Tara Brach - The Power of Inquiry in Spiritual Awakening - Part 1

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Part I - In spiritual life, inquiry arises from our deep yearning to understand reality, and it involves bringing an interested, engaged attention to our immediate experience.  These two talks explore how inquiry serves emotional healing by focusing on difficult "stuck" places, how inquiry enables us to become more intimate and understanding of others, and in the deepest way, how inquiry can reveal the deepest truth of what we are…our true nature. The talks include several guided reflections that can enrich your meditation practice and serve spiritual awakening.   Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music

Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrock.com, where you can also join our email list. Now, let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Namaste, welcome. Thank you for being here, friends.

So this will age me a bit, but back in the day when phones were answered sometimes by answering machines, I had a friend and if you called her, the message on the machine you'd get was this. It would say, what I want to know is, who are you? And what do you really want?

I thought it was so wonderful with Stock Media in my tracks every time. And if we actually take time with those questions, who are you? And what do you really want? They're a gateway to freedom. So in our everyday trance, we have questions going on in our mind, but they're usually fear-driven. They're trying to solve a problem. You know, what's the faster route to get to work, or what is that person thinking of me,

or what can I wear that'll look okay, and how to get more done? So they're not questions that will mean much to us if we were at our end of our life looking back to what's really meaningful. So they're natural, but there's a deeper potential imposing questions. It's called spiritual inquiry. I mean, consider this, that the moment. moment you ask yourself, what is happening inside me right now? Do you ask that and you actually notice what's going on? You can sense how that question, that inquiry guide your attention.

More reality and truth is revealed. Here's another one for you and I invite you to pause and just consider this. Take a breath and then another. And then ask yourself, who am I if there isn't a problem to solve? And perhaps you can sense how much is revealed, both about how often we live in a problem mentality and also the freedom, the mystery beyond that. So, my friends, these next two weeks, the talks will be on the power of spiritual inquiry. And I can say that on my own path, the curiosity about the nature of reality and then asking questions that take me beyond mental cognition, it's revealed a greater truth and love that can't be described but can be experienced. So I hope you find in your lives these explorations alive and of value.

Thank you. When I was young, my father took great pleasure in entertaining my siblings and myself. And I remember one story from a camping trip, a family camping trip, where he described two men who were spiritualists. They had seances and so on. And they had a consuming curiosity about what happened after we died. So they made a pack. And the pack was that whoever died first would appear through a seance

and describe the afterlife. And so some months went by after one of them died and the other, they kept having these seances but nothing happened. I think it was about eight months later, maybe let's say 10 months, not whatever gestation period and other creature needs or life needs, contact was made. And it was with great excitement that, you know, the friend's voice appeared and so his living buddy said, so what's it like? He said, well, we eat and we have sex and then we sleep and then we eat some more and we have more sex and we sleep.

And his friend said, that's what it's like in heaven? He said, oh, no, no, no, I'm a moose in Wyoming. So growing up, that was one of my all-time favorites. I don't know why, but so it's a silly example of what I'm going to, the theme we're on, which is that we, that we, We all have a deep yearning to know reality, to know what's true. Each of us has that in us, this mysterious world that can't be captured by our thoughts, we want to know. And many of you are familiar with the phrase, the truth shall set you free. Well, the inquiry, what does it really mean to seek the truth? What does it mean for us to

really want to know, you know, what is separating me from love and what is love? Are really the question about, you know, what am I believing that's keeping my life small? And really the deep ones of, you know, who am I or what am I? What is this life? So, the last talk last week was on the three attitudes. that really support a liberating practice. And those attitudes, the first attitude is one of real openness, a kind of relaxed attention that allows the life that's here to be here.

