Tara Brach - True Belonging

Episode Date: August 9, 2013

2013-08-07 - True Belonging - We all have a longing to belong. When pursued at the egoic level--often through our good-personhood projects--there may be temporary satisfaction but our sense of separation is ultimately reinforced.  In contrast, bringing mindfulness and compassion to whatever is arising dissolves the sense of separation and reveals the basic goodness of our own loving presence. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

I'd like to begin tonight with one of my favorite teaching stories, one that's kind of imprinted itself some. And it's a lovely Hasidic story about a rabbi Zusa. And he's on his deathbed and his disciples surrounded him. And he's weeping. And they're trying to figure out why he's so upset. They're all perplexed. And so they asked him why he's weeping.

And one of them ventured to said, surely if anyone is assured a place in the kingdom of him. heaven it's you and the sage turned his head to his beloved students and said softly this he said if my children when I stand before the heavenly court am asked Zusha why are you not Moses I shall have no hesitation in firming I was not born a Moses if they ask me why then are you not an Elijah I'll speak with confidence neither am I an Elijah I weep friends because there's only one question I fear to be asked, why were you not Zusha? So there's power to this teaching.

And it's something that we can each intuit in our own lives, that we in some way leave home, we in some way disconnect from some natural beingness, from what is unique within us, from our full aliveness. And we end up confining ourselves to a smaller sense of what we are. And in a way, you can think of it that we incarnate

and very quickly between our culture and our caregivers we're given messages about who we are and really who we need to be to be accepted and loved and successful.

in this world here. And then we internalize that. So rather than paying attention to what's right here, our passions, our fears, our longings, our aliveness, our creativity, we're focused on these standards that we think we need to meet all the time, how we should be thinking or feeling or acting. And it takes us away from home. So the way of moving from our self-souling, story, the narrative that confines us. And usually that narrative has built into it a lot of messages of how something's wrong with us and we really need to be different. And with those messages there's a felt sense of fear and anxiety.

How to move from that collection of self-story into a sense of living from essence, from essence is really the exploration. You know, how to wake up from who we thought we were and who were not and really live from the aliveness that's here. So the question is really what stopped Zushya? He's a wise pious guy. You know, what stopped him from being himself? And I've named a bit of it. You know, our deepest longing is to belong. and this is something that's very much rooted in our biology and in our brains and nervous systems the most recently developed part of our brain is and it's what

has allowed us to flourish as humans has us geared for connection it has us wanting to connect wanting to attach wanting to attach successfully so there are different ways that that happens we have a spiritual but out of that longing to belong, to really experience a oneness with aliveness, a oneness, a oneness with heart, a oneness with all beings. In other words, it can be absolutely all encompassing that belonging. That's the spiritual expression of what's possible. But the ego out of fear confines it to, I want to belong to my closest circle of whatever,

of whatever, those that can affirm me and make me secure, and I have to do this, this, and this to belong. So what I want to explore tonight, I want to contrast the egoic approach to belonging, the one that most of us get caught in at least some of the time, the ways we try to be good, the ways we try to feel good about ourselves. And that's the key, that we often try to feel good about ourselves,

and contrast that to really feeling our basic goodness. Can you sense the difference between those two? On the egoic level, we're trying to be a, it's our good personhood project. We're trying to be the person that will get the acceptance and get the love. And when we start waking up and realize it doesn't really deliver, it doesn't work, it's not very secure, we start turning towards a kind of press, that lets us discover a goodness that is really the grounds of all belonging. We start trusting who we are.

So we'll explore that. We'll kind of juxtapose it and this is not about getting rid of all our ego approaches to feeling good, but it's about sensing where the limitations are. So most of us, if we're honest, can scan the day and and find out how many moments in some way we're doing things to feel better about ourselves or how many times we're doing things to not feel bad about ourselves. We can kind of check that out, that that's kind of a layer in there. Now, when we manage to feel good about ourselves,

it lasts a few seconds or maybe a few weeks, but not usually, it's short because of we have to keep refueling the good about self kind of machine. When we begin to touch, oh, there's a basic goodness here in this presence itself, that becomes the grounds of lasting freedom. So this is the kind of two different levels. The ego level of feeling good about ourselves has evaluation and it's based on a narrative.

