Tara Brach - The RAIN of Forgiveness

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

The RAIN of Forgiveness - The capacity to release the armoring of hatred and blame is intrinsic to our evolving consciousness. This talk explores the process of authentic forgiveness, and how we can use the mindfulness-based tool of RAIN to heal and free our hearts.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. The Tibetan teacher Alan Wallace writes this. He says, imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries and someone roughly bumps into you so you fall and your groceries are all strewn all over the ground. And as you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and to make, tomato juice, you're ready to shout out, you idiot, what's wrong with you? Are you blind? But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into

you is actually blind. And he too has sprawled in the spilled groceries and your anger vanishes in an instant to be replaced by sympathetic concern. Are you hurt? Can I help you? Can I help you up? So this really is our situation in life that when we are in a moment of blame or more expanded hatred, the aperture of our awareness has narrowed. We're coming from ignorance, meaning we're ignoring, some of the truth. We're not seeing the whole picture in some way. So we're operating from a more primitive or reactive part of our brain and being and cut off from empathy from a deeper level of

wisdom or understanding. So forgiveness, letting go of blame is a more recently evolved capacity in terms of evolution because it takes metacognition, it takes being aware of the suffering created by not forgiving, by hanging on to our armoring and our blame and our anger. So it takes a recognition of that and it takes a kind of training of the attention to stay and be with the vulnerability that's there. Because when we're willing to forgive it means we have to actually open to where the hurt is. And that takes intention.

going against our conditioning to fight-flight freeze to get away from vulnerability. So it's a more recently evolved capacity. It's really part of this shift that we're all involved with, the going from limbic dominance where we're really trapped in fight-flight-freeze to what sometimes described as attend and befriend. That's a very different relationship with experience. So this is the response to encounters in the world that Gandhi and Martin Luther King called Soul Force, that when there's violence coming at us, when there's injury, rather than perpetuating

that cycling, we're responding from a more awake part of our being, from a more awake part of our heart and mind. So this talk is called the reign of forgiveness because we'll be using the acrackers which is a mindfulness tool to explore how we evolve this heart of ours to release the armoring more rather than continuing in the old patterning. And it's a theme that I try to touch on as often as I can mostly because I feel like it's so alive for me and for most people I know that forgiving is not a one-shot, it's like over and over again whenever we feel in some way offended or slighted or not seen or whatever,

we tighten. Whether it's the low-key kind of forgiving of just being able to release blame or resentment that makes us kind of tight are the very deep forgiving that comes when we're carrying a very kind of a lifelong wounding. It's still the same process. And I don't know anyone that is not in some way having to work with how to open their hearts to other people. And we're all in that. We all at times tighten up against others. I like to begin these talks by saying it's a universal part of our conditioning to armor ourselves. And I often liken it to when you're wounded we need a scab.

and the anger and the scabbing over is part of our survival system. It lets us know that something has been harmed in us and that we need to take care and act. The problem comes is that we get habituated to the armoring and habituated to the anger and so we're living with a kind of permanent scabbing that doesn't allow for intimacy. So it's how to recognize that. But to say that the limbic armoring is a mode of control. It's a very natural mode of control trying to protect us from more unpleasantness. And I say that because it's really important to approach ourselves

where we're hardened with real gentleness and understanding. There's hurt in there. It was a necessary part of our evolutionary development to actually perceive others as different and bad and armor ourselves against them because for tens of thousands of times as long as we've been in our current societies we were in these little tribes roaming around and other little tribes were a danger and to the degree that they looked different, acted different, had different beliefs or language, that was the sign to protect ourselves.

So of course that's been carried over into our psyches in current times and there's been tons of research that shows how we're way less empathetic with people that in some way seem different. It could be very visually, racially, it could be in terms of religion, it could be in terms of body size or socioeconomic. But we are, we cut off from empathy when someone seems different and that's when they become, I usually use the language of unreal other, that we don't sense the same humanness that we feel that is in us, in them. They become less real. It comes out a lot when we don't, when we're

