Tara Brach - The Stories that Empower Us: A Conversation between Tara Brach and Elizabeth Lesser (2020-11-18)

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

The Stories that Empower Us: A Conversation between Tara Brach and Elizabeth Lesser (2020-11-18) - Whether we know it or not, our daily lives take direction from myths and tales that are hundreds, even thousands of years old. During their time together, Tara and Elizabeth will speak about how these origin tales have shaped our psyches and perpetuated the violence and suffering that marks our world. They will then explore how we can create fresh stories that guide our collective awakening to peace, compassion and healing.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Welcome, my friends. So glad to have you with us and I just am aware that you're tuning in from many continents and it feels so beautiful to be able to gather in this way and feel us come together from all our spots where we are, many more in lockdown than we might have been even last week, so it makes it extra special. And I am really excited and delighted to have Elizabeth Lesser with me tonight for a conversation. And a little bit on Elizabeth. Elizabeth's the co-founder of the Omega Institute, and many of you have been there.

I have been there and taught there for decades now. It's an amazing place, and it has kind of opened up to the world. so many kind of pioneering programs. Elizabeth has initiated some of the most amazing conferences in the world. She's also given to popular TED Talks and is the author of a number of books, including New York Times bestselling book, Broken Open, How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, and her most recent book, which will be focusing on in which I've read and, oh my gosh, I highly, highly recommend that we'll talk about is Cassandra Speaks.

when women are the storytellers, the human story changes. So in brief, this beautiful, powerful book reveals how humanity has outgrown its original tales and heroness. And it empowers women to trust their instincts, to find their voice, and tell new guiding stories that can really create the world that we believe in. So Elizabeth is a friend of my heart. a deeply respected colleague. And if you don't know or if you haven't known her before, you will understand why I'm speaking in superlatives.

Elizabeth, we are so delighted to have you with us. Thank you. Thanks. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Hello, everybody from all over the place. It's just lovely to be with you. Yes, I want to jump right in to do with your new book

because, first of all, we get grabbed by the title. Cassandra Speaks. Can you just, how did you come up with that title? Who is Cassandra? Let's just start writing with that. Well, I've always loved mythology and religious texts. You know, I just love reading, whether it's the Bible or the Quran or the Buddhist texts or the Hindu texts. I've just always just, you know, because humans learn through stories. That's how we learn. So I've been fascinated with stories, and I didn't take me long to notice, even way back in college, that, wow, most of the books we love, the heroes tales, the parables, the myths, they're written and told by men. Because back in the day, P.S. also a lot now, the storytellers were men, and there's nothing wrong with the stories men tell. and the values men tell their stories from.

But a big swath of humanity was left out of the storytelling. So I went back and reading and reinterpreting everything from Adam and Eve to Chinese stories to the Greek myths. And as I was writing, and I was writing about one of the Greek tales, the tale of Cassandra, we were in the midst of the Me Too movement. Now, I know that seems maybe like ancient history now. we've all been through so much, but really it was just like a year and a half ago. And one night, I was watching television and I was watching the televised trial of those young

girls who had been molested by their doctor, Dr. Larry Nassar. And the judge in a rare way of dealing with a trial, first of all, allowed it to be televised and allowed 125 girls to tell their story in front of the cameras with Dr. Nassar sitting there. And for years and years, 30 years, he'd been at it. And for years and years, these young women, most of whom were Olympic athletes, had told their mothers, had told their parents, had told their coaches, their college coaches, the U.S. Olympic team. coaches. They told them that this man had been molesting them, but no one believed them. And I was reading the

story of Cassandra at the time. Cassandra was a princess. She was the most beautiful princess of the king of Troy, and Troy was an ancient city that was often at war with Greece. And she was so beautiful and alluring. All the men wanted to marry her, including the gods, Apollo, the son of Zeus, wanted to marry her. Zeus wanted to marry her. And Apollo offered her a gift, the gift of being clairvoyant that she could, would be able to see into the future. She would see what was going to happen to her family and her countrymen and her world. And she wanted that. She was a very spiritual person. She wanted to be able to see and to understand. So she accepted the gift, but he had neglected to say that she would have to have sex with him right away after she got the gift, but she didn't want to.

