Tara Brach - Trusting Our Hearts

Episode Date: September 9, 2016

Trusting Our Hearts (2016-04-06) - Trust in our basic goodness directly effects our capacity for intimacy with others, creativity and living fully.  This talk explores the ways that our caregivers and culture undermine that trust, primarily by giving us messages that we are "not enough" or flawed.  We then explore the meditation practices that remind us of our loving hearts, and of the goodness that expresses through others. This remembrance is what nourishes a liberating quality of trust in ourselves and in our life. 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. We'll be reflecting together on what I consider one of the kind of core domains of spiritual living, which is trusting our hearts and trusting our lives. And I'd like to begin with perhaps one of the most evocative and provocative statements from Albert Einstein, which is, I think the most important question facing humanity is, is the universe a friendly place? This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.

So, is the universe a friendly place? Now, as you're considering, if the word friendly throws you off, you might consider it more in terms of, is there a quality of intrinsic benevolence or love, connectedness, that even in the midst of clearly ignorance and violence and suffering, is it still there underneath? So in a way we're saying, is there a basic goodness to life? And in this particular talk, I'd like to reframe that question just a bit in a way that makes it more immediate and less abstract. And that is, is loving kindness, is there a basic goodness, a basic love within you? Do you feel there's some basic goodness within you?

So that's the inquiry. And to me, in my experience, our response to that, it goes hand in hand with our felt sense of trust. If we feel there's some basic, intrinsic love, then we trust our hearts, and that extends to others. Even though we might not trust that another person won't kill us because people do things, we still have some trust in life. So that's the inquiry and it's one, there's a yearning that I find when I work with people

to really trust who we are. It's a deep part of our personal healing and our spiritual awakening, that sense of some deep sense that I'm okay. And it comes out of a sense of belonging, that we feel a sense we belong to the life that's here, we belong to our universe. somebody very recently sent me a cartoon and in it a dog is at a psychiatrist lying down in a psychiatrist's office and he's saying actually I'm really okay I just like to have a place where I'm allowed on the couch

I like that so this is the inquiry do you feel at home in your being in your body in your heart in your world? And another way to ask that is, is there something right now between you and feeling at home? By extension, this trust, if we have it, or if we don't have it, entirely affects how we live our life. It affects how we engage in relationships with each other. It affects our capacity to give ourselves to our work,

to be creative, and actually to be able to relax and enjoy our moments. What I'd like to do is return to Albert Einstein and describe how he puts it in terms of if we have or don't have this sense that there's some basic goodness. And as you listen, listen both for yourself individually and also as a species to what he says. He says, if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, in other words, that there's not basic goodness in us too, then we will use our technology, our scientific discovery, and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness

and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly. He says, but if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, that there's some basic goodness within us, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources towards creating understanding models that help us understand that universe. He says because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives. So if we have trust in basic goodness rather than defending and aggressing,

we'll seek to understand to discover our connectedness and in so doing really find refuge. That's my Torah overlay. Let's look a little more at unfriendly, can't trust and trust. And I think of it often in terms of through an evolutionary lens, a perspective, whereas that unfriendliness or mistrust comes out of a perception of separation that we feel we're apart from and that the other out there either is threatening to us are we need to in some way get something from. and this is the domain of where our primitive brain is dominating.

It's part of our nervous system to perceive that, to have mistrust, to have all our survival strategies of aggressing and defending. So mistrust, in this case, would come from our limbic system and our reptilian brain. Whereas friendliness, meaning trusting basic goodness, comes from the more recently evolved part of our brain, the frontal cortex, which is the seat of empathy and mindfulness, a broader perspective, it's the part of our brain that when cultivated actually can perceive past separation to a unitive experience. This way of looking at it says that the more that we cultivate our frontal cortex,

the more there's going to be a possibility of perceiving ourselves and our universe, as friendly and good. I read a little story about a kindly priest, sees a little boy who's stretching to reach up to be able to push a doorknob, somebody's house. So he walks over to him, you know, and presses it for him and then presses the doornob and he says, now what?