with people that don't agree with us. Have you noticed how it feels when someone disagrees? It's like all of a sudden we tighten up. I'm bringing this up because in this extra-political season it's so there, you know? And one of my favorite illustrations, some of you old times will remember of what happens when we disagree, we create unreal others. It happens a lot between religious groups and in one there's a group of Confucians that were very upset with a Taoist master because his way of practicing he was sitting in his mountain cabot without any clothes on. He'd meditate naked and they thought this was just absolutely awful. So they hiked up the mountains intending to give him a lecture on proper conduct and of course

they arrived there and there's the sage sitting naked in his hut and they sing so they start confronting him. So, what are you doing sitting in your hut without any pants on? And I love his response. He said, this entire universe is my hut. And he says, this little hut is my pants. What are you fellows doing inside my pants? So if we want to keep evolving our consciousness, this is the domain that can be sometimes most challenging and yet most necessary, which is to start sensing the suffering that comes when we push someone out of our hearts. That we can't just say you, you're bad, but you, I love, because the heart doesn't open and close like that. When it's armored, it's armored.

So, one of the lines from Rumi that I feel says that the best is this. he says your path is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you've built against it. And this is really what we do as we begin to deepen our listening to our lives, it's just notice, oh, okay, this is a barrier, this attitude, this way of relating to myself or others. So we release averse of blame. that's part of this releasing of the armoring, for our own freedom, but it's also for our collective freedom.

There's really no other way we're going to have a more peaceful world. There's no other way we're going to end racism or social injustice, the cycles of violence, unless we who are consciously intending to wake up in our own lives with people, that we have locked into blaming, soften our heartsome. It's got to start with us. There's a kind of beautiful metaphorical story that I share whenever I have an opportunity because I find the image so powerful and I recently found that I've been telling this story a little wrong so I'll correct myself.

But in 1957 this is outside of Bangkok, a group of monks had to move the monastery that was there to another location because of a highway being built right outside of Bangkok. And so when the crane began to lift this giant Buddha that was part of their temple, the weight was so tremendous it began to crack. Plus it was raining. So they lowered it back down to the ground. They were concerned that the whole thing would crack and covered it with a canvas tarp. And much later that evening the head monk went to see what kind of damage had been done to this massive Buddha statue.

And this statue was a clay statue, but it was very treasured by everybody. So he checked and he looked, he'd shown some flashlights through the cracks and saw that it was shining out, back at him was gold. And he started chipping away at the clay and found after some hours he was face to face with a solid gold Buddha. That's how that happened and the historians believe that several hundred years earlier the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand. It was then called Siam and that's why they covered the statue with clay. But what's interesting to me and this is the monks believe is that this solid gold statue was covered with clay to protect it in difficult times much in the same way

that we cover over our own innate purity with our defenses, our coverings, because we are moving through difficult times, whether it's a difficult culture or family or whatever it is. And that what's sad is that we get identified with the coverings. It's like we take ourselves to be the egoic coverings, the defenses and the aggressions and the habit patterns that we've created to try to protect ourselves and we forget the gold. We forget the light of awareness, we forget the warmth of our hearts. It's like we're sitting here and we're thinking of ourselves as an egoic self that has a plan to do this and is worried about what this person thinks and so on and we forget the consciousness,

the awareness that's looking through these eyes and that's listening. right now. So when we are locked into, in some way, judging, blaming, angry at another person, we're reacting from our covering and we're reacting to their covering and we're forgetting the gold. Some weeks ago the talk I gave was how our basic armoring, the most basic level, is in rejecting ourselves. That the blame that we have is aimed at the parts of the egoic self we don't like. So we really have an unreal self. It's like rather than really sensing who we are in our wholeness, we aim our judgment at this idea of a bad self inside. For many of us, in fact most people I know it's pretty much of one of those

life challenges to begin to wake up out of the grip of feeling bad or unworthy. that that's just, it's very, very prevalent. And I often refer back to one woman who was in a coma and when she woke up out of the coma she looked her daughter in her daughter's eyes and she said, you know, all my life I thought something was wrong with me. And those were her last words and she lay back and she died. And for her daughter it was actually a parting gift because it was, it was a part in gift because it In a moment she got this insight of how incredibly tragic it is, that any of us would move

through this precious life and have all these moments focused on something's wrong with me. Instead of being intimate with the people around us or enjoying the spring that's here, Whether it's listening to the sounds of birds or Mozart or feeling ourselves able to move and walk and feel the earth under us, we miss our moments when we're occupied with a bad self. So that's the first way we armor ourselves is against our own being. And then what happens is this not okay self is very easily offended, is very easily hurt. So it's never just something's wrong with me. It always projects outward, there's a badness in you.

