Tara Brach - The Reality of Change: Embracing this Living Dying World (2017-05-24)

Episode Date: May 26, 2017

The Reality of Change: Embracing this Living Dying World (2017-05-24) - The Reality of Change: Embracing this Living Dying World - Our true refuge is reality - only by opening to "things as they are" do we find true peace and freedom. This talk explores impermanence - a key feature of reality. We look at our habits of resisting change - including loss and death, the practices that awaken and open us, and the gifts of letting go into the ever-changing river of experience. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. We begin this class with a classic tale that takes place in a faraway land long, long ago, and it's lost now in the midst of time where a old king and a queen were very concerned about their son, the prince, because he was very skillful in ways of war and clever in the affairs of the state, but he didn't have much heart for leading people and guiding people. He's very self-centered and kind of disinterested, and they were concerned about the fate of the kingdom.

And so they went to speak with a sorcerer who was quite wise in his ways, and the sorcerer asked them, what is he passionate about? And they had a hard time coming up with anything, and they said, oh, yeah, horses. Okay. So the sorcerer told them to bring the prince to the palace gardens the next morning, and they showed up with him, and the sorcerer had a very amazingly beautiful white horse there, and the prince was immediately drawn to it and said, how much? And the sorcerer said, first you have to ride it.

So the young prince jumped on this white horse and just galloped to. off and it was just ecstatic for him. In fact, he was so carried away that he just ran through the surrounding farmlands and into the hills and then he, of course, had endless energy. He had endless energy, ran through the mountains and mountain passes and into a part of the world he didn't know well. And he ended up in some very deep woods and it was late. And so he stopped in the middle of a deep forest at a little cabin and of course a beautiful young woman answers the door and it's the cabin of a woodcutter and he's invited to stay for the evening which he does and next day he takes off to find his way home and he asks everybody he meets how to get back to the kingdom but nobody has

the foggiest notion of how he gets back and so at the end of the day he went back to the woodcutter's house and stayed there again. And he did this day after day trying to find his way back. But he just was unable to, he couldn't find his way home. So he ended up staying with the woodcutter and the young daughter and working for the woodcutter and learning the craft. And of course, he fell in love with the beautiful girl and they get married and they have children. And after some years really the memories of his old life faded and he became very happy and content. He'd learned a trade. He loved his children. He loved his wife. He had a good, good life. He'd go for these long walks on his own now and then to this glen with a deep, beautiful forest pond.

One day he was in the glen by the pond and he saw his two children running. out of the forest and a tiger was chasing them. And they jumped into the pond. The tiger jumped into the pond and disappeared. And then his wife came running after the children and she too jumped into the pond and disappeared. The horse galloped up, jumped into the pond and disappeared. And in moments, there was no trace of his family that he loved so much in his horse. And he fill to the ground, sobbing and weeping. Then he felt a soft hand on his shoulder. And he looked up into the concerned eyes of his mother, the queen, and the faces of others from the court. And he was in the palace gardens and the horse was standing there quietly. The queen was relieved.

She said as soon as he touched the horse, he'd fall into the ground and was kind of lying in a trance for two to three minutes. and he said two to three minutes impossible I lived a whole life I had a trade I had people I loved a wife and two children I had things that mattered to me I lived a whole life it was not two to three or minutes not possible he was dazed

bewildered and he stood and he walked away the sorcerer bowed to the queen took the horse and left so the prince was profoundly altered by this loss and this mystery and his attitude changed. His heart opened to every moment of his life,

to every moment of his life. And after his father and mother died, he ruled wisely. He was very attentive and caring about the welfare of his kingdom. And that's the end of the story. So the inquiry really here is, what is it that allows us to open our hearts to every moment of our life? And it's the remembrance that it's passing and it's precious.

And I know for myself and so many of you who are listening that we've had that experience of accompanying someone we love when they're dying and how along with the grief as someone, someone passes from this life, we're kind of catapulted beyond our thoughts and beyond our personality into some space of a mystery where there's just love and there's presence. It's like the world stops, the world of our leaning forward into something. We've had that experience. Many have had the experience of having a life-threatening disease and know what it's like to really get it

that our time here is limited, and then that deep recommitment to aligning ourselves to live in a way that's really with what matters to our hearts. So the teaching here is that we can't live fully or love fully unless we get the truth of reality. I can say for myself that probably the deepest and most profound realization I've very ever had is that to the degree I open to death and dying, to that degree, my heart can experience unconditional loving. And they're entirely interdependent, entirely. So here's our developmental predicament. Our only true refuge, the only true waking up and healing comes from absolutely opening to reality as it is.