The more spiritual version of belonging, and the word spiritual I'm not crazy for, but the trans-personal, the non-egoic, isn't based on a narrative, it's based on being. It's based on a timeless presence that we're trusting it. Here's a way to bring this home a little more. Here's an inquiry. You can just close your eyes for a moment

and just ask yourself these questions. First question is, if you kind of scan right now and today or this week, what is between me and feeling good about myself? What's going on that's between me and really feeling good about myself? And just notice what comes up. Notice if there's a lurking story about being an inattentive parent or maybe you didn't exercise enough or you ate wrong.

Or maybe you're not feeling good about yourself because you were really judgmental with your partner you're not coming through the way you want to at work. But just sense, what is it? What's between me and feeling good about myself? See if you can sense how what you land on is the domain of narrative. It's about the story of your life. It's about your doing self.

Let's change the question. Now ask yourself, what's between me? and feeling my basic goodness right now. And if you don't like the word basic goodness, feeling my natural presence, feeling the spirit or heart that's here. What's between me and feeling my basic goodness? Spirit, presence.

What do you find? Maybe you notice there's kind of a clench in the heart, there's some fear in your body. Maybe you notice there's just a distracted mind and you can't land anywhere. But what you might notice is that when you ask that question, what's between me and feeling this natural presence, my deep beingness, natural goodness,

that the question actually brings more presence to bear. You actually start noticing what's happening in the moment. That presence is the portal. That's the beginning of belonging to the life that's right here. So when you compare this, these two questions you might sense for yourself as you move through your day, what is your filter? Is your filter, how am I doing now? Am I doing it right? Do I feel good about myself? Am I meeting the criteria for a good personhood? Or is your inquiry, what's really

between me and real presence? Trusting my goodness in this moment? The Buddha taught that to whatever the mind pays attention to, that will be the inclination of our awareness. Okay, you can open your eyes. Now, the more fear in our system, in other words, the more there was early wounding, the more there was poor attachment with care givers, the more we have a kind of genetic propensity towards fear, the more we're going to be hitched to the fear of not being good, and the craving to feel better about ourselves. In other words, that's going to become an area that's really charged,

the more fear that's there. And there's a good reason, because if we don't feel we're good, we won't be included, we won't belong to the tribe. Does that make sense? Why it matters so much so feel good about ourselves? We don't feel like we're good, we won't feel like we belong.

You know, it's interesting, the word good derives from the Indo-European word that its root is gather and together. So feeling good has to do with feeling belonging. But how do we go about it? We try to belong by setting standards versus belonging to the moment. And that's what gets us in trouble. And even when we're not meeting our standards, even when we're really flunking the tests

to speak, still feeling good about ourselves matters. There's a story I love that Sylvia Borstein tells about a man named Phil, a Buddhist practitioner in New York who was described being mugged at gunpoint. And he'd worked on the loving-kindness practice for a while. And one, so this evening on a small side street in Soho, a shoveled man with a scraggly beard, dirty blonde hair, accosted him in a man. money and so Phil gave over $600 that he carried in his wallet. The mugger shook his gun and demanded more. Stolen for time, Phil handed him his credit cards and the whole wallet. Looking days and high on some drug, the mugger said, I'm going to shoot you. Phil responded, no wait,

here's my watch. It's an expensive one. Disoriented, the mugger took the watch, wave the gun, and said again, I'm going to shoot you. Somehow Phil managed to look at him with love and kind and he said look you don't have to shoot me you did really good look you got several hundred dollars you got credit cards and an expensive watch you don't have to shoot me you did good the mugger confused lower the gun slowly I did good he half asked you did really good go and tell your friends you did good days the mugger wandered off saying softly to himself I did good I did good well I love Love that story, the poignancy for me is how deep in us, no matter what is going on,

no matter how our lives had gotten contorted and tangled, how deeply we want to feel good about ourselves. Even deeper than that, we want to trust our basic goodness. We don't want to feel good about a story of a self. But we don't usually get that deep because we're so busy trying to meet those standards. But still, it matters to us. So then it becomes important if we want to drop into a deeper level of that trust in basic goodness, it becomes really important to start looking at how in our daily life we go about kind of in this trance of I want to feel good about myself and doing all these things to feel good about ourselves.