And the second attitude was one of interest, you know, what is this life about? And the third was a caring which really cherishes what is discovered. And in each of those attitudes there's actually a whole domain of practice that we can explore. So in this talk I'd like to explore the domain of practice that comes out of that core interest in the nature of reality. And some call it investigation, some call it inquiry. But this class and the next I'd like to explore the power of inquiry, the way the truth really does set us free. I'd like to explore it in a practical way, you know, a practical way, you know, how do we ask the questions that are really going to wake us up and how does it work,

that we really free ourselves? One of my favorite poly phrases, and that's the language of the Buddha, are the words aipasico. And it means come and see for yourself. So the Buddha gave all these verbal teachings and then basically capped it off by saying, you can believe it or not, better just to find out with direct investigation. Because it doesn't matter what you listen to, it's not until you confirm through your own experimentation, your own looking that it's going to be cellularly alive, that it's really

going to come alive for you. So as it goes, it's the same, anything I say in these talks, you know, they're kind of meant to point the door, I sometimes think of one person described it that I'm the welcome at and that at the door, but you have to kind of walk through and just do your own thing, really. We have to practice and explore. So the only real liberation is from direct investigation. This is Heldegaard of Vingen says it this way and I find this a really powerful way of framing it. She says, we cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others.

An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light. part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light. So in a way, the kind of core theme is how do we wake up from the interpreted world and really let this investigation and inquiry into what's true connect us with our own inner, knowing, and light? I think maybe the first step is to really get it how many moments we're living inside that trance of an interpreted world. I mean, how many moments we have that veil of thoughts that's really felt we're filtered.

It's filtered by the culture, it's filtered by our parents, it's filtered by what's been internalized by our own small self. You know, all these concepts and biases and unexamined views. We live inside them. So the trance is what prevents that kind of direct realization. The trance is the interpreted life and one of the first revelations of meditation is getting oh, I'm living a lot of moments inside these stories. We just start seeing it.

And at first it can feel overwhelming. It's just the sheer force of this ongoing inner narrative that keeps capturing our attention. But we start noticing and bit by bit we're resting a little more in the awareness that's noticing, bit by bit. So it's a deconditioning. We're kind of deconditioning living inside that trance. A couple of decades ago at the Insight Meditation Society, which is one of the retreat centers where I've gone many times to both practice and I also have taught there, They have each year a three-month retreat. So one of the early three-month retreats, one of the visiting teachers was a Korean Zen teacher.

And he was sitting in and he listened to the different teachers give their Dharma talks and he sat there while the students did their practice. And there were all the traditional talks, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold path and the recharacteristics and so on and so forth. Finally it's his turn to give a talk and he sits up there and he's, he's kind of quiet and still and then he looks at everybody with this fierce look and he says everything all wrong all the teaching's wrong that's his major comedy says it not matter there's only one question what is this that was it that was his teaching you know is everything else

wrong all wrong you know so of course everybody's sitting there they've been listening to these talks for the last two and a half months and all of a sudden you're supposed to put all that aside But this is very zen and very powerful to get it that beyond all the teachings, there's this inquiry that's really, what is this? What is this aliveness right here? What is this moment? What is this awareness that's aware? What is this? So our practice is to notice we're in trance.

and reconnect with what's here in a way we're seeing the veils and pulling them aside to see what is this, what is true. And often when I'm talking about this I think of the Wizard of Oz and I think of Dorothy and her companions and there they are and they finally get in to see the wizard and the booming voice of truth that's telling them what's what. And who is it that pulls the curtain? Do you remember? Toto, the dog. Toto's that part of us that's going, what is this anyway? Pulls the curtain. So I think of it as if we have this inner Toto,

this kind of truth-seeking place in us that really wants to get beyond our stories, beyond the beliefs that tell us we're not enough, beyond anything that is a story in our mind that creates distance with other people, the judgments and the blame. So there's this inner Toto that wants to pull the curtain and we're trying to strengthen that part of ourselves with that inquiry so that we can wake up out of the interpreted world where the false narrative that, you know, the wizard's voice is dominating.