And then we're locked into the clay, the covering, judging the covering. And we get very focused and very fixed, the aperture narrows. We go around scanning for what's wrong with you. There were some letters that Dear Abby received that she admitted she was at a loss to Anne. answer. One of them said, Dear Abby, I've suspected that my husband's been fooling around and when confronted with the evidence, he denied everything and said it would never happen again. Dear Abby, I have a man I can't trust. He cheats so much, I'm not even sure the baby I'm

caring is his. So, as we become more mindful and aware of self-judgment, it can be amazing, shocking and disturbing to notice how many moments we're judging other people. In fact, I have people sit with me on retreats and somewhere in the middle of the retreat will have a meeting and to watch their own mind and recognize how many moments are occupied with in some way and we're on silence in retreats, nobody's saying anything, how many judgments are going through is really astounding. the sense of others should be different. And whenever you notice the word should going on, should is an argument with reality.

You know, it really is, no matter how right we feel like we are, it's a sign of trance. And I invite you to investigate that. That when there's a sense of should, the apertures narrowed. We're reacting from some limbic covering and we've lost connection with the gold. Now, most people feel like forgiveness is a really good idea until they have something to forgive. I mean, it's just kind of the way it goes. And as soon as you have something to forgive, your body state is such that it just feels impossible. So what makes it so difficult? If we listen to the Bhagavida, it says, if you want to see the heroic,

look at those who can love in return for hatred. And if you want to see the bridge, and if you want to see the brave, look for those who can forgive. It takes a real courage. You know the word courage means a greatness of heart. It takes a real courage because to forgive we have to be willing to experience vulnerability. But let's just do a reflection together. I'm going to ask you to do a couple of reflections. Part of this talk will be you picking someplace where you'd like to explore cultivating this soul force, this possibility of forgiving and we'll use rain with it. But I'd like to, the first reflection right now, if you will, just to close your eyes for a moment, take a moment to collect yourself and arrive right here.

Pick somewhere in your life where you feel like you're holding on to strong blame, or in some way you're feeling resentment or blame or lack of forgiveness towards somebody, somebody that you've pushed out of your heart in some way. And when you have the person in mind and allowing yourself to sense what the violation has been, what the behavior, you don't have to go deep into it, but get enough so you can sense how come the blame is there,

how come you feel a sense of judgment or aversion. And here's the inquiry. If you had to let go of the narrative that you're wrong or you're bad, you should be different. There's something wrong with you. If you had to let go of that narrative, what is it that's difficult that you'd have to then feel? In other words, what's that narrative protecting?

If you had to let go of the story of you're wrong or you're bad, you can continue to reflect on this, I'm just going to ask to hear from a few people just so we get a sense of what's in the room, just raise your hand, I'll point to you and just say one word of what, if you had to let go of your wrong, what's difficult to feel under it and when you speak, see if you can speak really loudly. So anybody? What is it that's under, yeah, in the back? Choices. So now that's not difficult. If you could feel choices, then what stops you? Open to choices. So if we could really let go of the blame,

you're absolutely right, it opens us to choices, but there's something that stops us because there's something that's really unpleasant to feel if we let go of that sense of something is wrong with you. What would you have to feel? Anybody. There's a lot of, there's no right answer. Yeah, back there. Fear. Yep.

What else? Say it again? Pain. Pain. Mm-hmm. Protection? Protection. Rejection.

Rejection, exactly. Yeah. Longing. Yeah. Inadequate? Yep. Anybody else? That I might not be right. Right. Well, okay, if you're wrong, if you're not wrong, maybe I'm wrong, right? Right. So, inadequate, fear, pain, unworthy, that I might be wrong. There's a really good reason we hold on to our blame. For most of us, there's a sense that if I let go of you're wrong, then I have no control, no power, I could be violated again, there's that fear, or maybe I'm the one that's wrong. So we hold on to it. Now, I recently did this exercise and somebody said, yeah, but if I let go of the you're

wrong, isn't that just like condoning what was done? I want to speak to what really this practice of forgiving, this evolving our heart really is about because you can forgive somebody, you can let go of the your bad feeling. In other words, you can include somebody in your heart but set whatever boundaries are appropriate to take care of yourself or loved ones. You can forgive somebody and absolutely commit your life to never ever allowing that to happen again. Forgiving is not condoning. Forgiving is a movement to free your own heart from that squeeze of hatred and blame.

