Tara Brach - Trusting the Gold (retreat talk)

Episode Date: December 2, 2016

Trusting the Gold (retreat talk)(2016-11-10) - When we are unaware of the emotions and beliefs that shape our experience, we are in a trance characterized by an identity as a separate, incomplete self. Trance obscures the awareness and love that is our deepest essence. This talk explores the two key pathways of awakening from trance and recognizing and trusting the gold of our true nature. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. I thought I'd begin with one of my favorite metaphors for really the spiritual path, but in this case coming to a retreat. And it's described as if we're jumping off a plane with a parachute. and then we realize, oh my gosh, there's no parachute. And then we realize there's no ground to hit. And then we realize that there's no one who jumped.

Now, some of you may be thinking you're still at the, oh my God, no parachute stage of things, right? But what's interesting, I mean, one of the beautiful parts of the practice is realizing we've kind of jumped off together and some of the same experiences are coming up. And we all are noticing how in the midst, after we've jumped, in the sense of here we are, there can be this kind of frantic struggle for control,

the sense of, okay, how do I work with this one? And what am I doing here? How do I apply the right strategy? You know, if the figuring out mode, and you might have noticed how many moments that goes on, And then there's the what's ahead mode, including maybe for some what's going to be like when I get home? Nah, not this group, right?

Okay. What's the next four years like and onward and onward? And that, which reminded me, of course, of one of the great Zen stories of a novice at a monastery asking the Zen monk, so what happens after we die? The Zen monks said, I don't know. And the novices horrified. I thought you were a Zen monk, and the response was, I am, but not a dead one. So part of what we start facing, and this is every one of us, is a sense of the uncertainty,

the not knowing, and starting to watch the different ways we try to resume control, right? We are trying to do that, and sometimes it's real obvious with the looping thoughts and the reactive emotions and the planning and the tightening around. We're trying to control the inner weather. We don't want to feel it, and we're trying to make it different. One of the kind of Buddhist Western jargon, the terms for when we're frantically are in some way even not so obviously trying to control things is selfing,

that we're just in those moments. of trying to manage experience resurrecting a sense of the self that's here. In fact, in the moments of really not controlling all impressions of self-dissolve, but the self doesn't want that, so it keeps trying to control to resurrect itself. So it happens in real obvious ways, but even when we don't have a real task to do, because a lot of selfing is organized around the sense of I am doing this. I'm here to meditate, to try to work with thoughts, to try to manage to be with this emotion,

to be this way with other people. Even when we don't have a goal or a task, there's a default network in the brain, many of you've probably heard of this, that lights up, that starts presenting us with the future in the past, so we can keep oriented in a sense of a self that's here. It just happens automatically.

In other words, the brain is designed to keep fueling that perception of being a self. So one way of understanding the evolution of consciousness is that while that's going on, there's also a waking up that's recognizing how that's happening. all the controlling, all the looping thoughts, all the ways of contracting, a waking up to recognize that but not be identified in a narrow or limited way. That's just one kind of broad, simplified version of what's going on to recognize a larger belonging, a larger sense of beingness than this doing self.

and when we're in it we're not so caught in this self-focused attention. But it's difficult because thoughts keep happening, as you've noticed. One little cartoon, a bartender saying, I know I'm nobody, but I'm all that I can think about, you know. So meditation training, I mean, this training of our attention is really evolution way of this kind of self-training to wake us up from that limited self-sense. We pay attention, we train to pay attention to what's in the present moment, we pay attention to our relatedness, we pay attention to the awareness that's here. In this week together and during these days

being in the groups I've noticed so much how many of you are kind of on to, to yourself, so to speak, being able to notice the operations of selfing. I've just noticed that. And how many of you are getting more familiar with that what you might call presencing or resting in something larger that's noticing. And what I'd like to do tonight is explore one of the primary characteristics of a awakening that happens as we get more familiar with waking up at a selfing, and that is trust, that there comes a trusting in the really the what we are and in the process of emergence to experience

that what we are. It's the fruit. It's one of the fruits of practice. And when there's that trusting, some describe it as the fearless heart, that in that trusting, and trust is close to faith and the Buddhist or the Pali term for faith, Sada is to rest one's hard in what is true. But we just get to relax into what's here. And this fearless heart is that vast, awake heart that can include the fears, but it's not defined by them, not driven by them, not to be. driven by them, not organized around them. We'll explore this at a time that this characteristic of trust at a time when it's clearly very challenged on purpose. Right now, if we're talking about trust in our human potential to really wake up into loving awareness, to realize that

is our essence. And at these times, there's such a deep sense of doubt about human goodness. It's a critical inquiry, really. Gandhi was asked, what do you think about Western civilization? And its response is, it would be a good idea. Okay? So when we explore this kind of growing trust that I know is happening. I've had many of you tell me that it's happening. We're exploring it with the understanding that the way that it grows is by bringing a full presence to the places in our experience where there's mistrust. We're bringing a full presence to where the suffering is. I described this great circle of awareness that Joseph Campbell describes the line, and line and that below the lines where we're unconscious and above the line conscious. And that