So the common denominator in most meditative paths is this noticing thinking and come back right here. And I've shared at times that there's a statistic that we have something like 80,000 thoughts a day and that 98% of them we had yesterday, right? So we're living in this little cocoon and the sign of it is that we keep repeating our patterns. Have you noticed? How often these like this core twists that we really wish weren't happening where we just keep on eating too much or keep on judging more than we wish we would or keep on taking

things too personally or whatever it is they keep happening? Well we're in that interpreted world. We've internalized some beliefs. We keep rerunning the same thoughts and they keep generating the same. feelings and behaviors over and over. So, we need to train ourselves to pull that curtain, to get interested, what's really going on? It said that, you know, we all know we have three brains and we use 100% of the lower two, the more primitive ones, and we use 20% of the neocortex and some describe it that we mostly use it to explain away the

acts that were generated by the lower parts of our brain. In other words, it's not rational, it's a rationalizing brain, as they put it. And that we then end up just using whatever's going on to reinforce our beliefs about things. This is an example I like a lot that it's time to elect a new world leader and only your voice counts. Here are the facts about the facts about the three leading candidates. I'm sharing this because it's, you know, as you know, there's so much going on about elections. Candidate A, associates with crooked politicians,

consults with astrologists, he had two mistresses, he also chained smokes and drinks eight to ten martinis a day. Okay? So listen, that's candidate A. It's a choice one. Candidate B, he was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college, and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.

Candidate C. He was a decorated war hero, he's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer and never cheated on his wife. So which candidate would be your choice? And how many of you would vote for candidate A? B. Couple. Couple like the one that drinks whiskey every night.

C? Okay. So here they are. Candidate A was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Candidate B. Winston Churchill. candidate C. Adolf Hitler. Yeah, it's pretty pretty whatever it is. I don't know what it is. It's interesting.

There's a saying that history repeats itself, which is a good thing, because most people don't pay attention the first time anyway. So why did I share that? And it's really just because we live off our ideas about things. And it's really not unless we're willing to investigate more deeply past the spin

that we hear, the rumors that we hear, even the stuff that might be true but we don't really know what it means that we get to a deeper level of reality. So the metaphor is that if you're in a dark room and you are bumping around against the furniture, you'd want to shine the light and shine the light of awareness on what's there to be able to move with more grace. Now, importantly, inquiry and what we're going to be exploring how to look, it's not conceptual. Certainly conceptual inquiry is an important thing for different domains of our life, but we're talking today about spiritual inquiry or we're really looking into the nature of the heart

and awareness. So it's not conceptual. So it takes a commitment, the training and inquiry takes a commitment to put aside the inner dialogue. That means when you ask yourself a question, you don't then go around with thoughts about what the answer might be, you actually check into your body and your senses. So that's one point I want to make very clear that that's part of the training. It's non-conceptual inquiry, which isn't easy because we're very addicted to the stories we tell about ourselves. This one story, a little story of a guy comes into a bar and is talking to the bartender and he says, you know, I know there's no self, but I'm all that I can think about, you know.

So we're addicted. So it really takes some willingness to step out of the thinking mind to explore what's really true. Pema Chodran writes this. She says, being preoccupied with these thoughts, our self-image and the like. It's like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads.

It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs. Because when you're telling the stories about who's wrong and who's right and what you need to do to be meeting your own standards. It's wearing earplugs and a blindfold because your senses aren't awake in those moments. Check it out. When you're in the thinking trance, you're not aware of the sound of the wind and the trees and you're not seeing the gleam in the eyes of the person you're talking to. You're not there in that way. So there's a few attitudes that support inquiry. I just want to name them. One of them is a quality of sincerity where you really want to know, where you really care about understanding and sensing what's true.

