Tara Brach - Trusting the Gold: A Conversation - Tara Brach and Jonathan Foust

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Trusting the Gold: A Conversation - Tara Brach and Jonathan Foust - In this interview-style conversation, Jonathan asks Tara questions about key themes in her new book, Trusting the Gold. They include their own relationships and ways we work with our inner life and others, in cultivating the capacity to see basic goodness and realizing a mature and liberating quality of trust.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Greetings and namaste and thank you for being with us. Tonight is really a first. My husband, Jonathan Boust, who many of you know as a spiritual and meditation teacher, will be interviewing me. So we've never quite done this before. We'll see how it goes. The folks, focus will be key themes from my new book, Trusting the Gold. So enjoy, and I'll see you in a moment. Well, this is a delight. Welcome.

It's good to have you here. And I am totally delighted to have this conversation with my wonderful wife, Tara Brock. We met right after she finished her first book, Radical Acceptance. And since then, I have been privy to observe her in the birthing process of multiple other books. radical compassion, a true refuge, and most recently the book Trusting the Gold. So we have this opportunity to talk a little bit about this book and what it means and some really, really wonderful explorations, I think you'll find interesting. So welcome, Tara. It's great to have this time with you.

I guess the first question I have is what instigated this one. How did it come from an idea to something that drew your focus? Well, in a way, this book was incredibly unintentional, like kind of backed into it. It was like this unintended pregnancy because my staff here, we were just collecting anecdotes and quotes and things that people had requested, and we thought we'd have an informal collection, but it grew into a book that sounds true, produced, and fantastic illustrator, Vicki Alvarez kind of brought it to life with her. She's just beautiful, she has beautiful illustrations. So yeah, that's how it came about. And as I was working on deepening the stories and

putting it out, the theme became so clear that it all was really coming down to what does it mean to trust, to trust our own goodness and to see and trust the goodness in others. and really the beauty and goodness that lives through all of life. So that became a very real and compelling theme, especially given the times where mistrust rules. I mean, there's so much polarization and real violence in the way people regard others that it just feels like one of the most important places for our attention.

You know, from my standpoint, it was just really interesting to watch from the outside, starting with, oh, here are a couple stories and, oh, here's an illustrator, and wouldn't this be kind of fun and easy? You know, and then it really turned into like a really, really deep dive into bringing these stories alive in a way that would be meaningful. So the end result, are you happy with it? I'm really happy with it.

Yeah. I didn't expect it to be what it was. It came out to be this book that I like holding and that I find beauty in, and I keep wanting to give it away. I hope other people want to give it away because it's, well, the feedback I've gotten is that people find the stories really relatable to, and they just kind of help us remember what matters. So, yeah, I'm actually really excited to have it out there. You know, it's beautiful just to have it in hand. It's like feels good in your hands.

I love the cover. It's really, really nice. How do you imagine people using this book? Because this is different than what you've done in the past. Exactly, it is. Where in the past, it's like you read a chapter and then the next chapter and the next chapter. And in this book, you can read it straight through. But I think most people are going to just kind of open it to,

something and hopefully find something that speaks to them in the moment. It's lighter reading in that sense. The stories are like a couple of pages long, so you can kind of dip in and out. So the cover's got a nice gold quality to it, and the title is trusting the gold. What about the title? Obviously, there's a lot that comes with the title of the book.

