Tara Brach - Trusting Our Secret Beauty

Episode Date: March 9, 2011

2011-03-09 - Trusting Our Secret Beauty - When caught in emotional suffering, we sense that we are living from a reactive, contracted place, and don't trust or like ourselves. This talk explores the severed belonging that is the genesis of that doubt, and the two wings of mindful presence and love that carry us home to our natural wholeness and goodness of Being. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

So I'd like to begin tonight's talk with a story about what is sometimes called the dark night of the soul. And this is, was an elderly friend of mine who's a respected rabbi, told me that as a younger man, he had had a debilitating depression. This was a conversation some years back. But it was hard for me to imagine because this is a social activist with amazing passion and joie de vivre. But as a younger man, he said he was a prisoner of his mind. and that he felt in some way cut off from real life, that he was here but not so here. He just tragedies would happen and he'd feel a sense of,

oh, that's awful, but his body wouldn't feel it. His heart wouldn't feel it. And he got a sense that beauty and love, and he was a little cauterized, one step removed. And most painful was that he felt self-doubt as a religious leader and self-doubt as a father and a husband and doubt in terms of his relationship with God. That was what was most crushing.

So he told me about that, and he told me that one evening he was driving home in rush hour and a car hit him from behind and he had some pretty bad injuries and landed up in the hospital for a few days. And one night, in the middle of the night, he was lying away because it's sometimes hard to sleep in hospitals. And he heard an inner voice, and the inner voice said, I'm not at home.

And he had this realization that he was never at home. No matter what he was doing, he never really felt at home, whether he was engaged with his children or at social gatherings or leading a service, you know, speaking to people or writing.

It's like he never really felt at home. There was always some sense that he should be somewhere else, he should be different, he should be something more. And in the deepest way, he never felt at home with God. He never felt a sense of oneness with his beloved. Now, when he described that, immediately it resonated that the language not at home. I've known so many people that in some way when they're telling me about their suffering, that's the suffering they're describing, the sense of with other people feeling in some way not belonging, invisible, not understood, or down on oneself, not at home in oneself, or people that are

struggling with physical problems, not at home in my body. You know, I've heard it so much. And this describes what the Buddha called dukkha. And the word duca is sometimes described a suffering, but that's not maybe the most accurate word. It's this fundamental unease, not able to rest, really arrive right here. There's an uneasiness and off-balancedness, that we're in some way disconnected. We're not inhabiting the currents of our life. And so sometimes, Duka, like for this friend of mine, this rabbi, culminates, in like the dark night of the soul where it's like wrenching suffering. And other times this not at home feeling is this undercurrent that's just pervasive

and not so in our awareness. But there's a sense of being in routines and somewhat preoccupied and never really, it's like this moment is not where we're arriving. We're on our way. Now one of the biggest signs of not at home is doubt. out. It's not always conscious doubt. But when we're not at home, we're not able to be at home in the moment or in our body or our hearts, there's a sense that we're living in a kind of contracted sense of who we are. There's a tightness. And something in us intuit that and we don't really trust ourselves. We don't trust the contracted self. So not at home often goes along with doubt. Some mistrust that something's wrong and it's wrong with me. Now for this rabbi, that wake up in the hospital, the sense of I'm never at home cracked open something. So he contacted

this soul longing to discover what it really meant to be at home in his life. And that became his passion and he told me that he said he something in him said no matter what it takes it's not I'm not living I'm not in the currents of my life no matter what takes this is this is my this is my path to find this out and so he began this kind of contemplative inquiry and I think of him as really ahead of his time because what he was doing he now could say it was mindfulness practice but he would ask himself the kind of questions I sometimes ask you and hear which is, write this moment, what is between me and feeling at home? Right this moment, what is between me and feeling at home in this body?

Am I here? What would it mean to be at home right now? You can ask yourself, what would it mean? What would the felt sense be of being at home? And what he found, as we explore here, is that home-coming, has everything to do with paying attention to what's happening right here and not just noticing what's happening right here, but a kind of a softness that says yes to it.