And I want to say right now that some of the things we do to feel good about ourselves are actually skillful things. helpful. They're helpful to our lives. The point is to be mindful of it. Because if we're doing it mindlessly, it still reinforces a sense of a self that's not good enough and needs to feel better. Does that make sense? So just be mindful of it. And I'll give you examples of wholesome ways we try to feel good about ourselves. We do try to be virtuous sometimes in the way we eat or the way we exercise. And even more so, we have a moral code because it's part of our evolutionary equipment to share a moral code and we try to go along with it.

And that morality tells us to be as honest as we can and to be considerate to other people to not cause harm. It teaches us to not take what's not ours and not take undecredit when it's not ours, to really be respectful. So going along with that code is wholesome. but if all we're doing is following the rules to try to feel good about ourselves, it won't work. That's the point. Okay?

There are also ways that are not skillful, and those are the ones I want to just take some time and just unpack some. And one of the most basic ways we try to feel better about ourselves, one of the most basic strategies of our good personhood project, is to judge and punish ourselves. It's well intended. It really is. I mean, you can take anything we're doing

and find a positive intention. We're trying to strongarm ourselves into being a better person. And then we have these emotions that support that like guilt and shame that are trying to remind us of how to navigate, but because we are so caught up in them,

they actually further strengthen the trance of not okay. So we punish ourselves. We blame ourselves. We're harsh and cruel to ourselves. In one story, a man was given a parrot who had a really, really bad attitude and a worse vocabulary.

I mean, he cursed and it was foul. So he tried to change the bird's attitude. He tried loving kindness, and he thought, oh, this parrot had a bad childhood, whatever. but it didn't work the parrot was really really rude so finally in a moment of desperation he put the parrot in the freezer

and there's all this squawking and flapping and screaming and so on and then all of a sudden dead quiet and of course the man got frightened that he might have actually hurt the bird so he quickly opened the door at which point the parrot calmly stepped into his extended arm

and said this I'm so sorry that I offended you with my language and actions. I ask your forgiveness. I will try to check my behavior. He was astonished at the birds change in attitude, but then the bird continued and said, may I ask what the chicken did? So the problem with punishment is that initially or overtly it seems like it works and we know that inside what happens. And even though it's a fun example, what happens when parents with children are very punishing?

What happens? Well, we know that what happens is that somehow rather the child behaves in a way and is cut off from that what he was told or she was told was wrong, cut off also from passion, from longing, from creativity, from aliveness. Punishment cuts us off from our life energy. It gets torqued. Of course, it comes out in other ways. So it cuts us off and not only that, not only does it cut off our belonging to life really is the opposite of what we wanted, you know.

It also locks us into an averse of relationship with ourselves. Again, neurons of fire together, wire together. The more times you send critical judgments to yourself, the more locked you are in the narrative and feeling of, I'm bad. So we lock in the trance. We further sever ourselves from belonging. That's the first big way.

The second big way that we try to feel good about ourselves is inflation. Rather than deflation, putting ourselves down, we inflate ourselves and we try to tell ourselves stories of how we're better or special that we're more intelligent than most everybody else around us. And it includes it kind of put down to others, but we fuel our special person. kind of sensibility. It happens a lot with bragging or with exaggeration, but in some way of kind of presenting what we want other people to see, which of course has a kind of contrive quality and cuts off spontaneity. There's a story that took

place in the backwoods of Virginia supposedly, a guy's driving around sees a sign saying talking dog for sale. So the owner appears and says the dog in the backyard if you go check them out if you want them so the guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there you talk yes yep the lab revise after recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk he says so what's your story the lab says well I discovered I could talk when I was pretty young I went to help the government so I told the CIA in no time at all they had me jetting country to country sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders

because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running, but the jetting around really tired me out. I knew I wasn't getting any younger, so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. Got married, had a mess of puppies.

