happened to our wildness, what John O'Donohue called the wildness of God of spirit? What happened? What happened that we forget or disconnect from that spontaneity and that joy and that capacity to sense spirit and aliveness? It's like, what happened to that? And it's probably the deep. deepest inquiry in any of the spiritual traditions is this question, who am I? You know,

beyond the roles, beyond the ideas that our culture gave us and behind the ideas that we internalize from our family, you know, who's really here? I mean, who is listening right now? And we so we begin to, you know, have that as our inquiry. And tonight, because I am very humbly aware of how limp words are. You know, we can say this is the inquiry, but when we begin to point to it with words, difficult. I will, as much time as we have tonight, and we might continue this next week,

bring in different reflections that can help us just to start getting familiar with what's here. A friend, Unitarian Minister, told me about an interfaith gathering, and the beginning, it opened with an inquiry, which is really, well, what shall we agree on calling spirit or the divine or God? What's the name we should use? And so right away, there was a question, shall we call it God? No way responds a female wickon. Uh-uh. What about goddess she says?

remarked a Baptist minister, spirit. Nope, declares an atheist. So the discussion goes on like this for a while. Finally, a Native American suggested the great mystery. And they all agreed. They all agreed because each one of them could acknowledge, no matter what the language or concepts of their faith, they could acknowledge that it's a mystery.

It's a mystery So we begin in that spirit that we're going to be exploring a mystery This inquiry and it's the same kind of mystery Much like when we're around the dying It's that same mystery That we just hit this like we don't know I remember when Jonathan's mom died a few months ago

And he looked at me and said Where did she go And I remember sitting with my dad when he was dying and he was there in this breathing body and you could sense something, spirit, consciousness, and then the body stopped breathing just wasn't there. It's perhaps the most jarring and profound experience to be on that edge. Do you know what I mean? That edge of living and dying. It's the mystery. You know, it's the same mystery with love. if we really

sense someone we love and we then just sense what is this love? What is it? And really, really take time to explore. We get dropped into that same mystery. I can say to you right now and I'll try it.

Let me just ask you to experiment for the next few seconds, 10 seconds. I'd like to ask you not to be aware. just don't be aware and see what happens okay don't be aware okay that's enough now did anyone succeed you know what happens and it's true somebody said sort of we can not be aware and realize that we very quickly drift yeah but could you sense just there is still a presence there that's

you feel that and yet if we start to say okay so what is that awareness what is it You know, if you close your eyes again and say, okay, so awareness, you know, can I feel my own awareness? And you go further and say, so, what is this? And we're going to continue to explore it, but just to get a sense that there is not an idea that can capture the nature of awareness. And just as, you know, we can't see our own eyes, we know we're looking, but we can't see our own eyes, we can't see awareness.

What we are looking for is what is looking. What we are looking for is what is looking. This awareness is the essence of what we are, and it's not another object of the mind. So we can only be awareness.

And in every experiential practice, there's a certain kind of gentle, interested turning towards this mystery and then just a relaxing and being quality. That's kind of the sequence. But what happens is in our daily life we leave beingness.

There's not that many moments if you review your day today that there was just an abiding and pure presence, just that being quality. The mind is entirely conditioned to fixate on thoughts and fixate on objects and stay more contracted. We don't stay in that open presence. And the most basic way that we contract is that we keep on re-creating this narrative of self.

We keep reincarnating our sense of self. We keep substantiating it. We keep reminding ourselves, we're here improving it, and reminding to others that we're here and trying to fill all the sequence of needs that the self has to feel like it's okay. We're very self-oriented.

So we start looking at that, how we're solidifying the sense of self. It's like the guy the bar who's confessing to the bartender, he says, I know I'm nothing, but I'm all I can think about, you know. we're on it all the time. So we see how this identity of self starts develop.

We start exploring it. And it's very interesting to see that, you know, initially we're kind of merged with the maternal matrix. There's a kind of oneness. And it's the nature of evolution and in a lifespan the same that we start differentiating. Okay, I'm a body and there's a body here. And then we differentiate within that. Okay, I'm not actually this.