And he was furious. So as the story goes, he spat in her mouth and put a curse on her. Cassandra, you will be clairvoyant, but no one will believe you. And for years, she saw what was coming. She saw the war. She saw the Trojan horse. She saw her brothers all dead. She saw her city in ruins. And she would say it, but no one would believe her. As I was watching these young women, I thought they are our Cassandra's. They are telling their truth, their experience. But this time they're being believed. And I thought, that's what I want this book to be about.

Changing the way the old story ends. So it doesn't end with women not being heard, women not being believed. So that we and men too who know their inner feminine, so that finally we respect. that part of ourselves so deeply. It's really this part that I was leading in the meditation. And we give it so much clout and musculature that our stories begin to matter and actually change what it means to be human.

Hmm. That is powerful. And I was following those same trials and the enormity of that kind of a, there was kind of a field of healing that that was created by that judge that when people are listened to and the same thing happened post-apar you know apartheid you know when truth and reconciliation that one man said if i he was blinded and he said if i couldn't you know tell my story i would still be blind and so many people that were able to tell their story that were heard actually found healing in that so i love that's

the centerpiece it's wow so you write that like for most of human history, the storytellers, as you said, were men and that this kind of shapes everything. And if women had been listened to and believed and respected, then the stories that actually have stayed with us that are shaping today, shaping our politics, our economy, everything would be really different. So can you tell us more about what this world would be like if women were the storytellers and believed and respected? Well, I made sure to say over and over in the book that if women were the storytellers, too, not just the only storytellers, I mean, imagine if all our stories had been written

only by women and men's instincts and proclivities and desires and hopes and ways of being had been like diminished and they'd been punished for wanting to get what they want. That wouldn't be a good world either. But the best way I have found to talk about how might it be different is when I was writing the book, I wasn't just reading ancient stories. I was also looking into the stories of today, like science. That's a story of today. What we believe often comes from what we've been told about science and our bodies. And I was looking into this, what we all come to think of what human beings do under stress. You know, we either fight or flight.

You know how that has been, that's what we all believe. Under stress and duress, there's an instinct within the human being. Fight, we either go out and fight what's attacking us, or we flee. we either flee physically or we step away, we close down, we shut down. And I noticed this one wonderful female researcher, Shelley Taylor at UCLA, in 2007, looked into all the studies done on fight and flight. They were mostly done in the 30s and 40s, but it became our story. They were all done on men.

all the people who came into the lab were men because in those days they didn't bring women into the labs even for health studies and she decided well I'm going to measure the blood level and the hormone level of women under stress because that's how they came up with the fight or flight what happens to men's hormones and chemicals in their blood and they found out that the rise in testosterone and other chemicals made them want to fight or flee. And she found, Dr. Taylor and her team found, that under stress, the same studies she did on women, different chemicals and hormones were flushed into their bodies that made them want to tend or befriend.

That's what she came up with, that in many women, the instinct is not to fight or flee. It's to tend and befriend. And what that means is I need to take care of the most vulnerable in the community. I need to tend. A war is coming. A flood is coming. My instinct isn't to go out and fight. It's to tend.

And also to befriend, to create circles of belonging so as perhaps to avoid the need to fight. Now, this isn't all women good, tend to befriend, all men bad, fight, flight at all. because we all have mixtures of this in our bodies and our beings. But this instinct to want to care is deeply ingrained in women from both our nurture and our nature. And if women had also been the storytellers, all of humanity would deeply respect this instinct to care, this instinct to tend.

It wouldn't just be seen as something for the kindergarten, class or or that's really nice but you know real people real first responders fight or flee no both would be true sometimes we have to be aggressive and strong sometimes we should be caring and open and giving and both need musculature and both are valid and the hero's journey i feel all the stories of homer and Odysseus and Moby Dick and all the great tales where it's just fighting and fleeing would be balanced by tales of heroes who care and tend and love and nurture and we'd be a more balanced species. I love it. What you're saying reminds when you talk about science and what science tells us that beautiful

quote that we're not only survival of fittest, we're survival of the nirvana. nurtured and how Einstein talks about this too, that the evolution is going towards increasing collaboration. And you can see that. And that our actually, when we're in our survival limbic brain, it's fight, flight, freeze. But when we're, our whole brain is activated, when it's integrated, it's what you're describing. We have this choice and capacity to tend and be friends. So that's beautiful. There was a quote, you probably know it, Elizabeth, something about the universe made of stories, not atoms. Anyway, I just don't know it, and I, and I, I love quotes. I'm like a quote slut. I like, I want them, give them to me. But I love that because what you're