And the nature of reality is ceaseless change, that everything that's going on is groundless, it's changing, it's moving, that we can't hold on to anything and everything that we want to hold on to we'll definitely lose, including these bodies and each other. That's reality.

And if we want to live in peace and happiness, we absolutely have to take refuge in that truth. And our predicament is that we're entirely conditioned to resist it. Every one of us. Our nervous system is. It's not even like our personality. It's like evolution has evolved us to resist this groundless changing process that we're a part of. So the inquiry that we're going to be exploring is how do we open to the changing flow?

given that resistance. And we'll look at the direct relationship between facing the truth of mortality and loss and the gift that it brings of awakening our hearts to really loving without holding back. That's our domain. In the Buddhist tradition, the Pali word for change is Anitja, Anitja.

And it's considered one of the key marks of existence. And in fact, the Buddha taught that our relationship with Anitia, with this nature of change, is what determines whether we're suffering or we're free. So you might be considering, so how am I with change? Because, you know, really, how are we with change? You know, we each have our own ways.

And we get it on one level. We get that everything's changing. on a kind of subatomic level that everything is constantly in motion, always. And we know that the galaxies are wheeling through the universe and that this universe is expanding. It's always everything moving. And we get the seasons. We're in springtime here right now in this part of the world,

and it's very distinctive how quickly it's all changing. And we get that our children grow up and graduate. and my son's about to get married. Stuff happens, you know. Our hips get replaced. You know, our minds go. All this stuff happens. We get it on some level.

Dean Inge said, when our first parents were driven out of paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve, my dear, we live in an age of transition. I really love that because don't we always feel like,

oh my gosh, we're in such an age of transition? And doesn't it feel like that right now? Stuff's happening. And it always feels like that on one level. And yet, to really grasp impermanence, we can't get it at the level of an idea, that it's a kind of story. In fact, any moment you're thinking about something,

you're not living in the living flow of this impermanent world. You're one step removed in a virtual experience. The only way to really get it is to wake up out of thoughts and really enter the river of living sensations and feelings. So, in the Bhagavita, the place where Arjuna is talking with Lord Krishna, he says, what's the most amazing thing that you've seen created on Earth?

And the response? The most amazing thing is that human beings see people all around them aging and dying and think it won't happen to them. Now I would add that when we do register it, because we do, I think it's just part of the nature of aging as we start really getting how fragile we are. When we register mortality or loss or that insecurity of change, it's with a fight. there's some sense it shouldn't be happening, that something's wrong. And for those of you that are more towards, you know, my level of decades,

I just turned 64 today. So, there is something amazing about aging, which is, and I explore this a lot with friends, especially with women, especially women in this culture, that there is some level that what's happening, You know, the sagging that's going on and the way our body is changing is like an embarrassment, like an offense, like it shouldn't be happening, it's happening to me and it's something to try to cover over, the shame with it.

And just to realize how we identify with these aging bodies and think it's an implication of our okayness. How many of you can relate to what I just said? Can I just see? Okay, I just want to not feel alone. So we, instead of opening to the changing flow, in some way, since it's wrong, it's bad, it shouldn't be happening. There's a story of a Catholic priest, a minister, and a rabbi who are discussing what they most want people to say after they die, and their bodies are in display in an open casket.

And the priest says, well, I want someone to say he was a righteous man, an honest man, and very generous man. generous. And the minister says, well, I want people to say he was very kind and fair and he was good to his parishioners. And the rabbi says, I would hope someone will say, oh, look, he's moving. So we're going to review, we're going to review, you know, how we pull away from the flow of living, dying, how we actually go into a trance. And just to say, it's a way. It's a way. It's a a natural part of our development, of our evolution, to perceive that we're separate, to feel insecure about that separateness, and to organize ourselves around survival, to want to avoid death and hold on to life. That is absolutely part of our nervous system. But when

that runs our life, when our whole identity is as a small self trying to protect its existence, we don't get to discover the connectedness with each other, the beauty that's here, and in a deep way the truth of who we really are, a larger sense of our being. All we are is this body that's going. This is a poem by Billy Collins that I think kind of describes that when we get into that trance and we're just organized around protecting our existence. Just how lost we are in that. And it's called the parade.

