Tara Brach - The Power of Awake Awareness (retreat talk) (2019-12-28)

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

The Power of Awake Awareness (retreat talk) (2019-12-28) - We all encounter "demons" of fear, anger, hurt, craving and shame. This talk explores our key ways of resisting difficult emotions, and how "when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone." We look at the power of mindfulness and compassion to undo resistance, and open us to the loving presence that can handle whatever energies arise. This special talk was given at the 2019 IMCW 5-Day New Year's Silent Retreat.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Good evening. It's nice to be here. It feels very cozy. The end of the first day has always got its own particular feeling, like there's some sort of a sense of bearing witness to like, well, how did that first day go? And for some there may have been a real stream of stillness and bliss that may be one or two of you.

And for others might be, you know, in that I thought this was club med and it's not. It's completely different and many, many sittings and how much that affects the body and it's unfamiliar. And so I wanted to just ask a few questions and actually look around as I asked for these hand raises. How many of you felt like you struggled with sleepiness today? Can I see by hands? Okay, look around just so you. Okay. How many restless, scattered, distracted?

I'm seeing the same hands. Okay. How many working with some physical discomfort or pain? Okay. Self-judgment. I'm amazed you're all here. You stayed. What's it like when you look around and see that maybe 75% of the room has joined you

and having these different experiences? Does it change anything to see how many others? How many, when you notice that, there's some shift in perspective. Can I see hands? Yeah. I asked that, hearkening back to something often that, especially in the old days we used to play with at retreats, which was to imagine as you're sitting there that all the thoughts and feelings you're having are coming from the person sitting behind you.

And that it starts being less personal when we realize that it's not so much my sleepiness as just the energy of sleepiness that is usually 80% of a group struggle with sleepiness on the first day, it really shifts our relationship to it. And there's a universal delusion that turns unpleasantness to suffering. And that is that what's going on right now is my fault, that I should be able to control this and that it should be different. If you unpack that, in other words, if you don't add on there's something wrong with how it's happening, it's unpleasant, but it's not suffering.

So there's a wonderful little quote I heard years ago from A.R. Amunds and it's the wind said, you know, I'm the result of forces beyond my control, that whatever is happening, is not something we sign up for or we can control. We can't control the feelings that come up. We can't control that thoughts happen, that restlessness happens, that distraction happens. And if we can realize that it's conditions playing out and not react, the space opens up that makes it possible to be with. So what I'd like to explore tonight as our theme.

is how we can discover freedom in the midst of difficulty with this non-judging, open-hearted presence that we keep pointing to. And it's really the theme of many Dharma talks and we'll be building on it. Like really how do we bring an open-hearted and clear presence to what's here? And I start tonight with one of my favorite stories. from the Tibetan tradition, this is the Yogi Milraipa, and in this story he returns to his cave after gathering firewood only to find that it's filled with demons.

In other words, they're cooking his food, they're reading his books, they're sleeping in his bed, they've totally taken over the joint. And so he has the sense that there are really projections of his own mind. But nonetheless, you know, all these unwanted parts, of themselves, it's no fun. He wants to get rid of them. So his first strategy for getting rid of them in the story is that he decides to teach them about spiritual path. You know, it's basically cognitive affirmations. You don't have to be reactive right now. Everything's changing. Can relax in the midst of things. So he's basically trying to talk himself cognitively

into a better state of mind. That falls flat. That doesn't work. Can't do it cognitively. The next thing he does, because the demons are still theirs, he's really pissed off. And so he loses patience and he gets angry and he runs at them. And that made them all laugh. That didn't work either. So finally he gives up. And he sits down to the floor and he says, well, I'm not going away and it looks like you're not either, so let's just live here together.

And that works fairly well. Most of them are gone, except for one. And it's the one that's the real core issue that's particularly vicious. And we all know that one. Some of us have a handful of them. It's the feeling that this is really, this is the stickler. It's like I keep coming back to this one. And he doesn't know what to do.