describing, and I think science is really one of the incredible metaphors for everything that's happening is that what is it telling us? And it is telling us about an evolving that moves towards 10 then be friend. So let me ask, because I love the way you pull apart stories. So that's what I love so much in reading. Let's go right to Adam and Eve, the origin story. Because it's so cool. if you tell it through her her version of what she what happened picking the apple leaving the garden what we have learned from that one well you know how there's so many heroes in the bible there's you know Moses and Job and the great Old Testament leaders and Jesus and their stories are also similar the hero's journey. They make mistakes. They must learn from them. And most of them must leave home and be

exiled. Go into the desert for 40 days. Be on the cross and rise from the problems of being human. That is the hero's journey. We get tested and we grow and we change and we rise. Eve is the only protagonist in the Bible who is punished for that same curiosity to grow and learn and change and be tested and so to grow. She's in, she's second born, you know, everything's so cool and happy in the Garden of Eden. It's just Adam and God and animals and nobody has to work and it's just perfect and then God decides to send a helpmate to Adam. Maybe he was tired of taking care of Adam. I don't know. And so he makes Eve and she's second born, but she becomes the first to sin. And this is the story that women and men have inherited. Men are basically born fine and great

and women were born second, and they blew it. They were the first to sin because they were curious. Eve was told that tree in the center of the garden with that beautiful-looking fruit, a snake comes and tells her, it's delicious, and you'll become wise if you eat it. And she said, but God told us not to eat it, or we'd die. and the snake, who in biblical days was the purveyor of wisdom, snakes were worshipped, the snake said, well, you won't die, die, the old you will die, and you will become wise. You will become as wise as God. And she wanted it, just like all heroes wanted. All heroes are willing to risk almost anything to step into their true self.

And she did it, but then she was punished. So the story goes. P.S. All the stories were written by human beings. They did not fall from the sky, unless you're a biblical literalist, which I'm not. These are stories that people told in order to explain why they're suffering in the world. And it was all laid on Eve. It was her fault. And then so much in the Bible talks about it being women's fault. As in Greek mythology, Pandora is the same story. She was the first woman. She was told not to open the box. She opened the box. All the bad things happened. Many, many origin stories blame it all on women. And so we wonder why, even all these thousands of years later,

women don't trust their voice or their instincts. Why would we? We were told there was something basically wrong about them. I'm just thinking about blame. I don't know if you want to say a little more about blame because it's so interesting the need to blame when you kind of insecure in your existential way it's like something's wrong okay something's wrong with you know yeah blame you know I think we're really living we are living in a morality tale about blame right now and how blame is is a inaccurate useless and destructive way to channel one's emotional life. We want to blame.

You know, it's almost as if, you know, you hit your elbow and it hurts and you want to, like, lash out at somebody. Like, that's a very animalistic instinct to want someone else to take responsibility for our pain. And it's just very natural. And it shows up in all the stories.

Wow, life is hard. Who can we blame? for that instead of, as the Buddha said, there is suffering. That is the first truth, that there is suffering. It's nobody's fault. It's just the realm we have found ourselves in. So instead of looking for someone to pin it on, what can I do myself to alleviate suffering for me and for others? That's an instinct that's not female or male. It's the spiritual. It's the spiritual. practitioners work to move beyond blame. Beautiful. We need that. So I want to take you to another one of the amazing stories that you

unpack, and that's the spell of Galatia. And I'm not sure if I'm saying it right. Galatia, yeah. Galatia, yeah. That was another good one. So, yeah. Okay. Well, that was the story of Pygmalion and Galatea. Pygmalion was a sculptor in Cyprus, and Cyprus was part of the whole Greek Empire. And at that time when he was being celebrated for his sculpture, there was this sense in Cyprus that women were just sexually running amok.

And this is when I really know this is a story written by men, that women were any woman who, who was experiencing her body and her sexuality as something she wanted. She was a prostitute. And most of the women in Cyprus were seen as prostitutes. And Pygmalion, the sculptor, had had enough of it. He just didn't want to be with women anymore. They were just sinful.