And the little boy says, we run like hell. So sometimes it's a mix. Sometimes we're going at being compassion, other times we're playing on another level. But I like the way, um, you know, in terms of evolutionary psychology, Stephen Pinker put it in his book, Better Angels of Our Nature. He says we're on a vector towards being a friendlier world, even though we focus in our news and so on, on where the violence is. He says, if you look at research over centuries and centuries,

we're actually becoming less violent, you know, in families, between neighborhoods, factions and nations, and it's because of our increased capacity to empathize, which is really what makes humans as a species successful, that we can collaborate. If you look at it from the perspective of the spiritual traditions, and in Buddhism in particular I can speak to, that the whole intention or the heart of the path in spirituality really is to evolve in a way that we recognize our interdependence, belonging to each other in our world and then we can live out of that.

It's really the bodhisattva ideal that we can sense this awake-heart mind and it doesn't mean that we then are naive and turn a blind eye to where there's violence or suffering, racism, bigotry, greed. But it means that we don't interpret that as the essence of who we are, we can be. Chogium Trunkpa, he's one of the teachers, a Tibetan teacher, that really brought the term basic goodness into the spiritual domains. And again, by basic goodness, it's not in contrast to badness. It means that there's an intrinsic connectedness, an intrinsic capacity for loving. I'll read a little bit from him. Buddhist psychology is based on the notion that human beings are fundamentally good.

Their most basic qualities are positive ones, openness, intelligence, and warmth. This goodness contains tremendous gentleness and appreciation. As human beings, we can make love. We can stroke someone with a gentle touch. We can kiss someone with gentle understanding. We can appreciate beauty. We have an actual connection to reality to the oneness of things that can wake us up.

So meditation is our evolutionary tool to wake up, if you're thinking of the brain, the frontal cortex of the brain, and more spiritually to wake up our capacity for loving and for wisdom. And what meditation enables us to do is with mindfulness, look at the earlier evolutionary strategies that are running through every single one of us. and by bringing awareness to them, freeing up our identification with them. So there'll still be aggression, they'll still be greed, but as we wake up mindfulness, we realize, oh, that doesn't define me, and that makes all the difference. Yet as we know, we have really strong conditioning to identify with our egoic tendencies.

when we behave in ways or think in ways that have to do with othering, you know, trying to self-aggrandize or put down others or whatever it is, we end up not trusting ourselves. And that's really painful because every one of us has those tendencies and it's very, very quick and easy and deepen our psyches to think we're bad because of it. Garrison Keeler puts it this way. He says, my ancestors were Puritans from England.

They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time. So I think for most of us, the starting place is just to acknowledge the strong competing forces that exist in our nervous system and our psyche. One of the terms I like is the big squeeze

whereby, every day, every day for most of us, if we're observing, we'll see ourselves playing out things we don't really admire. We'll see our thoughts circling around a sense of moi, you know, what's going to make me more comfortable, what am I afraid of, what do I need to prepare for, and just keep on being very self-focused, we'll see our minds judging, we'll see our ways of misguise misstating things in a way that are a little bit deceptive. We'll see things we don't like. So that's part of the big squeeze.

The other side of it is we see the beauty of spring right now and something in us gets really touched as we see how life just wants to live. It's so beautiful. Or we'll see a child and see that vitality and glow in the eyes and it just touches us. or the night sky, or we'll hear a poem or some music that transports us. And we sense something in our being that it's hard to find a word for,

but it's a sense of depth and tenderness and spirit that is not hitched to that conditioning. And when we're feeling it, it feels more the truth of what we are and the depth of what we are than any of those habit patterns. That's the big squeeze. They're both operative. Now, we wouldn't be drawn right now to be listening and reflecting together in this way unless we felt not only that we had touched that basic goodness

but that it means the world to us to really trust it and live from it. That's what draws us to spiritual life. And we love it the moments that we feel that goodness. The moments when there's a sense of forgiving and reconciliation, we love it. We get so touched. The moments when there's gratitude, when we realize somebody's really on our team. Those moments of the random acts of kindness. And there's one shared cultural story that came to mind as I was reflecting that really fits in this.

and most of you are familiar with it, and it's the 1914 Christmas truce. And for those of you that might not remember, there was an agreement, and starting on Christmas Eve, the German, and the British troops actually sang Christmas carols to each other across the lines. With the dawning of Christmas Day,

with the light of Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged in their trenches and approached the Allied lines, the no-man's land, calling out Merry Christmas. And at first the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but then when they saw they were unarmed, they all started shaking hands,

they exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings, and they sang carols and songs. And this, of course, it's now almost at a mythological level because it speaks to something that is, it transcends the conditioning, and yet it so much matters to us. that there's a basic quality of heart in all of us.