And you can sense that quality in children often when there's just that natural wonder and interest and wanting to know that's very, it's got an innocent story. to it. Some grandparents wrote out, wrote their little sharing about, about, it's called From Children's mouths. My young grandson called the other day to wish me a happy birthday. He asked me how old I was and I told him 62. He was quiet for a while and then he asked, did you start at one? I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colors yet so I decided to test her. I would point out something and ask what color it was and she would tell me. And oh, as she was correct. It was fun for me, so I continued. At last, she headed for the door and said sagely,

Grandma, I think you should try to figure out some of these things yourself. When my grandson asked me how old I was, I teasingly replied, I'm not sure. Look in your underwear, grandma, he advised. Mine says I'm four to six. The power of sincere inquiry, and those were playful examples, is that when you really are interested, it draws out the truth. And I think of this, I think of at my mom's funeral, that one of her old friends was talking to me and she said, you know, I could tell her anything because I always knew she was interested in me. And it struck me that I kind of was remembering how in high school my friends would come over after school we had kind of the gathering spot.

But I noticed often they drift off and they'd be off talking to her in her office and she was very involved with the field of alcoholism and often they'd end up talking about their own use and about their parents being alcoholics, but she had this sincere interest in people. In fact, some of her friends told me how she was great at dinner parties they could place her the spot on the table where she was most needed because, you know, she could draw on anybody. So it's that quality when we sincerely want to understand. The other attitude is a willingness to be uncertain. And this is key when you're and we're going to be practicing some levels of inquiry during

this talk that to go in open-handed, it's those that are arrogant and certain, you know, are holding tight to their knowing to their ground but aren't available to learn. So it's asking a question of being willing to be changed by what you discover, not holding on to your idea of what's going on or what's going to be right, which of course takes courage. It takes vulnerability. I've shared before the inquiry that one way Sage offered to anybody that would come to him saying I really need to know what's true and his question to them would be, what are you unwilling to feel?

What are you unwilling to pay attention to? can maybe sense a little how just asking that, you go, oh, hmm, so that's what I didn't want to feel. And yet that's what needs to be included to really touch truth. So what motivates? You know, we have that part of us that kind of described as our inner Toto or that really deep part of us that it's the awareness in us that wants to recognize itself and be whole. And Rumi says it most poetically. He says, grapes want to turn to wine. We want to wake up. We want to realize truth. So the first practice that we'll explore this first level of inquiry is one of moving from thoughts into the, well, what's really

here? What's happening? And to begin, you might make yourself comfortable and close your eyes. Just allow yourself to consider this a pause to let yourself arrive here. remembering these attitudes of that quality of sincerity, of real interest in what's going on, a willingness to be uncertain, to not know. And you may begin by just that simple question, what is happening inside me right now? What's the most predominant experience you're aware? And again, to keep looking, what is happening right now? Now, inside me, experiencing not through the interpretive mind but directly through the senses.

Right now, again, fresh, what's happening inside me? You might ask this flavor that the sage offered, what is it that I might be unwilling to feel, unwilling to pay attention to, inside me right now? What is it that might be asking for inclusion, acceptance? And notice what happens when I ask that question. What is asking for inclusion or acceptance? What is it that might be a little difficult to attend to? And as you notice whatever is appearing or arising, just to welcome it, allow it, be with

it. You can ask the question, is there anything else right this moment that we're going to welcome it? wants my attention. Just re-asking in a fresh way. As you're ready to take a few full breaths and open your eyes. Okay. So you might notice when a question is poised or posed, it directs attention to what's going on. It increases the energy and the incisiveness of attention. There's more penetration of attention and this is the power of inquiry when it's combined. It's a flavor of mindfulness and when it's supporting mindfulness it actually allows us to contact more fully what's there.

In any moment that you ask you know what is happening inside me right now you're going to be moving from the realm the trance of the interpreted world right into the aliveness of the body. What is happening? What wants attention? What's asking for acceptance? Inclusion. So those are some examples of questions you can play with to really start mastering the art

of deepening attention inwardly. Now I'd like to remind you once again, this is I feel like of any of the misunderstandings about inquiry. biggest one is that there's a kind of figuring out going on. So I could ask the question, what's going on inside me right now? And you might say, well, you know, I'm feeling kind of bad because I had an experience in college of rejection that really went back to my mother not paying attention to me when I want, you know, it can go like that, which is possibly okay for a therapeutic process but not spiritual inquiry. Because again, we're not engaged