So he went into his sculptor studio and locked the door. And for a couple of years was celibate and decided instead out of white, ivory to make a perfect virginal woman. And he spent years perfecting this. It's sort of a creepy story in that he would adorn this sculptor and he would put earrings in her ears and he would pretend to brush her hair. And the gods were so impressed, first of all, by the beauty and the whiteness and the virginal body of this woman's statue and also by Pygmalion's love of this statue. They were so impressed that Venus made the statue come alive and Pygmalion married the statue once she came alive because she was a virtuous, white, pure, thin, beautiful woman.

She came down off the pedestal and they lived happily ever after. And there's been so many stories throughout history, whether it's my fair lady or pretty woman or all the reality shows now where women go through makeovers, where we want to be rid of this body of ours that isn't perfect. That isn't the white, chiseled, thin, perfect body. and we spend so much of our energy as women trying to look like something we're not. In this case, it's not the Greek Cyprian statue. It's the magazines, it's the websites, it's the television shows. We're supposed to all look a certain way. And if you haven't noticed, almost no one does.

And the women who do aren't what they have to go through in order to be so thin and tight and never age and have their hair a certain way, it's torture. It's like Chinese footbinding, which is a whole other story for millions and millions of Chinese women for centuries. Because men found tiny feet appealing and the helpless tottering was somehow sexualized, women bound their feet, which a lot of the high heels we all wear does are the same. thing. And so I tell that tale as a way of telling women of all ages and all races and all body types and sizes to get down off the pedestal right now and to love our bodies as they are and to want them to be healthy and strong, but to stop putting so much energy into the facade

so that we can actually be useful in this world as opposed to this constant focus on how we look. I was so glad to see that chapter Elizabeth, because just working over the decades with so many people, how I couldn't even give you the percentages. I feel like most everybody has an eating disorder. Most everybody, you know, you gave some percentages. Just has a deep dissatisfaction. And then I was also thinking of how this ivory whiteness of this statue and with all the colorism in the world and the biggest industry in cosmetic industry in Asia is whitening skin and how just the violence of creating an ideal, you know, like that. So you just described the violence to women.

It's a violence to men too. the men who are going after certain sex robots or the pornography, getting hooked on an idea of what's perfect, makes it so that there's no intimacy possible with the real. And also men suffer so much from their own pedestals that they're supposed to be on. Tall, buff, strong, invulnerable, which is a different kind of prison, no less harmful to the spirit and to the body and to the meaningfulness of life. And as you said, the colorism, the layers of what we all do to ourselves, trying to be who we aren't, trying to fit into boxes that we aren't. for people of color, it's just one more violence done to selfhood.

Yeah. Well, thank you for that story because I knew it in the vague recesses, but you just brought it right out, and it's such a powerful one. There are some amazing quotes, as you say, you really have them, and really shocking ones from Jewish and Christian leaders and so on about women. And, you know, the general theme is women, as you've described, are sinful not to be trusted. Their lives don't matter as much as men. I'm going to share a couple, and then I'd like some comments.

So this is from St. Tortilian. Thank you. I saw you going. I didn't want to take a chance on it. So he says, do you not know that you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your children. sex and as punishment weighs down upon you, you are the devil's getaway. You are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. Because of the death you merited, even the son of God

had to die. So blaming us for that. And then this is Martin Luther. If women become tired or even die, that doesn't matter. Let them die in childbirth. That's why they are there. So do you think People are thinking that way now. How does it carry forth in time? And that's just one of the many quotes. And I didn't have to look too hard from them. And when I first found them, they shocked me as well. You know, like the first prayer that Orthodox Jewish men say in the morning is thank you God for not making me a woman. Do women and men in our culture still believe that because of women, even the son of God, had to die or let women die in childbirth, there's a range of what people still believe. Go to some

cultures and women are stoned to death if they are raped. Go to some cultures and women still aren't supposed to enjoy sex because if so, there's something sinful and evil about them or they have their clitoris removed. In our culture, down the street, it's almost as bad as that. And up the street, it's much more liberated. So there's two things I would say to it. Yes, on some level, women still do hold that in our bodies, that somehow we are responsible for suffering, so we should keep our voice low. We should be nice all the time. A powerful woman is not a good thing. Even those of us who are, powerful and have had powerful positions in the world. We still often, oh, I spoke too much in that

meeting. I'll be more quiet in the next one. We're swallowing our voice all the time. And I think it's because those old stories still cling to us. And some women and men live by them more literally still all over the world. So until all of us are free from it, none of us are free from it. And when I hear people say, that's just, that's not what's going on anymore. No, it is still going on. And what we have seen over the past few years, the backlash against the rising feminine, is a lot of strong men coming into power again because old ways don't die easily. And we have to stay vigilant and we have to be both this and this.