Anything you want to say about the kind of the essence, of what that means to trust the gold? Yeah. Well, the image I use, which I share a lot, is from that statue, that clay plaster statue in Southeast Asia that people loved over the centuries, but it wasn't really attractive. And it turned out, and they found this out in the 1950s,

that after a drought, there's some cracks, and they discovered it was actually solid gold, Buddha. And I love that metaphor. because I feel like we think of ourselves as our egos, our personalities, or our coverings, and we get identified with that and we forget the depth of our being, the mystery, the goodness, the love, the awareness. And when we're forgetting it in ourselves, we see others also as they're covering. So there's a question that Einstein asked that I find just really a cool place, to pay attention, which is, he says the most important question that humanity can address

is, is this universe and is this life in innately benevolent, friendly? Well I remember I've given a number of talks on this, but in one of those talks about, you know, that there's a basic goodness, a love and awareness that all of this universe brings forth from, and that's kind of what I was offering out. My mother was with me, as you know, she came in and out of class a lot with me when she was living with us. And she was a Barnard philosophy major and she loved to take issue with me. And so on the ride home, you say, well, what makes goodness more basic than badness? I mean, what about all the racism and the, you know, capital punishment and wars?

And, you know, aren't we just as basically bad as we are good? and I completely acknowledge the cruelty and horror of how we humans can manifest. And what I said to her was that there is no cognitive winner on that argument, you know, is there a basic goodness to life? I could just speak for myself and I'm pretty pragmatic, which is that when I can see all in my personality and conditioning all the tendency, towards aggression and grasping and so on. But when I get quiet, when that all settles, like when the waves settle, what's there is

a presence and a tenderness and it feels more like home, more real, more true to what I am than any of the particular stories are conditioning that comes and goes. And so when I assume that that is essence, when I assume that loving and that awareness is essence, and I feel it, and if it's in me, because I belong to this earth, it's in you and it's in all beings, the way I live and the way I feel is much more free and loving. So it feels useful and helpful and true to me. it's more of an invitation to just explore. Like when you experience yourself, do you experience a sense of a kind of essence that's loving

and aware? And it's actually a question I'd ask you right now. Do you feel that sense of basic goodness? You know, first I just want to say I so appreciate your mom's perspective on things. I'm just recalling how I think she did, I think almost every week-long retreat we offered. and she'd just sit there for seven days in silence and on the way home she would always say, I'm not sure why I do these things.

So, you know. A second, but to her credit, she'd say that, but then she would always tell me, you know, on some level, and this is especially towards her death, she was, I find a lot of peace when I just riot my breath. So, you know, she was both and. Exactly. Well, such a clever and strong mind.

And I think that's sort of the human conundrum is that, you know, we have this mind which is sort of set up to compare and judge and figure stuff out. And that's very identified as a separate self. And then underneath that, you know, there's this possibility that you're speaking of of some inherent sort of transcendent presence that is in its essence, you know, know, as some form of benevolence or goodness, and is it possible to trust in that? And it certainly depends on which lens I look through, you know, when I look through kind of the comparing mind or I look through my identification as a separate being with people out to get me, it's impossible to access that sense. But I do know from myself that when I have transcendent moments, you know, sometimes I described them as like those moments.

moments when I'm without desire, when I'm not wanting, I'm not wanting anything to be different than how it is, then yeah, yeah, then there is this sense of like the perfection of everything. Those are not permanent states, I have noticed. You know, they're somewhat transient, but I, but I do find for myself, you know, just through the lens of my own practice that that those moments of really, really deeply pausing and resting in presence, there is that sense of kind of the mystery and some form of benevolence. So I guess there's this, you know, that essential question of if we all have access to some inherent goodness, what is it that gets in the way?

You know, like, what would you say just in your study of this topic are like the main impediments to accessing trust? Well, maybe instead of impediments to trust, it's natural to distrust. It's part of our survival equipment to distrust. And there's nothing wrong with distrusting. So we're going to get into, you know, what do we really mean by trust? But from this point of view of the survival mind, let's say the squirrel that we watch that's fleeing from the fox, it's really good not to

trust the fox and to be vigilant and to run away. So on that level, it's wise and intelligent to sense what's going to be a threat to us. So mistrust is natural. And every being that incarnates feels a sense of separation and has fears of being hurt by things and mistrusts where, you know, there might be some danger. So that's really just to get that mistrust is natural. It's part of our survival brain. And we all have wounds in our early childhood or wounds from our society that would deepen that mistrust, that would deepen that sense of the, I sometimes think of it as severed belonging that there's, that we don't belong and there's something out there that's dangerous.