We can't be at home unless we're agreeing to the reality of this moment. Now being at home doesn't mean that we're saying, oh, I'll just be passive, I'll never do anything. Being at home means that we're inhabiting this moment fully without resistance, our heart saying yes to life, and which actually frees us to be very creative and proactive. So this was his meditation, and what he found was that, this is what he told me, he said, everything I was longing for,

peace, happiness, the light of God, trust in myself. It was right here in this accepting presence. But he had to go through this process. What does it mean to be at home? So when we think, well, what draws us to mindfulness practice? What draws us to these kind of teachings? My sense is that on some level, every one of us wants to feel more at home. We want to trust who we are.

We want to be able to be here fully. So I'd like to explore that tonight, this kind of reflection on homesickness. I often use the phrase that our real sickness is homesickness. On homesickness and doubt, how that turns into doubt, and then how do we find our way back again? And if we look at the genesis of doubt, because this is always interesting to me, you know, it's not like we were born with self-doubt.

You know, that's not, you can kind of sense. It's not the immediate response of a new infant in the world. In fact, we arrive in this world with some pre-verbal sense of belonging, you know, in the womb. And when we're first born, there's a kind of resonant field and with the caregiver, you know, of belonging. And so that the mind is designed to, over time, perceived separation. But if there's this fundamental sense of, okay, part of the earth, part of this experience in the womb, part of this love with caretaker, that belonging, even when the normal ego stuff happens, can carry us with a sense of basic trust.

Like things are basically okay. And many people have that, but many people don't. And the reason we don't is because very early in life, for most of us, I'd say, there's a severing in belonging that it might be, we might have a genetic disposition to anxiety. but also our caregivers have their own fears and their own wants and are not able to provide a really present and a field where there's a responsiveness to our needs. So there's a break in belonging there. And then we're born into a culture that doesn't really encourage belonging. There's not natural ways of belonging.

Think about it. We have to prove ourselves every step of the way. And we have to be a certain way to belong to our family system, and we have to prove ourselves in schools for sure. And then at work we're trying to prove ourselves. And even in spiritual communities, there's these unsaid rules about how one should be. So every step of the way,

we're given a message, a kind of set of criteria of how we should be. And there's a gap between that and just our, sense of ourself from the inside. And so there's a sense of not belonging. We don't quite fit. Now what happens is that because we yearn for belonging, we go about trying to create a self that'll make it in the world.

And every one of us has been in some process of kind of constructing a self that'll get accepted by others, that'll be approved, that'll be appreciated. So we abandon ourselves. We abandon our presence and our openness and our tenderness and our vulnerability in this self-construction process, which includes the defenses and the cover-ups and so on.

We get really busy with it. Somebody sent me this. I was talking about this year ago, and somebody sent me this story about a guy in a midlife crisis who decided he had to reinvent himself. We reinvent ourselves whenever we have a chance to move in a direction of what. what will be better, how we'll make better impression in the world.

So this guy hits 45s, names Thompson, he decides to change his whole lifestyle and appearance so he can look better, live longer. So it goes on a strict diet, jog, swims, takes all these sunbass, get his color just right. Just three months' time, he's lost 30 pounds, reduce his waist by six inches, expanded his chest by five inches,

foil to tan, gets a new wardrobe, slick car, etc., etc., decides to top. but all off with a sporty new haircut. Afterwards, he'll stepping out of the barbershop, he's hit by a bus. As he lies dying, he cries out, God, how could you do this to me? And a voice from the heavens responds, to tell you the truth, Thompson, I didn't recognize you. So it's a silly story, but the truth, but here's the, here's where it comes from, which is we go about, we're trying to change ourselves all the time.

We're trying to get better. Just watch. There's an improvement project going on. And what happens is it stops us from recognizing who's here because we're so busy trying to be somebody. And the further we go, the more we try to, you know, we use our false refuges, what I talk about so often, to try to take care of and soothe our anxieties and be okay. So for this rabbi, his false refuge was his intellect.

That's why he felt so cut off. He left home because he took refuge in his intellect to try to make it in the world. Now, each of us has our ways. How do we try to make it in the world? And how does it really take us further and further from home? I mean, for some of us, it's proving ourselves. You know, we just keep having to do more, try to accomplish more to make it so that we're okay. we're trying, it's our effort to be at home with ourselves.

But our busyness never works. The more we speed up, it's like we're bicycling away from the present moment and away from who we are. Or as Lily Tomlin describes, she goes, the trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat, you know. So we have our false refuges. For many of us, it's obsessive thinking, trying to figure things out. The biggest false refuge is judgment.

