Tara Brach - The Power of Mind

Episode Date: July 7, 2010

2010-07-07 - The Buddha taught that "Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind." This talk explores how our intention and attention can tap into the living awareness that is our source, and give rise to healing of body, heart and spirit.

Well, I'm delighted to be back with you. It always feels like a long stretch whenever it's two weeks away. And I hope you've been staying cool and making it through this weather. It's been pretty amazing. So I was out in California for those two weeks at a retreat, which was quite wonderful for me. I've been writing and quite busy teaching, so I hadn't had a chance to take the time.

and I recommend going to retreats. It's amazing to step out of our routines and dive in. So there's a lot of silence and quietness and sitting meditation. And also chigong. I don't know how many of you are familiar with chigong, but that was very at the center of the weave of this retreat. And chigang is a form of meditation that connects us with the basic aliveness consciousness

that really is kind of a source of creation gives rise to the whole living world and are very synergistic with the practice we do here developing this refined attention to the aliveness inside and around us and one of the shared understandings of this retreat and our Vipas and our Buddhist retreats is that when you

tap into this dynamic awareness because awareness is dynamic, it gives rise to life, you really tap into the natural and universal intelligence in this universe that makes possible every type of healing. Every type of healing. You tap into this universal wisdom and love that makes it possible for you to, to release blocks in your body that cause disease states, that open the heart, and that really free the mind. So, and it's very visceral when you, especially you can tell when you've come out of a retreat.

And this, you might feel some after a sitting meditation or any time that you're paying attention, there's more aliveness. You see things as if for the first time. There's a freshness to perception. there's a refinement to inner listening, the senses are awake. That's one level. And you can sense when you come out of deep attention

that the heart's more free. It's described as the pure heart's release. And of course that the mind is more awake. So what I'd like to explore tonight is the power of mind, how each one within us has, this natural intelligence that when we tap into it can entirely transform and heal every part of our life that there's there's a real empowerment to practice that

we recognize that within us is everything we need so I'd like to discuss and explore this and say that it really comes down to something I hope is very familiar for those of you that I'm coming here regularly which is intense and attention. That the entire path comes down at its core to intention, to sensing really what matters.

Like in this moment, being able to listen in and sense what does this heart really care about. And then from that intention, paying attention to the life that's here. Intention and attention. Now, there's

everybody is aware of how there's a kind of a sense of the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind and we know how the physical body affects the mind and we know how our neural patterns in biochemistry then give rise to certain emotional states we know that when we tinker when we exercise we feel different emotionally we know that if we drink wine or take certain kind of drugs that we feel differently,

that it changes our thoughts and our mood and even our worldview, possibly. So we know putting an electrode in the brain, and you can go into depression or ecstasy. That we know. We know the movement from body to change of mood. And I often share one of my favorite posters at a conference I went to years ago that was talking about the power of psychopharmacology with trauma.

It had a poster on Prozac, and it said, if there was Prozac back then, and it had Karl Marx saying, sure, we can work out capitalism if we just tweak it a bit, you know. And if there was Prozac back then, and you have Edgar Allan Poe looking out the window saying, hello, Bertie, you know. And I love that, so we know that side of it. And now, of course, as most everyone here is probably familiar, there's huge, amount of research that's showing how when you shift how you pay attention, it affects your neural networking, it affects your biochemistry, it affects your body. Tons and tons of research now.

That we know it with mindfulness, that more activity in the left prefrontal cortex. We know that it strengthens the immune system. They've done research showing how mental imagery when it's used by musicians and athletes, when they review what they're going to be doing their music, they practice just mentally, their actual performance becomes much, much more skilled. There is some interesting research, some of you may have heard of Dr. Masaru Imoto. His book is Hidden Messages in water,

and he shows how human thoughts can affect the crystalline structure of water molecules. So he took clean water and polluted water, froze it, showed the difference of the molecules, the crystal structure in the polluted water, deformed kind of contorted, not pretty, in the clean, clear, good water, beautiful crystal structures. And then he had some Buddhist monks meditate

over the polluted water. And lo and behold, they froze it. And the structures of the crystals then were comparable to the clear, unpolluted water. Now, I'm not putting this forth as I don't know. I don't know about, you know, all the different ways the research is conducted, but we know that our mind affects matter. We know that. And of course, the body is 60% water, so if that has some truth to it, we really dramatically affect our body with how we pay attention.