And this body is part of my identity, but on this mind. You know, some kindergartners were asked if they could describe the body, and they described it as basically this vehicle to carry around the head. I don't know if I believe that. Kindergarteners are young for that. So we start, and then we interact with our family and community to start getting more and more information about who we should be, who we need to be to be approved of, loved. safe. So we develop this personhood, the sense of self based on what we feel we need to be,

and we also develop our sense of self based on what we think we aren't, what we wish we were, but aren't, you know, what's wrong. So it's this constellation of thoughts and feelings and our behaviors to try to meet our needs. And you can think of it sometimes like we have this mask and we just keep starting to paint it and paint it and paint it, so it's really the mask we're presenting to the world that we'll get what we want back as a response. And it's interesting if you can start to examine any interaction, just to notice that in that interaction,

there is some element at least, rather than pure spontaneity of a self-sense that's trying to in some way present something that will get a certain reaction. you might consider right now if you think of someone that you like a lot and you want their respect

so this is a little reflection for you just close your eyes and somebody that you like but you want their respect and once you have someone in mind ask yourself what is it that you most want that person to see about you and you might also ask yourself

what is it you most want that person not to see about you and as you identify some of this. Know that your self-identity, the ego identity, is organized in a good way around these wants and fears. What happens over time, and you can open your eyes if you like, is that we develop a set of beliefs and narratives about who we think we are, who we think other people are, how we think the world's relating to us. We develop a worldview about what life is and the more fear there is, the more insecurity there is about this self, the more rigid our view about the world. The more tightly we hold our ideas about others, the more we see

two-dimensional characters, and the more we see life in a kind of narrow way. The more we kind of are tightly holding. Now, I've shared at different times that my relatives, my family's from both sides back or Jewish and through one cousin I was sent this. The greatly beloved Rabbi Shachter was on his deathbed with his people surrounding him awaiting his final word to them. This is on the what is life kind of thing. And in a faltering voice he uttered, life is a fountain. So those closely circling him passed the word out through the crowds and the word went down a long line of people in the hallway and passed down through the stairwell person to person. You know, life is a fountain, out through the throngs of people and outside, you know,

waiting outside to here. And it finally got to the edge of the throngs to a little boy. And he said, what does that mean? The person didn't know the answer. So that person asked the next person. So the question came back, what does that mean? What does that mean? What does that mean?

Up the stairwell down the hallway, all the way to the rabbi's assistant who was right. by his deathbed. So he whispers the question into the rabbi's ear. And the rabbi responds, so maybe it's not like a fountain. There is in the Zen tradition, this phrase, don't know mind,

it's very hard for us to stay open. We want certainty. We want to know who we are and we want certainty about the world. So we develop these, I sometimes call them, these kind of space suit self with the ideas and thoughts

and feelings that, you know, tell us who we are. And the sad thing with the spacesuit cell is that we forget who's looking through the mask. We get so identified with who we're presenting and how the world's reacting to us and how this self needs to change and be a better space suit to make it that we forget this most basic,

presence, this sacred presence that is this awake space that's here, that's listening, this tenderness, this responsiveness of heart, we forget who's here. And that's the suffering that happens. And the reality is that we can't find the deep happiness, the true happiness, unless we begin to recognize how our sense of self has here. in small ways to a small identity. And in that seeing, begin to relax open and intuit the vastness and the mystery. There's a phrase that I've come to love

that I heard from an Asian teacher. And he said that what we're awakening to is having a heart that can be ready for anything, a heart that can be ready for anything. And my understanding of that is that when we're identified with a small self, we're inherently insecure. The small self, no matter how well put together the space suit, there's going to be cracks. There's going to be crises where, you know, things don't work. There's going to be lost.

There's going to be death. and if we don't have a sense of who we are that's really a refuge that's true unless we can be aware of the presence, the awareness that's timeless, that's vast, our sense of beings always going to be tensing against the future. Does that make sense? That if we're identified in a small way,

we're going to be defending against what's around the future, corner and you can feel it you can feel that sense of having to get ready all the time having to prepare for something the sense that there's not enough time these are all flags that were identified with that small and secure cell so in Buddhism there's the three classic refuges that I in my own understanding translate to that we take refuge in the truth of what's right here, that's Dharma, you know, just what's happening moment to moment. We take refuge in loving relatedness, and we take refuge in the pure and timeless awareness that is our ultimate home. And when we get familiar with that refuge,

then we have a heart that can be ready for anything. And when I say that it does, only mean ready for the big losses. It means ready for the beauty that's here. It means that we're available in the moment, like the little girl drawing the picture, to celebrate what's here, not to always be preparing for what might go wrong. So the inquiry then is how do we become familiar with this enlarged sense of being, with this spirit or radiance, our love, that's really our essence. How do we become familiar with that when our habit is to over and over again

reconstruct a small self? And in the time I have left, two primary modes that we look at. And one mode of becoming familiar is that we start exactly where we are with the waves of our moment-to-moment experience. So if we're going through a life crisis and we've just had some major disruptive loss that's bringing up fear,

if we've just gotten back a biopsy that's positive, if somebody's betrayed us, if we're facing a situation that we're really afraid we're going to fail, and we start paying attention to exactly what's coming up with as much courage and presence as we can. And that's called taking refuge in the waves or in the Dharma or the truth of what's here. The other piece I'd like to explore tonight is taking refuge in the ocean

of awareness itself beginning to get the knack of saying, okay, all this is going on and who am I really? Who's really here? Am I really that person that feels victimized or am I really that person that feels so oppressed by life? Am I really the grieving person?