It's a life process for most of us, as I mentioned. Often there's an early wound and it keeps getting re-triggered by who we're with and it can take years. Sometimes it takes therapeutic support. The more there's trauma in there that the covering is. is protecting the more we need therapeutic support to be able to begin to process that trauma. There's many stages to forgiving. Sometimes after we, if we let go of the covering of blame, then we have to get in touch with, first we have to get in touch with the rage that's

in our body but then the fear and then underneath that may be the shame and underneath that may be the grief. So there's a lot of levels. You can't will it. You've probably noticed that that when you're feeling shut down and armoured against somebody, you can't will yourself to forgive. In fact, if you do, it's actually premature forgiveness and it's almost like it's in the guise of forgiveness but inside your heart's still clutched. You can only be willing and by that I mean you can have the intention to let go of blame and forgive because some deep place in your way.

you knows that's the path of healing. You can have the intention. And if you do, that opens the door enough for the whole process to unfold. That's the magic of it. If you reflect in this as we practice together in this particular session and come to even a degree more intention in your life to release blame. you are moving in the direction of a very profound healing for your own heart and also something that ripples out to others.

But what motivates? What really motivates? There is an intelligence, a wisdom in each of us that knows that we're not free if we're living in resentment. That self that's resentful is not who we want to be. Many of you might have heard that there's a story of two ex-prisoners of war and they meet again many years later and one says to the other, have you forgiven our captors yet? And the first and the second one answers through gritted teeth, no, never.

And then the first one looks at them kindly and says, well they still have you in prison then, don't they? So there's a place in us that knows that it's not something, we can't force it, but but that's the pathway. Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck puts it this way. She says our failure to no joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive. Our failure to no joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive. So we release for the freedom of our own heart, to lighten our own heart. We're going to explore now, this is the next part of this is,

explore, okay, so how do we become more willing and begin to evolve ourselves to let go of the armoring? And as I mentioned, we'll use the acronym Raine, which is recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture as a way of loosening the armoring. And we'll be doing it in two parts. perhaps the most interesting research on forgiveness has shown that before we forgive others, there's usually something that goes on inside us where we feel some love or forgiveness or compassion coming towards us. And it softens us and it allows us to forgive others. Which is very much what I describe when I talk about the U-turn,

where we're blaming another, the first place to pay attention, if you want to forgive is to bring kindness to the wounded place in you. In other words, if you just try to aim your attention at them and either keep blaming them or try to forgive them or won't work, you need to bring the attention back here. One friend calls it a U-turn, Y-O-U-turn, you know. You need to bring it to the vulnerability inside you. And this is the dynamic of forgiving,

that we first bring compassion to the wounded place, in us and there is more space than for the other. By way of example, many years ago, a man who had attended some of these Wednesday night classes, had two children, wife, he found that his wife was having affairs, multiple affairs, this wasn't the first, been going on for a while. So when he talked to me and he was just incredibly broken up over it and angry and heard and he didn't understand how possibly he could ever forgive. You know, he said it would be letting her get away with having destroyed our family. So what I told him was don't worry or try to forgive right now.

That's not the season right now or the stage of where you are. The first step is to tend towards the... the massive hurt and vulnerability that's right here. So we practiced rain. And just to say that while he was in this process, a kind of therapeutic process, this is actually back in the days when I was still seeing clients, he was setting up his boundaries. He was in a separate room, they were in therapy and he wasn't sure if he was going to continue with the marriage.

So it's not like he entered this process of self-compassion. then forgiving her and let himself stay in a setup to be stepped on again. So we practiced rain with it. The starting point was the most presenting feeling he had was of anger. So to recognize anger and allow it to be there. Every emotion is intelligent. It had a reason to be there and the first step I know for myself when anger comes up I I have to even go beyond just allowing, I have to say to the anger, forgiven, forgiven,

because I have such a reflex to think, oh, angry, you know, that's bad personhood, you know, that's like means something's wrong with me. So I have to decondition that, say it's okay. This weather system is fine if this weather system's here. So that was for him. Recognize and allow, let the anger, let the rage be there. And then we began to investigate. And investigation means that you let it be there and you contact it in your body.