engaging in mental processes that take us away from the moment, it's an inquiry that brings us into the moment, okay? I just want to kind of make that clear. One person described it as Zen and reading all the books about Zen, you know, the art of reading all the books about Zen. So it's like it's not that, it's not, you know, stepping aside and in some way getting mental about things. Another example I liked of the misunderstandings of it. This came from a book called the Lady Bird Book of Mindfulness. In ancient times, guru Bill-end entered a state of mindfulness that lasted 35 years. During that time he contemplated everything and sought to solve all spiritual questions. When he had finished, he wrote the

answer on a grain of rice. He never married. Now that's weird, right? That's a weird story. So here's this guy, he gets mindful but he thinks it's about answering every question and he misses his life. Not that getting married is necessary to have a good life but he's not living, he's trying to figure out things. It's not that. That's a long, long rooted way of saying, Don't get caught in the thinking process. More, it's an untangling and a coming down from thinking process. So the second level of inquiry I'd like to explore with you is how when we're caught in emotional suffering we can use posing these questions to untangle the tangle.

Okay? And here's the basic formula for when we're in emotion. suffering. In those moments, if you're having a hard time, if you're caught in an emotion that is gripping you like fear, anger, judgment or shame or whatever it is, in those moments you're living in an interpretive world, you're living in a trance, you're believing beliefs that are causing you trouble, that are triggering off feelings that you're identified with. Your whole sense of beingness has become confined in a little world of limiting beliefs and waves of feeling that are defining you.

Okay? That's the moments of emotional suffering. And so undoing that trance absolutely requires investigation. Now many of you are familiar with Rain, so Rain is a very good example because Rain basically is saying bringing a mindful attention and and going deep with the investigation and then holding things with kindness. So I'll give you an example of one person who was able to find some freedom using this kind of inquiry or investigation, then we'll try it out.

And as I often do, I'm going to be asking you to think of something in your life where you have felt stuck in some way and then we'll explore how inquiry can help, okay? you might be kind of thinking about what example you might use. All right, so in this particular situation, there's a couple of years ago, a young man I was in touch with who had come to some retreats. And he joined a nonprofit, environmental nonprofit, and a real bright group of people he was working with. And he was the new kid on the block.

And so whenever they'd have their weekly meetings with the different subteams, you know, than brainstorming, he got very insecure. And even though he might have some good ideas when he wasn't with the team, he'd just go into self-doubt. So he would kind of become all tied up and really unable to engage. So we did some practice of rain. And for those that aren't familiar with rain, it's an acronym for mindfulness. And so here's what we would do. He'd get in touch with his feelings of insecurity. and the R of Rain is just to recognize it's going on, okay, and secure. And the A of Rain is let it be there, allow it to just be as it is right now. So recognize and allow.

That's the ground level of being able to bring that light of awareness, okay? Recognize it and allow it. And then we began the I, which is to investigate or inquire into what's happening. So, I asked him some questions. One of the questions is, well, what are you believing when you're in that group? And they said, well, I'm believing I'm inferior, that they're going to find out and reject me, that I'll lose my status, my belonging here. Okay?

That was the belief. And it's a common belief. When we scratch below the surface, we often will find disbelief. that I'm falling short or I'm inferior, that's going to be found out, I'm going to fail, I'll be rejected, okay? So he found, that was his belief. Then he continued to investigate and I said, okay, well when you're believing that, what are you feeling? And that's a question to go into his body and what he found was this kind of tight pressure in his chest and his throat, a kind of feeling of being squeezed and you know I asked well what's it like to live with that in your

in your life and is this like just in this situation he goes actually I go through a lot of my days with that kind of squeezed feeling and and then it got really sad he said well it just disconnects me from myself not I'm not at home so then I asked him another question I said well ask that fear place what it most needs. It's an important question, by the way. This is when you're doing inquiry to feel the fear in your body and says, well, what does that place need? Okay? What does it want? And he was surprised because the response was just to accept that it's there, not to presume it shouldn't be there. Okay? So, the response he was being asked to give to that fear was, okay,

