Tara Brach - The Wings of Awakening - Self-Honesty and Love (retreat talk) (2016-11-06)

Episode Date: November 12, 2016

The Wings of Awakening - Self-Honesty and Love (retreat talk) (2016-11-06) - We evolve our consciousness by bringing a clear and kind attention to the tangles of suffering. This talk explores how the "second arrow" of self-judgment imprisons us in emotional reactivity, and the pathways of awakening awareness that reconnect us with our full human potential. 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. I'd like to begin by saying how much appreciation I'm feeling for the quality of your practice and your efforts and your intentions. Just really feeling, felt this to the groups and in the hall, that there's this real cheer. choosing of presence. And in a way, you know, when we're here and this is our shared aspiration, it's kind of a perfect setup to then notice really vividly how much we leave. And that's really fine. It's the nature of mind, but we're noticing. And I've been really, really touched by the level of honesty that I'm sensing about that, just really being able to be

able to name and notice it. And part of what I think the noticing is is how often we go around with a sense of there's a problem here. I'm struggling with something, I've got to figure out a problem. I have to solve a problem. How often there's a sense of wanting things different. I mean, how many of you have noticed when it's unpleasant how quickly there's wanting it different. Yeah. Okay. And then the big one, and this is really tonight's exploration, which is coming right off of, I felt Jonathan laid out so beautifully, the energies, the challenging energies that we encounter and working with them, is to continue with that, to continue with exploring how we be with. And one of the main layers that we often miss and yet is locks us into trance is that not only is something happening that's difficult and that we wish wasn't happening, but we add on a layer of I'm bad for this. I'm doing something wrong. This reflects badly on me. It kind of goes very quickly from

this feels bad to I'm bad. And I'm wondering how many of you notice that? Adding on. How many of you notice that when you're sleepy, how there's also a layer of something's wrong with me in the way I'm practicing? Okay. So this is traditionally called the second arrow.

The first arrow is the direct experience, that raw experience of it could be fear, our anger, our sleepiness, or anything. And the second arrow is that we make ourselves wrong for the fact that it's happening. There's a self-owning it, and that's really the problem. And the more there's a core sense, of course, of already existing self-aversion, the more quickly everything that's going on in some way gets tinged by that sense of, this is reflecting badly on me.

Very early on, we internalize the messages of the culture and parents that in some way say, you should be different than you are, something's not okay. So one of my favorite little stories about this is a woman who walks by a pet store on the way to work, and this time the parrot's in a cage out front, and when she walks, walks by, the parrot goes, awk, you're ugly and you're stupid. And she goes, ooh, it's strange. Well, it must have heard that somewhere.

Next day she walks by, and same thing. Ah, o'c, you're ugly and you're stupid. And she's kind of annoyed and she thinks she's going to go in and say something to the owner, but she's really busy. She's got a lot of stuff to do.

So she goes, third day it happens. Ah, gawk, you're ugly and you're stupid, and that's it. She goes in, and the owner is objectively. apologetic. He feels terrible. He says he'll do some training with the parrot trust, you know, it'll be okay. She goes by a few days the cage is missing, but when she goes by, I think about four days later, the cage is back and the parrot goes, o'k, o'k, you know, it's in us. We don't have to have other people criticizing us. I mean, we, it's, you know, it's ready to burst out that sense of

already not okay. So I'd like to, in our exploration tonight, just deepen that look at how we wake up from the trance of a not, that very quick to feel something's wrong with me, not okay self. And I'd like to start with a poem that a friend of mine who's a poet sent me just, I just got this yesterday.

This is Kaviri Patel. This flurry of snow thoughts inside my mind globe is continuous. No room for sunlight, warmth, peace. I'm stuck inside a pattern I can't control unless I see the woman trapped inside and the one holding the globe. The choice to shake it up again, our cradle the scene in her hands till all the cold flakes have settled

and quiet serenity abounds. The pattern I can't control unless I see the woman trapped inside and the one holding the globe the choice to shake it up again are cradle the scene in her hands till all the cold flakes have settled and quiet serenity abounds.