It's not like, well, I'm angry because back historically my father treated me this way and then my mother did that. It's not analytic. Investigate means investigate how this experience is expressing in our bodies, the felt sense. And for him the anger was this heed and pressure in his heart and when he investigated and open to it he found under it this deep shame. There was a belief that she did this because I was inadequate, that I wasn't a husband that brought her gratification and that I was too buried in my work and too insensitive.

He had a whole list of why he was a rejectable person. And then buried in the shame was deep hurt that she didn't care enough to keep trying. So his practice in the investigating was to get in touch with the shame and get in touch with the hurt and then go to the end of rain, nurture. And as many of you know, I often guide people to put their hand on their heart because just the way we would to another person to offer kindness, you know, put our arms around them, it's very powerful to be able to come into relationship with our inner life and offer affection and care that way. So he put his hand on his heart and he would just say the message over

and over again, I care, I care, I'm here, I'm here, I'm not leaving, I'm not abandoning you. And so this was his practice of deep self-compassion and it took months and months until he was in the place to then bring into view his heart's view his wife. And at those times he could start then beginning to practice rain with her and that meant recognizing and allowing her way of pushing him away, her way of behaving, letting that be there, This is just the reality, this is how she's behaving, and then investigating to sense what's underneath that. And underneath that he could start sensing her fears about aging, her fears about loneliness,

her disappointments. That investigation, being able to see past the covering in another person, ends up also leading to a sense of the gold that her heart she wanted to love and be love, she wanted to feel connection. And he found that he could come into a place of not pushing her out of his heart. He had a divorceer because he didn't feel he could trust her enough to have the kind of intimacy that he wanted. But they could co-parent together. They could be in collaboration, you know, without the bitterness that comes when we have a limbic-to-limic divorce, which is many of you know, just incredibly painful. Some of you might remember the metaphor of having

somebody in the woods seeing a little dog by a tree and going to pet the dog and then the dog lurches at them with his fangs bared and all of a sudden you go from being friendly towards the dog to being really angry at this dog because it's aggressive and then you notice that the dog's leg is in a trap. And then you go from feeling angry to owe you poor thing. That is exactly the process of forgiveness. Whether we're forgiving ourselves or someone else, when we recognize and allow what's going on and we begin to investigate, we see how we or another have our legs in a trap.

We see how when people act in ways to cause suffering, they're suffering. And when you can see that, the heart gets tender. Then there's a natural, you get to the end of rain to nurture. Now again, you have to, as with the dog, even if the dog's leg is in a trap, you still have to protect yourself from getting bitten. Okay? So it's not like you're condoning biting, you still protect yourself, it's just that your heart's not hating the dog.

I'd like to share with you. I found this last year, this is a four-year-old with his mom's help gives internet advice, okay? And the site is called ravishingly. Here's the question that came to the four-year-old. Do you think it's okay to tell someone I'm afraid to forgive you because then you might hurt me again or should I wait until I'm no longer afraid to try and be their friend again? Here's the response.

It's nice to forgive someone because then you're not. not angry anymore. My friend David really wanted to play Ninja Turtles and he just hit me in the nose and then my nose started bleeding. He said sorry and the teacher said it was an accident but I couldn't forgive him because my nose was bleeding. When your nose starts bleeding you can't forgive someone but when my nose stop bleeding I could forgive him. There's often a question when we start exploring this, you know how to let go of the armoring and let go of the anger and the hatred. well, what about really horrific violations like child abuse or mass murders?