And so we have to work with places where there's mistrust. What I mean by mature trust is, is where we, even though there's danger, even though we can mistrust ourselves because we can say, well, I hurt other people, or whether we can mistrust another person, they could hurt me, we can still remember also beyond those coverings that are reactive and potentially hurtful, there is a potential within us all to wake up loving and to wake up our awareness and move beyond, hurting ourselves and each other. So trusting the gold is trusting that potential and calling it forward, but it doesn't mean that we put aside our distrust in terms of taking care of ourselves. So I like to

make that distinction there. Does that, does that resonate for you? Yeah. And I would certainly say that for myself and people that I've, you know, run across in this life, that we have a very unique and individual relationship to life and to that, to the, to the, to the distrust that were, we're shaped by our wounds. But maybe just to personalize it, how about you? Like, what, what would you say were the, kind of the seeds of distrust? And, and how, how would you say that, that sense of distrust has matured or transformed in some way to more of a sense of like a mature trust. Yeah, well, like many of us, I've kind of done some exploring of my personal history to kind of

sense, you know, how did I get the way I am? And I'll share. I haven't shared this a whole lot, you know, in my talks and so on. But my mom was alcoholic when I was young and she was depressed and she was anxious and we were really close and she tells me this too that I would try to make her feel better and on some level I just felt like her pain was my fault and that it was up to me to try to help her and I couldn't do it. I couldn't make her better. So I mistrusted myself in the sense of I'm needed and I'm failing somebody and then my dad, attorney and, you know, out there successful, achieving person, rewarded me when I was achieving. So I hitched my well-being, my lovability, my respectability to achieving in outer ways.

So this is all like the coverings. So there I was, you know, not trusting myself because I was letting down and failing my mother and not trusting myself because I could never be enough. Like, no matter how much I'd get rewarded. and they weren't punishing when I didn't do things well. But I got the message that, you know, tried to be great and feeling a sense of falling short, not enough. That was my self-mistrust.

And of course, I didn't trust others to love me as I was because I didn't feel lovable as I was. So that was kind of the makeup for me. I have many friends who have similar kind of things from childhood and then add, on what our society does. I mean, the most obvious example right now in this day and age is how if you're Black, indigenous person of color, you not only get the family imprint, but you get the society constantly on some level saying inferior, not worthy. And so there's all these layers that happen to all of us. And then I'll go on to saying a bit about how I have climbed out of the messaging about not okay. But I'd be curious, you know, just to bring you in here,

how would you say your mistrust got fueled? You know, it's interesting, the interesting thing about the Enneagram, and for those who aren't familiar with it, it's a very, very powerful approach to looking at psychology and spirituality. And I always like to say, when you're looking at the different classifications, you know it's you when you get a sinking feeling? Like, oh my God, no, not this one. And mine is the one that basically is built around distrust. So distrust has runs as a very core theme in my life. And I think it really has that, you know, the roots again, they go back to the really early conditioning, you know, for me. And just that sense of like not belonging, of, you know, feeling, you know, unseen, unheard, you know, all that

stuff. But I, you know, as much as I even kind of roll my eyes, just sort of sharing it, um, that it actually was a very, very deep formation for me of constantly looking through that lens of self-protection, you know, looking through that lens of, you know, some degree of hypervigilance. And then setting me up for, um, you know, for many ways, a kind of a lifetime of as I look back, I think, you know, how many years did I, spend if there was any possibility of getting getting attention or getting any kind of accolade my my immediate answer was of course i'll do that you know really chasing that you know that desire to kind of want to belong and so forth and then of course at some point there's there's kind of a turning point or a crisis or an

insight and i remember for me it was this one moment living in the ashram of just at the just at the end of my rope of feeling just exhausted and overworked and realizing how I was just I just couldn't say no because I was so addicted to thinking if I did more than I could you know then I'd be okay and the crisis point for me showed up as from now on I'm going to be me until I'm fired and there was something about that that gave me access to like wow would it really be okay to be me and I think the rest of my life has been exploring that. So it was a real... How often did you get fired?