So he surrenders even further and he puts himself right, goes right up to the demon, he puts his head in the demon's mouth. He says, just eat me up if you want to. the demon vanishes. So the message of the story is that when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone. When the resistance is gone, the demons are gone. Unpleasantness, when we fight it, solidifies a sense of self. Our sense of who we are gets organized around the not liking and aversive self. So you might have noticed today that with restlessness or distraction or sleepiness or whatever the demons were that rather

than just surrendering okay it's how it is there was some sense that it shouldn't be this way and in those moments the equation is that pain times resistance equal suffering to the degree that you were at war with reality with how it was, that's the degree of suffering. And of course the same equation goes, pain times zero resistance equals ultimately liberation, you know, no suffering. So I remember at my first Buddhist retreat that the takeaway from the whole retreat was that The boundary to what we accept is the boundary to our freedom.

And that was my takeaway. That it didn't matter what it was, whether it was not liking my thoughts or not liking the food in the dining room or not liking what a teacher was saying or what another yogi was doing. The boundary to what I could accept was the boundary to my freedom. hand in hand with that is that meditation basically undoes our resistance. Meditation isn't a doing. Actually, in those moments of presence, we're undoing our habits of resisting reality. Does that make sense? That we all have these different ways that we're running away. Kind of

it like we have this bicycle and we're peddling away from presence and the more stress we get. get the faster we pedal. We all have different strategies for how we're getting away, how we're resisting. And meditation actually undoes those strategies. The challenge is that it's a very deep patterning in all of us. Whatever your particular mode of resisting is, and we're going to look at the different ways we resist, they're deeply grooved in, like in those neural pathways. We keep doing the circuits. We have a certain thought. and then we do our tensing against things, and then we have a feeling, and then we have more thoughts, and we lock into our way of resisting.

So it takes a really strong intention. And each one of you is here because in some way you have a deep motivation to be free, a deep motivation motivation to step out of the squeeze of those patternings. You might not know how and you might feel like you don't have the discipline or whatever it is, but there is some longing. The challenges we get caught because we, I think George Carlin said it best, he says, I'm not into working out. My philosophy is no pain, no pain.

So here's the problem with that, which is that if we don't work out, if we don't learn to be with the pain, we actually increase the pain. Carl Jung describes it this way, says, what's not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate. So whatever we're resisting, whatever demon is active that we're in some way either trying to fight or judge away or hate ourselves for not doing anything. but whatever way we're resisting, as long as we resist, it kind of locks in our future. It locks in a kind of patterning that keeps us trapped.

So one of the images I've always loved that describes the beauty of facing the demons is when they're described as animal-headed goddesses. And in the Tibetan tradition, you see them in lots of artwork. You see them in the mandalayas that, you know, You have to go through them to the center of the mandala where there's freedom. Or if you're entering the temple, a sacred temple, you have to go through the animal-headed deities to get to sacred space, through the rage and through the lust and through the anger and through

the fears. It's not like we get to that awakened space because that's not there. It's the alchemy of engaging with presence. with the demons that frees us. And I like the Tibetan tradition because demons are not bad. Demons are energies that by engaging with presence we free up our natural intelligence and aliveness and spirit. It's like that phrase no mud, no lotus.

It's the nutrients that actually let us bloom. So our motivation, our motivation for facing the demons is because there's a love for truth and there's a love for aliveness and a love for love. And if you really check in, you're motivated to stay present or stay with what's here because in some way you love life. And the first step of staying present is noticing how you're living. leaving. And I'm just going to go through some of the most common ways we leave, like any animal with a limbic system we leave by fighting, by fleeing, by freezing. Freezing happens

when we're traumatized and there's just that confusion and paralysis. We leave that way. Flight, our fleeing, is really common, the most common way that we flee here, just thinking, thinking, thinking. It's our mental control tower. We kind of escape into it. We talk to ourselves a lot. We flee in relationships. When we, instead of feeling the feelings that are there, we pretend to feel a certain way, or we divert attention with our intellect or our humor, or where we accommodate or where

we withhold. We flee online regularly. Have you noticed that? How much fleeing from vulnerability or angst, how many times we just go and just check our email or whatever? And texting, you know, for so many people, texting replaces other forms of contact. One writer from New York, from the New Yorker described as when his son turned 12, they kind of lost their closeness.

his son just was constantly texting and just grunted, you know, didn't really communicate. So he decided finally that, well, he would just text too. And he started catching on to some abbreviations from his son. And he said, he wrote, one, my son did not have to teach you because it was so self-evident, was L-O-L. I knew right away it meant lots of love because he put it at the end of every message he sent me. So, he said, it's such a safe way to express love, such a beautiful telegraphic abbreviation for the 20th century. It's like a little arrow of love you can send out to anyone you know, L-O-L.