Doesn't punishing help then? And actually it's the same truth that when someone causes suffering they're suffering. And our blame and hatred only continues the cycles of violence. It really locks us in our trance conditioning. It's a lot like this group, this is from a a movie about 15 years ago that an African tribe had this description, they say, vengeance is a lazy form of grief. You could say it's a lazy form of fear. Vengeance, that covering, that armoring is a way of protecting ourselves but when we overdo it or when it hardens and

becomes our ongoing personality trait, we're in prison and we can't heal the grief that's underneath. Everything that you named when I asked you, well, what would you have to feel if you stop saying you're bad? The things you named you can't heal as long as you're saying you're bad. Does that make sense? You can't make the U-turn and actually do the healing as long as you're blaming outward. So it's an evolution and consciousness because we will continue to fixate outward with you should be different and you're bad. We will continue with that until there's enough of that mindfulness, that metacognition that gets wow, by doing this, I keep my heart tight, I keep myself from being intimate with other people, I can't really be free.

story that I shared at a conference last, some of you were there, I'm seeing some faces that look familiar at this conference last weekend that really exemplifies the evolution and consciousness as possible. It was shared by a man who worked with juvenile offenders here in Washington and most of the youth he worked with had been in gangs who had been gang members who committed homicide. So one 14-year-old boy in this program had shot and killed an innocent teenager to prove himself. And at the trial, the victim's mother sat impassively as the trial went on. And then when the youth was convicted of the killing, after the verdict was announced, she stood

up, she stared at him and she said, I'm going to kill you. Okay? So, youth has taken away to spend several years in a juvenile facility. the first half of the year, the mother of the slain child went to visit his killer and he had been living on the streets, she was the only visitor he'd had and they talked for a while and then she just gave him some money for snacks and for reading materials and so on. And she started step by step to visit him more regularly to bring him things to reads, food and small gifts.

He was confused and uncertain when she asked him the question, well what are you going to do when you get out? He didn't know. So, she offered to get him a job at a friend's company. And then she inquired about where he'd live and since he had no family to return to, she offered him a temporary use of the spare room in her home. So he lived there for eight months. He ate her food, he worked at the job and then one evening she calls him into the living room

and to have a talk, sits down opposite him, waits a bed and then she says, do you remember in the courtroom when I said I was going to kill you? And he said, I sure do. Well, she said, I did. I didn't want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. And that's why I started to visit you and bring you things. And that's why I got you the job and I let you live here in my house.

And that's how I said about changing you. And that old boy, he's gone. So now I want to ask you since my son is gone and that killer's gone, killer's gone, if you'll stay here. I've got room and I'd like to adopt you, if you'll let me." And she became the mother of her son's killer, the mother he had never had. In the Buddhist tradition this is described as the Bodhisattva archetype, the expression of the full awakened heart mind that can see past the coverings and see the gold, and from that awake heart help bring out the gold and others.

And I don't share that story because I'm aware in my own life when I reflect on how would I react if my son had been killed. I have no idea what would be possible what I'd call on. But there's something very powerful about knowing that we each of us have this potential to intentionally evolve consciousness and that this is the domain it's so close in, you know, where we hold our judgments, whether they're just the habit of being resentful and, you know, feeling let down by others and our deep, deep, aversive blame. Either way, we have the possibility of freeing our hearts, of waking up our hearts.

so important in our own lives and as I mentioned at the beginning, this is for the collective. We look at the repeating patterns of cycles, whether it's the Irish Protestants and Catholics, the Hutus or Tsus in Rwanda, the Bosnian Serbs and Croats, the Palestinians and Israelis. They continue to sentence their children and their children's children to suffering and conflict when the cycles go on and not. So the effects of evolving consciousness ripple out. They need to be in our institutions. We need to institutionalize forgiveness rather than blame.

I mean our current justice system instead of real justice, it's just basically blame and punishment. And yet there are different models emerging, whether it's peace and reconciliation hearings, where there's instead of blame and anger. there's human hearts meeting and talking. And to me, one of the most encouraging is restorative justice, which is really a system that values everybody's needs. And it's designed to address needs without blame and punishment.

And so it happens if somebody commits a crime, the victim's brought in, the offenders brought in, and the community that's involved is brought in. And there's a process of mindful listening and speaking and finding out what needs are there and how to meet those needs so everybody can heal together. How wise? What potential? I was watching a video of one of these restorative circles.