How exhilarating it was to march along the great boulevards and the sunflash of trumpets and under all the waving flags, the flag of ambition, the flag of love. So many of us streaming along, all of humanity really, moving in perfect step, yet each lost in the room of a private dream. How stimulating the scenery of the world, roadside trees, the huge curtain of the sky, how endless it seemed until we veered off the broad turnpike into a pasture of high grass

headed toward the dizzying cliffs of mortality. Generation after generation, we keep shouldering forward until we step off the lip into space. And I should not have to remind you that little time is given here to rest on a wayside bench, to stop and bend to the wildflowers, or to study a bird on a branch. Not when the young are always shoving from behind, not when the old keep tugging us forward, pulling on our arms with all their feeble strength. I should not have to remind you that little time is given here to rest on a wayside bench, to stop and bend to the wildflowers, or to study a bird on a branch.

So you understand. We just kind of keep tumbling forward in time with our trance of pursuing this and avoiding that. and the gift of the remembrance is it's right here but we need to pause so let's pause for a moment collectively let's take a moment if you will and in that pause you might

close your eyes just to get more in touch with your senses because the way out of the trance is to reopen to the river of our senses just to even take a moment to feel this body sitting here and breathing, and to feel the sensations in our hands and our feet, to let the sounds wash through. We leave.

We leave over and over again, as in that parade, kind of marching somewhere else. So here we are just resting on that bend, touching into the moment. We'll explore now the different ways we leave, that we resist the changing, flow by going somewhere else. You can continue if you'd like to have your eyes close or open them if you like, but part of our survival conditioning is to seek and hold on to temporary pleasant states.

The changing flow is pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, just everything's moving through us. But what we try to do is grab on and try to keep it all pleasant. We try to line up our pleasures and just keep it comfortable and pleasant as we can. So it's pleasant tastes or feelings or sights or sounds, but also to the activities and experiences that help us to feel good, like accomplishing things. How often are we on our way to checking something off the list so we can feel better about ourselves

rather than living right here? How often are we trying to get somebody's approval or trying to possess something that we don't have or seeking to consume something. It said that in India, when a pickpocket sees a saint, they see the saint's pocket. So when we're leaning forward, trying to hold on to the pleasure or grasp some more of it,

the aperture narrows. Instead of that wide openness to let this life lift through us, we get very narrowed and fixed. and it changes our capacity to feel the mystery, to feel love, to be fully here. And you might reflect for yourself on this something in your life where you have some charge that you're going after, something you know you regularly pursue, whether it's something like a taste pleasure that you're really into or some particular high or an accomplishment that you're after. after, money, somebody's attention.

So you might, again, it helps to close your eyes, just sense, what is it that you know you end up getting hooked and pursuing, where your mind fixates? What's it like when you're in the midst of the pursuit, trying to hold on or get something? You might even sense it in your body. See how well you can sense what your body's posture is if you're approximating that wanting mind where you're chasing after pleasure. You might sense yourself leaning forward, you might sense a tightening, the fists,

might sense the face getting a little tighter when you're wanting something. Notice when you're wanting something, when you're going after more of another portion of food that you're really craving or somebody's attention. How aware are you of those around you? How aware of you, are you of your own deeper needs? How aware are you of the river of change?

This world that's turning, this body, with its ever-changing sensations, this heart. It said when we're grasping after something, it's like we get rope burn because everything's moving but we're trying to grasp that rope and we get singed. So you can let go of those ideas and thoughts and just come back again, just feeling yourself here and get the knack of reentering the flow, just feeling the aliveness again. So we leave because we chase after things that are pleasant. We also leave because this changing flow

because we want to push away or aggress against obstacles to what we want, things that we don't like. It usually takes the form of judgment, our anger, and it's usually aimed at ourselves and others. So we leave the changing flow when others don't cooperate with how we want them to treat us. When they don't live in a way we think will serve them like our teen is getting into trouble in some way. Or when those empower act in ways we don't like. So rather than staying and feeling our experience right directly, we go mentally into judgment, into shoulds.

So here's the deal. When the word should comes up in your life, you should be different or I should be different. That's that evolutionary conditioning that is in some way arguing with reality and leaving the flow. Should. It's an amazingly powerful flag when you get into the knack of no doubt.

It's as if reality should be different than it is. Well, it's just the way it is. But you're opposing it in those moments which means you're no longer in the flow. Now the third way that we leave the flow, okay, there's grasping after what's pleasant, there's pushing away the obstacles, is that we pull away, we withdraw from what's unpleasant. We lose ourself in thoughts. We get lost online. We get busy speeding along just to be occupied so we don't have to feel what's going on here.