So back to this retreat I just went to. Many people there were working with physical, had physical struggles dealing with really major challenges. And I could tell you many, many stories of these people who had maybe come a year and a half ago to their first retreat and meditation and Shigong did a dedicated year and a half of it and the dramatic changes in their bodies. One woman came with Parkinson's. She was really going downhill. All her symptoms were getting really progressing, trembling, muscle pain or gait, and her mind and her sense of aliveness. Everything was shrinking. Her world was becoming very small.

A year and a half of this practice of paying attention to the aliveness in the body and having the intention towards health, towards openness, towards wakefulness. And her symptoms are completely gone, completely gone, and she's off all medication. I heard many, many stories from people like this. And the point and what's important is not that if you have a disease state in your body, that you necessarily are going to get rid of it. It has to do with, there's an amazing possibility for the deepest level of healing of our body, mind, and spirit.

When we choose presence, when we start choosing how we're paying a lot, attention rather than going along with the condition patterns of our mind. That's the point. The key element in what empowers the mind is learning to arrive in presence. And one of the ways of understanding presence is that rather than being a slave to our habitual patterns, in other words, repeating our routines in life the ways we behave in an addictive fashion or the ways in relationships we keep redoing the same thing are the ways we keep treating ourselves over and over again rather than being a slave to our patterns when we come into presence

we come into an open field of possibility in a moment of presence it's all wide open how the world is created from that moment is filled with possibility now our habits create probability. And this is basic quantum mechanics that we move from a, we're continuously moving from possibility into probability and it's driven by our habits. But that changes when we start having access to this mystery we're calling presence. That changes. That presence quiets the patterning and allows us to tap into this open field of possibility, where there can be fresh perceptions, new choices, untangling disease states of the body and the mind. And the way this happens, intention and attention.

We're going to look more closely at this. And just to say that this presence is not passive. When I talk about presence, I'm talking about a very actively engaged quality of heart and mind, very here, very alive. The main way that we get lost in our patterning is through our thoughts. Hence, most meditation training is training on how to recognize that and wake up out of it. And we know the way our thoughts imprint our mood. I mean, just take a moment and reflect.

Let's just close your eyes for a second. And just take two words out of thin air, and the first word will be trouble. And just say to yourself trouble and hear the voice in your mind saying trouble, say it a few times, and notice your body, your heart. And then take a nice long, deep breath. And then mentally say the word kindness. Just put the word kindness in there. And say that a few times.

What's that like? We know that when we're thinking mean thoughts or petty thoughts, our world gets small, our body gets tight. When we think of what we're grateful for, what we love, think of something pleasant for another person that could happen, we enlarge. So intention means the intention to choose or decide, not to follow and be a slave to our habitual patterns of thought.

If you want to transform, the key is noticing your patterns of thought and waking up out of them. This is from the Damapata Buddhist scriptures. Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a deluded mind, suffering will follow you as the wheels of the ox cart follow the footsteps of the ox. Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind.

If you speak and act with a pure mind, happiness will follow you as a shadow follows close to a form. Take the word believe, we believe things the word believe be we be what we believe and we live what we believe be is the basic sense of who we are when we're believing something it affects our sense of being and it affects how we live in fact the more you believe in something that's what your cells and your body and your heart participate in so what are we

believing? Are we believing that we're not worthwhile or that we're not enough or that others aren't trustworthy? Or that something bad's around the corner? Are we believing in a basic sense of being flawed? Are we believing that we'll never really be intimate with others? I'm naming some of the challenging ones. Our thoughts and our beliefs create our reality. And thoughts are just like they're a snapshot, a still of this living reality. So anytime we're living in thoughts, we have pulled away from the stream of our life. Okay. Anytime we're living in thoughts and believing our thoughts, we're not in touch with the reality. Now, sometimes thoughts, are good approximations and useful.