Well, you know, the paradox is that I started speaking up, I started challenging, I started saying no, and the feedback from those around me was like, wow, how did you get plugged into 220 volts instead of the 60 volts you were operating on before? So I felt much more alive, much more engaged, you know, paradoxically. got promoted. That's the problem.

That was actually the problem. But I only got promoted. I only took on the things that I, that really truly lit me up as opposed to sort of feeding that, that inherent sense of, of, you know, like the hungry ghost of just kind of needing,

needing to take on more to feel like I belonged. Well, it's interesting because one of my major breakthroughs on the mistrust piece was also an a spectrum in a, in a spiritual community in my early 20s. Many spiritual communities have a kind of undertone of, we're trying to get more and more perfect, you know, pure and so on. And in ours it was, it felt like it was like that. And so I remember at one point just, it's like, just everything came crashing down and it became so clear how impure I was, you know, it was like, and so I was, you know, it was like, and so I, I was, and so I,

I remember being in a meeting in a group of women and confessing my impurity, you know, how much I didn't trust myself, you know, that I was, you know, here I was teaching yoga, but I really, you know, I had a vanity about my own capacities as a yogi and I like to show off and I felt self-centered and I just, I felt like very far from having a pure kind of essence and I have no idea how they responded. I think I was so caught in my shame I couldn't pay even pay attention but I remember when I went back to my room totally it was like a total crash. I was just flooded with pain, you know, about my badness. So this is like you know, I was hitting a bottom of self-mistrust and just

was weeping until finally something just noticed, wow, this is suffering. You know, this hurt, ouch. Feeling this bad about myself really hurts. And so it started getting toned by compassion and there was more and more of this witness that was just realizing, wow, to be so mistrusting and harsh. And as I kept going, that grew. And so it really shifted from me being this bad and pure person just down to myself to a sense of, you know, I'd kind of was like this, to really kind of holding with tenderness this,

you know, sense of pain and so on. And then even that quieted down and I had this realization that, yeah, there is conditioning playing out to be vain or to be selfish or whatever it was or competitive. And yet this presence that was here, this tenderness, was more truth, was more the truth of who I am, more it felt like home. And that felt like a passing condition. And there was something in that, Jonathan, where I just really rested in that. And I knew that that would keep coming back in my life and I knew it would disappear and

I'd get filled with out again, but I knew that that was the path was to keep turning in that direction to trusting that basic goodness, that awareness and tenderness that was arising. And I can say honestly that I've had, you know, countless experiences since then of recontracting and in some way back in the patterning of not trusting or not liking myself. But each time that I basically it was kind of doing rain, what I call rain, or bring mindfulness and compassion to what's there, it would start dissolving that sense of, you know, this small self. And I'd land up back in that field of compassion or care that's, I feel like really what we all,

all are. It's really what's under all of us. And the repeated rounds of it have been really what cultivates the trust. It's just I have to keep revisiting it over and over again and unwinding things with mindfulness and compassion and then realizing that identity that I was taking myself to be isn't who I am. It can't possibly grasp this mystery of presence that's here. So that's kind of been my process and it continues now, but when it, the difference between now and then is that I think of it as lag time. It's like when there's some contraction, some sense of badness or identity that's really tight, I notice it much more quickly and it doesn't take much to have it kind of dissolves. It becomes more porous so I can sense the gold shining