There's a whole mess now of, if you've looked online, there's a ton of different cartoons with gurus and people approaching gurus. And you can see a lot of the ways that we culturally resist presence through these little encounters. One of them I have here has a guru and the guy that's visiting him is this corporate executive who's flown in on a helicopter to the top of a mountain. He's saying to the guru, what's the meaning of life? But make it quick, I've got an appointment meeting in a half an hour. And another cartoon has somebody that's climbed up a tall mountain to see a guru and he's saying,

the guru is saying, and he's got his pad by the the way. He's saying, I love being a recluse, but you wouldn't believe how slow the internet is here. All this to say that part of our survival condition is to pull away from the moment, either by speeding or getting lost in thoughts or emails, we don't want to be here. So we each have our own pattern of resisting impermanence, of leaving. And some of us are more chasing after things that seem pleasant and some of us are more angrily judging what's going on and some of us are just exiting out with numbing ourselves with food or lost online.

But however we do it, we get habituated. And this is John O'Donohue. He says, rather than living presence, this wild, mysterious existence is reduced to cookie-cutter days, patterns that seem static. When we pull away from the changing flow, we get very, very kind of entranced and rigid and lose that mystery. We're going to shift gears now and explore. How do we undo those habits and re-enter? this living reality.

And the first and primary and key way is the main practice that we emphasize here, which is bringing mindfulness and heartfulness right to what's going on in the moment. And I often call it a U-turn, and I want to bring this expression back again. It's like when we're leaving reality, it's like we're watching a movie and we're fixated on what we're

what's going on and we've left ourselves and we're either in that movie judging or we're grasping after something or we're numbing out but we're kind of facing outward. The U-turn is when we decide to be mindful and bring the attention back to the aliveness that's right here in the moment. It's when we start recognizing what we're resisting that we can re-enter the flow. I want to give you an example from a dear friend. and who was part of this community for a number of years, and he died of lymphoma about 13 years ago.

And he wrote a letter to his friends. And I want to read you just a piece of the letter. And just as background, before he was diagnosed, and even after he was diagnosed, he was a busy, fast-paced person, and he was kind of pressed and on his way to doing different things, and even after a diagnosis, figuring out what treatments and how his daughter was going to be. And so he was still at a lot of those mental, you know, busyness going on.

But this is what he writes. He says, A question that keeps me on track is, what am I running from right now? It's a powerful spiritual reflection. Every one of us has something we're running from, some fear about our health, about our children or someone else we love. some shame about being inadequate, some grief or disappointment about how our lives have worked out.

I invite you to try it, asking, what am I running from, helps us to face and include the parts of our being that most need a healing attention. In my case, I've been expending so much effort running away from fears of cancer and loss that I couldn't be present. We're all facing impermanence and death. my practice continues to be very simple, saying yes to the feelings as they arise and treating them with care and presence. Please, stay in the present. It's the only place that allows us to live and love fully. Meta Alec. That was his name Alec. Who is a very, very beautiful being and And his realization, it's like his cancer and facing mortality brought awakefulness that touched, an open-heartedness that touched people around him.

And this message, what am I running from, is what I mean by the U-turn? When we're facing outward, when we're on our way to what's next, trying to get the next pleasure or avoid a problem. running away. So the U-turn is this willingness to look, what's here? You can ask yourself that at any moment it's magic, what am I running away from or what am I unwilling to fuel? And what happens is it directs us back to what Pema Children calls that soft spot or that vulnerability that actually when we bring presence to it is a portal to open-hearted awareness.

That very tenderness opens our hearts. We feel like we've come home. Several years ago, there's a man who was working really hard to hold his marriage together. And he found out that his wife was having an affair and it was devastated. And so he knew they were going to split and they had children and it was really,

it rocked his world to face this change. he had really had the vision and the commitment to a life relationship and it wasn't going to be that way. So everything in him felt like this shouldn't be happening. She's bad for ruining things. This is bad. We shouldn't have gotten into this kind of a jam. I should have known. A lot of should.