Really resonated with me is that these are the two wings that we explore again and again here. Jonathan talked about last night. This is the wing of can we see that the pattern's going on? Can we see, oh, okay, I've turned against myself. Can we see how we're shaking up the globe, like how we're spinning the stories? and can we choose instead?

This is the radical shift. It's an evolutionary shift to cradle, to hold with kindness. This is where we're going. Just to say that these two wings of seeing what's happening, like right this moment, what is happening inside me,

to see truthfully this moment and to regard with kindness are utterly, interdependent. You can't see truthfully what's here if the heart is judging because the judgment will distort the scene. You'll just see the old associations that lead you to saying bad self. And you can't really love what's here unless you're seeing it and in contact with it. Love is abstract unless it's embodied. Okay?

So these are totally interdependent. When we're not really seeing truthfully what's going on, in other words, when we've left the rawness and we're in one of our patterns, and when we're not holding with tenderness, we're in a trance. Okay? That's when we're in a trance. Really, the definition of trance is the opposite of those two wings. And one of the metaphors that I love a lot is from Joseph Campbell,

and some of you may have heard it before. Jonathan has shared it a number of times. And it's really a metaphor for awareness that has circle as this big circle that's awareness, and there's a line that's going through. And everything below the line is what you're not conscious of. In other words, it's what's not truly being seen. seen and regarded with kindness or love. And again, remember, it's both wings. It's not just that you're not seeing it. It's also that it's not held in your heart. And everything that's above the

line is what you're aware of, what you're conscious of. And really the path, the spiritual path, is bringing more and more of the contents of what we've in some way pushed away and judged into the light of awareness. That's what we're doing. We bring these two wings of we're that we're really learning to activate, of seeing what's going on and holding with kindness to our inner life and to each other. That's really the training. And I thought I'd share a story, a beautiful illustration of bringing the two wings. One woman brought the two wings to someone else who she didn't know. This is told by Catherine Ingram. She says a few years ago, I was with a close friend in a grocery store in California. As we snaked along the aisles, we

became aware of a mother with a small boy moving in the opposite direction and meeting us head on in each aisle. The woman barely noticed us because she was so furious at her little boy who seemed in ten on pulling items off the lower shelves. As the mother became more and more frustrated, he started to yell at the child, and several aisles later, she progressed to shaking him but the arm. At this point, my friend spoke up. A wonderful mother of three and founder of her progressive school, she'd probably never once in her life treated any child so harshly. I expected my friend to give this woman a solid mother-to-mother talk about controlling herself and about the effect this behavior has on a child. Braced for a confrontation, I felt a spike

in my already elevated adrenaline. Instead, my friend said, what a beautiful little boy, how old is he? The woman answered cautiously. He's three. My friend went on to comment, about how curious he seemed and how our own three children were just like him in the grocery store, pulling things off shelves, so interested in all the wonderful colors and packages. He seemed so bright and intelligent, my friend said. The woman had the boy in her arms by now, and a shy smile came over her face, gently brushing his hair out of his eyes. She said, yes, he's very smart and curious, but sometimes he wears me out. My friend responded sympathetically. Yes, they can do that. They're so full of energy. As we walked away, I heard

the mother speaking more kindly to the boy about getting home and cooking his dinner. We'll have your favorite macaroni and cheese, she told him. I always turn to sense what touches me so much about that story. Something about, you know, we can take that in and sense her being able to witness what's going on and see what's happening. And she was really able to step out of her own potential reactivity and see more clearly. She could see, yes, this is harmful behavior. And yes, this is a woman who's reacting from stress and whatever. And had the wisdom to respond from above the line rather than a reaction that would have just kept the woman in her unconsciousness and her defensiveness. And really the challenge and potential is for us to be able to step out of that