And he describes how for the next six months, and he had this infatuation with texting, and he texted everybody he knew, and he'd sent it, and he just sent L-O-L to everyone he knew, you know. He said his sister was getting divorced, and he wrote to her, we're all behind you and beside you, L-O-L, your brother, you know. His father got ill, and he sent him, you know, get well soon, L-O-L in Canada.

He said, everybody I knew at work, at home, everyone, I sent them, L-O-L. Happened, here's the coming to truth. He's texting his son from the airport saying he hates being away, but he had to travel to make money because it was tight these days, signed off L-O-L. The son responds, Dad, what exactly do you think L-O-L means? Well, lots of love, obviously. And of course, his son set him straight, and his world crumbled, and he had a lot of emails to write to explain himself to other people

why you'd LOL them in the midst of their suffering. But I bring it up. It's fun. It's cute. And also that our fleeing approaches, ways we remove ourselves and create distance, really make it so that we... are unable to see who's there. We're not really communicating.

And that's a deep part of fleeing this, whether we're doing it through pretending or withholding or in some way getting lost in our thoughts, we're no longer connected with our hearts. Second big way, fighting, judging. And that's where we're resisting some vulnerability that's going on in our lives by saying, this shouldn't be happening, I'm bad, you're bad.

That's the kind of fighting that's going on. And it's when life is not working out the way we want it. Instead of being with that, there's a lashing out or a lashing inward. And as I described these, just sense where you notice this for yourself. One story, a new business was opening, and one of the owner's friends wanted to send them flowers for the occasion.

So they arrive at the new business site and the owner reads the card and it says, Rest in peace. So the owner's angry and calls the florist to complain. After he tells the flurist the obvious mistake and how angry is, the flurist replies, Sir, I'm really sorry for the mistake, but rather than getting angry, you should imagine this. Somewhere, there's a funeral taking place and they have flowers with a note saying, congratulations on your new location. So blaming and judging is the big one,

and you can notice it at retreat. Again, think of it that this is a way of resisting the demons, that you may have gone through today thinking, I'm not doing this right, I'm not doing this day right. So rather than just being with how it was and the feelings of, it's this blaming oneself, or you might be blaming others. This person's too noisy, or this person in some ways taking my space or blaming the way somebody might be eating

or walking or something in the group. And what we find, whether it's here, you probably have better examples at home or relationships get more charged, that whenever there's blaming, it's like whatever we practice grows stronger. And the more we blame, we're resisting the demons, the less access we have to the vulnerability that's behind the blaming. The more we blame, the less access to the vulnerability behind the blaming. So there's the fleeing usually into our thoughts, there's the blaming often towards ourselves. And then the last piece to mention the ways that we resist is by grasping.

And you can watch it here, you know, the kind of the grasping I want, oh gosh, I want a nap. Or the grasping after I want the food to be different or more or something, but not how it is. Are grasping, I want to go online and just check something and you can see it. Or as one person described today, the grasping after the sound of the bell at the end of the sit, oh please, oh please, I want the bell, you know. It's like, please may it end. It's grasping for something different. And then through our lives, we're going to be a little. And then through our lives we have different ways of leaving by grasping around consuming. Most people have some way of resisting how this moment is by consuming. It could be food or sugar or alcohol.

One story a friend gave me that I love, man goes to a bar and orders a drink. Bartender gives it to him and then the man pushes it off to the side. Orders another drink. Bartender gives it to him. This time he drinks it. And the bartender says, well, what gives? Well, you go to AA meetings and you hear regularly, it's the first drink that leads to trouble. So we go ahead and grasp and then we, in some way, make it okay to ourselves. But the reason I am really reviewing these is to have you look at your own lives mostly here right now while you're here, but also at home, and sense if you can begin to see how you resist the present moment. Begin to see how the mind moves away from the present moment,