Am I really the scared person? Who's really here? You know, that's the deep inquiry. Okay, so these are the two ways. I'd like to, by example, for the refuge in the waves, share an identity crisis that I had when I was in my 20s that has been memorable because of the shame element in it.

Shame is a great imprinter on the brain. You can always remember. shame events, but it was one of those refuge in the waves experiences that really, it was one of my first experiences of finding true refuge, a sense of a different identity than I was really hooked on. This occurred when I was living in an ashram, a yoga ashram community, and in this community as I've shared, many of you've heard some of my stories, a lot of really wholehearted good energy. I mean, you know, we were young, we were innocent, we were really sincere, we were just into like the aliveness of the yoga and serving. And so there was a lot of

wholeheartedness. And there was a shadow side. And I'll speak to my own shadow side. I was very zealous and I was going for it you know I had the sense of I really wanted to purify and so on and I was very vigorous in the practices and when I felt like I was making progress I was on top of the world and when I felt like you know I could see my flaws in some ways I was falling short I would you know dip and then I would re-energize myself and try even harder to become more pure and more okay. So looking back, I can really see that there was this trance of perfection, that that we're supposed to be more perfect, that I had an idea of a self that was on her way somewhere that was imperfect and needed to get better and that would never get there

because she was never enough. My friend and a poet Donna Fault says, perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Okay, but I didn't know that then. So here's the story. So I was the director of our yoga center at that time, and I was promoting one of our major events of the year and went in for a staff meeting,

and the director of the ashram was furious at me and he was waving one of the flyers that I had printed out, 3,000 of them I'd printed out, and there was the typo, and the typo happened to be the date, you know, something like that. So anyway, it was a really bad scene, and I owned up and I said, and if other people had supported me more

and I'd had more help and somebody had proofread, you know, and I got defensive. and left. And then I just spiraled into one of those times where my brain was just a filter for what was wrong with me, and I started looking at ways I bragged or exaggerated the size of my yoga class, or ways I gossiped, or ways I was not as selfless in my service as others that were just giving of themselves.

And I was in a bad place. So this was at my space suit self that was trying to get more, Perfect had a really big crack. Some weeks went by and I went to a sensitivity group gathering of the women in our community and I named a lot of it. I kind of jumped off a cliff and named a lot of the pain and what I was going through, my self-doubts and I have no idea what they said. I know I left there really raw.

And that night I just, I just decompensate it. I just fell apart. And something in me, and I didn't know about rain back then or mindfulness in a formal way, but something in me had the wisdom to know, okay, it's out of my control. Just notice what's happening and let it be. Just let it be.

So waves and waves of grief and fear and shame would just roll, we're rolling through. And I kind of just in some way I was just whispering, okay falling apart, grieve. And it just and just letting it be and letting it be. And I remember at some point there was kind of a quieting

so I sat down in front of my altar and in that quietness I started getting a sense of the story of self that I've been living in. It was like this character that was visually trying to do a lot here and prove herself there

and be busy there and get up earlier and it was a very exhausting thing to bear witness to. But what I realized was the self in my story was not who I was. That this character in my narrative was a part of the identity that had been created, but it just was not the mystery that was right here being present. So that's when I had this thing, something in me went,

okay, so who's here? And there wasn't an answer. And if you ask that question and you get an answer, that just means the mind has popped in again. Because there's nowhere to land. But there was a mystery that was tremendously open and tender and awake. And I remember this sense of home. That was the most notable

that on some level there was homecoming and that was in retrospect kind of the taste of true refuge which I speak of now and I'm writing of which is and it's over the years become more and more familiar but that was an intuition of

okay this is home and that the more I could remember that the more when that character appeared there was a little more capacity to go that's not me Not like that's not me push away, but the me, the wholeness of me, that can't possibly define or narrow or limit or stain who this is. The upshot is when we bring our attention to the waves, and I mean to the waves unconditionally, like completely letting them be as they are, lovingly letting them be as they are

because often and I'll say I say this a lot we can't be with the waves unless we're deeply committed to being with them kindly it's the only way there'll be space for them

when we're kindly and courageously with the waves we become the presence that is really our nature we relax open we come home and each time that happens, and this is the gift, each time we pause and we open to those waves

and remember that presence, our trust grows. There's more trust in who we are. There's more trust that lets our heart be the kind of heart that's ready for anything, each time. And it doesn't matter if it's a little time are one of these like great stories where my spacesuit shattered open

and the light shone through the broken places. You know, it doesn't have to be that, okay? It can be that you get caught in something small where you're stuck in a self that's feeling anxious and busy and you just pause for a moment and with a kind of a smile, say, okay, that busy self is not who I am. And there's kindness.