And I'm not saying, by the way, and I feel like I need to say this every time I talk about thoughts, this is not a thing saying we shouldn't be thinking. We need to think in order to survive. It's just having a choice about what we think about. Does that make sense? Absolutely need to think. And it's a life transforming capacity

to notice our thinking and make choices about what we're going to hang out with. many of our thoughts are ways of understanding the world that are not so real I love this this is a test that was given to children some children one of them is it says name six animals which live specifically in the Arctic and the child wrote two polar bears and then three and he crossed off the three four seals and that's the answer to the question that was really good six animals and then of course what was sir walter raoulay famous for he is a noted figure in history because he invented cigarettes and started a craze for bicycles what is a vibration

well there are good vibrations and bad vibrations good vibrations were discovered in the 60s so we have our ideas about the world and some of them are useful the ones that are most problematic as I mentioned are the ones usually about ourself and others that make us wrong, makes others wrong. We live in a kind of habitual kind of circling of worry and judgment. And then of course, whether they're very extremely, we're down on ourselves or even the light ways that we get self-conscious, they affect our behaviors. Some of you might remember this story. It's one of my favorites of a Michigan woman. and her family vacationing in New England

and she has a favorite coffee ice cream place so she goes for a hike and then wants to treat herself to a double-dipped chocolate ice cream cone. So she goes to the ice cream parlor and there's one and only other patron there, Paul Newman, who's sitting at the counter having donut and a coffee. The woman's heart skips a beat

as her highs make contact with those famous baby blue eyes. The actor nods graciously and the star-struck woman smiles demurely. Okay, pull yourself together. she chides herself. You're a happily married woman with three children. You're 45 years old, not a teenager. Don't be a jerk. The clerk fills her order. She takes her double-dipped chocolate ice cream cone in one hand her change in the other. Then she goes out the door, avoiding even a glance, gliding smoothly past Paul Newman. When she reaches her car, she realizes she has a handful

of change, but the other hand is empty. There's no ice cream cone. What did I do? Did I leave it in the store? Back into the store. She goes, expecting You see the cone still in the clerk's hand or in a holder on the counter or something. No ice cream cone is in sight. With that, she happened to look over at Paul Newman. His face broke into his familiar, warm, friendly grin, and he says to her, you put it in your purse. So we do dumb things, you know, when we're caught up in our ideas about the world.

And in the most basic way, we live from our fearful. beliefs. So when we have beliefs, they're based in fear that I'm not going to be okay, I'm not okay, you're not okay. It ends up creating our universe. And examples are if there's a fear and that we're going to blow it, we're going to a job interview, that fear itself makes us nervous and unable to express ourselves and we might not get the job. So our fear creates the very reality we're afraid of. Other example, if we have the fear no one would really want to, want to be intimate with me and we're entering a new relationship. Clearly our defensiveness or our ways of grasping or withholding will end up creating a real

schism. It won't work. They'll be distance. If we have the belief I can't trust others, they'll take advantage of me. Then we anticipate being cheated. We have an angry kind of defensive stance and somebody does will mistreat us out of that in reactivity to us. So how we're thinking about the world,

what we're believing totally creates our life. Totally creates our life. This is Mahatma Gandhi. He says your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your character.

And your character becomes your destiny. So our stories about the world and trap us. And there's an understanding that where the mind goes, energy follows. So if the mind is going in a direction that's fear-based, filled with doubt, mistrust, the energy is contracted, tight, block. If the mind goes somewhere that is full of possibility that has to do with love, to do with gratitude, to do with wanting to help, The body, mind, spirit opens.

Back to the negative side, the Anglo-Saxon root for the word worry is to strangle or to choke. I thought that was an interesting derivative. So we're talking about the power of mind here in either direction, either to entrap our lives or to free us. I heard one story, a doctor told a man that he had a problem with his lungs. they had done a scan and found a spot and he told him he had three months to live and within three months the guy crashed and died

they did an autopsy and in the autopsy found that the spot that was in his lungs had been there for 30 years and this is a very big example of the placebo effect that what we're thinking about is going to affect how we respond

it's very very true with emotional stuckness how we stay stuck Many of you saw the video Jill Taylor did brain scientists and her book is my stroke of insight. And she describes very clearly in that book that when emotions arise, it takes about a minute and a half for them to be processed through our bodies and minds. After that, you need thoughts to keep the emotion going. And so we have to keep thinking about what's wrong in order to keep the emotions cooking. and modern neuroscience illustrates how our life situations can evoke such deeply groove patterns of emotional reactivity.