how your body might tighten against the present moment, how your activities might keep you from the present moment. Because if resistance, the way we leave is below the line, and by below the line, we often talk about Joseph Campbell's circle, of awareness and there's a line going through and anything that is below the line is outside of our awareness and anything above the line is in the light of awareness. And the more we meditate, the more we're bringing life into awareness, which gives us freedom because if it's below the line, we're identified. If we're resisting, we're identified. What you resist,

you're identified with, you get hooked to it. If you're resisting your loneliness, you're identified with it. If you're resisting your anger, you're identified with it. So the first step is to start noticing what we're resisting because our resistance is like wearing a mask, whether we're withdrawing and that's, we're in our withdrawn mask or avoiding or controlling, and we start to consider ourselves a controlling person, a withdrawn person, a scared person. We identify with the mask and we forget who we really are.

The more we resist. So a story to give an example of kind of shining a light on strategies of resistance is something that really came forward. a pattern with Jonathan and myself. For most of the time we've been together, we've had a kind of twice a week meditation scheduled. And during that meditation, we check in. And it's a chance to feel what we're grateful for

and also to look and sense, well, is there anything really that's getting between us? Is there anything going on, any pattern that's keeping us from really open-hearted, loving and caring? And personality-wise, I've been the one that's been more intent on making sure we communicate about things that might create separation, just because that's the way it's happened temperamentally. And also it's been part of my temperament to feel like you're not really willing to go where I want to go and talk about such and such.

So one day, this was a long time ago in our relationship, we're way past this now, but we were, we were, we had done our meditation, and we had pretty much talked about everything but our relationship. So before we ended, you know, I paused us and I said, so, how are we doing? Is there anything you feel would be good for us to pay attention to? And then I kind of sat back to listen, really kind of self-satisfied, that I kind of framed the inquiry in a positive, impotational way,

We were on my turf, basically, you know. And just so you know, I had nothing really on my mind. I didn't have a complaint. I was just on some way wanting him to remember that it was important that we talk about things, you know. And so Jonathan squirmed a bit and kind of looked towards me to give him a clue was there something I had in my mind

because he was afraid he had missed something. You know, it wasn't our anniversary or anything like that, but he was afraid there was some right answer he should be coming up with. So he did look at me hopefully. and I just kind of sat silent. And there really was a deer in the headlights look to him. So then he got a mischievous look,

and he pulled ahead his iPhone, and he asked Siri, how do you respond when your wife asks, how are we doing? Within moments, he got an answer. And this, I swear, this is the truth. Siri said, I'm okay, you're okay, and this is the best of all possible worlds. Really, he showed it to me.

And of course, I instantly gave up and it lightened up everything, and we didn't talk, but we went on and had fun. But what we did at other times is point out the patterning that was playing in that dynamic. And the patterning was, and the way it comes down to, is that for me, if I feel unattended to, like he doesn't want to be intimate or close or whatever,

then my way of reacting to that feeling rather than just being with that feeling of going down to that deep, deep, early place of I'm not lovable or wanted, my way is to then be judging and blaming and trying to control. So I was being aggressive, so, you know, I was kind of trying to put him on the spot.

and his way of resisting the demons is when he feels insecure or threatened is rather than sitting and feeling it he will either accommodate me or use something to distract or humor or whatever but not just sit in that fire so you know there's a learning that comes out of it that he really needs to cooperate with me more

I'm actually sharing on purpose about us because whether it's in relationship with another person or in our own relationship with ourselves, catching onto our pattern, oh, when I feel unlovable, I then judge somebody. Catching onto those rather than just staying present is the beginning of being able to undo the patterns. Is the beginning of freedom. And so I'd like to invite you, we'll do a couple of reflections. The first reflection is a demon's reflection number one, if you will, just to take a moment

to close your eyes. So this is coming up with a situation in your life where it's like Melarepa entering the cave where the demons are active. It may be somewhere where it's in a relational context where you get triggered. It'd be hurt, anger, fear, and as if you were bearing witness to like Milarepa doing his, trying out his different strategies, you might sense that when you get caught in this, what's your strategy initially at least for resisting or reacting? How do you try to leave the vulnerability of the moment and control things?