And there's just a little bit of opening, but trust. That builds the trust. Okay So that is refuge in the waves Now we'll just Just to give you a taste Actually

I'm changing my mind Because I always do this I always spend time on the waves And don't give enough time to the ocean So I want to spend more time on the awareness side And those of you that have been here a lot Will have noticed that the meditation

this evening was a little different, a little more full emphasis on how to start sensing the space and the awareness that's here, little less emphasis on focusing on the waves. This shift, this training, is a training to move from the foreground of objects to the background of awareness.

It's a necessary training. Our conditioning is to fixate and fixate and fixate, as if our attention's going out onto a movie screen. And we rarely pause and notice the projector, the awareness that's back there. And again, that's just words and a metaphor. It's not exactly that either. But we're paying attention to the objects. So how do we begin to look back and get familiar?

with this presence or this being quality is the inquiry. I'll read you, this is Sogio Rimposhae. He says, if everything changes, then what is really true? If everything changes, then what is really true? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Is there something, in fact, we can depend on that does survive what we call death? Reflect for a moment, if you will, just to, you might close your eyes. This is this question, if everything changes, then what is true? And as a beginning of a reflection, you might just sense, okay, so I'm just going to explore a little bit of my own

self-sense at different phases of life. You might imagine yourself in kindergarten. Just flash, I'm sure you have some pictures somewhere, how you looked, but also maybe from inside out what it might have mattered to you, what moods might have predominated or what the world seemed like, what your sense of self was. Just for a moment, just flash on kindergarten. You can jump forward in time, jump forward to high school. You might really be. Remember, again, what you're like, your body, what you wore, who you were with your friends. Again, all you need to do is flash on it a little and just a sense of your self-identity, like what you were like then, what mattered to you.

Maybe you can jump forward and remember your first real job, your sense of who you were, the consolidating of self there. Maybe if you got married or had a major relationship, what your role and sense of self is there. As a parent, if you're moving on in the decades here, you might notice what's like children leaving, home, major losses, what it's like when there's a loss. Somebody's died or a health problem. You get a sense of all the different human circumstances you've been in, different feeling states, beliefs, views, priorities, what matter to you. and then ask yourself through time what about me in all these moments what about me has been unchanging

what's always been there always been there so this is something that just to get a sense that these lives this river of life I mean many of us especially as you get older it gets more and more clear it's like a flash it's happening so fast

We've been through all these different little mini incarnations in this life. What's always been here? This consciousness, there's a quality of presence. Now what happens, though, is that we leave, we fixate again on the character and the story that happens to be the current character. We might sense that and then we come back into that kind of fixation. So how do we get more familiar? How do we start getting familiar with presence itself?

And one of the ways I find really useful is using my body, this form, and then deepening attention. And the body and the senses become an entry into formless presence. And my appreciation of inner space, because I find even the words inner space when I reflect on them, kind of loosen all the bearings and the moorings and open up something. one time that it really opened up some was when I took Narayan to the Smithsonian for an IMAX presentation I think the name of it was Cosmic Voyage

it was the one where you first go out into space by degrees so you go out and out and out the Milky Way and into the edges of the observable universe and just to get a sense of scale Andromeda, this is the galaxy closest to us, is it takes 2.4 million years for the light to reach us. So here it is 186,000 miles per second, hurling towards us,

and we're seeing light that came out of it 2.4 million years ago. Okay? So here we were at the edges of the observable universe. We were way, way out there, right? And then you come back to Earth, and then you do the exact same thing, the exact same amount, inward, inward, inward.

And what's so interesting, right, to the quark, the tiniest particle, what's so interesting, it's not that hard to sense the vastness of outer space in some levels, but we usually consider forms as more solid. And yet we're 99.99% empty, these bodies, you know, we're empty. and you know the space between atoms and the space within atoms compared to their mass it's just mostly empty in here so we went far into inner space into that emptiness and I was really struck by how outer space is there's a micro kind of cosmic version of outer space right here so I'd like to invite you just to check that out for a moment and then on your own if it if it intrigues

to explore a little more. Just to pause and feel your breath, feel yourself here, feel your senses awake. And you might even keep in mind the images I just gave of outer space, that vastness and of inner space on an atomic level. Just to sense that.