There's a phrase now that's very, very common in neuroscience, that neurons that fire together, wire together. Many of you probably heard it. But it's really interesting when you think about it, it means that the more you think or rethink about something, about what's wrong. and that brings up emotions, the stronger that link is, so that you're more inclined to keep thinking about it and more inclined to keep having those feelings, and it locks in the belief. So just to kind of summarize this part of the talk,

which is every one of us has very, very strong conditioning, every one of us has very, very strong patterning that our minds and our thoughts keep us stuck in certain ways, of feeling and living. In other words, our reality has a certain stativeness to it because of that. And every one of us has the capacity to call on awareness, has the capacity to contact and arrive in presence and open up the field of possibility in ways that can dramatically transform and free us dramatically. This is the purpose of spiritual practice. And the purpose of spiritual practice

really is to wake up out of the patterning and have choice. So I'll give you an example of what that can mean in a more specific way because when I talk about intention and attention, I'm talking about choosing to come into presence so that you can live from the fullness and truth of who you are. And when we get lost in thought,

you might notice it that sometimes part of you wants to stay lost. And sometimes we really don't want to bother, you know, practicing even at all. But the more that we're present, there's a kind of virtuous cycle here, the more that we touch presence and sense, oh, there's a kind of open-heartedness and there's more space and there's more creativity. the more we sense that, the more strong our intention is to come home. And the more we come home, the more that intention brings us into a more full and deep and awake presence. So there's a kind of a cycling that goes on.

So the story I was going to tell you, there's a man, Jason, Latino man who came to me for therapy. And he arrived in the United States when he was a teenager, got scholarships to go to college, became a lobbyist for industry. And then it was really kind of going up the ladder, marriage and so on. And then he got addicted to cocaine. His superior at work basically told him, you know, you either recover or, you know, get off it or you're out. And his wife basically said the same thing.

So he hit one of those times that it was a good time to go to therapy. and he landed up with me because his wife had a friend that meditated and told him that that was the 11th step in 12-step program so he thought maybe he could jump verse 10 and you know anyway

so we started exploring his life and turns out that when he was young he was bullied by an alcoholic father and an older brother and finally it hit a he had a very dramatic event where his brother and his brother's friends pushed him into the street and all his books

just got tossed all over and it was raining and that was it. He started lifting weights, became buff, joined a gang, became as mean as the baddest guys in the gang. But he happened to be very, very smart and even as he was drugging and hanging out with his buddies, he was still working very secretly because they'd make fun of him

if he was caught in high school work. working but he got that scholarship landed up in college and then as I said he was a he really made he's quite successful in many ways but then the cocaine took control in his mind it wasn't in control and he was really angry because he felt like he could manage it and he was really angry that his boss and his wife and people were meddling with his life okay that's where we started off that was all in the first two sessions of therapy. So we started

with his anger and I had him just the way I often invite you to feel what was there and sense, you know, let it be as much as it was, you know, sense the stories around it, but feel the energy and once he could feel the energy, that kind of swell and pressure

and heat of anger, you know, what's underneath it? What's underneath it? Deep, deep vulnerability. Deep vulnerability. A lot of fear and a belief that others will take advantage in me, they'll control me if they don't see that I'm strong and in charge. And the deepest belief, I'm weak and unworthy.

In other words, the deep belief was, I can't trust myself. That was kept fueling the addiction. Because when he was on cocaine, he felt a sense of power. Okay? So his belief is, I can't trust myself. And I started asking him, well, how does it feel to believe that? And when you say that, how does it feel? Try it on. Feel it in your body. And what he described was he said, ashamed, totally alone, hollow, aching. He said, I've spent years trying to cover this hole. Everything's been pulled into this whole. Love, marriage. I don't deserve her love. So I'm just saying this is the power of mind to create suffering. He locked into the belief, I can't trust myself. I'm weak. I'm unworthy. and out of that he created his life,

which in some ways he outwardly was successful, but then it all came tumbling down because it was all built on this belief of, I'm weak, and if they see me, I'm doomed. So he got in touch with that hole, that hollow aching place and breathed with it, and as again, as we do here, he just brought a presence to it.