Now I'm just retired. Guy's amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. $10. $10, this dog's amazing. Why on earth are you selling him so cheap? Because he's a liar. He never did any of that shit. So we present a self that we want to be admired, that we want to help us get through the door. And it really makes sure we're a member that we belong. And a lot of the ways we do at our exaggeration and little white lies. and it's very interesting to track it

just to watch yourself for a week knowing you're just going to watch and see how many times in some way you're trying to present a self that looks good, very on purpose. Because what happens when we do that? Underneath inflation and that presentation

is a deep sense that we need to do that because we're lacking. So again, the more we practice it, the more we reinforce a deep sense, sense of something's wrong. Underneath inflation is a sense of emptiness or hollowness. So we cut off and not only that, when we go around and there's kind of bragging and exaggerating we actually have an aversion to our own narcissism. That's an undercurrent. We don't like the fact we're doing it.

So it again that trance of unworthiness of not being okay. Okay the next way we try to feel good about ourselves and this one we're all familiar with probably is that we strive to do more to be more to achieve more to help more in other words a lot of the things we do are you know it's kind of a dutiful or ambitious or trying to in some way feel better about ourselves and the more we get done I mean it's very tempting and seductive because when we check things off the list we we do feel better about ourselves, right, for a little bit? And we know how long that lasts.

I mean, we know that's really, really soon before you start realizing you have something else to check off. But what happens is that we get hooked on it. And the more we're hooked on kind of doing things, the more we are cut off from the present moment, from the aliveness that's here, from the tender-heartedness and open-heartedness that's here, from the creativity and wonder that's here.

Now that's we're not belonging to the life we love because we're trying so hard to get things done so we'll belong. Catch 22. Part of what's very sad about that, all our doings, especially our doings that are helpful to other people, is that we don't trust our motives. In other words, sometimes I do a word workshop and I'll include in it this sharing of random acts of kindness we've done,

just to name some of the kindnesses that we've done in our lives. And people will share different kinds things they've done. But many people report that even when they share it and name it, there's a part of them that feels like, well, I just did that because I wanted to feel good about myself. Or I just did that because I wanted, in other words, there's some self-aggrandizing in the act of helping. We don't feel we're pure. And so this whole domain of doing good to feel good about ourselves needs mindfulness.

It doesn't mean we stop doing good. This is not like saying, or cut out all the acts of kindness. Just be mindful so that we don't get trapped in some sense of we're doing it to uplevel our goodness quotient. Okay. Last one I want to name of the ways that we try to feel good about ourselves is really a way, it's really fear-based, which is that we in some way conform and go ahead and be the person that other people tell us we should be and don't take risks and don't experiment and don't follow our bliss.

We just don't take a chance. And that's where we have this unlived life that we have this unlive life that we don't that becomes so painful, especially if we feel like we're at the end of our life or we look back and realize we really did not live true to ourselves. There's a brief essay I want to read to you that I love that to me really illustrates this. And this is written by Bruce Holland Rogers. When he was very young, he waved his arms, gnashed the teeth of his massive jaws and tromped around the house so the dishes trembled in the china cabinet.

Oh for goodness sake, his mother said, you're not a dinosaur, you're a human being. Since he was not a dinosaur, he thought for a time he might be a pirate. Seriously, his father said at some point, what do you want to be? A fireman then, or a policeman, or a soldier, some kind of hero. But in high school they gave him tests and told him he was very good with numbers. Perhaps you'd want to be a math teacher. That was respectable. or a tax accountant. He could make a lot of money doing that. It seemed a good idea to make money what with falling in love and thinking about raising a family.

So who's a tax accountant, even though he sometimes regretted that it made him well small. And he felt even smaller when he was no longer a tax accountant but a retired tax accountant. Still worse, a retired tax accountant who forgot things. He forgot to take the garb to the curb, forgot to take his pill, forgot to turn his hearing aid back on. Every day it seemed he had forgotten more things, important things like which of his children lived in San Francisco and which of his children were married or divorced.