Do you withdraw? Do you get controlling and blaming? If you try to numb it in some way? Do you try to talk yourself out of it? Give yourself a Dharma talk? And if you could keep exploring a little that wonderful question, what are you unwilling to feel in those moments? What are the demons that are there that you're in some way avoiding?

And just to sense what's the experience of yourself when you're in some way avoiding? you're in some way avoiding those demons, playing out your resistance or you're reacting. In other words, if you're instead of just feeling what's here, you're blaming yourself, or you're blaming someone else, or you're withdrawing from a situation, or you're trying to control. What's the felt sense of self that comes with that? In other words, what's your small self-identity? If this is a deep pattern, it'll feel very familiar.

It'll feel like a very familiar unseen withdrawn self or a very familiar controlling self or a very familiar blaming self. This is the mask. This is the mask that we get identified with when we're resisting, when we're doing anything but presence. And it starts developing very early on as a way to help us navigate. But it's a way of resisting reality. And it creates the sense of a separate not okay self when we do anything but real presence

with the feelings that are there. James Baldwin writes, love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without. and know we cannot live within. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and no, we cannot live within. He goes on to say, I use the word love here, not merely in the personal sense, but as a state of being or a state of grace, not in the infantile American sense of being made happy, but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. So this last part of our exploration together, we're going to go further into this surrendering

of the mask. Whatever our mask is, the controlling mask, the blaming mask, the avoiding and withdrawing mask, that we fear we can't live without it. We don't know how to operate without it. It seems scary to drop it and yet we can't live within it because it keeps us as that small, unreal, separate, not okay self. So as Baldwin says, we need that love that's a courageous love to stop withdrawing, to stop controlling, to stop the judging and to open to what's here.

So if you'd like to open your eyes it's fine. of the ground levels of our training together is to recognize that if we're lost in thought, we're fueling the mask. If we're lost in thoughts, our thoughts are going to keep on triggering the emotions that loop back the thoughts. We're going to keep on looping and being identified with the mask. So one of the first things we do in meditation training, it's just what we're doing here, is come into these bodies, come into the sense.

the senses, come to the breath so we can begin to sense the difference between being lost in a thought, which is a virtual reality that keeps the mask going, and being right here, which is the undoing of resistance. We start undoing the resistance by waking up from thoughts. Carlos Castagnata writes, you talk to yourself too much. You're not unique in that. one of us does. We maintain our world with our inner dialogue. A man or woman of knowledge is aware that the world will change completely as soon as they stop talking to themselves.

I really love that because of course we don't stop talking to ourselves forever. There's a certain amount of thinking that actually is necessary to survive and can be profoundly creative. But we need to know the difference between. between thinking, which is virtual and hereness. In fact, one of the most powerful little ways of practicing that you can do as you're here is when you notice you've been thinking, wake up from the thought, you know, just thinking, and notice the difference between being inside the thought and this living reality. Just notice the difference.

And the more you get the knack of noticing. producing the difference between virtual and real, the more there's almost a gravitational kind of pull to live in the immediacy of what's right here. So that's part of the training, is that we over and over again wake up from our thoughts. I love the way Veronica Tuguleva puts it. She says, we speak about losing our minds as if it's a bad thing. I say, lose your mind. You would purposefully find out who you really are beyond your thoughts and beliefs.

We can't find out who we are beyond the mask if we don't wake up out of our thoughts. Does that make sense? Yeah? Wes Nisker, a good buddy of many of ours, Dharma teacher, talks about the relationship with our minds. He says, and he talks about his relationship with his own mind. He says, we're still friends and we still live together, but I'm no longer co-de- So how do we now practice when we become aware the demons are in the cave, we've become aware

that we've been throwing at them every strategy we have, we've been blaming ourselves and blaming them or trying to control or huddling in some way or trying to go to sleep and give up? How do we practice? And this is where we'll take the rain acronym and just explore when you're caught in the cave and the demons are really activated, how can you use mindfulness and self-compassion to wake up? And I'd like to check here and say,

how many of you have never worked with the Rain acronym before? Can I see by hands just to give me a sense? Don't be shy, because it's an ever-deepening process. Thank you. So, rain, the acronym is recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. And then there's what I call after the rain, which is noticing the shift,

the waking up from the small identity. And rain is a way of doing what you might think of as a U-turn, that when there's demons going on, when there's feelings of insecurity and self-doubt or restlessness or anger, our tendency is to fixate on them and either fight them or fixate on them but run the other way, but either way we're hooked.