It's like this. It's okay. You're here. So every time he'd feel himself getting into that anxiety anticipating his team meeting, he would pause. He'd recognize, okay, it's insecurity, he'd allow it. He'd say, okay, believing, all right, believing I'm going to fail, feeling the squeeze, needing, oh, it's okay that it's there, okay, it's okay to be there. And that's the I. The N of Rain is to offer some kindness, some nourishing. So it's just nourishing, it's okay, it's okay to be here. He'd offer what's needed. When you offer what's needed, that's the end of rain, nourishing.

Every time he'd do it, he found, before he was doing, before he started rain, he was this tight, small, scared, and secure self that was going to blow it. And after rain, after the nourishing, his identity had shifted. And he was resting in a larger space, kind of the witness. the awareness, the compassionate place, he wasn't caught in his small self. Now that didn't mean he wouldn't go into the meeting and still feel some waves of anxiety. But it meant that he had more choice because there's more space around it. He was inhabiting a larger sense of his being.

And this is the gift of inquiry that when you go past the interpreted world, and you begin to sense what's really going on and investigate, you end up sensing a bigger space that you're living from. There's more understanding, there's more space. So, one of the questions he would sometimes ask himself after he had done rain is, is that insecure, tongue-tied person who I really am? I just want to toss someone out to you because it can be very helpful once you've gotten a little more perspective, just to ask that, you know, is that scared person, is that insecure or self-conscious or embarrassed or whatever person really who I am? Because it becomes so clear that who you are cannot be confined by that small story.

You're bigger than that. And that's the gift of inquiry. So working with fears is one of the things. the most important domains for inquiry because when we're afraid we're believing something that isn't true. I'm giving in about a month there's an online course I'm giving that's called Awakening a Fearless Heart and if you're interested in it you can go onto my home page tarbrock.com it's up there in the right-hand corner but we use in this course this kind of inquiry to be able to step out of that interpretive world and

and really start discovering in the moment-to-moment experience who we really are beyond the fearful self. I often think of it that the vulnerable parts of us, the scared or shamed parts of us, are kind of like these shy creatures that hang out in the dark woods. And if you imagine this meadow of open awareness, we're trying to invite them into the light of the sun so they can be included and transformed. But to get them to come out of the woods requires really having a sincere interest and a sincere care. We have to really want to get to know them.

So as you approach inquiry, just sense your sincerity that you really want to get to know what's true inside you. You know, one of the women I worked with, I'm just thinking to share this example also, her Her belief was that I'll never be in an intimate relationship. And she had been married, she, you know, divorced and so on, but she felt like I just, I don't have the capacity to be that close. I'm too insecure, people will, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So again, recognize and allow that, you know, feeling of grief and loss and so on, but we

started to investigate and ask us. her, you know, to feel that in her body, how she was living with that belief of I'll never be intimate. Then I asked her a question that is a really powerful inquiry when we get caught in limiting beliefs. Is it possible this isn't true? I mean, do you know this is true for sure? There's a teacher Byron Katie, some of you might know about who's wonderful at working

with beliefs since she uses inquiry really skillfully. And do you know this is true for sure? It's one of the questions she suggests. I like the phrase it's real but not true which I share a lot because you can ask yourself okay it feels real but is it really true? And what you'll get is well it feels real and I don't know it's true but it feels true and our body because we feel fear believes the message of the fear. But that doesn't mean it's truth.

So this is where Inquiry can start making a wedge where we have been hooked on believing I'll never be intimate, on believing I'll never be successful, unbelieving I'll never be happy. It can start making a wedge and allowing a little bit of space and a little bit of freshness around it. So for this woman, you know, asking that question, put a crack in her solidity about I'll never be intimate. And when she could feel the weight of the fear and shame and grief in her body, she started adding that the end of rain, the nourishment and softened some.