They're being offered in different schools around the country now. And in Oakland, I was watching one teen describe, he said, I used to lie, I used to fight, get suspended. But now I'm in this place, this circle where people listen to each other and when they open up they show who they are and it makes me want to treat people differently. Because when people open up and you see their vulnerability and you see the gold that's underneath that you don't want to hurt them. One more example that I'll share with you and then we're going to do a practice together

is a very dear friend of mine and a teaching partner. Cherry Maples, who's also worked as a police woman for many years. She attended a three-day restorative justice session at a maximum security prison. And a victim of rape came in and for three days she told her story to the guys that were there and there was a lot of back forth and the guys got clearer and clearer of what the ripple effects were, the horror for a woman of being raped. And it was amazing healing for her to have them listen and have them understand. And at the end, she thanked these guys for the healing that had taken place and she told

them she said, each one of you is welcome to my home for dinner. We can shift from prisons and punishment to processes that evolve our heart. It's possible. But as I mentioned, it begins in our own life in places where we're holding blame and resentment. So I'd like to close by just doing a brief meditation and invite you to practice it when you have more time on your own. So closing your eyes, letting your attention go inward and just take a few full breaths to collect and gather yourself.

Bringing to mind some relationship where you feel that you have hardened your heart, armored against someone. a relationship that you'd like to, that you have some willingness to explore right now, to awaken a quality of forgiveness. And I wouldn't pick some place where you feel like there's been traumatic violation, won't serve you in a brief exercise, but somewhere where you're holding resentment, anger, blame, let the situation with this person be close enough in that you can sense what triggered you and the reign of forgiveness begins by recognizing whatever is triggered so it may

be a sense of anger, could be rage, could be that you're seeing the judgments moving around, feeling of unsafe, begin by just recognizing whatever's predominant, judging, anger, hurt, blame and just allow it to be there for now. This is a way of pausing and making room for your own response, recognizing and allowing what comes up in you. And then we deepen rain, this is the U-turn, you're not paying attention to the person now, you're paying attention to your own heart

by investigating what you're experiencing. So if it's anger to let yourself feel it in your body, feel it the pressure, the heat of it. You might sense what you're believing. Perhaps you're believing that this person couldn't love or respect you. Maybe you're believing that you're unlovable. Maybe you're believing that you're in danger.

But let the feelings that come up around the belief be felt. If you let the anger be all that it is, you might sense what else is underneath it. Is there hurt? their fear? The eye of rain investigate is really an inquiry as to what's really here inside me. What most wants attention, what's the most difficult part of this that I have to feel? You might investigate by sensing if you're in touch with a place you that feels hurt or afraid what it most needs, how it wants you to be with it. So you're investigating the vulnerability underneath the blame, the hurt, the fear, the powerlessness,

perhaps the feeling of unworthiness, whatever is underneath. That's the investigating. And as you sense into yourself what the vulnerability needs, you can begin the end of rain. You might put your hand on your heart as you do this and just offer what you sense is most needed to the vulnerable place inside you. And if it's hard to offer it to yourself, you might imagine some loving energy in the world,

some being, some deity, some friend, their love helping to nourish this part of you, bringing kindness inside you. See if you can let it in, be willing to let in some warmth and kindness. and there may be some words to offer to yourself that help. You might say, it's okay, sweetheart, or I'm sorry and I love you, or I'm here and I'm not going away, I'm right here. The rain of forgiveness begins by bringing rain to our own vulnerability. And then, and this is where you have to just feel your own timing

from the place of feeling some nourishment in our own heart, we can begin to look through the eyes of compassion to bring rein to the other person, to recognize and allow whatever state they're in, whatever way they're being, doesn't mean we're going to allow them to behave or treat us a certain way, but we're in this moment recognizing allowing, this is the reality of where this person is.

And then we begin to investigate and sense past the covering to the vulnerability that the covering is trying to protect. What's going on for this person? How is their leg in a trap? Can we see another's insecurity and fear, disappointment, feelings of inadequacy and as we invest and begin to see the truth that this being too has a leg in a trap, that there's suffering there, there can be a more natural extension of forgiveness and kindness, that you too are suffering. May you find healing, may you find peace.

And if it feels natural to offer a message of forgiveness, I see and feel the pain you've caused me and I forgive you now. or it's my intention to forgive you, then please feel free. End the reign of forgiveness by coming right into the moment and just sensing our own being right here. You might sense whatever shifts have occurred in your heart that allow you to be less of the judge or less of the one who's blaming and more resting in a more open or tender space.

And just notice that. Notice who you are when there's some movement in the direction of forgiving. This is the evolution of consciousness, the awakening of the heart. Rumi puts it this way. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. Namaste and thank you for your attention. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.