With rain, we're making a U-turn and bringing our attention to what's underneath, to the actual felt sense that's going on behind that resisting. And the way we do it is to begin by noticing, okay, the demons, if you're here, you're recognizing and allowing the different mix of the thoughts and the feelings. Just let it be there. The investigating is primarily somatic. And I'm going to give you an example, but I want to just point out right now that when you investigate, the biggest misunderstanding about investigation is that we're trying to figure

something out. It's like, you know, my parent basically gave me the message that I was never good enough. And then when I tried to do this, I internalized it. You know, it's not that. It's checking and finding in your body what's there and how it feels, knowing that our issues are in our tissues, really bringing that gentle investigation into the body and then nurturing with kindness. By way of example, I like to give stories.

stories of how different people use rain, and because it's the holiday season, and some people are coming from the rawness of what happens in the relational field, are the rawness of lacking a relational field. I thought I would share a story about a woman to place around the holidays. She's really estranged from her daughter and in-law and growingly estranged from her own son. She felt very pushed out of their lives, especially, boundered around the grandchildren. And the dynamic had been that she would express her opinions

rather forcibly. And her daughter-in-law really just did not want to put up with a controlling mother-in-law. And then, you know, got an ally and her husband. And from her perspective, she told me, she asked things like, well, are the children getting enough protein because the parents are vegan? Or she brings to them, you know, what about music lessons? It's supposed to develop the, you know.

But they didn't want that from her. And she started to become more restrained, but it seemed like anything she would say was a violation. And so she did rein with that. And we got together and she would think of her daughter-in-law and get very angry. And she basically blamed her. daughter-in-law is the main one that was keeping her from her family and she felt like her daughter-in-law hated her and it doesn't matter what I say or do, she just doesn't

want me in there, you know, and so on. So we started there, recognized and allow, there's anger. These are the thoughts and these are the feelings that are swirling around. And allow doesn't mean we like it, doesn't mean we want to stay with it for very long. Allow is like pausing with something, saying, okay, we're just going to, I'm not going to resist right now, I'm not going to negate it, I'm not going to fight it, just going to let it be here. Because unless we pause and create some space, there's no way we can investigate and get intimate with what's underneath.

So there's recognizing and allowing. And then she began to investigate and I helped her by saying let that anger be as big as wants to be and she felt like it was exploding through the room that she was in. And then she felt like it was exploding through the East Coast and then exploding through the whole United States and the globe and everything was kind of bursting into flames and exploding. It was big anger. Okay.

And she kept letting get it bigger and bigger. And then she got quiet and she said, you know, well, nothing's happening. I said, well, what are you aware of? And she said, well, I'm alone. She said, yeah? She said, well, I'm alone and I've been pushed away, I'm not wanted and there's no one here. And so there's this feeling of complete abandonment and being alone and as she opened to that

and really let herself feel it, she started weeping and that's when she could begin nurturing. And I've often found that if we investigate and investigate and really get down to where the vulnerability is, there's a natural sense of care or tenderness that comes. And I often have people put their hands on their heart and the final question for investigating are one of the most powerful ones is what is this place most need right now? Or how does it want you to be with it? to really sense the need. And for her it needed to know that she wasn't leaving, that

she was staying. Because when we feel other people are always leaving us or abandoning us, if we look close, there's often a sense that we have left and abandoned ourselves. And so she found that her nurturing was just to say, I'm not leaving, I care, I'm not leaving, I care. And that's the nurturing. And then after after the rain is just to sense what's there. And she said all I can feel right now is that there's this kind of space that's kindness and there's a hurting inside it. But what that means is that her sense of her own being was larger than the hurting.

And this is the shift in identity that really is at the heart of all Dharma practice. that when we stop resisting and instead of resisting the demons there's a presence with, which is a surrendering, we're surrendering the resistance. That presence actually becomes a space, a tender space, like an ocean that has room for the waves. And there's a sense of freedom with that. So for her many, many rounds, this was a deep wound and it took many rounds of rings. until she got more and more familiar with being that kind of space of kindness

that was holding the young child that felt abandoned. That was more the truth of who she was than that self that felt pushed away, unloved, and really was very angry about that. During this time, she was having, you know, email contact and so on with her son and with her daughter-in-law, and it was pretty uneventful. And she kept doing the practice the way she described it. And a Tibetan teacher used these words. She kept meeting her edge and softening with rain.