Then one day, when he was out for a walk by the lake, he forgot what his mother had told him. He forgot that he was not a dinosaur. He stood blinking his dinosaur eyes in the bright sunlight, feeling the familiar warmth on his dinosaur. or skin, watching dragonflies flitting among the horse tails at the water's edge. So there can be a wholesome kind of sorrow that comes when we realize we left home. It wasn't our fault. There's huge, huge conditioning from our society and from the places of unmet needs

in our own heart and body, a huge conditioning to contract and just do the best we can to belong. Huge conditioning. So we take on the strategies we take on to feel good about ourselves and forget the pathway into just trusting the goodness that's already here. Just like that story was Zusha, we, you know, in some way he became this way, he became this wise and pious rabbi but and there was tremendous consciousness in that and yet still he was still going along with some role that didn't allow him access to his fullness of being and he knew that and then this young boy who had some passion to feel his primordial nature you know and got pulled away from it So we can feel a mix of sadness and longing sometimes when we sense that there's this unlimited

reserve within us of love and presence and creativity and aliveness. And we're in the habit of turning the attention and fixating outward on how to get through the day, how to be a good person, how to not be a bad person. and the potential here, the potential, is to become mindful of that, the ways we've become small, and then choose the presence that brings us back home. I'll share a story for me that was a real wake-up. It happened in my early 20s just a couple of years after I had moved into an ashram, a spiritual community. And I wrote this up, you'll find it in true refuge.

huge. I was part of a woman's kind of sensitivity group, a sharing group, and I remember after going through kind of a tough period where I'd really kind of turned on myself a lot, confessing to this group that I did not believe I was a good person. And that was a big deal because this group was kind of, it was a spiritual community and we were all supposed to be spiritual people and to say, you know, I feel like at the core, I'm, you know, I don't trust myself, I don't trust my motives. That was, you know, pretty confessional. And I remember leaving and feeling like I had really laid myself raw, but it was true that I felt that. I was, in this particular spiritual community, there was a kind of perfectionism.

We were all trying to get to be more perfect, more pure. And I was doing long meditations and tons of yoga and working long hours. and community business, and I was trying to feel good about myself. I was trying to feel good about the kind of spiritual person I was. And yet, I could see underneath that that itself was narcissism. I could see how selfish I was or my self-image of wanting to be admired, wanting to be a great yogi or wanting to be great whatever, and that every step of the way the things I was doing to be a good spiritual person

actually just let me know how big my ego was. So I was really stuck. And so when I confessed that, I was being truthful to what I was being aware of, but I felt kicked out of the garden like I did not belong in some deep way. Now, I share that because those good, good personhood projects, the ways I was doing it, they, from the outside, they looked really good. I mean, yoga and meditation, eating healthy and helping others, it looks good.

And so it is that, you know, and you get, and I got enough feedback that would puff me up enough that I was really hooked on them. But it cracks at some point when we realize that underneath it, if we don't trust a goodness that's not hitched to being a good person, we're going to always be insecure. And I was missing that. So through the years, I've found in working with myself and other people that the gateway to that trusting, we'll keep doing our habitual stuff and just be more mindful, but the gateway to trusting, if you want to trust your goodness, your beingness, are the two wings of awareness that we talk about over and over again in teaching meditation. And one is the wing of this mindful presence that sees

what's happening right in this moment. It's that question, what is happening inside me right now? This is if we want to start belonging again, really. And the second wing is compassion, is offering a great deal of kindness to whatever we notice. So the starting place in true belonging and really trusting is often with the painful conditioning that's come out of kind of failed perfectionism. In other words, often the way that we try to belong brings up so much pain that that pain itself, if we're present with it, starts opening us to the compassion that's really here. Now, if those sound like a lot of words, I'm going to give you an example for it. But a few weeks ago I gave a talk on the three gestures or expressions of love.