part of this growing trust is the more we bring what's unconscious above the line, the more we're resting in a quality of wholeness of being in the truth of who we are. So we get familiar with that. We get familiar with that potential of who we can be. And I remember at my, it's probably in my first week-long retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, one of the teachers there asked us a question about trust. He said, how many hear trust that you're an awakening Buddha? I'm wondering, I'd like to ask you that question. How many hear trust that you're an awakening Buddha? Just spontaneous to see what happens. Okay. Thank you. When that question was, was posed to me, my first response was to raise my hand, and then after it, it started shining

a lens on all the moments I was below the line, caught in a smaller sense of self, and totally not trusting that at all, and recognizing, of course I do sometimes, and also knowing that over time, that's one of the things I can point to that has changed. So first, if we look really in an evolutionary way, mistrust is a given in the unfolding of all the species. I mean, just to think of in an existential way, all creatures have this perception of a self in here and a world out there. and with that, you know, the primal mood of the separate self is fear. There's a sense of something can go wrong, I'm temporary, things out there are threatening, I am dependent on things out there.

There's a basic mistrust and that brainstem and limbic system get organized around that to make sure things are going to be okay. So it's really, it's kind of a given that vibratory fear. and our limbic and our brainstem that says something could go wrong any moment. And then what we find is that we organize ourselves around ways to protect or defend or ensure we're going to be okay. And we have different ways of organizing ourselves. We have different needs that we're trying to take care of as we've been exploring here a lot. I heard one silly little story about three guys they're on this deserted island and they're desperate because they're going to die and

star, sun, etc. All of a sudden they find this magic lantern. It's containing a genie who grants them each one wish. So the first one goes, oh my God, yeah, get me, get me off this island, get me home where I'm safe, food and be okay. Vush, guys vanished. Second person, same thing, get me off this dreadful island, vush. Third one says, hmm, I'm lonely.

I wish my friends were here. So there's a reflex in us to go whatever the unmet need is to try to meet it. And the unmet need, there's a fear that something's going to go wrong. And then, of course, it gets really exacerbated by cultures. And the more the culture has a lack of there's less not belonging, natural ways of belonging in the culture to earth, to each other, to family, and so on. The more it's a limbic culture where you have to meet certain standards to be okay. and we all know what that's like. We know that the culture says, you know, have certain

kinds of looks and intelligence and competencies and money and so on. I like the way Dave Barry describes it. He says he was puny all his life, which is very painful for a male. He said, I totally missed the boat to Puberty Island. I was this hairless little dweeb with a voice in the Pinocchio range. One day my mom bless her heart at a talk with me. She told me that girls were not interested only in looks, that the qualities that really mattered were brains and a sense of humor. That little talk was long ago,

but it taught me an invaluable life lesson I've never forgotten. Mom's lie when they have to. So it gets exacerbated, this mistrust that we're not okay, this doubt in ourselves, and of course, doubt and mistrust of others that will be, accepted and okay. And one of the places it plays out as we, you know, become adults and take on these different roles in our work and so on is a sense of are we really good enough or doing our job or contributing well. And it's really quite astonishing, the more you learn about

imposter syndrome, how many people that are incredibly accomplished. in a deep way feel that they're a pretender and that they're going to be found out. And of course, if you really sink your attention into that, as long as we think it's an egoic self doing it, in other words, whatever we're doing, if I'm sitting here thinking that there's a self that needs to do a good job and a talk, there's going to be a tightness in the system because you can't trust the egoic self. You can only trust really what's there when there's not that identification.

The real truths and the love and the creativity and so on flow through when that sense of selfness is not blocking the way. So this is a little story that has to do with imposter syndrome. A young MD described doing his residency in OB obstetrics. And he was really embarrassed while performing pelvic exams, and he felt like, who am I and what am I doing and so on. So he said he found that his way of dealing and covering up that was to whistle softly. So he says, the middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing, further embarrassing me.

I looked up for my work and sheepishly said, I'm sorry, was I tickling you? She applied with tears running down her cheeks from laughing so hard. No, doctor, but the song you were whistling was, I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner. In a way, I'm being playful on purpose with it because every one of us is in the same soup where we all have this limit. conditioning to be afraid we're not enough. You know, if we're identified with our ego, we're going to think we're not good enough because we'll always sense the ego is just a sliver, a twisted sliver of the full reality.