She would meet that edge of that anger and just soften by investigating and holding herself tenderly. And that phrase really helped her. And I'm sharing it with you because I've found it helpful too, that you can do a very brief rain. You meet your edge and just some softening and opening to what's here. Well, she went and last year, this is during the holidays last year, went and visited again. And this was after, it may have been like 200 rounds of rain. So she'd done a lot of working with that anger. And as it turned out, her daughter-in-law was kind of under the weather, you know, kind of sickly when she came.

And so she got to step in, and she had kind of sensed how her daughter-in-law was kind of under the weather. step in and she had kind of sensed how her daughter-in-law just worked herself ragged. She really cared about her kids and she worked herself ragged. And so she was kind of, it was really felt good to her and she went ahead and made those, you know, beyond burger, vegan burgers and the vegan lasagna and she did everything the way her daughter-in-law wanted it. And before leaving her son kind of hugged her and said, thanks for showing up. I really, really needed you.

Her daughter-in-law walked her out, she had an Uber taking her to the airport, walked her out to the Uber and she said, I really needed a mom around. And for this woman she got into the Uber and just broke down but it was a good breakdown because she felt that belonging. And she told me what let me feel that belonging is I met my edge and softened so much I was just soft enough to belong. which is stuck with me, is soft enough to belong. So the final commentary I'll make on this is that when there's a deep wound, many, many

rounds of rain, the key piece that often is forgotten is that after doing some nurturing to pause and notice the difference between who you were, the masked person who began, the the identified person, the controlling person, the hurt person, the fearful person. And whatever the sense of your being is in those moments, notice the difference. Because the difference is pointing to who you're really becoming. Sometimes we can't directly open to what's there when we're doing rain. This is a topic that's too big for right now. Sometimes before we can even begin to recognize and allow and investigate,

we simply need to do a lot of meta to make it safe enough because we can re-traumatize by going directly into the vulnerability. So the point is not that you always should put your head in the demon's mouth. That's not the teaching. The teaching is that we're leaning in that direction and that we have to do a lot of kind of self-nurturing almost to build the kind of stability in our nervous system to be able to fully surrender. So I'm just putting that out as a reminder and let's go back to the cave again, okay?

Demons cave. So if you will, closing your eyes. What we're doing now is just a very brief rein that I invite you to expand on, on your own. Again, a situation, relational situation. they can bring up the demons, whether it's fear, hurt, anger, shame. The demon might be aversion, hatred. See if you can go to the most kind of challenging part of that situation so that you can remember what was going on, see a person's face or where the setting is, the room you're

in. So you let yourself get in touch with what it's like when this comes up. And perhaps notice the way you might habitually resist or react, be defensive or withdraw, blame. Instead you can make the U-turn and recognize and allow as much as you can notice about what's going on inside you. It helps when you're recognizing and allowing sometimes just to say this belongs. This is a wave in the ocean right now.

This is the way it is. Just to let it be there. It's like saying yes, this is reality right now. It's the beginning of undoing the resistance. And then to deepen attention with investigating. Just to feel in your body, you might even put your hand on your body where you feel most feelings. and that helps to connect and just notice what does it feel like?

Where do you feel it? What does it feel like in your body? There may be a belief that goes with this about how other people are perceiving you or you or maybe that you'll always be the same or a belief that you're failing or unlovable just to notice the belief and then how that feels in your body and sense. deep into where you feel most vulnerable, what that part of you that is vulnerable most needs? What does it need? Exploring just in these moments any gesture of kindness.

Again if you're touching your heart you can just send energy and care through your hand. Could be you know I see this suffering and I care or I'm not leaving. be trusts your goodness, sending some message of kindness and relaxing back a bit and just sensing if there's any shift from the self that was in reactivity, kind of identify with the mask, caught in that small self and the space right now of care and presence, the sense of who you are shifting, the whole trajectory of our path. is not getting somewhere as much as relaxing back to discover this presence, this tenderness, this kind of empty radiance of being.