And as you do, to revisit our meditation of before and see, can you imagine the space inside your hands and arms right now? in arms right now. Sense that empty space inside your hands and your arms. You imagine the space, that empty space inside your feet and your legs. And can you imagine the empty space inside your belly and your chest? You imagine the space that fills the head. Can you imagine the space that fills your entire body, inside your entire body?

And can you imagine that while this space has no space, This space has no form. It's intensely alive and awake. Imagine this space, this inner space, filled with the light of awareness. The Tibetans say it's closer than you can imagine, just to be this light of awareness, this wakefulness, this awake space. Srinarsar Gadha says,

as long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, you seem short-lived and vulnerable, and of course you will feel anxious to survive. But when you know yourself to be beyond space and time, you will be afraid no longer. Now it's sometimes easy to compartmentalize and to sense this world of inner space and awareness as some exotic, otherworldly thing.

And yet each of you has experienced this beingness. And you might have noticed this kind of open awareness, this awakeness, when you're looking at the night sky and sensing the depth of the night sky, is really kind of the depth of your own being. Or you might sometimes have been up in the early morning when it's really quiet and just sensing in that quietness that that's just a dimension of your own awareness. There's something that resonates like that. or the stillness of a new snow

and the stillness appeals to us because there is innately something still awareness is absolutely still there's a whole world of aliveness happening but it's known by this stillness so when we have these times where we enter beingness we inhabit being this

there's a kind of homecoming and it's not like activity means we're not at home. It's that we're resting in this background of awareness and life is playing out, but we're not lost in the narrative of a small self. There's a quality of wholeness, a wholeness of being. I have found that when we're really happy, when we think there's something we're happy about, and it might be this profusion of roses that has appeared on the bush or the sound of our child's laugh when they're delighted or the sensations.

for many of playing in the ocean. When there's that happiness, there is, it's only happening because of that beingness. There's a quality of beingness or presence that actually is making possible the happiness. We're actually happy because we sense our own beingness. There's that homecoming feeling.

So I invite you just to check. We started off tonight talking about well-being. And just to check, when you feel well-being, when you sense, ah, this moment, yeah, this I'm happy, I'm peaceful, sense the quality of beingness. You may not even sense of there's a who am I in that moment that's consolidated. I'd like to end in a kind of a little bit of a different way by saying that when we are inhabiting beingness, it informs everything. And we naturally express our love.

We naturally want to serve. We're not preoccupied with self. We respond creatively to the world. Now, sometimes you see that when people are dying because the form is more transparent and their beingness. They're just more aware of their beingness. Their identity is not so hitched anymore.

And I wanted to share a brief story that I thought that really touched me on this. This was shared by a hospice worker about a patient of hers. And she writes, in the weeks before his death, my father, a blustery man's man of a guy who had difficulty communicating anything that was not a strongly held opinion, became someone else who I had vaguely sensed was there in him, but had never before met. I could talk to this other father in ways you would not have it had not been possible all the years before. As you know, my father was outstanding in his profession and in one of these last conversations,

I asked him what he felt was a contribution he had made to the world that made his life feel worth it to him. I had thought he would point to one of his many award-winning projects, but he had smiled and said, you, of course. I do not recall ever having another word ever having another word of praise from him in my whole lifetime. I don't recall having a word of praise in my whole lifetime, but it was enough.

I share this because I think we come to the spiritual path because we don't want to wait until we're dying to realize our wholeness and live from who we are. There are so many opportunities each day to relax for a moment and remember this being, and then have the next moment's expression with whoever we're with, be one of fun, our loving presence, our generosity. We develop a heart that's ready for anything, but we're not waiting for something. We're here for it.

This is the moment that matters. So our training, and what I'm exploring tonight, is both bringing our attention to the ways of the moment, but also beginning this exhilaration that turns to the space that's here, this wakefulness itself, this mystery of presence of who we are, and discovering this as our refuge and our home.

So we just close, taking a few moments again, just to have you close your eyes. And in the pause, begin to again feel with your senses awake, just what's happening here. You're opening to the waves, not controlling anything, just letting life be as it is, the sounds and a changing play of sensations,

feelings in the heart. So that as you sense the changing experience, you might also sense what's unchanging, this timeless presence, this awake, space if you ask who's listening right now or who's aware and just gently turn the attention and then just let go and be that being quality that awake space come to trust this beingness as what we are the more we live this life with a heart that's ready for anything for the

joys and the sorrows, to live fully, to love fully. 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.