through. That's pretty much the process. So there's something really paradoxical about, you know, as we always joke, if you meditate, you feel better, you know, you feel your sadness better, you feel your distress better, you know, that for both of us, you know, living in ashrams and different, you know, different, different ashrams, practicing intensively, that there's something very, very potent about how this practice of mindfulness, if you will, actually brings us more and more intimately to that edge where we can actually see the distrust. You know, we can see what's between us and that kind of inherent radiance or that inherent goodness inside. So I guess the question is, as you've gone through your journey of remembering more and more that

inherent sense of goodness. What about for people who've experienced trauma, like real, real intense fear and helplessness, you know, who really feel, I mean, I think we all feel cut off at times. There's no question about that. But what about for people who, for whom it's a very deeply searing experience, that feeling of being cut off? Yeah, the basic principle is that the more wounding that happens, the more distrust and it makes a whole lot of sense. And when we have an experience of being cut off and powerless and totally out of control, it's so searing that there's very little sense that there's anything safe in the world.

And so it takes more conscious cultivation of resources to begin to calm the nervous system and so that when we've been traumatized, we can get reintroduced to a space of calm where the waves aren't crashing around so much and we can really sense a larger belonging. So it's the same pathway for all of us. We're all moving from a sense of separateness and the pain of separation to really, realizing our belonging, but because trauma is such a profound cutoff, it takes more resourcing. And the resourcing, when I work with people, I'll ask them a question which is, even though you basically don't feel safe, what gives you even a taste of it, even a little bit of a sense

of safety or feeling loving connection? And for some people it's, you know, that they have a friend or a parent or a grandparent that when they sense them and their love, they calm down some. And for some it's, you know, being outside and lying on the ground or leaning against a tree and for some it's a spiritual figure they bring to mind. But whatever it is that gives even a taste of safety, if we then revisit it again and again and take the time when we feel a bit calmer and more safe to actually get to know it, get familiar with it, you know, just feel it as a felt sense. It actually creates new neural

pathways in the brain so we have easier access to feeling that sense of ease. We have more access to remembering what we can trust. And I think of it like the sun is always there, no matter how traumatized we are. But sometimes the banks of clouds are really thick. And so what thins them is these practices of resourcing, of remembering places and people and experiences of safety and love. So it's all about remembering and finding that pathway back to remembering. And I would imagine that for some people,

that what that really requires is calling on the resource of not just the meditation practice, but really, really a connection through others and through relationships has to be a big part of this. It really does because we get wounded in relationship, so we heal in relationship. So we're bringing those meditative qualities of, we're bringing mindfulness and compassion into our relational field. And for many of us, I know so many people that trust started reawakening by just a certain friend who really accepted us no matter how we were. It's like another person's mirroring of the gold. You know, if somebody knows how to see our goodness and let us know it, that's the greatest gift that we can be given. So we do heal each other into trusting the gold and that's really essential.

And it's something that you and I can see in our own relationship that part of the goodness of a close relationship is that everybody goes into periods of mistrust and we all need each other, we need to be reminded by each other and that's really the generosity of a relationship. We remind each other of goodness. I think there's a strong tendency to feel like, you know, this path of awakening is a solo journey. And in many ways it is. It's about, you know, about that inner healing, our fundamental relationship with the universe. But it's so much more when we opened it up into the relational field.

And I know certainly over the years of our relationship, it's been, it's almost been sometimes been a kind of a purgative process of just seeing my own patterns of distrust. and bringing them into the relationship for, you know, for them to be seen and felt and held and ultimately, ultimately just, just held in love. And I know we, you know, we have this ongoing, ongoing thing around whoever does the role reversal first wins, you know, which is such a great, it just changes the frame in relationship that is, you know, that as soon as I can begin to sense the the fear or the anxiety that you're bringing in of how you're not trusting your life or you're not trusting how how we are in relationship as soon as I can move into that there's such a powerful process of feeling more whole and in that same way for myself when I can name a way that I'm holding back in a way that I'm holding myself separate just naming it is is powerful but then actually

having it received and feeling empathy is quite powerful. Oh yeah. You know, I actually think of everything in terms of relationship, that we're in relationship with our inner life and we're in relationship with each other and we're relationship with, you know, the moon and the stars. It's every, everything's a web of relationship. and when there is conflict and when there's a sense of separation, often what we have to do, and I see this with you and me, is first go inward and re-hook up inwardly because usually when we're in conflict, we're living in a smaller place within ourselves, so we have to re-come back to a little more wholeness inside us.