mind globe and bear witness to what's going on in ourselves so we have the same possibility of choice there, even when what we're judging is the way we cause harm. Because if there's anything it's hard to forgive. And I know that many of you could touch into this in the forgiveness practice. It's very hard to be okay with ourselves when we face the reality that sometimes we're not honest. And sometimes we cause other people suffering out of our needs. Sometimes we get lost in our anger and we really do, just like that woman shaking her child. We think of that and it's awful to see somebody mistreating a child, but that happens. How can our hearts include this? So the key that, as I mentioned, I'd like to explore is when we catch that second arrowing,

when we've been angry or anxious or in some way causing harm to ourselves or another, and then we add on that kind of nail in the coffin of badness, how do we start waking up? And we're really exploring how to shift, and this is an evolutionary perspective, from fight-flight-freeze. You know, the limbic brain, the survival brain's reaction to our evolutionary potential, which is to attend and be friend, which is to see truly and hold kindly. One of the phrases that rings true for me is when a Srinar Sargadatta, whose wonderful non-dual teacher says, all I ask of you is this, make love of yourself perfect. When he says that, make love of yourself perfect, he doesn't mean loving the character

in your story and the narrative. It doesn't mean you're loving and trying to add some extra polish to that story character. It's not more affirmations of why you're a good person. It's really that seeing and loving the rising waves of what's right here. It's making the love of this life right this moment right here as full as possible. A lot of people say, you know, have that question, well, don't the Buddhists feel like there's no self there to love? It's language, but we're really opening our hearts to the life right here.

And the magic is that the more that we bring tenderness to the life right's here, the more the sense of a self actually starts dissolving. That's the freedom that happens. The hint is when we have this, let's say, this aspiration, to meet this life with open-heartedness, with love, is that if we're in a limbic hijack, if we're gripped, it doesn't start out by love. It's not like we can skip from fight-flight-freeze

to embracing with love. That's not organic. So a hint here is that, as we do with rain, because rain is really just the unfolding of the two wings, right? Recognize and allow, and then deepen it with investigate and nurture. It starts just with that willingness, some intelligence in you knows

that by pulling away, it's just going to keep you locked in. So there's something in us that says, okay, I'm willing to stay just a little bit more and just a little bit more and just a little bit more, and just a little bit more, and that's the beginning of love. Does that make sense? we begin by just saying I'm willing to stay.

So from an evolutionary perspective, when we're in that hijack, what's happened is our system has encountered stress. There's an unmet need. In some way, when you're in reaction, there's something in you that needs more safety, needs more of a sense of, in some way, being taken care of, gratified, needs a sense of being loved,

needs a sense of belonging, a sense of worth. There's an unmet need. And when that unmet need is strong, when there's like a real raw sense there, the survival brain takes over and tries to get away from the pain of that unmet need and goes into fight-flight-freeze, tries to take care of us. So reactivity is a way of trying to take care of us. It's the primitive brain's way of trying to meet needs. The problem is it doesn't work. So we have to keep evolving. I mean, that's just the way life goes.

Life has to keep adapting because the old system doesn't work. So one of the ways that I find really useful in remembering what's going on, when you're caught in reactivity, I often go back to Dan Siegel's model of the hand as a brain. And I know many of you are familiar with it, so I'll just very quickly as a reminder, if you take your hand like this and you say, okay, fold your thumb in, four fingers over, this is your brain. This is the frontal cortex here and what it's covering over, brain stem, and limbic. And when we're integrated, okay, we're like this. And what happens is information flows up into the limbic system and it might say,

unmet need, something dangerous, something bad, we got to take care. And then the frontal cortex gives a message down, oh, it's cool. We've already done this one and it's not what, you know, it's a rope, not a snake or whatever it is, but we get information that that was then, maybe there was trauma then, but now is now and we're okay. But what happens when there's not a lot of presence and not a lot of integration of the brain is that information comes up, uh-oh, we're going to be exposed as a phony, uh-oh, people are going to reject us, uh-oh, something bad's going to happen, and we flip our lid,

okay, right? And what that means is in those moments at that time, we're an olympic hijack. There's a kind of circling going on of fear thoughts and fear feelings where the way you know you're an limbic hijack is, it's overwhelming anger, are the fears really gripping, you might notice you're freezing and there's just no way you can respond. We're an limbic hijack. And so if there's even a recognition, and I sometimes will say to myself, okay, limbic hijack, when I'm just feeling like really reactive, just to name it is part of coming back into integration. Because as Jonathan said last night, the shaman say if you can name a fear, it doesn't have as much power over you. When there's naming, it activates the frontal cortex.