because if women and sensitive people of all stripes just start doing this and just start doing power the way it's always been done as a domination, angry way, what's the point? So I'm so interested in women and all sensitive people becoming both this and this, becoming people leaders who can do power differently. I was going to ask you more to talk about power, because I was going to ask you more to talk about power, because I think that's a word that freaks people out and it's just hugely confusing for many. And you had conferences on women in power and you say basically that the point isn't just getting powered. It's really doing it in a radically different transformational way. So can you speak to that a bit? Well, I love the word power, and I was surprised when I did the first Women in Power conference, how many women just didn't like the word?

And by like the third or fourth one, there was this moment when all the female Nobel Peace Prize winners were on the Omega stage. It was that year I called the conference Women Power and Peace. You might think, how'd you fit that many women on the stage? Well, in all the years of the Nobel Peace Prize, at that point, there were only five women out of a hundred and something who had received it. So they were on the stage, and at one point, one of the Nobel Peace Prize winners, an American, she was being interviewed by Pat Mitchell. And Pat asked her, Jody, she asked her something about how do you, how did you find your power? And Jody, who had walked across fields filled with landmines because she won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping landmines be banned as weapons of war. She had walked across fields with people watching her as a way of saying, I might get blown up now.

You see how long landmines can stay? And she was so brave and so powerful. But when Pat asked her, how did you become so powerful? she said, I don't like the word power. I'm not powerful. And they got into this whole semantical conversation of power is just shining who you are in the world. It's knowing who you are in here and being fearless and self-loving enough to shine. And if you shine, it doesn't mean you're going to get in the light of someone else. There's enough light to go around. We all can shine and be powerful. But Jody would have none of it. She was like, I'm not powerful. I don't like the word.

So over the years, I've been very made aware that the word power is very unappealing to many, many people. And I think it's because it's been so corrupted. And the second part of the book is called Power Stories after the first part, Origin Stories. And I went back into these manuals of power that I had never read. Machiavelli, the Prince, and Sun Tzu, the Art of War. And I felt so naive. Power as an abusive

and power over and a dominating strategy that's violent has been taught by these books and in corporate America for years that that's what power means. And I would love us to change what power means.

I would love power to mean the ability to make beautiful change in the world because you're so at home in your own skin and you're so beloved to yourself that you love the world and you want to do excellent creative masterful things in the world and we all can do it and you don't have to be a celebrity to do it You can do it in your home with your kids on the school board, in your town, anywhere in your business. To be powerful is to share power, to model a new kind of power and to bring people in. You know, as I listen to you, and I think for myself, well, what does it mean?

It doesn't feel personal or individual. In other words, power feels like a neutral. energy and it is kind of in the universe and it moves through me when I am not identified with a separate self. It moves through me when I'm feeling a collective collectivity. The way you just said is power comes from love and so I think we're saying the same thing but a lot of times we are trying to get get strong women feel your power and it still has an ego equality and so it feels like if the getting strong comes from knowing your belonging, that you're at home in your own skin because you know you're intricately connected with the entire universe.

Then you can have that soft front and that strong back because you feel like you're part of the universe. And that's where empowerment seems to come from to me. It's a collective kind of an experience. And so I'm curious because I'm too thinking like you are, the old power, the old stories of power are from male dominance hierarchies. Old power is always the form of power over. It's the stories of superior and inferior and using that power to dominate. And the new power that I feel like the stories that we're talking about that really come

from an immoral wake heart are the power that comes wanting to serve our collectivity. And it comes from that sense of connection. It's so beautifully said. I love that. And I think it's such an interesting time to be alive. It's painful to watch and be subjected to what's been going on with leadership in our country and in other countries. But it's also so instructive. It's like it takes it from theory. And you can just say, do we want to be the kind of leader who makes other people afraid? or feel less than, who believes that I'm the only one who can do this, stand down because I'm on top. Do we want that in our families, in our businesses? Is that the way we're going to make sure we deal with things like climate change and racial

injustice and financial inequity? No, we can't clean all those serious problems up from that old. style of power. It has to come from strong people who are open to the other. And I think each one of us has such an opportunity right now to take it out of nice, fancy words and to really do it in our life. Just look around your neighborhood for people who have a sign on their lawn that was supporting a president you weren't. There's your work. Can we find each other in this divided time