That's who we really are. For most humans it involves engaging with the demons, with the different energies of fear, anger rather than resisting being willing to face them. And we're talking on an individual level, the importance of facing the demons to really wake up to our true being. But it's also the same shift in consciousness that we really need as a world on group level. We can behold our world and sense the demons of fear and that when we don't face them, happens.

Our group survival brain goes into fight-flight-fries. We're in a group limbic hijack that creates an unreal self and unreal others, leads to demeaning and violating. You can open your eyes if you'd like. Just take a few more moments here to say that we talk a lot about how we're practicing and it's not just for individual freedom. a practice that really is for the evolving consciousness of the species. And on the group level, if we don't face our fears, we live in a sense of inferior, superior,

good, bad, and violation. Even with each other, as any moment there's comparing mind, any moment there's comparing mind, you can't see the purity of beingness that's here. You lose track of your own essential goodness and in others. And what science shows now is the brain when it's afraid. When the brain is afraid, it locks into superior or inferior. Our survival brain does not perceive the innate worth of all beings. Our survival brain doesn't do that. So we're waking up from our survival right here individually and we also are learning to wake up in a group level through ways of having dialogue with those that we've locked into unreal othering with.

And I want to share an example of that of going beyond the mask kind of in a group way. One of the bridge builders that I watch out there that's doing that a lot is Van Jones. He brings groups together so that they can see beyond the mask. And I saw a spontaneous video of him that I want to tell you about, that I think is a really amazing example of waking up out of the habitual ways of defending and aggressing. This was right before the election of President Trump when some supporters of his that were white supremacists confronted Van Jones. He's a CNN commentator. He wrote The Messy Truth, and as I mentioned, he brings groups of difference together. And they confronted him,

calling him a racist, saying that what about the white policeman that was just killed? And they're really angry at him. They're also videoing his response. So this is like he's on the spot being kind of attacked verbally by these guys and it's really high energy and he keeps talking to them and talking to them and asking them about their feelings and experience and so he actually treats them really respectfully and he listens and this is what he said at the end he said if you cry just as much when that black man died in that police car and i cried just as much when that horrible bigot shot down the police if you're crying and i'm crying and i'm crying just as much and we're crying together, then we can find a way to get our cops

to be better and our kids better. And he's speaking and this young man, just to watch it was amazing, is nodding and they end up hugging. Now there's a reason that in talking tonight we started very much, spent most of the time the individual but I wanted to name this because every time that we're talking tonight, we started time you make that you turn and are willing to face your own vulnerability and fears, you wake up out of a small identity that creates other. And you become enlarged and more and more living with an inclusive heart.

When you include your own vulnerability, you start including others more and more. And I think it's such a powerful and important question for us to ask ourselves, who don't we cry for? We know we cry for some, but who don't we cry for? Who do we make less than or other and then not cry for them? Can we cry for the earth? It's like when we're not facing the demons, we're not in touch with vulnerability, can we really cry for the earth?

So we're not crying for the earth, we're not going to save our earth. Do we cry for the billions of animals that are tormented each year and killed to feed humans? The cruelty of that, do we cry for them? Do we cry for the people that we work with when, and when I say cry for, I mean care for. Cry for, care for is our hearts open. So we end tonight, invite you to close your eyes one last time.

Last time in the cave, we explore tonight really the masks that we wear to avoid the demons, how we get identified with those masks. The mass we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. And it takes intention. And the intention, what motivates us is love to make the U-turn over and over again, not just when there's major issues and we need to meet our edge and soften. But in any moment can we choose to be here? So I invite you in these last moments right now to perhaps sense, is there anything between

me and an awake, open-hearted presence? And with whatever you notice, can you meet that edge and soften with that, with the the kind attention. Can you say yes to what's here? This belongs. From Dana Falls, the poet, in the shared quiet, an invitation arises like a white dove lifting from a limb and taking flight. Come and live in truth. Take your place in the flow of grace. Draw aside the veil you thought would always separate your heart from love. All you ever longed for is before you in this moment if you dare draw in a breath and whisper yes. Thanks to each of you for your presence and attention.

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