There's studies on it now. MRIs that show in the moment you note or name mindfully what's going on, you are reintegrating the brain. When we're in our unconscious looping, the beginning is to shine a light directly on what's happening and name it. I want to give you an example of how powerful this wing of naming it and including it can be that just happened recently in a conversation I had with my dear friend and assistant Janet who's here with us and who gave me permission to share this story. By the way, Janet's the name Janet. and she said this and I looked it up means the graciousness or mercy of God. And as my assistant, I experience that blessing a lot, as many of you know.

So Janet and I were having a conversation on the phone, and Janet was telling me all the way she felt like she was falling short and not doing enough. So I started to reassure her that she was doing plenty, but that was a bad strategy because that brought on more. And then it went a little deeper because Janet, some of you know this, some of you might not, but a couple of years ago had a diagnosis of Parkinson's, which takes a lot of self-care.

And so part of the not enough is I'm not taking good enough care of myself and I'm not eating well and I'm not, or I eat well enough, but not to the extent that I could to be taking care of myself. And then it came, and then it cycled back. and then I get sleepy and then I'm not doing the job right and it came back to the job again. So I realized

the absolute ludicracy of me trying to convince Janet that, you know, in fact you are enough. So I took a different tact and I asked her to proclaim very loudly, I'm not enough. I'm falling short and had her

kind of say it loud and even yell it. And then I said, let's sing it. So there we were and I'm I'm driving on the beltway, and she's, I don't know where she was, but she says she started singing, you know, I'm falling short, I'm a loser, and I started joining, and we decided to do a duet. And by the way, it comes easy for me because, you know, I wrote radical acceptance. I know all about falling short. In fact, Jack, Cornfield, my friend says, calls me the Queen of Shame, because I've investigated it so deeply. So there we were singing about falling short. And any time the conversation would go on to something else, we'd say, yeah, but we're blowing that too, you know.

We just went on and on. We both came out of that feeling so much freer from you nodding your head there. Yeah. From buying in. And that's what it's about. It's like there's a very deep looping of thoughts and feelings about not okay. And it takes really shining a light on them. And to do it collectively, for instance, in one group I was in, one person began by saying,

you know, how deep and intense that senses of the self-judgments, you know, like the more you start noticing, the more you notice them, just really. And I asked the group, so how many of you are in some way working with everybody, all of us? And the immediate feeling was, well, that itself is healing, just to know that. Just to know that in this field here, we're all waking up to a loving presence. that's here and all having to bring over and over again that presence to where the tangles are, every one of us is in that. It helps because it's not so personal then. And that's actually part of truth. The truth is when we're below the line, it's all very personal. When you even

get a glimmer of it's not just me, it's us. It's not my self-aversion, it's the self-aversion that is rampant in our culture. When you get a glimmer of that, you're already coming above the line. Does that resonate for you? There's, in my life, can point to two transformations over these years of practice that are really evident. One is that there's less lag time between when the looping is going on and some recognition of, oh, okay, back in that looping of something's wrong with me, not doing it right, falling short.

There's less lag time. And there's less lag time in at least having some gesture of kindness. And if I can even remember that it matters to be kind, like I'm not talking about feeling kind, that could be down the road. just that it matters. Like right in this moment, just even saying that that it matters, brings in the possibility and starts reintegrating the heart and mind to be more fully here.

Just a gesture of kindness. So trance, when we're below the line, we're avoiding the rawness of emotion. We're not really contacting it. and we're making things wrong. And it takes a lot of dedication to be willing. It's kind of courageous to be willing to ask that question, what am I unwilling to feel?