So he was arguing with reality. And he told me, he said, Tar, I know that my anger is causing more suffering. it's just what my mind is doing. So I encourage him, let the anger be there. Don't add more judgment, but just notice what's going on underneath the thought it should be different. Because should is running away. When you're saying should, you're running away from reality. You're saying reality should be different. So sense what's under there, what are you running away from? And I kept them company in that process. And when he did that U-turn from should and blame to what's here,

what he found and what you might anticipate is a deep grief about the loss. And it really was only by saying yes to loss. In other words, accepting that this is passing. This relationship, this configuration is not going to be stable. It's not going to stay. by saying yes to the pain of that loss, it was only by doing that that he was able to reconnect

with his own aliveness and his own wise heart. You see, as long as we're resisting reality, we're not able to inhabit the presence that's really the source of our wisdom and love. So he made that U-turn, and it helped him to relate to his wife, to navigate, the whole custody from a very awake part of his being.

You know, I've seen so many lives get arrested by blame, by shoulds, by ungrieved grief. This first way of reentering the stream is making the you-turn, sensing what you're running from, and bringing the two wings of a kind attention and a clear attention to what's right here. Okay? That's the first way. Now, the second way I'd like to talk about that we can re-enter the stream is by remembering what we belong to, remembering the larger field of belonging. When we're living inside a sense of separate self and we're facing a sense of our mortality or loss, the fear that comes up can lock us into the trance, make us fight harder, make

us numb ourselves more. And so we need something to help us to remember, hey, we belong to something larger. And there's so much research now that in the moment we remember connection with a friend or a loved one or our nature, it changes, it deactivates our limbic system. There's research that when we're holding hands with someone that we love, they can actually watch with an MRI that shifts in the brain. to quiet the limbic system to have more well-being. Connection makes it possible to open to impermanence.

Give you an example that really touched me. This is some years ago a member of our Sanga, Brandy Walker, was working in the Eastern Congo, and she was working with women who had been assault and abused, and she had been there for two years. and then one day the Congolese rebels attacked the group of aid workers that she was working with and they fled into the bush.

She describes how she and several co-workers are lying on the jungle floor and it became completely about survival and she's trying to figure out what to do and she has Dharma talks running through her head like what do you pay attention to? Open to the present moment so she opened to the present moment. And she said she could listen to the gunfire. But this is what she said.

She said, listening to it as the rocket propelled, grenades exploded, and the shots whizzed above her heads, I just made the conscious decision to listen and then to look into the eyes of my companions, to look into the eyes of my colleagues, and to see their divinity. She says, this got me through. I saw such sacredness there.

this togetherness, it gave me strength to confront death. We can open to everything if we feel connected. I think of my mother's passing and how she was very, very surrounded by family and loved ones. And there was a field of loving and there was different reactivity to pain and we all had enormous amount of grief. but there is some fundamental okayness in her. She felt so much belonging to that field.

And I've seen it over and over with different people who are dying, that when there's that connection, it was certainly true with Alec, that sense of connectedness, the field of loving and belonging is big enough for this living, dying world. So that's the second pathway. One more example of that is a woman whose son committed suicide, pretty much the most horrendous losses to try to open to. And she went to a group of parents that had all lost their children in some way.

And what she began to do when she wasn't with them was imagine, okay, this is my community of loss, and she imagined them all holding hands. and she sensed that kind of vastness and tenderness of space when they were together. And it was slow, but it was that sense of connection with others that let her begin to open to and process really the unnameable depths of her grief. We need to feel connection. So that's the second pathway. The third pathway I want to name in terms of, again, we're talking about,

about how do we come out of the trance and really open to this living changing flow that we're in, including the losses. And there is a way that we can do a daily practice of remembrance, of actually reminding ourselves. In many spiritual traditions, there are meditations that keep us tuned into the reality that we're going to die. In the Buddhist tradition, there's the five daily recollections and I'll read them to you. I'm actually going to read you four of them because the fifth isn't about death and impermanence as much. Here's how they go. And you might just close your eyes and meditate with them and just sense how do they land for you. I am of the nature to age and decay. I haven't gotten beyond aging. That's the first. I'm of the nature to age and

decay. I haven't gotten beyond aging. I'm of the nature to become ill or injured. I haven't gotten beyond illness or injury. I am of the nature to die. I haven't gotten beyond death. Everything dear and delightful to me will change and vanish. Once again, and these are the, I frame it in these words more for myself, this body and mine is of the nature to age and decay. Like all beings, this body and mind is of the nature to age and decay. And like all beings, this body and mind is of the nature to become ill or injured. And like all beings, this body and mind is of the nature to die. And like all beings, all that is dear will change and vanish.