We love goodness, we do. So when we see it in ourselves and others, that deepens trust. And when we feel disconnection and we focus on violence, aggression, defendedness, that reduces trust. So let's look a little bit at how in our own lives we have come to be at whatever level of trust or distrust we have, because we know it begins with our caregivers that the first 18 months of our life are our primary time for the cultivation of trust. So if our parents are dependable in meeting our needs, if they're attuned, if there's a resonance

field, and they meet our needs in a way that is present, so there's really good attachment bonding, that cultivates trust. That gives us a groundwork. If the world's undependable, we don't get responded to, in a very basic way, it's not there. I'll share with you one little cartoon I saw where a woman and her friend are having coffee. Her son is on a ladder wearing goggles with his blowtorch and he's writing on the wall, I need love. And she's saying to her friend, oh, he's just doing that to get attention, you know. So this is the primary domain with our caregivers.

but the messages that they give us all come through the culture. And basically we're given these messages of how we should be. And I just want to emphasize a little bit that our mistrust comes, when we're given messages we should be different. Criticism. We're told there's something's wrong with us. And it comes in all these different ways. I mean, often it comes in the realm of how we should look,

how our body should look, the cultural standards for attractiveness, and we're just given this message that we should be different in order to be appealing and it leaves huge numbers of people constantly feeling a sense of a clutch that something's not okay and with that a mistrust of themselves. Then we're given these standards for how we should behave very, very early, ways that we should either be more cooperative or not too demanding or not so sensitive or not so emotional or more sense or just told that. One story, a young girl notices that her mother has several strands of white hair that's in contrast to her normal brunette hair and just curious, she says, Mom, how come some of

your hairs are turning white? And the mother's response is this. She says, well, every time you do something wrong and you make me unhappy or cry, one of my hairs turns white. So little girl thought about this for a little while and then still puzzles, she says, Mom, how come all grandma's hairs are white? So we get our behavioral messages. And then, of course, there's messages about what it means to be intelligent, which is a really big deal. And I often reflect on how most of our schools have a very narrow translation of intelligence. It's very much kind of left-brain analytic. And what a large percentage of humans don't fall into that category,

kids go through school and come out feeling stupid in some way. And what a tragedy that is. And our parents, just because they're worried we won't make it, reinforce it. It's hard to underestimate the impact of criticism that comes either from our parents or through the school system or through religious communities, or through spiritual groups that would seem to be accepting

but actually have all sorts of unwritten standards on how you should be. I was thinking about one woman who shared the time she was with her mom towards the end of her mom's life. Her mom had been diagnosed with cancer, I think it was. And she was spending a lot of time with her, and her mother had been a very kind of controlling

and judgmental woman, but it was very much softening in these final months of her life. And doing it very intentionally, she really wanted to connect with the relatives and friends and come from a gentler place. And so after one group of relatives had left, she looked at her daughter and said, so how was that? And the daughter said, you know, really reassuringly, Mom, you did really good.

And her mother shook her head and said, no, I did really well. and for this, even though and her mother then actually took a long nap, she was exhausted, but for this woman it triggered off a lifetime of feeling I can never get it right. Which led to underneath, first there was anger, underneath that there was a real sense of pain or grief, but in the depth it was a sense that she just couldn't trust herself.

She just never could get it right. very, very painful for her being able to recognize that and begin to work with that was part of the portal towards trusting ourselves. But these messages are painful and I'd say the most toxic of them are the ones in our culture or any culture where the dominant population, in this case white population, sends a message that others are less than. And it's the most toxic because it's sent through every institution and through every part of the culture.