What is it that I'm running from? What really wants attention? Because then we have to tolerate what we've been running from. So what makes us willing? if you really sense. How come we're all, we all signed up for this. We all signed up to sit and walk and come back again and again to presence, which sometimes is spacious and light-filled and crystal rainbow, whatever,

and other times is clutch in the chest and just over and over having to, Charlotte Joko Beck describes like this icy couch that we're sitting down, on, this clutch. What motivates us is that there is a wisdom waking up in each of us that really knows that everything we long for, what most matters, becomes available as we come above the line as there's this radical self-honesty. That becomes more interesting and more engaging and more alone. than staying comfortable in our story.

It's courageous to be honest. But it becomes more the way we want to live. And that loving, that holding with care, we get it, that if we can't embrace it, we're going to be below the line. Carl Young says, nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parents.

Unlived life could mean always wanted to be a musician or, you know, hike the Appalachian, but it also means the unlive life is what we haven't honestly acknowledged and held with kindness. Mostly I'm speaking on an individual level tonight of how we bring our attention to the unlived life, especially the places we've turned on ourselves. But I wanted to share that quote from Carl Young because it's not just, doesn't only keep us in trance and in prison. When we don't face and open to what's inside us, it ripples out to touch those that we're close to and it goes beyond that.

It goes into our culture to the extent we're not facing what's inside us. us. There's a story I like to share now and then comes. I read this book and this was the very beginning of the book and it describes an Austrian woman named Clara and she's made pregnant by her uncle. And when his wife dies and he marries her. So all her children die soon after birth. Finally her fourth child lives very, very sickly. So she obsessively nurses this child. for two years. So he'd try to get away from the nipple, but she'd force him as if that's the only way he's going to live. She's also obsessive about having a spotless house, and she lives in fear of her husband's beatings. Now, her son grows up exceedingly fearful. He's a vegetarian, and he's afraid of microbes, of germs, of dirt.

He feels the very blood in his veins is dangerous, and it'll bring about defects and feeble mindness because of his mother and the incest. He's afraid of gossip about his incestuous family. He never has children. He's afraid of tainted blood. He's terrified of cancer, which took his mother's life, horrified that he suckled at diseased breast, afraid of moonlight and horses, of snow, water, the dark, of judges, of Americans, of old men, of poets. So the question is, how could anyone live with so much fear. Here's how he did it. He seized on one all-encompassing explanation

for the existence of sin and disease and for his failures. It was not a weakness in his parents, in his blood or in his mind. He was faultless. Others were felt. He could not change his china blue eyes, but he could hang the world they saw.

He would identify the secret source of every evil and rooted out. he would free Europe of pollution and defilement, only health and purity would remain. Are such grim and comic facts significant or merely interesting? Here's another. The doctor who could not cure Clara Hitler's cancer was Jewish. When we look in an evolutionary way, the repercussions of fight-flight freeze of not being with the shadow. up getting absolutely huge and violent when we're not with fear. And you just now back to the world, the society we're in and what's going on this week and last week and so

on. When we're not with the fears, then it becomes aggression and aimed towards other. Because we become unreal, we're disconnected and other becomes unreal. So then, oh, fear, let's wall out the immigrants, okay? Let's get rid of refugees. Others are competing for what we deserve. I mean, how else do you explain how those who are living in poverty would vote in ways that would undermine their own needs

because of other fear that's not really open to? We don't see our own biases when we're not open to what's inside, our own grasping for privilege, for power. That perpetuates this culture of violence and injustice towards non-dominant cultures. So I bring this all up because we are practicing not just to evolve an individual psyche,

but really to evolve our cultural psyche. In the moments that we're willing to stay with what's difficult, we're part of this movement to bringing above the line, bringing our awareness above the line so that, and it ripples out, so there can be more and more of a consciousness of our mutual belonging that we can live from that. So let's look a little more closely now at how within our own psyches, when we're caught in a limbic hijack or when we're caught, let's spend the second arrowing, how we disengaged, it. By way of example, again, we're going to use the acronym rain because it's not something

other than our practice. It really is how we unfold these two wings of seeing what's happening and opening to it. The example I'd like to give you as a woman I worked with some years back, She was in one of those generational sandwiched crunch things where she was visiting her father in a nursing home once a week. It was about an hour from her home. She'd make calls in between. And when she'd visit, he was really lonely, and she was kind of in a rush. And as soon as she'd start leaving, he'd already be asking about when she's coming again.