And they are, we begin with in a moment that we're stuck, first forgiving what's going on inside us. In other words, not making ourselves wrong. That forgiveness is the entryway if we want to build a sense of true trusting of our goodness. We have to forgive the conditioning. It's not our faults that we try to inflate ourselves and that we brag. It's not our fault, you know, that we turn on ourselves. And it's not our fault that we conform and don't take risks.

It's very deep conditioning. So the first step, if you want to come back home, forgive the conditioning. Forgive your aggression, forgive your defensiveness, forgive the condition. the conditioning. There's a one man I was working with at a retreat and he had become aware that his modus operandi for feeling good about himself was to be the center of attention wherever he was to dominate in groups and he was at a family gathering and he saw how his younger brother had been wounded by that, how he had always taken the limelight and his brother had locked into the experience of

being not mattering not being important, not being seen, not being visible. And it really brought him a great pain. And so he started becoming more and more aware of all the moments that he just unconsciously just grabbed attention and needed to be the center of peace. And so the first step for him, again, this is his project, to feel good about himself,

was to forgive that that was his strategy. and I share with him phrases that I really love Eric Colvick has taught this in a forgiveness practice I'll share them with you you can just close your eyes from and just listen so if you blame yourself for your strategies

if you don't like your own narcissism here's some language for it he says I allow myself to be imperfect I allow myself to make mistakes I allow myself to be a learner, still learning life's lessons. I forgive myself. And if I cannot forgive myself, now I forgive myself.

It's my intention to forgive myself when I can. So again, I allow myself to be imperfect. Just imagine if you get caught up in your strategy, whether it's domineering or defended, whatever it is. I allow myself to be imperfect. I allow myself to make mistakes. I allow myself to be a learner, still learning life's lessons. I forgive myself.

And if I cannot forgive myself now, it's my intention to forgive. So again, for this man, because he did not trust he was good, he was constantly trying to dominate to feel better about himself, and then he felt the second arrow of I'm really bad, look how I dominate, right? And this is the way to begin to unravel that, just offer forgiveness. It's just conditioning. It's not who I am. So that's what he began with.

If I express the two wings, that's the wing of compassion. We have to be mindful also to begin to unravel these, the knots of how our ego self goes about trying to belong. So for me, back to the night that I had that confession to my sensitivity group. When I left the group, I was kind of completely torn open. And I remember retreating to my little room. We have very little spaces there in the ashram and just overwhelmed with this intense amount of shame and it felt like I just could not even bear it. So I thought to myself, oh, I'll do some yoga right now and then I'll do some

journaling. And then immediately I got it that again I was going to try to do something to feel better about myself. Now, again, yoga's good. Journaling's good. It's just how I was using it, right? So instead I said, okay, I'm just going to be with this. Just be with this. And so I just opened,

and my intention was just to be kind, and I opened to the ways of the shame, and it turned into grief, because it often does when you open, then you open and sense the pain of what's going on, and open to the fear that went with that, that I'd never really be close to anybody, that something was really wrong with me.

And the grieving was really deep, but after it was over and after I quieted down, I started seeing scenes of my life. It was like I was seeing scenes of a play, and in each scene there was a self-character trying to do something to make things work, trying to control things, trying to feel good about herself,

trying to accomplish something. And each different situation, I was trying to inflate or prove or whatever. And when I saw that, it was this perpetual doing. And I really saw this character of self-doing and doing in order to avoid failure. So I'm going to read what I wrote about this. As I sat there watching this play, I had for the first time a compelling sense that this character, wasn't really me.

Okay, so I was watching and seeing the doing self, trying to feel good about herself, and realize that's not me. That's just conditioning. Her feelings and reactions were certainly familiar, but they were just ripples on the surface of what I really was. In the same way, everything happening at that moment, the thoughts, the sensations of sitting cross-legged, the tenderness, the tiredness,

were part of my being but could not define me. my heart opened. How sad to have been living in such a confined world. How sad to have felt so driven and so alone. When we start to get how hard we're trying, I mean think of it when you're with somebody, this assumption that you have to be a certain way to be accepted, how rare it is to feel like it's just okay how we are. When we start to notice how much we can thrive, ourselves, control ourselves, judge ourselves, present ourselves. There can be a real sadness to that. But if we deepen our attention, there's a real presence, we start getting that self who's trying so hard is not who we really are. It doesn't define us. Even the helpful