We judge ourselves, judge each other, takes us from home. It is in some way a perfection project. When we doubt ourselves, and this is, whenever we're feeling a sense of not at home and we're doubting ourselves, then we have this assumption that if only I could be more perfect, then things would be all right. And that gets us in trouble. this perfection project, probably more than anything else.

Some of you might remember the story of a reporter who asked the bank president, who's known and very well known in the business world, sir, what is the secret of your success? And the response is two words. Well, what? Right decisions. And sir, how do you make the right decisions? One word. And what is that, sir?

Experience. And sir, how do you get experience? Two words. And sir, what are they? Wrong decisions. So we learn by stumbling, and yet it's our biggest fear. We're really afraid of being wrong, of making mistakes. So homesickness and self-doubt give rise to this perfection project. And these are the words of in Psalm 101 too, I will walk the way of perfection. So it's very much in the the Judeo-Christian heritage. And so here's a poem, Perfection, Perfection. I have had it with perfection. I've packed my bags. I'm out of here, gone. As certain as rain will make you wet, perfection will do you in. Perfection straineth out the quality of mercy. Wither's rapture

at its birth. I've handed in my notice, given back my key, sign my severance check. I quit. Hence I could have taken. Even the perfect chiseled form of Michelangelo, Radiant David squints. The Venus de Milo has no arms. The Liberty Bell is cracked. Okay, so this is, we're kind of moving forward here. So we find out that our perfection project just turns us into a bundle of tight, tense muscles.

So how do we relate to it? How do we relate to the reality of non-perfection? Because this is the given. one of us is in this conditioned body that is going to grasp after pleasure, that's going to get greedy, that's going to get fearful, that's going to get possessive and defensive. How do we make peace with that? How do we come home in the face of non-perfection? I think it helps to know that for many, many, many, many centuries in our particular culture,

We've been given the message that in some way we got kicked out of home because of our non-perfection. Adam was but human, writes Mark Twain. This explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake. He wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent because then he would have eaten the serpent. So you get it. So it goes way back, that there's a sense of something's wrong and a sense of severed belonging.

Okay, so the third Zen patriarch. This is one of the phrases that I have found most powerful describes the essence of spiritual freedom is being without anxiety about non-perfection. So non-perfection is given. How do we not add anxiety? Now let me ask you to try this out. Just for a moment, okay? Just close your eyes.

And in a brief few moments, just review the reality of this body-mind person I call self is not perfect. Just whatever comes to mind about not perfect, whatever expressions of ego or self stand out to you and remind you of non-perfection. Now for just a few moments sense the possibility of being without anxiety about this

that just is that it's possible not to add what the Buddha called the second arrow of anxiety of judgment without anxiety about non-perfection. sense that your wises self could say it's okay. This is just how it is. In fact, there's a tremendous joy in freedom

and just letting it be okay. And maybe you can just for a few seconds let it be okay. But that's a glimmer of freedom. The portal to freedom is finding our way to be okay, to have that wisdom to be okay with this human predicament. Now you can open your eyes when you'd like.

If you want to keep meditating, that's fine. But here's the inquiry. For some, it might have been impossible. I might have felt there's non-perfection here and I'm completely uptight about it and it's not okay. And that's fine. Then you're just mindful of how much that is really grooved in there. That's the starting place, just to be aware of it.

For others, you might have had a sense of, you know, I can notice all this and still be okay. And you know that often that's not the case. Often you do get very uptight about it, but it's possible. It's possible to just take the whole shebang and say, oh, it's okay. Now, what lets us have that glimmer? What lets us have that stance where we're not in the self-doubt? We're in the space that's just present, the witnessing, the mindfulness. what lets it be possible to be without anxiety and this is this is kind of the crux of everything here is if we have an intuition or some sense

of our basic goodness of our belonging to something larger of the awareness and love that's here if we're in some way intuting that's what I really am, this awakeness, this tenderness, the one who's listening right now. If we can trust that that is more essential, this subjective

truth of what we are, than the ego self we typically identify with, we can have more and more stretches of being without anxiety. We can begin to deconstruct the doubt. So what this means is beginning to sense and trust what Thomas Merton described as our secret beauty, this loving presence. And he called it our secret beauty because he recognized that we spend most of our moments identified with something smaller. In fact, the whole of the spiritual path is recognizing that we're identified with something smaller.