And he'd always say, I know you're really busy and I know you have better things to do. But there was some grasping. And then she was the other side of the sandwich was her son, who was in middle school, struggling with some learning disabilities and angry, withdrawn, wanting attention, but storming away when he got it. So she was having a hard time, and when we talked, she basically said her way of where she started in was, I know I love them, but I really don't like them, which is really hard to admit. That's honesty. That's the first recognition. I just don't like them. and I feel like I'm hard-hearted.

I'm just hard-hearted. So the allowing was simply that she agreed to let that be there, that she was going to stay. Now, this is the beginning of witnessing. Remember the mind globe, you know. She's stepping out enough to just name what's going on. So that does create some space and some presence. It's powerful.

So then she recognized it, it, the investigating and getting more intimate, I often think of it as a U-turn where we're going from, you know, I don't like them and here's what's going on, and we're going directly right into our body and our heart to say what is really going on in here. And this is where the courage comes to say, what really have I been unwilling to feel? What is it? And for her, what she was running from and where her all her reactivity I don't like them and this is a bad situation is I am an unloving and unworthy person I'm bad it was a badness personal badness and there was a sense of fear and shame that was kind of spiraling around it and I asked her

you know how has this affected your life and how long have you been feeling this and it was way before her father got sick and way before she even had a son, that in some way she felt that personal badness, as is often the case. It attaches itself to the current circumstances, right? When I asked her, and I often asked this question, so how has this affected your life to believe in this badness and to feel this kind of squeeze of fear and change? she said, well, I can't get close to people, really, because I don't trust that they could love me. And it was at that point, that was when there was, and I often describe this as ouch, as that was when the suffering was, she really got it that there was suffering. It was

like that sense of, okay, this being right here is having a really hard time. I think of it as a soul sadness that comes up sometimes when we see the landscape of our life and begin to recognize how many moments, whatever the pattern is that we're running, for some of us the pattern is the ways that we keep people distant and try to look good. And underneath that, there's some sense of not okayness. The pattern might be the way we hold on tightly to people and try to get their approval or get them to see us again. Something's not okay.

There can be a soul sadness when we realize how we've been inside that mind globe and shaking it up saying I'm bad on some level and playing out our patterns over and over and never letting it settle, never finding the peace and connection that we long for. So for her, that ouch was a sense, That was when she touched that.

And then I asked another question, this is all part of investigating, of really contacting. So what does that place in you? That ouch place most need. And I invite you to ask yourself that when you're deepening those wings of presence. What does this place really need in this moment? Because when you ask that, you're creating a communication between the vulnerability and the most awake potential in your being. When you sense what's needed and for her, what was needed was a sense of really being

held, really being cared for, really feeling that. When you get in touch with the need, the part of you that's most awake has all the potential to care, it actually activates that place to respond to the need. Okay? So for her, that was when we could move to nurturing, which was really to put her hand on her heart. And for her, just a simple phrase, it's okay, sweetheart, I'm here, I'm here, which was coming from the most awake, most caring part of herself, was what she offered. When we have activated the two wings, recognized, allowed, investigated, nurtured. The most important moments are right after.

I want to say why. You might consider when there's a real rain, okay, comes down and it nourishes the earth, it's after the rain that everything flourishes, that life is able to express its fullness. So to be able to, after we practice rain, and by the way, it's not like rain always goes to the fullness of our potential of wisdom and love, it goes to a degree. But to pause and sense and get familiar with, get familiar with the taste of freedom that comes right after. I asked her, you know, what would your life be if you were no longer believing you're bad?