These are the daily recollections and we each have to find our own ways. to bring them to mind for myself just because my body is so unreliable and I never know each day whether or not I can really go for a full walk most of my walk some part of me is saying this could be the last walk when I leave home this could be the last time I see Jonathan or see my dog or I keep that very much in the front of my attention

and it actually makes it not morbid but very, very poignant and beautiful. It's like Ajan Cha, who's one of the great Buddhist monastics and teachers of many of the Western teachers of this generation. Here's how he puts it. He holds up a glass. He says, do you see this glass? I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light.

beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, of course. But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious. It's as we started with that young prince, how do we open our hearts to every moment of this life. The last pathway that we'll explore to realizing the changing flow and really living from the wisdom and love that that awakens is literally the practice of letting go into the changing flow. In other words, waking up your senses and letting go into your senses. And we'll close with that. But I want to first just name again the gifts of

opening to anita, to impermanence. And I mentioned one, which is the cherishing, that we really get we don't know. And that brings alive the poignancy of what's right here. Stephen Levine said, imagine this, you have three days to live. Who would you call? What would you say? And why aren't you doing that? So there's the gift of remembering it's precious and living from that remembrance. The next gift that I want to mention is that when you open to reality, to this changing reality, you realize who you are.

You are a changing flow of experience. Let me give you an example of how that realization happens. I was meeting with an older woman at a retreat some years ago. She had terminal cancer and she knew she didn't have that long to live. And she described that every time she looked at someone she cared about, she'd see how they were right now. But her vision would penetrate and she'd see how their form was really this changing stream and she'd see disillusion. In other words, she'd see how they were going to get sick and die

and go. So she was really living with us. All these precious forms are going, going, going. But for her, it was a weightiness. It was very difficult. And she said, what she wanted to do was cup her hands and hold their dear faces and preserve them from change. That's what she wanted to do. Stop it. except she said there was nothing to cup because there's always that stream of change. So she described that and then she paused with that image of she was trying to cup but they were just this stream of change and I said to her yes and your hands are also streaming change and everything dropped for her because she started seeing her own form as a transparent stream of change.

And that let light through. And then she relaxed into that field of light that was just everything was streaming change, background of that light and awareness and just became that. And her practice was over and over again sensing how you and I and everything is this unfolding stream of living change and then realizing that formless love that was aware of that. Form and formlessness. And this practice carried her through dying. It carried her as she got increasingly weak. There was increasingly this transparency that she could sense the light that was shining through the streaming change. I offer you

this because it's not just an exotic spiritual experience is what's really possible as you open to radical impermanence. Rumi puts it this way. Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wondrous sight will vanish. Every sweet word will fade. But do not be disheartened. The source they come from is eternal, growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? That source is within you, and this whole world is springing up from it. The source is full, its waters are ever flowing. Do not grieve, drink your fill. Don't think it will ever run dry. This is an endless ocean. So we began with the trance, the young prince and trance, and we end now

with the awakening from the trance, realizing this changing stream of life and living from that with a sense of love and wisdom. I'd like to close with a guided meditation. Invite you to come into stillness, and as you close your eyes, let yourself. Let yourself become aware sitting still but noticing how inside you nothing is still. Be aware of the moving of sensation, feeling your hands, perhaps softening your hands, feeling the aliveness there and in your feet tingling, vibrating. Can you open the attention and feel the whole body, movement of energy? Can you include sound and sense the changing dance of sound.

And can you let this river of sound and sensation, feelings, just live through, sense how the whole universe is animated energetically, moving, dancing, tingling, vibrating, appearing and disappearing. Notice what happens if you invite yourself to completely let go. into that changing, flowing river of aliveness. Just let everything happen. You might sense in the foreground, the streams of energy, sensations, vibrations, sound. In the background, this light-filled awareness

that's shining through everything, this space that everything's happening in, this awake awareness that's a source The source is within you and this whole world is springing up from it. The source is full its waters are ever flowing. Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change at the essence remains the same. Every wonder's sight will vanish.

Every sweet word will fade. But do not be disheartened. That source is within you and this whole world. is springing up from it. The source is full its waters are ever flowing. Do not grieve. Drink your fill. Don't think it will ever run dry. This is an endless ocean. The close with a simple prayer. May we remember this living flow, this aliveness that courses through us. May we rest in that vast, open-hearted, presence, it's the source, the light that shines through the changing stream.

May we remember who we are and live from that loving presence. May all beings live from loving presence. May there be peace in this world, generosity, compassion. May all beings awaken and be free. Namaste and thank you. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.