were identified with an ego self with all its foibles and the spiritual path is waking up just saying yeah this ego defends all this is here and that's not it that's not all of it

the what I am is this presence is this luminosity is this love so that's the pathway and as we trust that larger sense of being, the doubt begins to dissolve. And there's an amazing freedom to move through our day

and not have a kind of sense of doubt of, I'm not okay. Amazing energy that's freed up and spontaneity. And most precious, when we're not caught in doubt, when we're not double-taking on this ego self, there's a kind of love that flows because we belong with each other in this earth. So the rest of this talk is really how to cultivate that trust, how to sense that secret beauty and wake up out of the doubt. And we begin with the practice that we do here, the most central practice that we do here, which is we learn to come back and really open to the life of this moment. to the extent that you can start making yourself at home in exactly what's here, and this takes courage, because we leave, we're more comfortable leaving. But if you can learn to make yourself at home in this moment, then you begin to discover the aliveness and vastness that's really

the portal to our secret beauty. But you have to be here. In other words, we can't find our way to trust and belonging by thinking about it, by trying to perfect ourselves in some way, by judging ourselves, none of that does it. There's a relaxing into what's right here, said that we really, our way is to dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows. So even right now, can you just get a sense of kind of a relaxing back into the life that's here, this breath, these feelings. Now the challenge of coming home to this aliveness right here, of this portal of presence, is that when we say, okay, so what's between me and being present, what we find is there's a kind of edginess, a restlessness, a discomfort?

There's something we don't want to hang out with. When my rabbi friend asked the question, you know, what's between me and being at home. What he found a lot was that he felt there wasn't enough time. He felt like he was supposed to be doing something else all the time. His self-doubt made him think he needed to do more. Well, what happens when we ask ourselves? Well, what's between me and really this portal of being right here in this moment? And what we find is there is some quakiness or anxiety or shame,

or fear or something. And sometimes that energy that's difficult to be with gets really big. We really don't want to be here. And I'd like to use a metaphor I found very powerful. If you look at the Tibetan tankas, the religious mandala's pictures, or you look at the pictures of temples in Asia, what you'll often see is that guarding the entry to sacred, space are animal-headed goddesses.

And they're very dramatic. I mean, there's wrathful deities and there's jealous deities. And, you know, so there's this anger. And then there's the fearful ones. And there's the grasping, passionate, clutching ones. But they're all the different expressions of consciousness. And the teaching is, and this is a really powerful understanding, that the stuff we don't want to be with that is in every body mind.

is exactly the energies that are part of the path, a part of the homecoming, that to get to sacred space, we need to encounter these energies within ourselves. It's not like they're in the way. It's not like we actually have a better spiritual experience if we can somehow or other bypass them and just have all peace and bliss and harmony. They're part of the equation. So I like this. I like this image of the wrathful and the jealous and the, you know, angry, fearsome deities for a couple of reasons.

And one is that it makes what is in every one of us natural and a part of the process. We don't make it wrong so much when we think of it that way. And secondly, they're deities. They're called deities. Now why? Why would anger be called a deity? Why would fear be called a deity? And the reason is because it's all the same prana energy life spirit. It's just they have torques to them.

And by being present with these energies, they are free to express their essence, which is alive and luminous, loving and beautiful. But we have to be with them. So one of my teachers, Sokny Rimpashe, when he was asked about, you know, strong emotions and how we get all entangle with them. He said they're the juice of the path.

Okay? The stuff that we avoid that we're running from are the juice of the path. He said, the deal is not to get empty and vacant, like no thoughts, nothing going on. The idea is to enter into these energies, open to them with wisdom, with presence, and then let their aliveness inform us. It's a warm, alive emptiness. So, example. This is an example of homecoming.

How do we come home into the moment? One man, his deity was rage. And he basically, when others didn't cooperate with him, when he sensed criticism, when somebody didn't pay attention to him the way he wanted, sometimes he'd lash out, but often he'd just sieve, you know, just really get twerked into knots. And so he had a lot of doubt about himself.