and be who we are and value who we are, but at the same time, value who the other is and know that they too are living a valid life, their pain and their choices are coming from something deep inside them, and that each of us can be an ambassador of that kind of, non-egoic way of being with the other. It's not easy. It sometimes can't be done, but I would submit that it can be done a lot more than we think it can. And, you know, those of us in the spiritual

world, we throw around words like oneness, we're all one. Yeah? Let's practice that. Let's figure out how to actually be one with the people that we've been otherizing and make that as much part of your spiritual practice as meditation. That's not easy. It's what I'm trying to do because I think it's what the gods would like us to do. Well, Elizabeth, you have a beautiful piece in there about inviting someone to lunch. And to me, what you're just, describing really is the hope that I mean we have to go towards more collaboration and bridge building that's the only direction It's not like the half of the population that disagrees with us is going to vanish We have to find a way to hold hands and

And respect each other and begin to talk so we start where it's more viable or not not quite as hard and Can we can build from there but would you mind sharing? What you've been doing with this? inviting someone to lunch? Well, I jokingly started it a few years ago. I actually did a TED talk about it because someone had heard me at Omega say that I'm going to start taking people to lunch who disagree with me because we talk about diversity and we're such good people who are practicing anti-racism and anti-sexism. But when I really looked into myself, that wasn't where I was being the most obnoxious. It was people who disagreed with me. Diversity of thought.

And diversity of thought, as you said, is never going away. In fact, it's good. Just like diversity in a biosphere is good. You know, we know as biologists that we need diversity in the forest, we need a diversity of animals and insects, and diversity of race is rich and good and beautiful. And diversity of thought is not going away and it's important. We can learn from each other, actually, as opposed to being against each other. We can all learn and grow. So I made this joke on the stage that I was going to take the other to lunch. And someone who was running a TED conference asked me to actually do it and then come back and do a TED talk about it, which I did. I have a TED talk called Take the Other to Lunch. And I started inviting people who disagreed with me,

as you say, starting easy, like my brother-in-law who was against gay marriage, or someone who didn't believe in climate change or someone who had voted for someone. And I went up until it got really difficult. I took a woman from the tea party, a leader from the tea party to lunch. And I put out these ground rules. You can watch it in the TED talk if you want. How to have lunch with your other in a way that encourages not changing each other, but humanizing each other. And learning from each other, why do you feel that way? What's your pain? What's your experience? What do you hope would come out of your choices and your beliefs and just being with each other as humans? Part of what I love so much about that is I feel like our biggest suffering is we forget our belonging to each other.

And the most horrific version of that is that we create these dominance hierarchies where we dehumanize those that are below us. And so the question I get most, Elizabeth, in these last months, when I talk about not blaming, creating bridges, is I can do it with a lot of people, but the person my family who's a white supremacist, I can't do it with them. I cannot have that conversation. Somebody recently, they were talking about the vaccine with somebody else and that person muttered something like, I hope they don't just go give it all to the blacks. something like really like that even as I say it now, you know, just my heart gets choked by it. Your book focuses on the caste system that's around this whole globe of males dominating females. And over the last few centuries here in this country, the caste system has been the most violent has been the racial caste system. And part of what I really, that I'm working with myself is it's so clear that the story that we want to create is one that that absolutely undoes all caste systems and sees us all together. And Black Lives Matters is such a beautiful model in the sense as it just says it. It's just these lives matter, you know.

But there's been some extension between the feminists and the blacks and during DOC movements. through the centuries actually, not just recently. And so I'm just wondering, because I, ahead of time told you this is something I would love to be able to bounce around with you a bit. Any thoughts or insights you have on the, you know, here we have not just male storytellers, but European white male storytellers, creating stories

that create a racial caste system, and what's going to help undo that? Well, our country is founded on the story of white supremacy. It's a story. It's a made-up story. We had to have that story in order to have slavery. You couldn't enslave so many people if you didn't believe and tell the story over and over that we are superior to them.

That is a story. And just like the stories that I tell in the book. about men and women, if you don't look at the stories and if you don't unpack them and admit in this country, that is a founding origin story of our country. Hello, everyone. This isn't about blaming you all, you bad, white people. This is just about, would you admit that this is the story that the country is founded on and that it is in our DNA and its tentacles are still around us, and can you read about it? All the incredible books that have come out over the past couple of years, written by black authors about racism and anti-racism and white supremacies.