And it helps when you have somebody with you to keep your attention on it, which I did. And the more that he stayed with it, the more it just started unfolding itself, unfolding itself. So rather than spending time in the thoughts, he was just feeling the feelings and spending the moments just offering attention, offering attention. And there was some settling and some space that opened up.

Because when you shift from the stories to the presence, space opens up. The stories keep fueling the emotions. The presence allows there to be a loosening, a quieting, and you start coming home. So that's what happened to him. This is his practice over months and months. He would see his emotions start getting strong, the anger or the fear, because he was getting more in touch with fear. And he'd sense the belief of, I'm a screw-up, I'm really unworthy, and he'd stop. and he'd start paying attention to the feelings there with presence, and there'd be a loosening up. And one of the greatest teachings for him, because he did go to a 12-step group, and he did have a sponsor, came in a 12-step group,

where his friend told him what his mantra was, which was not my will, but my heart's well. Now, Jason had been very much my way, my will, I'm in control. And every time he'd get caught in that, he'd say, my heart's well, he'd sense the choosing of presence, choosing to be honest and kind

with what was going on inside him. This is the power of mind. The power to shift from a life pattern that's kept us from intimacy and from being at home with ourselves to choosing presence and beginning to discover our heart's will and beginning to discover our heart,

which was what happened to him. His marriage actually became very deep and strong out of that. They had a long process, though, which is the case sometimes. And at work he was more energized than ever. He's still kind of a hard-driving guy, still kind of a take-charge guy, but not mistrustful in a way

that you know where he where he had a constant edge much more fluid he was living from what i call wholeness he used the power of his mind the power of presence to release the patterning and come into a larger sense of being this is roomy he says i've gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival. I've gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I'm the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival. You might ask yourself, you know, where are the places that I get stuck? You know,

where am I living from less than wholeness? And what are the thoughts or the patterns of thought that are going on that? I know for myself that when I am stuck, when I'm emotionally stuck, if I ask myself, well, what am I believing? Usually I'm believing in some way I'm falling short. I'm letting someone down, I'm not really coming through. There's usually some sense of personal failure there. I know when I'm feeling stuck, I end up putting other people down, and in some way, if I pay attention, I'm just creating distance there. And so for me, one of the most important reflections,

whenever I'm feeling stuck, is to say, well, what am I believing? and how am I creating separation from myself or from others? How am I at war? And it's way, way more subtle now, as I tell you this, than 15, 20 years ago. I mean, back then, I'd say after I graduated from college and I really had to face up to this, I was really at war with myself. I really believed in a flawed self that was blowing it. and I brought that right into spiritual life

where I worked really, really hard at spiritual life but it was coming from a sense of something's wrong with me. Nowadays, it can slip below the radar screen because there's not the kind of over thoughts of, you know, that trash myself. It's much more subtle. It's kind of like when I get sick, there's a judgment that I'm not handling being sick well enough,

that I shouldn't be grumpy or I shouldn't be aversive or should have more whatever. There's the kind of thing where I'm adding the second arrow, but in a much more light way. And yet, any thought or belief that puts ourselves down or puts another down is creating separation. It's keeping us from our wholeness.

It's the power of mind to divide. That same power of mind when we sense our intention can connect. So what happens for me is as soon as I get oh, okay, I'm feeling separate, I'm feeling apart, I'm feeling kind of

fragmented inside myself, there's an intention because I long to be really at home in the truth of what's here. And that intention has me deep in my attention. So I pause a lot because

the storylines keep going, I mean, the habits of these mental kind of routines, they're strong. So I pause a lot and I notice and I feel my intention and I pay attention more. The ground of healing, this is the kind of the bottom line, the ground of healing are this movement towards wholeness. And it doesn't matter whether we're talking about whether our bodies becoming more in a flow, less blocked. our hearts opening, our minds, the ground of healing is the realization of basic goodness. The ground of healing is realizing basic goodness. Our beliefs are telling us something's wrong.