And I'm thinking of, you know, one of the biggest challenges I had in our relationship actually came not that long after we got married because I got, that's when I got sick and I kind of spiraled into sickness pretty quickly. So I went from this robust person and you and I loved going, you know, hiking and boogie boarding and you know, kayaking and the whole thing and I got so sick that I could barely do those things with you. And I remember getting increasingly depressed and kind of withdrawn from you and your efforts to be helpful, I would just kind of like pull in more deeply because I was so stuck and not

just feeling sick, but I realized that I was feeling a distance from you because I wasn't the partner you had married. I was no longer feeling fun. I didn't, I just didn't feel like an attractive, fun, cool, neat person to be with. And I wasn't. you know, in many ways. And so I really feared rejection and I remember it kind of coming to a peak one day. I remember being out in our hammock and feeling, you know, really distant from you and really

contracted and I did what I call the U-turn, whereas I turned the attention not from you but back to what's really going on inside me. And I got in touch with a feeling of kind of shame and unlovable. ability, you know, that really core feeling that I'm not going to be loved. And again, I did that same process I described before, you know, and ouch, you know, and I started bringing compassion to it and holding myself and really offering just in that case, just feeling like I was just saying, okay, universe, you know, okay, beloved, the sense of the, you know, loving awareness in the universe just bathed me because I really was so, feeling so cut off.

And it really was restorative. I just felt more of a sense of being held by the universe and held by my own being. And I remember when I went to talk to you, because I had done that inward relating, I was able to be more real with you and name what I just said that, you know, I was afraid. I really feared that, you know, you wouldn't want to be with me. And you were really amazing. I mean, you kind of mirrored back what I was, you said, you heard me and you said what you were, I was, you let me know you understood and you were incredibly unconditional in your

care which of course was really soothing and you shared how powerless you were feeling in the face of you know, me taking that dive and the self-consciousness you felt when you tried to extend help and your own vulnerability around it. And it was a deeply trust building for both of us, I felt. Like it brought us a lot closer because we both were very real with our vulnerability and we could see the goodness that was there, you know, the tenderness towards each other. But I found again and again, and this is both with us and in so many relationships that to deepen trust we start with where we're not feeling trust.

and get real with it, the places that we feel reactive, hurt, angry. And that takes us kind of courage to feel not okay. But if we do that within ourselves, then we're able to bring it into the relational field in a way that's actually healing so that both people can end up sensing both the conditioning, the waves on the surface, but also kind of that shared ocean of tenderness. So I kind of wanted to say that out loud because I haven't really shared so much our process. You know, it's so interesting to me, you know, how we're both in our, in our both individual worlds around the powerlessness we were feeling. You know, how powerless you were over just your medical condition and how powerless I felt around being helpful and, you know,

being in being in our marriage. And we had our individual very, very private internal separate worlds around that. And I'm so struck by those two wings of the practice of, you know, like the courage to really see and name what's true. And for you, for you to name it in many ways really helped me to name it. and then to hold, to really move into that, that heart space that could hold all of that. It was so, so powerful. And so I'm struck at how. It's true. Well, I was just thinking that that has been through our whole relationship.

When we do that, and we, for those that are listening, we take, you know, a couple days a week, we kind of do check-ins or we really see, is there anything between us? and feeling loving and close, it's when we are courageous enough to identify, well, this is an edge and it doesn't feel good to bring it up. But when we do and we stay with it, it lands us up more with trust. And that's what I find each time.