He felt like a bad person, a violent person, and a non-spiritual person. And so we began to practice. Okay, so here's the deity. How do we work with this? And so I had him do something I ask a lot of people, is to just sense, okay, how does this energy want you to be with it? How does it want you to be with it? And the response of this, you know, ferocious, angry, rageful deity was to let it be there.

Now, that didn't mean have him lash out. That didn't mean let him believe the stories that going on in his mind. There's a difference between believing your story that this person screwed me and letting the energy of anger, the heat and the pressure be there. Does that make sense? The difference there? the deity wanted the energy to be allowed to be there just let it be there

well that was a big deal so he so he started practicing he thought of a situation that he was really that was really just he had a huge reaction to you know somebody that he felt was double crossing him so it was a big deal somebody he thought was talking behind his back

so he let the energy be big and it got very explosive and I just encouraged him keep letting it be as big as it wanted to be and it just kind of like crashed through the windows and the doors and I said how big is it now and he kind of it's filling the eastern hemisphere you know and now it's spreading through the planet earth and you know now it's out to space and filling the galaxies I mean it got big you know and but then you know I said and now and he said well now I'm feeling kind of an emptiness inside me I said okay so pay attention

to that he said well it's a kind of a sorrow it's it's sad it's It's like I'm all alone. He said, okay, so how does that energy want you to be with it? Same question. How do the deities want us to be with it? Kind, be kind. So he was just kind with that sadness. And gradually, what emerged for him was this very big space of kindness,

but it had a strong energy to it and had a kind of a stillness to it at the center. And he began to call it his still point. And he felt at home in it. You know, there was this kind of stillness and this steady energy that kind of was all around it. And he felt at home. How did he come home to sacred space? It's the energy of the deities.

He was just with them. Now, for him, this isn't like a one-shot story. This is not a quick, happy ending. He had a lot of programming to be angry and to feel, you know, other people mistrustful and so on, many, many rounds with the wrathful deity and then with underneath that,

this loneliness. But the point is that the entry to sacred space to coming home is being exactly with what presents, exactly with what presents, whatever is going on in your life right now. That's the portal, right here. So let's just,

we'll just take a moment with that one because I'm naming two different gateways of homecoming that wake us up out of our doubts. It's just a short reflection to give you a taste. As we pause for this, invite yourself home. Just invite yourself to be right here. You might feel your breath, feel your heart, and you might sense in your life right now

if there's some situation that stops you that gets in the way from feeling at home with things. maybe something going on in a relationship, artwork, maybe something going on with your body that just makes it hard for you to really feel at home with life as it is. And when you sense, well, what's between me and being at home? When you sense this situation,

you might sense that there's some emotion that's there, some fear, some anger, some jealousy, some grief. So maybe one of the deeps, deities, one of these, they call the animal-headed goddesses, is there, that energy is there that feels between you and homecoming, sacred space, restlessness, doubt, a not-okay feeling. They're all expressions of these deities. And you might sense that. And with that, have some interest to sense, well, how does this sense?

energy want you to be with it? How does your anxiety want you to be with it? Your anger, your hurt. Does it want acceptance? Does it want forgiveness? Does it want you just to allow it to be there? Not to try to get rid of it. They want kindness. These deities usually are wanting some quality of presence. You might notice what happens if you just offer what's needed for some. For some, that helps to put the hand on the heart or the cheek is just an offering of presence to whatever expression, whatever deity, whatever energy is here that might feel like it's between you and being at home. So it helps to put your hand on your heart to bring more of a tenderness that can be good. And just sense an increasing presence that the more you're with this energy,

the more just that being with itself, that presence itself carries you home. You might sense that even in a few moments there's a little more space, there's more kindness, more wisdom. You might find there's a still point, an alert inner stillness, that's just bearing witness with kindness.

So this is the first pathway of homecoming that where we are separate from ourselves, there's usually some energy that we're not wanting to be with. And our pathway is this kind of courage to say, okay, I'll be with what's here. Rather than reacting, we're willing to pause and bring a kind presence to these animal-headed goddesses, these energies.