I have been just imbibing these books because it's a story I had the privilege not to really know. And now I know, I must know that story. Just like those quotes you read from the Bible, like you think, why should I read those? You should read them because they still live in our bodies. So one way to deal with any kind of oppression is to unpack the stories, decide as a culture, that is not a true story. No, whites are not a supreme race. And therefore, we're going to tell a new story now. And that story in the case of the cast of racism is Black Lives Matter. It is a fantastic rallying cry because it's simple and it's true. So, you know, how do we change it? I think was your question? Well, a dear friend of mine and I imagine she's a friend of yours, Angel Kyoto Williams.

She's a Zen priest. And she said something that I read the other day. that really stunned me. She said, we must be strong, but we have to be patient because she said, I think of my ancestors, and they lived with hope and strength for all those years,

keeping their eye on the future prize, knowing it wouldn't change in their lifetime, but they never stopped working toward it. I wrote it down because I wanted to read it to you. She said, our anxiety comes from the desire to have things be different. My ancestors had to prepare themselves over and over again for moving toward a freedom that was nowhere in sight. If I get bound by time, I think it should all happen in my time. Well, it didn't happen in my ancestors' time. It may not

happen in my time, but the possibility is always unfolding. And, I live in that possibility. I know that it may not come in my time, but I know it will come and I know it can come and I know it should come. And I want to be part of its coming. I want to be part of the becoming of the new story. So I find what she said really hopeful that her ancestors kept working even though it didn't come in their time and she's going to do the same thing.

You know, the last conversation I had with someone with Resna Menacom who wrote my grandmother's hands, wonderful African-American trauma specialists and anti-racist writer and so on. And he says nine generations. And there's something about opening ourselves up so that it's, you know, kind of letting go of the sense. of has to be a certain way and yet being absolutely passionately dedicated moment to moment. And just to circle back and say the work has to come out of love. I know so many white people right now that are starting to get it and contracting in guilt,

it has to come because we're grieving the horror of what has happened to all of us inside a racial caste system. And then we just are passionately caring and trying to repair knowing it's going to take the time it takes. Yeah, another friend of mine, another African-American friend, Morgan Dixon. I don't know if you know her organization, Girl Trek. It's a health organization for black women. And she said, I am part worshiper and part warrior. And the worshipper part of her, the part that like, she's so. hopeful. She's so warm-hearted. She would not be into me having guilt and walking around all guilty.

She's a worshipper of life and of love, but she's a warrior, and she doesn't take any shit. And I think that's what we all get to do now. We all get to do no harm and take no shit and work with that balance as best as we can. but it's fun. It's actually fun. Well, it seems like we've come around to this gift of a message that you offered through the meditation on. I just want to kind of check in and see if there's anything else you felt like you wanted to share or talk about. One thing I just wanted to say about you, and I said this to you the other day, I have the pleasure of being close to a beautiful Catholic nun, Sister Joan Chittister.

She's sort of my go-to, wise woman, and has been for years. And one day, I said to her when I was getting off the phone, like, you're such a kick-ass nun. And she said, no, no, no, no, no, don't say kick-ass. That's not who I am. and that's not who you are. You are leaven, she said to me. I had to go afterwards and look the word up. Levin, the rising element that you yeast, that you put in bread, leaven, it raises, raises things up. Like, don't watch your words carefully. Don't say that. Say to your friends that you love. You are leaven.

You raise up the world. You raise me up. So I just want to say that to you before we end. Tara Brock, you are leaven. You raise up so many people. And I just deeply appreciate you. Thank you, dear. Well, it's really mutual. And if it's okay, if I weave one more word in, that you brought to me in your book, it's the word gallant. And you brought it in through to Tony Morrison. And I find you are, you have a courage that cuts through

in a way, you know, the courageous hearts, the heart that it can be afraid, but it continues anyway. So it's really a bow of honoring. And I also want to say on behalf of all those listening, and I've got my book here, this book

really had a really big impact on me. And so please get it, give it as a gift. You know, the holidays are approaching. Give it as a gift. It's really powerful, good medicine. So thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you everyone. And let's all just hang in there through these times. Just like Reverend Angel said, it's always unfolding. Blessings. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.