And as I have shared with our check-ins, and this has changed, but initially was, I knew they would be good for me. I knew I would be glad I would do them, but nothing was, looking forward to those check-ins. And in the same way, I think it happens with our meditation practice. You know, it happens with, you know, with any practice where we're pausing and coming

in contact with reality. We're not necessarily looking forward to it, but it can be so incredibly freeing. So we have just about maybe about three or four minutes left. So when we're exploring this whole theme of trust, there's sort of our internal experience. you know, of really looking at all the conditioning that's created a sense of separation. And then there's this sense of how trust and distrust shows up in our most intimate relationships. And anything you might want to say about how do we apply it to the world? You know, this is such a challenging time in the world right now.

How do we keep this practice alive? How do we cultivate more trust in a world that's filled with so much turmoil right now? I think that's the most important question. And I see initiatives happening on the macro level, you know, where there's attempts to bring people of difference together, to have the kind of conversations. The real question is, what's it like being new? You know, where does it hurt? If we can start naming, naming what's going on for us and really imagining and sensing what it's like for others, that's the training. And it takes a real courage and willingness.

So I feel like rather than talking on the macro level of each of us in our own lives, wherever we feel distrust or that edge of aversion, our difference, if we could first make the you turn and come within ourselves and bring presence and compassion to how it's coming up for us, and then try to ask that question, what are you going through? What's it like being you? What happens over time is that it doesn't make the other person, let's say there are a person that's actually causing harm, it doesn't make us put down our boundaries. We have what's called a strong back and a soft front.

We see clearly with discriminating wisdom who's causing harm and how we need to protect ourselves. We have to have that strong back. our hearts can still sense what another's going through, their vulnerability, their wounds, and underneath that we can begin to see that just like us, people love love, people want to be free. You know, there's a quote I love from Thomas Merton that goes that life is this simple, we're living in a world that's absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or fable, it is true.

And gradually we really get it, it's not just a spiritual idea that the sacred is living through all of life. One of my practices is a kind of be walking and I'll see a tree and I'll just sense how the sentience, it's like the tree and I are loving each other, but the tree's love is it's not as complex, but it's still life-loving to live, you know, and I'll see a bird or I'll look at the puppy that I'm, that I walk with all the time, Katie, or I'll look at you right now. And it's not just a nice story or a fable to see the consciousness shining through another person's eyes, to feel that heart cares just like this heart cares. It's a fundamental valuing of life.

And when I'm sensing that, I can't feel alone. It's like we're we're all from that same shining gold. And I sometimes think if we could all be practicing to see that gold, we wouldn't harm. We'd know our essential belonging. We'd care for our earth, you know, it's our larger body. Since the gold shining through the earth, we couldn't be cruel to animals. You know, we'd torture billions of animals a year as part of our habit of eating. couldn't do it. We wouldn't have racial caste systems or sexual or caste systems or class

caste systems because all beings would deserve the same respect and care because we're all connected, you know, the gold is shining through us all. So it can sound idealistic and that's why we need to keep coming down to just this moment right here as you're listening, as your being, just sensing that within your own being, when you get quiet, there's an awareness and a tenderness, and your being's not different than other beings. It's in all of us. And even if it gets covered over,

the most radical, powerful, beautiful thing you can do is to have the intention to trust it, to see it in yourself and others, because that really is what will heal our world. To cultivate the intention to trust. That's beautiful, and probably to be able to be. and probably a perfect time for us to kind of end. So juicy, what you just said and you.

Thank you so much. Wow. Well, I have a question for you. Is this the first time we've ever done this? Didn't you trust me enough to do this kind of a co-sharing of a presentation like this? I just think it's totally fun. And I look forward to more. and it's awfully strange to be sitting in one room knowing you're sitting in another room.

So I trust I'll see you shortly. Quite intimate to look at a screen, isn't it? Yeah. Thank you for hosting this way. Thank you. Really good. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabroch.com.