You can try that on yourself. What would it be like? I mean, really, just sense in this moment, if you really did not believe that anything was wrong, what would that be like? For her to ask that, to sense into that, she said, I would be free to love without holding back.

I'd have a ton more energy. and life would be an adventure not a problem. I wrote it down because I thought they were pretty cool. So the process, again, for her, was to be with these two wings and then just to start sensing that beingness, the presence itself. See, the steps of rain have to do with some intentional doing. They're really, really skillful, but they're doings. But after in, you just stop, stop doing anything.

And then just rest in the beingness that's there. Get familiar with that. Get familiar with who you are when you're not inside that globe and you're not the one shaking up the mind globe. You're just presence. Sometimes when we take these steps of rain and we're investigating, getting a touch with us going on and we feel that clutch of that kind of clutches. core clutch of rawness, it's not possible to offer compassion towards ourselves.

The more there's a limbic hijack, the harder it is to offer compassion to yourself. I want to take a moment to say that it's just as much the end of rain is just as powerful when we reach out to whatever we perceive as a source of that love and care. I know for myself and the story that most recently in my own life has kind of had reverberations on how I practice was a few years ago when I got caught in that kind of deep sense of not okayness. And I was offering, you know, the kind of messages I offered to myself. And some part of me was just really resistant saying it's still not okay. to be like this. It's just not okay. And it always has to do for me with hurting other people, feeling like the way I am and some way neglecting, as I described with the conversation with Janet.

I'm falling short. And so I, instead of trying to offer to myself, I just really came from that place that unmet need and just said, please love me, because that's what the need was, just to feel loved that could dissolve away that core sense of not okayness. And I just kept whispering, and it was with really a lot of longing, because if you want to pray and have your prayer answered, you have to pray from the depth of longing. Prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. The deeper you're in touch with how much you yearn to feel loved,

the more that yearning will call the loving presence to you. So it was with a lot of yearning. It was with tears. Please love me. And I felt a sense of presence just right here just bathing me. It was as if this kiss on the brow, this wash-through of loving. And the more your prayer is coming from longing, the more porous you are to let it in. It's really, really hard to let in love.

For most of us, it's easier to actually express it than to let it in. So that's the process, that when you can't nurture yourself, to reach out and longing, to turn towards whatever source you sense, and it could be that you bring to mind someone that you love, that you sense love and presence and wisdom shining through and let the love of the universe come through that vehicle. Or it may be that your sense of loving presence is God or the Buddha or Bodhisattva, or it may be your dog, or it may be Mother Earth, but to pray and reach out and long for. And then from that yearning let in, Clarissa Esta says,

refuse to fall down. If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down. and if you cannot refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven. And like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled. You may be pushed down. You may be kept from rising, but no one can keep you from lifting your heart towards heaven. Only you. You may be pushed down.

You may be kept from rising, but no one can keep you from lifting. your heart towards heaven, only you. It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says nothing good came of this is not yet listening. We really are practicing for the collective awakening of heart. When you begin to attend and befriend, your heart space itself becomes available in a way that can be with and care about and respond to those around you. We start living from an enlarge belonging.

And as part of closing, I'd like to share a story that I have been including in talks for probably 20 years now. And I used to just include the first part, but I learned the second part two years ago or three years ago. And there's a beautiful book called Offerings at the Wall. It has this whole selection of like 90,000 letters and mementos that left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. How many of you have been there? Good number. Then you know these letters. So they're collecting

this book and I want to read you one of them. Dear sir, for 22 years I've carried your picture in my wallet. I was only 18 years old that day that we faced one another on the trail in Chulai, Vietnam. Why you did not take my life I'll never know. Forgive me for taking yours. I was reacting just the way I was trained. So many times over the years I've stared at your picture and your daughter. I suspect each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt. I have two daughters of my own now. I perceive you as a brave soldier defending his homeland.