That's what our beliefs do. Our beliefs are trying to make sure that we, that we're preparing for every contingency and that we're, you know, defended and protecting ourselves. And yet the ground of healing is trusting. And when I say basic goodness, our belonging, our connectedness, at onement. The ground of healing is trusting this living dynamic energy I described at the beginning.

In Chigung, it's called Chi. We could call it loving presence. Is the source of this life. That loving presence, that this consciousness gives rise to all these bodies and minds, to the earth, to all of life. And when we sense that, and it's not a concept, when we directly experience this aliveness that's our home, this awareness that's our home, there is a trust in goodness that comes. And Einstein puts it this way. He says, the most important choice that any of us can ever make, our decision that we can ever make, is that this universe is a benevolent place.

that's the most important decision we can make now we can't slap that on as a belief but we can choose presence we can choose the pathway that lets us contact that goodness that's our choice every spiritual tradition talks about faith faith mind not blind faith

but the faith that comes out of directly contacting this awareness and love and recognizing that's who I am. Every spiritual tradition I've encountered. Different language, that they talk about opening to this presence and knowing that's our home, that's our refuge. Over and over again at the retreat

as different people shared their experiences, there was a theme, and the woman again that had Parkinson's described it beautifully that at first she felt like she needed to be healthy in order to be happy, in order to be present, in order to move on in her path, she needed to be healthy.

And it flipped 180 degrees. And she realized, I need to be present. I need to have a kind of unconditional presence or happiness in order to be healthy. Do you understand that flip? We think, I need to have a certain kind of relationship

our certain experience at work, our certain health, our certain body in order to be okay and happy, in order to trust that things are good. But it's actually the opposite way around. We need to find ourselves a way to come home to the awareness that's here, find our happiness and our peace in this moment in order for our health to unfold itself. So the spiritual path is this shift from a kind of a small self-identity

that has if only mine and is always trying to feel better by rearranging the externals and living in this very patterned way to choosing again and again like this very moment choosing. Okay, presence. Okay, what's right here.

Choosing to open our hearts to the life that's right here and making that choice now and again right now and making that choice because we love truth more than we love our stories I consider

what makes it so that some people will practice Vaphasana meditation and kind of plateau out you know maybe say you know I feel a little bit more like more relaxed less stress but kind of plateau and other people

it will unfold to the deepest levels of realization and freedom. What's the difference? Or when I see a couple that goes to couples therapy and then another couple and they're doing the same therapy, same therapist, but what makes the difference between the couple that find their way to a profound kind of tenderness and intimacy and the other that say stuck?

Are somebody with their health, you know, that somebody with health that some find a way to work with their physical problems in a way that maximum possible health and other are not. What's the difference? It comes down to wholeheartedness. How sincere and wholehearted we are in our intention towards presence.

If you do this practice and you're really wholehearted, it will bear fruit. If you leave tonight in some way sensing there's an amazing possibility in every part of my life if I choose right here, this moment, to be present. And it's hard sometimes because what we're being present with isn't so easy.

But there's something in us that chooses it. The whole world unfolds from that. Tammy Simon, who's the owner of Sounds True, described a profound shift that she had in her experience. When she posed, she was on a vacation and she posed to her partner this question. she said, am I living up to my highest potential? And her partner thought for a bit and then responded and she said, you know, that's the wrong question.

The real question is, am I living in a wholehearted way? So I invite you to consider that, this wholeheartedness that it has to do with intention and sincerity that when we're wholehearted about the path, when we really give ourselves to presence, Out of that, we unfold to our wholeness. We really truly can discover who we are. And the practices are fairly simple.

The basic practice is what I call unconditional presence. It's being here and noticing what's happening and allowing it. Recognizing this moment to moment experience and not wanting it different, not trying to make it different. Or if you want it different than noticing that that's what's happening, you're wanting something different. that's okay, but noticing.

So that's the basic practice. There's just this choiceless awareness, just resting in presence. And then the other ways we choose are all the other skills that help us to arrive in that presence, to come home. So I teach often about the power of putting your hand on your heart

because there's in that gesture, we start deconditioning this animosity or at least indifferent we have towards our inner life. There's a gentleness. It's a radical gesture to put your hand on your heart and really sense accompanying your own life.