You might take a few breaths. and then open your eyes when you'd like. And I'm going to share the second pathway of homecoming. These are the two wings that sometimes are described of presence. If the first pathway is just this be with it, just be with it, be with whatever energy it requires. The second pathway of homecoming is love. And the Buddha very famously talked about good friends,

about loving relatedness as the whole of the holy life. and I often think what did he mean the whole of the holy life and what he was pointing to is that when we recognize and feel our belonging

with each other with fellow creatures with the natural world when we feel that belonging there is homecoming there is a radical and profound shifting of identity where instead of

this sense of the story of self, this separate being, there is a sense of belonging to an aliveness and field of loving presence that is freeing. So this realizing who I am, this path of realizing who I am, as much as it's about being with what is within us, it's about exploring the what is between us. One friend last week reminded me, told me of a story actually, Swami Satchez Ananda, who's a wonderful Hindu yogi, many people got influenced by. And he was asked in an interview what the difference was between illness and wellness. Okay? So illness, as he describes, it's the difference between illness begins with I and wellness is we. It's the difference between

I and we. And isn't it true that when we're in that self-centered, tangle of just all this absorption and concern about me, me, me, it doesn't feel good and we don't trust who's here. And when we're feeling we, when we're really feeling that sense of belonging to, whether it's belonging to nature when we're on a walk or belonging to our dog, when we're cuddling with our dog or belonging to a friend, that sense of we is freeing. So story I wanted to to share. I read a book Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle some time ago, and he describes these Latino gangs and incredible suffering in the Los Angeles area of violence and so on. And they created this homeboys industry that really gave a chance for some of these teens to

find jobs and find dignity, really. And so this is one story. He found one of the boys from the gang that he was working with, Anthony, he says, I want to be a mechanic. Don't know nothing about cars, but really, I want to learn it. So Gregory Boyle had his own mechanic, a guy named Dennis on Brooklyn Avenue, who's something of a legend in the barrio, and I'm going to read some.

He says, Dennis could fix any car. A tall, Polfen, Japanese American in his near 60s, Dennis was a chain smoker. He was not a man of few words. He was a man of no damn words at all. He just smoked. You'd bring your car in. He'd take the keys, and when you return the next

day, give you your car, purring as it should. No words were exchanged during this entire transaction. So I go to Dennis to plead my case. Look, Dennis, I say, sitting in his cramped office, truly a smoked-filled room. Hire this kid Anthony. True enough, he doesn't know anything about cars, but he sure is eager, and I think he could learn this stuff. Dennis just stares at me, nodding slightly. I redouble my efforts.

I tell Dennis that this won't just be one job for one homie, but it will create a ripple effect of peace in the entire neighborhood. Long drags of silence in a stony stare. I get out my shovel and my top hat and cane. Noble peace prize will alter the course of history. We'll change world as we know it. Nothing. Dennis just fills his lungs of smoke as I fill the air with earnest pleas. Once every trace of smoke is let out, he looks at me, and this is the only thing he says that day. I will teach him everything I know. And so, Anthony becomes a mechanic. He would give me periodic updates. I learned how to do a lube job today. I fixed a carburetor all by myself.

He hands me a photograph one day. There is Anthony with a broad smile, face smudged with axle grease, workshirt, with Anthony embroidered proudly on his chest. No question. To look at this face is to know that its owner is a transformed man. But standing next to him in the picture, with an arm around Anthony, and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, is Dennis, an equally changed human being. and all because Dennis one day

pulled down the walls and let the world in kind of get out of his cramped world and there was this true kinship that evolved I think we each know about this about the power of relatedness that if we were at the end of our life and we look back and we really wanted to say what matters

we would remember different intervals where in some way we held hands with someone, in some level. We would remember the intervals where in some way we just gave of ourselves and found in that generosity how much was given back. Our moments, when we opened ourselves and took a chance to be vulnerable and found that somebody could really hold us.

We would remember the moment of belonging because we trust more who we are in those moments than any other. We like who we are. Why? We're more who we really are. We're more whole. When there's a dark night, okay, when we're suffering, it's because we don't feel belonging. Okay, we feel cut off. And then what happens is all we can see is of ourselves is this cut off ego. self. Like who we are is this small, tight, afraid, deficient ego self. And at those times when we look around, all we can see is the mask and defenses of others. I mean, isn't it true that when we're feeling alone and deficient, we look around and we see others, egos, and

personalities and living daylight? But what don't we see? You know, we don't see the spirit that's there. So the second pathway of coming home is this pathway of turning towards relatedness, of looking to see the goodness in others, of opening ourselves, taking a chance to be real. What we find is in the moments that we reach out, in the moments that we see what's good. When we see that secret beauty, it actually brings it out. In