And it's often unconscious. It's not conscious. This sense of others are inferior. We talk a lot now about unconscious racism. Very hard to see. And yet it's deeply embedded in the culture. And when that's there and that message comes through, it's so deep in the psyche that it leaves that sense of alienation,

I can't trust myself, I can't trust my world. So it's a vicious cycle because when we can't trust who we are, then we behave and we can't trust the world, then we behave in ways that are defensive or aggressive, that then get more of kind of feedback from the system that something's wrong with us, and we get stuck in mistrust. trust. So the inquiry is, what helps us, whatever degree is you're listening or sensing,

okay, so to some degree because of my ego I don't like myself or trust myself, whatever degree it is. How do we begin to recognize that and evolve ourselves in a way so we can feel at home? How do we evolve ourselves so that we can feel a sense of trusting the goodness of our own hearts, and by extension sensing that same loving presence is in everyone. It may not be awake, it may not be manifesting, but it's there. So I want to, for the rest of the time of this talk, look at the strategies, and this is more from a practice level now. And one of the strategies for evolving ourselves towards more trust is bringing mindfulness,

starting right where we are to the places where we feel separate, bringing a mindful, compassionate attention to any place we're feeling doubt, separation, or mistrust, or any of the difficult emotions that come out of that. And the second area of practice that we'll talk about and we're going to practice together is to actively cultivate seeing the good, actively cultivate the heart, heart to feel love because any moment that in a visceral way your heart feels open and tender, you will trust yourself more. And by extension, you'll trust others. So I thought I'd maybe looking at these two areas, I share pretty early in my spiritual practice, early in my 20s

when I was in the ashram, one of the big wake-ups around trusts that I had. And at this time, I was very new in an ashram community. And I was going through a really hard time. I felt very kind of disconnected from others and down on myself. And I was living in a yoga ashram, and the kind of ideology or philosophy was one of kind of climbing a ladder to perfection that we're trying to purify ourselves that our ego would fall away

and we'd be just this glowing, pure light of wisdom and love. And so it had very much built in a kind of unconscious bias against ego, which by the way is really what causes

so much suffering because there's nothing wrong with ego. It's just being identified that this is me that causes the trouble. So there I was trying to trying really hard to get rid of my ego. And the harder I tried, the more I became aware of just how big it was. You know, I felt like, you know, I remember, you know, in some way talking about the yoga classes I was teaching and I could hear in the tone how I was

trying to make them sound like these fabulous classes and how competitive I was and comparing with other people and, you know, and just in doing the yoga, how I, back then I was flexible and I was showing off. It's been very humbling over the years that I actually have a disease that makes it so that stretching is not good for me, so now I'm not flexible. That's karma, you know.

So anyway, I was watching my ego playing out and getting increasingly discouraged with the possibilities of ever being free. And I remember being in a women's group and in our ashram community and basically saying, look, I know that I seem like I'm, you know, doing well in different ways, but confessing that because of my ego the way it was, I just didn't trust myself.

And it was a really big deal to confess that. It was like I was really naming my shadow and putting it out there and saying, I just don't like myself and I don't trust myself. And I remember it really well because, I mean, I have no idea what anybody said. Yeah, so I have no idea. The responses, I just know that in naming it, something cracked open. I remember going back to my little room, it was these tiny little room that I lived in, and really just wide open in touch with all the pain of something is wrong with me. And so the practices start where you are, and it just came in waves,

a sense of how imperfect I was until after a while, you know, after a lot of being with it and feeling this kind of broken-hearted at it and making space for it, more and more I was resting in a tender space. It was watching almost like a cartoon of my self-character doing all these different things and I realized as I was watching, that's not me. That's my story of self. These are some behaviors that come and go. The depth of who I am is this presence, this openness, this tenderness that's just paying attention

and that's getting kinder by the moment. And that was a huge shift because I went from being identified with this person who had a way too big ego to being awareness that was witnessing it but not hooked or narrowed by it. This is for me a key juncture. I've watched this with myself and many people that with practice more and more there's this shift and the ego still does its thing but there's less and less of a sense of being defined and more and more freedom to sense who I am, who you are, who we are is so much more mysterious and vast and deep and beautiful than any of these temporary patterns of thoughts and feelings