Are we talk about the smile? Well, if our patterning is to dig in our heels or to be grim and how many of us know how joyless our days can be, right? The smile is a technique, but it's actually a very powerful technique

because it opens us up to new possibility. It introduces to our nervous system a sense of relaxing the fight-flight and then coming home into presence. These are just two little examples. We practice the forgiveness meditation where we notice, okay, I'm really down on somebody. And we practice, what does it mean to sense that person's vulnerability or that person's basic goodness? And can we at least have the intention to forgive? That starts deconstructing our patterns. Or in the ways I describe with myself, we pause when we notice we're judging.

What comes out of this, and I've talked about presence as being this plain of unlimited possibility, is as big a thing as moving towards peace on earth. The global patterning is towards violence and aggression. How do we change that? It starts with us being able to hold. wholeheartedly commit to presence in our own body mind, catch the thoughts that are judging, pause, and come home to something bigger. Come home to that and us which really wants to sense and live from care. In that movement, from false refuge to true refuge, we plant the seeds of peace.

So over and over again, there's this invitation to turn towards the present. presents that will show us our goodness. This is Mary Oliver, a poem I really like. She wrote, and this is When I Am Among the Trees. When I Am among the Trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beach, the oaks, and the pines. They give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself in which I have goodness and discernment and never hurry through the world but walk slowly and bow often around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out stay a while the light flows from their branches and they call again it's simple they say and you too

have come into the world to do this to go easy to be filled with light and to shine. So let's practice together a little bit, this opening to possibility. Our minds create our reality. They create our life. In the moments that we release the story and turn towards awareness,

infinite possibility open. So we begin just in this very, very brief reflection, sensing ourselves pausing. Sense the space of a pause. It's just not to do anything, just to be here right now. Sensing the natural awakeness of the senses, sounds are heard. Sensations felt receiving this moment to moment life. And in this presence, to invite whatever might want attention in your life to present itself.

There may be some place of difficulty or stockness where you're, aware you're caught in patterns of thinking and feeling and behaving. Might be something in a relationship, something at work, maybe something in the way you're relating to your own body or health or our mind. See if you're watching a movie of the situation where this comes up, just let yourself stop at the frame where it's most disturbing or, where you just feel most caught. And sense the feeling of being caught,

what's going on emotionally, what the worst part of this is for you. And as if you could go inside the part of you that's most upset or angry or hurt or afraid. Just sense how the world looks through the eyes of that part. You're looking at the pattern of mind that's creating your world right now. Does the world look like you're very, very separate

from the rest of the world? like there's something wrong with other people or something wrong with you like you'll never be happy things will never work out what's the world view right now when you're stuck just acknowledge that view

and sense what's living underneath it just the feelings themselves and you might if you'd like experiment with just putting your hand on your heart and just letting yourself bring a very gentle presence to the life inside you,

how these beliefs and this view is keeping certain feelings fueled and just be with the feelings, be with the life in your body. You can even offer a message of, I'm here, I'm listening, it's okay, whatever words might express that you're paying attention, there's presence here, and kindness.

Sometimes it helps to sense this smile as we did earlier and just bring it into your heart not to cover over the feelings but to give them a very gentle kind space to be in. Sense if there's a little space that opens up as you really enter the moment with presence.

You might even ask yourself what would my life be like if I wasn't believing in this limited view what would life be like just to glimmer of the possibilities what would life be like if I could choose again and again presence if I could choose to live in a wholehearted way outside of the patterning of thoughts and beliefs that keep me small

and close listening again to the words of Mary Oliver when I am among the trees especially the willows and the honey locust equally the beach, the oaks, and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself in which I have goodness and discernment and never hurry through the world,

but walk slowly and bow often. Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, stay a while. the light flows from their branches and they call again it's simple they say and you too have come into the world to do this

to go easy to be filled with light and to shine namaste and thank you for being here the teaching you have received has been freely offered if you would like to contact the Insight Meditation Community of Washington

to make a donation or to learn more better programs, please visit our website at www.imcw.org.