a story I heard some years ago, one woman was in a grocery store in California, and as she went along the aisle, she became aware of this mother with a small boy moving in the opposite direction, and they kept meeting head on at the end of every

aisle. So the woman barely noticed that they were meeting these people, because she was so furious that this little boy, the woman, this is the woman and child that she was seeing. This mother was so furious at her boy because the little kid kept trying to pull things off all the shelves as

little kid to do it. And so the mom kept becoming more and more frustrating. She started to yell at the child and several hours later progressed to shaking him by the arm. So this is when this woman that's writing this spoke up. She said, I'm a wonderful mother of three and founder of a progressive school.

She had probably never once in her life treated any child so harshly that she's writing about the woman that she was with. I expected my friend would give this woman a solid mother to mother talk about controlling herself and about the effect this behavior has on a child. Brace for a confrontation, I felt a spike in my already elevated adrenaline. Instead, my friend said to this other mother, 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 her own three children were just like him in the grocery store, pulling things off shelf, so interested in all the wonderful colors and

packages. He seemed so bright and intelligent, like my friend said. The woman had her boy in her arms by now, and a shy smile came up on 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. So this is a story from Catherine Ingram's book, and I just reflect on it and think that, you know,

we are not aware of how our thoughts and our actions affect each other. That every day there are countless moments when if we paused, we could sense that it would be possible with somebody else to in some way mirror their goodness, some way let them know that we care, some way offer a part of ourselves, and in those moments find more belonging.

Or it may be that in other moments we seek out those that can mirror us, we reach out for a hand, Or it may be that in our meditation, that's what we do. So what we're exploring tonight, really, is that there's no surprise we would get caught in self-doubt. Most everyone I know has at least phases where they're aware of really not trusting themselves. Just as my rabbi friend found that the sense of not being at home with himself, with God, That happens to everyone.

Sometimes it's a dark night and sometimes it's just a feeling of doubt. And there's actually an intelligence in doubt. Doubt's message is, oh, I'm not at home. I'm identified with a smaller self than the wholeness of what I am. Doubt has an intelligence. The invitation when we feel that, when we get caught, and doubt is to ask the same questions my rabbi friend asked, which is, what's between me and being at home right now? How can I be more at home right now? Sometimes our way home will be,

we'll just be with the animal-headed goddesses that are there. We'll be with the pain, the fear, the doubt. Other times we'll reach out for love. Either way, we start finding who we really are, which is an experience of awareness and love that we know as home. So I'd like to close with a brief meditation, if you will. So this is a very brief reflection on coming home to our true belonging, coming home to wholeness. And we begin with the simplicity of just feeling our breath. Just belong to your breath. Relax with your breath. Let your breath collect you. Let your breath help you find that current that is really the riverbanks, the current that your life flows in, this hereness, this aliveness. And you might sense, what does it mean to belong to

this aliveness right here? How can I be more at home in this moment's aliveness? And then just let go. feel the aliveness as it plays at the heart. Perhaps there's mood or emotion and sense, how can I belong to this? If there's a difficulty or feels like you're encountering the goddesses, how can I be with this? How can I let be?

We belong to our bodies' aliveness and we belong to our hearts. We sense this whole field of aliveness that we belong to. We sense each other, the beings in this room. the beings in our life. I invite you to bring to mind one person that's easy to feel your connection with right now.

Imagine and feel that person right here. I'd imagine that person looking at you with eyes of total acceptance and understanding and care. Feel transparent to that person and received beautifully. And since, as you behold this person,

their beauty and goodness, the aliveness, the aliveness, the humor, the intelligence, the spirit that shines through. So you sense that who's looking through your eyes is looking back at you through their eyes. And you sense this field of loving presence, it's really your oneness. And then let go and belong to that. Sensing the awareness that's aware of all of this. It's that openness and wakefulness and luminosity. and then just let go and belong

let go and belong to that we close with the words of Rumi who writes about this kind of doubt that we've been talking about tonight he says you were inside my hand I kept reaching around for something I was inside your hand

but I kept asking questions of those who know very little 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. The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival.

The universe and the light of of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival. 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 site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much. much.