And then I asked her another question. This is another one I'm tossing out to you which was, you know, who would you believe be if you didn't believe something was wrong with you? Try it. Who would you be if you didn't believe something was wrong with you? It's a powerful question. She said, I wouldn't know myself because we know ourselves organized around the sense of what's wrong. But then as she sat with that inquiry and sat with it physically, she said, I can feel there would be more alive you know, more space, more creativity. It's like if we really challenge that something's wrong with me belief, we discover a world

of who we can be. So this class really we've been exploring how do we wake up from the interpretive world? Ask the questions that can get us into our body, into our senses, challenge and destabilize the old beliefs, begin to sense what's really. really going on inside us. That phrase, Ahi Posico, it's the only way through this kind of come and find out for yourself that we can start to trust the awareness and the love and the goodness of our being. It has to be through our own inquiry, our own attention inside. So I'd like to close with a final practice where you'll have a chance to kind of work with a stuck place and

just try out some of these questions and see how it goes for you, knowing that when you have more time and you're on your own, this can be something that's really juicy for you. Okay, so again, closing your eyes, sitting in a way that allows you to feel awake and relaxed, and scanning through your life right now and noticing if there's a situation, a place in your life where you're feeling stuck where you keep kind of reacting in the same way. I encourage you not to pick something that you feel is laced with trauma because it won't serve you as a way of exploring for this time. But someplace where you feel stuck and you keep reacting with feelings of hurt or irritation,

anxiety, embarrassment. And as you bring a situation to mind, you might sense what your most obvious reaction is that you feel isn't so healthy or you wish you could in some way heal or wake up from, whether just the anger or the fear or whatever it is. Because we begin, we'll use the acronym Raine as a way to explore this just to recognize what's happening. Recognize, okay, this is anger, judgment, blame, whatever it is, and allow it. Allowing it means you're just letting it be there, you're not trying to fix it or change it right now, giving it some space. And sensing your sincerity as we begin to investigate a little what's happening inside

you. And you might notice if there's, when this is going on, if you're living with some belief, And this is the part where we're shining a light of awareness on the mind. We're looking and saying, oh, is there some belief going on like, oh, you'll never be good enough or you're unlovable or too selfish or some way failing? Is there some belief that you can shine the light of awareness on right now? There might be, there might not be, but just see. That's the first question.

What am I believing? when we're suffering, generally we're believing something that's not true and that's limiting. It might be a belief about how another person is experiencing us. That person doesn't respect me, that person doesn't love me. And then when you're believing and experiencing this, what are you feeling in your body? So just let whatever beliefs there, maybe being unlovable or whatever it is and what's it like when you're believing that in your body? So inquire into your body, feel your throat, your chest, your belly.

What's it like when you're stuck? You could feel right into where you feel most vulnerable or stuck, most reactive, and sense, well what is this part of me most need? How does this part want me to be with it? Stay in your body and just sense what is this part most need? Does it need is that for that man, does it need just to accept that it's a, that it's here? Does it need you to offer more understanding, see what's going on? Does it need love or compassion or forgiveness? What does it need? Just sensing the possibility of your wisest kind

of self offering what's needed. Sometimes I like to put my hand in my heart and just sense that that which is most awakened me, my awake heart, my awake mind is offering, you know, whatever I've discovered through inquiry, offering the kindness or the forgiveness or the understanding that's needed. So if you'd like to you can put your hand on your heart and just offer what's needed. You might sense the presence that's here, the quality of heart and awareness when you're offering care. And just ask yourself, is that stuck self, that self I was reflecting on? Is that really the truth of who I am? in my sense, well, who am I if I'm not believing anything's wrong with me?

Knowing that true inquiry doesn't land on an answer, it opens to a mystery that's meant to be lived. True inquiry doesn't land on an answer. It opens us to a mystery that's meant to be lived. with the words of Mary Oliver. Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled, to cast aside the weight of facts, and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing, that the light is everything, that

it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom and fading. And I do. I want to believe I'm looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing, that the light is everything, that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom and fading. And I do. Namaste and thank you.