and behaviors. And it actually gives us the freedom to then respond to our world that changes those thoughts and feelings and behaviors in a very natural way. So my aspiration became whenever I'm caught in self-doubt in not trusting myself to pause and deepen my attention in that way of being mindful and present. And my other intention was to actively look towards the goodness that's here in myself and others. That's the next piece I want to explore with you because it needs to be on purpose. You know, we have a negativity bias,

which means that our habit of mind is to fixate on what's wrong with us and what's wrong with others because, according to the survival brain, it'll help us anticipate trouble and be okay. But it's a deep habit and it masks really the goodness that's there. And when we can't see,

our own goodness. We see others and we just see their ego mask too. There's a story that I've always loved of a woman who's, you know, comes into, she's outside and then she comes into the building that she, her office and goes up to her office and they're having a big meeting. And she said, you know, I was just outside and I saw a clown. And somebody looked at her and said, really? Was it a real clown or just a person dressed up as a clown? It's a sleeper, I know. So we practice. First practice, start where you are, whenever there's mistrust, self-doubt, to pause and feel your commitment

to really bringing mindfulness and presence so that that shift is possible from being identified with the self-character, the egoic self, to resting in something larger. The second is to purposefully look for goodness. And this is in Buddhist practices under the umbrella of metta, loving-kindness practices, which really are any way of paying attention that allows your heart to become more soft and open and warm, any way that works. We're going to explore two of those ways that I feel deep in our sense of trust as part of the last piece of this reflection together.

And let's do the first one. We'll do the first one right now, if you will, just to take a moment to set yourself so you're sitting in a way that's comfortable and upright. To taking a pause, this is our first meditation of cultivating trust, trusting our hearts. You might feel the sense of your body sitting here and breathing and let your attention come to rest in the area of the heart, your own consciousness. to bring to mind someone, some being that you love. It could be a being that's alive right now or not alive.

Friend, child, a parent. Could be a deity or a spiritual figure. Could be a dog, a cat. Often it's helpful that this be someone who has been kind or loving to you. you, that you felt that person's or that being's love. And you might visualize and sense that being right here close in. So you can imagine and visualize and sense those eyes looking at you with love, with affection, with fondness, with care. See if you can let that in with these eyes and what they're expressing. You can feel it. So you can attuned to

this being's goodness, to the quality of innocence or purity or loving that's coming through. And you might mentally whisper thank you and the person or being's name and sense how that is for your heart. Again, from the most sincere place, thank you. Let the attention come fully to your heart. You can let go of the idea of the other person and just open to the experience of your own loving, your own appreciation. Sense how intrinsically large it is, vast, how it includes the goodness that's everywhere, it includes beauty, it includes truthfulness, includes the whole mystery we're part of. And take some courage to just stay and really honor and feel the goodness of this loving. See if you can open to it and rest in it, sensing how this open-heartedness is an

intrinsic, intrinsic ground of being, that there are waves on the ocean surface, but this is the depth, the stillness, the vastness that includes it all. And you might wonder, what, if you really trusted in this? Who would you be? If you really trusted the basic goodness and love, the truthfulness, the tenderness that's intrinsic to you? Who would you be? And how would your life transform? If you really trusted this as the essence of being, what if you trusted that this same spirit or awareness, this loving presence,

was the animating force, the essence of all humans, all beings, how would your relationships change? Might be unfamiliar, mysterious, scary, yet part of us knows that the fearful, insecure self is not who we are. Here's how Rumi puts it. I must have been incredibly simple or drunk or insane to sneak into my own house and steal money, to climb over the fence and take my own vegetables,

but no more. I've gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. I've gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival. Okay, so please open your eyes. the more we trust our own goodness, the more quickly we see others and see that same light of awareness looking through those eyes and that same warmth coming from those hearts.