Above all else, I can now respect the importance life held for you. I suppose that is why I'm able to be here today. it is time for me to continue the life process and release the pain and guilt. Forgive me, sir. So here's someone who's willing to, instead of below the line, contact and be with the reality of what's going on, and forgive, hold his own being in his heart. The reason I wanted to share this is because that is not the end of the story.

In 2009, I discovered that, so this is actually not two or three years ago, boy, time goes quickly. So I discovered it hadn't ended with this note. And what had happened was a fellow vet saw the picture, a picture made it his way to him, and fun receiving it, he decided to, he got it to Littrell, so this is the name of the guy. He saw that had been in the wall and he made a decision, and it was he was going to go find the daughter in the picture. So he had had a picture in his wallet all these years of the father and the daughter that he had taken from that wallet after killing this guy.

So he decides he's going to go and return the photo to this woman in Vietnam. So he traveled to Vietnam, and he found her. I don't know how, but this is all in the news. And he found her brother. And then through an interpreter, he introduced himself. And he said, tell her, this is the photo I took from her father's wallet the day I shot and killed him. And I'm returning it. And then he asked for her forgiveness.

He was voice breaking. And then this young woman started crying and embraced him. And they're sobbing together. and later her brother explained that he and his sister believed that their father's spirit lived on in Richard and that on that day their father's spirit had come back to them. It doesn't end with us just attending and befriending. The more that comes into awareness, the more we live from awareness. And we're able to make amends and we're able to say, oh, you know, I've been dishonest.

but I really want to be honest and I care. I were able to say I hurt you and I get that I hurt you and I care. We're able to be honest. We're able to move on. We keep evolving when we've recognized. And the biggest thing that I think happens is that as we become more real to ourselves, we're holding and honoring what's going on inside us, others become real. We're not just seeing the mask.

We're seeing really who's there. They become vulnerable like me. Woman made a trip to the Genocide Memorial Center in Rwanda, and she sent me a note, and she said that this is the quote she saw engraved on a plaque. And it was written by Felicitan Nagangwa. He said, if you knew me and you read, really knew yourself, you would not have killed me. So this is our evolutionary potential, to know ourselves, to know the beingness, to know the vulnerability and the beauty of these

hearts, to see that in each other and to live from that. To step, and it really starts with sensing, oh, this pattern in that mind globe that's replaying and to be able to step out some and notice it and then from inside and outside and all over embrace it and then have that heart that sees in each other who's there. It's like Mary Oliver said. She goes, so every day, so every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you. So I'd like to close with a meditation. if we will, and I just take some moments to find a way of sitting. It's a pretty short meditation.

Srejadata says, all I ask of you is this, to make love of yourself perfect. What would it be like if we really committed our hearts to embracing the life that's right here? to bringing these two wings of seeing with that deep honesty and holding with that tenderness just this moment. You might explore for yourself, sensing into the life that's right here.

Sometimes the beginning of that is as if you could kind of move your awareness to in front of you and above and kind of shine the light back on your body, your mind. And let's really get, well, what's the body state and the mind stayed and the heart? Where have I been? Where am I now? What's really going on? Is there a pattern? Is there something that's been below the line that's wanting attention?

Is there been a layer of in some way assuming I'm falling short? Just shine a light. You can deepen presence by having that, let a way. awareness that's looking as if it's looking right into that mind globe really filling the globe and filling your body. So you're feeling from the inside out and from all over in a very intimate way discovering, investigating, contacting. What's it really like right now?

This is that radical honesty. There's a place that most needs attention. attention, bringing the attention. So you're feeling from the inside out and all around that place. And just sensing the quality of loving that it most needs. It may need the quality of loving that we call forgiveness. It may need the quality of love when we call simply keeping company with, allowing it to be here. It may need to feel bade through with utter tenderness and unconjuncturness.

an unconditional love. And since, after bringing these wings of honesty and loving to the life that's here, what happens when you just rest in the beingness that's here, who you are when loving is full, to become familiar with this loving presence, to trust it as your true home is the path of freedom. So thank you for your presence, your attention, and your beautiful hearts. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list,

please visit tarabrock.com.