roles, the helpful affiliations don't define us. And if we're identified with them, we're living in something smaller than the truth of who we are. You don't need to be a Buddhist. You know, just be aware and trust and live from the Buddha nature that's who you are. You don't need to be a Christian, just live from that Christ consciousness. I know you understand what I'm saying. You don't have to be a something. Just live from the truth of who you are. I think that's what the Rabbi Zush's story is about, that even the good roles are still roles and there's a much more direct and radical

and immediate experience that lets us trust our goodness and that's the presence that's right here. Anything short of that reaffirms a self that we're still trying to polish up. So as you might imagine, the more moments that you're resting in that awareness it sees the play, sees the character, holds it with compassion,

but isn't identified, the more we start sensing the presence, that's really who we are. And in time, in time, this is the gift of a mindful and kind awareness. In time, that presence becomes more the truth of our experience of our being than any of those roles. than any scene in the play. We begin to trust that. And as you can imagine, that's a shift in identity.

We're no longer locked into the narrative of an ego self. We're trusting our true nature. We're living from it. And as that happens, the more you're living from that awareness, the actual conditioning, the way it plays out changes. It's like that relaxes your nervous system. So you're not as inclined towards fight, flight, and freeze.

You're not inclined to grasp as much. The waves actually become more rhythmic and smooth, more in a flow. The gift of that, well, it actually ripples out to touch others. The more you're trusting who you are, the more you'll see others for who they are. You'll see past the mask. You'll help to invite that out. You'll help others to trust who they are. And you'll respond to your world in a naturally giving way because you'll sense your belonging.

Let's practice a little as a way to close this evening. Just to begin by inviting yourself to arrive, just take a few full breaths and take some moments to reflect on today or these last few days. Just without adding any judgment, just to notice where you are a day. doing self in some way trying to feel good about yourself, trying not to feel bad about yourself. Might be somewhere where you are seeking approval, trying to control things. And see if you can sense as you review that self trying to feel better, just to see that self as a character and a play, that this is just natural conditioning.

It comes out of fear, it comes out of the longing to belong, and the healing begins when you can just see it with presence. And just to offer to that part of your being, that self that's driven in some way, just to offer a forgiving kind attention. You might even just let the words, you know, I'm sorry, or it's okay sweetheart. Just offer that kindness. You might put your hand on your heart and since you're offering it to where the feelings and beliefs that are part of that character

live inside your body. Just say it's okay. I understand. It's not your fault. The beginning of healing is this self-compassion. It's so powerful not to blame yourself for the conditioning that plays out to offer forgiving attention, offer love. Just love to that place in you, that life in you that wants to be good, that longs to be good. And deepen attention right now to sense who you are really, to sense what's right here, the awareness that's observing the self, the awakeness that's here, that's here, that intention towards kindness. Can you sense that there's something mysterious and yet very immediately vibrant and kind and alive

in the presence that's right here? What would your life be like if you no longer believed that something was wrong? What would it be like if you relaxed and entrusted yourself to the presence that's right here that you can more and more realize this basic goodness is the true. truth of what we are and the conditioning as waves in the ocean of being. This is a verse from Dana Fault. She says, settle in the here and now. Settle in the here and now. This is the portal to trusting our goodness. Settle in the here and now. Reach down into the center where the world is not spinning and drink this holy

peace. Reach down into the center where the world is not spinning and drink this holy peace. Feel relief flood into every cell. Nothing to do. Nothing to be but what you are already. Nothing to receive but what flows effortlessly from the mystery into form. Nothing to run from are run toward. Just this breath, awareness knowing itself as embodiment, just this breath, awareness waking up to truth. May all beings trust their basic goodness, the spirit that lives through these forms. May all beings live from the open-heartedness of the spirit. May all beings help each other to awaken and trust this goodness that lives through all beings. Namaste.

The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW's site, which is IMCW. Thank you very much.