And probably the most profound, generous and healing act towards another person is to see that and let them know, reflect, back that goodness because it brings it out of them to let people know. When we mirror goodness it draws it out of them, especially when they're caught in doubt. Choggi'em Trunkba, the Tibetan teacher I mentioned, one of his teachings is never give up on anybody. And I love that because it doesn't mean that everybody is going to manifest in the way we wish they would. But there is, what Thomas Merton calls the secret beauty, there is a deep goodness

and love and potential that if we don't give up on, we can help to bring it out to whatever degrees possible. This is a West Angelozzi says, go and love someone exactly as they are and then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves. When one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered. So this is our evolutionary path, this path from the survival brain that is acting out of a sense of separateness and then doesn't like or trust itself, the ego doesn't like or trust itself because of that, to waking up the parts of ourselves that are inherently loving, wise and good, and learning to trust from that.

And when we trust, our actions come out of it. Share with you a story I've always loved, told by Naomi Shaiab Nye, who's a fantastic poet and writer. And she talks about an experience she had in the Albuquerque Airport Terminal. She learned her flight had been delayed, and then she heard a call over the loudspeaker saying, if anyone in the vicinity of Gate 4A understands any Arabic,

please come to the gate immediately. She says, Gate 4A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. The flight service person said, help, talk to her, what's her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late, and she did this. I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly.

Abiti, Stani, Shueik, mid-Fadilik, Shubitouet, the minute she heard any word she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, you're fine,

you'll get there. Who's picking you up? Let's call him. We called her son, and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her, Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for fun. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out

of course they had ten shared friends. And then I thought just for the heck of it, why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up to about two hours. She was laughing a lot by then, telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade Mamuil cookies, little powdered, sugary, cumberly mounds, stuffed with dates and nuts out of her bag, and was offering them to all of us at the gate, to my amazement, no one declined. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the one from California,

the lovely one from Laredo, we were all covered with the same powdered sugar and smiling. There's no better cookie. And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers, and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice, and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend by now we were holding hands, had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing with green, furry leaves. Such an old country-traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around the gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate once the crying of confusion stops seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those others too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost. Each day we get so much news about the world and hear firsthand things too

that can discourage an alarm. It's scary. So there's that. And as I describe with the big squeeze, no matter the state of the world, each of us can choose this moment, this day to turn to presence. We can choose love. It's a choice.

We can decide that we want to deepen our attention. We can slow down and become intimate with the life within us when we're caught in mistrust. We can look at another and say, wait a minute, behind that mask, who's there? and begin to get more and more capacity to see that that being just like us longs to feel at home and that being just like us longs to love. We all long for it.

So we'll practice our second heart reflection on really how we can wake up and open up and trust our being and each other. And again, take some moments to consciously come into stillness, perhaps relax a little through your body, feeling the movement of the breath, just feeling the state of your heart this moment, very gentle, kind attention, bringing to mind someone in your life who's easy to love, where it's not a complex relationship. And as you bring that being to mind and bring that being close in, sense what

it is about them that touches your heart. It might be that being's humor, generosity, kindness, vitality, naturalness, honesty. And imagine letting that being know what you perceive about their goodness, in some way being a mirror of goodness, expressing your appreciation and noticing what happens when you do, and then bringing to mind someone else in your circle of friends or relations that you care about. And in the same way, bring that being close in. And take some moments to look and see the goodness, the love, the sentience, the intelligence, the beingness that shines through.

And in a similar way, let that person know. Some way communicate your appreciation and notice what happens. One more person. Someone else in your circle of beings that you'd like to explore seeing the goodness with, bringing that person close in and you might imagine that person when they're happy, loving, space of freedom, just sense the goodness, letting them know and noticing what happens when you do. You might sense who you are when you're a mirror of goodness, sense of your own being. Can you imagine dedicating to seeing this light of spirit in yourself, in others, letting this

be more at the center of your path? Can you imagine how this would deepen, trust in yourself and others and ripple outward in a way that can truly serve the healing of our world. Close with the words of Thomas Merton. He says, then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts where neither sin or knowledge could reach, the core of reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the divine. If only they could see themselves as they really are.

If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more need for war, for hatred, for greed, for cruelty. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. May we recognize and trust our inner beauty. May we live from this loving presence. Namaste. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.