We'll always sense that something's missing or something's wrong. And that that mistrust is exacerbated profoundly by the cultures and societies we're with, that sense of not enough. And it's particularly acute for those in the non-dominant culture because all the messages of the culture reaffirm a sense of a hierarchy and a less than. So for the most vulnerable populations, and this is what we're feeling so much right now,

that sense of not meeting the standard, that sense of being considered as threatening or inferior or a problem or immoral, and I'm referring to groups such as immigrants, LGBTQ, people of color, become subject to institutionalized injustice and violence in a way that creates deeper and deeper mistrust. Tony Morrison says in America, or in this country, being American means being white

and that everybody else has to hyphenate. So if you're not in the dominant culture, mistrust is going to be greater because you're more at risk. I think of people of color that already militarized police, huge racism, and the sense of how much worse can I get, it can get worse. So this mistrust is in the culture. Then, of course, the training grounds for us as individuals and the family, the less attachment bonding we had, In other words, the more messages of, you're not okay, you're not lovable, you're unworthy, we take in, and that fuels the limbic brain thinking something's wrong. So I'm painting a picture in terms of, in an evolutionary way,

that we are rigged to fuel mistrust. It's amplified by our families and our cultures. It's the survival brain doing its thing, and we have a more recently evolved brain that has this capacity to recognize that selfing that's organized around mistrust and begin to draw on the qualities of mindfulness, empathy, compassion, presence, to inhabit a larger space of being. a larger wholeness. And it doesn't mean we don't any longer have the fears that come with our human situations.

The fears are still there. But there's a larger space of awareness and resourcefulness that we can respond to them from. I want to share with you, this is a blog post, a friend of a number of us here, Aisha Lee wrote this, that I think speaks really powerfully to the realness of this limbic mistrust and fear and the possibility of evolving in a way to recognize it. It's titled Being Present, Numnus versus Strength. My son has recently had a gun held to his head and robbed of a small amount of money this past Wednesday. This is in Washington, D.C.

I was within a nanosecond of being another black mother torn asunder by the death of her black son. This tragic figure that is so common in our media that it is viewed and barely remarked upon. This is what happens to us, we black people. We get killed in everyday existence, and some even see this as our lives. I have always understood that my child, my black son, is at constant risk. My stomach tightens every time he leaves me. Now I am numb. I've talked to the police. I went to work, and I canceled the phone and made arrangements through the insurance company to get him a new phone. I am numb, not strong. I cannot fully deal with the idea of burying another child. The thought occurs that I have often mistaken numbness

for strength. The crash that awaited came as a surprise. It devastated me in part because I was unaware of its roots. I am numb, but because of the practice, I am aware of it and not lost in the only positive fantasy this society allots to black women that we are so strong in the face of real nightmares. Many of us carry outrageous burdens of awareness every damn day. Many of us are numb. The gift of the practice is awareness.

I am numb but aware of it. I am numb but aware of it. I am numb, so I am walking and feeling my body as it moves and awaiting the inevitable crash that will come with curiosity and hope. The crash will not surprise me and the hurricane of fear, despair, resentment, anger and tears will find me ready. I am numb.

but aware of it. So we're here learning about the power of awareness, this evolving consciousness. And there are two main pathways that we've been exploring and that are described really as ways of waking up. And I'd like to kind of sink into them a little bit more with the lens of how they then enable us to really trust who we are. And the two pathways are attending to the waves of what's going on. In other words, the waves right now of whether it's fear or shame or excitement or tiredness

or whatever it is, attending to the waves and through attending to the waves with full presence discovering the ocean-ness, that that's timeless, that vaster sense of being. And the second pathway is attending to the ocean directly, looking into awareness, sensing that ocean-ness, and then being able to from that resting and being of the ocean-ness cherish the waves. Those are the two pathways and we've been primarily emphasizing the first. We're just going to review it a bit, as I said, with the lens of trusting. But I want to bring in tonight the second because as you get quieter,

that becomes a powerful gateway to deepen the sense of space and awareness that's here. One of the best ways that Second Pathway has been described, Chogium Trunkpa, put up a big sheet of paper and he drew a little V on it. And he said, what's this? And everybody said, a bird, you know. And he said, no, it's the sky with a bird flying through. it. The way our brain is designed is to fixate on the bird, fixate on our thoughts, fixate on the emotions. We forget the space of wakefulness, that alert inner stillness, that place

and space of awareness that everything's happening in and known by. And to be fully, to have that fully evolved consciousness, we need the foreground and and the background. Does that make sense? Okay. The foreground. How to pay attention to the foreground and how that can awaken us and awaken trust. And I was trying to sense what story I wanted to share and the one that really came up for me strongly was one of my first very, it's kind of one of the most awakening experiences when I was much younger. I was 21. I was fairly new in an ashram. I lived in an ashram for about 10 years, a spiritual community.

It was a very rigorous yoga ashram where we wore whites and turbans and got up really, really early. And the whites were to represent purity. And we were trying to purify and cleanse ourselves and become who we could be. And I'm sharing that because the culture of this spiritual community was one that it was not, it was bad to have an ego. It made ego bad versus just a natural part of our development. And so for me, one of the big challenges that came up is that I went in and I quickly caught on to what it was like to look good as a yogi in this community. really quickly. And the way you look good is you do yoga like crazy and you be a good yogi and then you teach it and you go for it on teaching and you try to prove yourself serving

like crazy and then and so on. And I could check a lot of them off the list. I was like really shining on a bunch of them except for one, which was you're also supposed to be very dedicated and devoted to the teacher who was an Asian male who was very, into hierarchy and it was very, he had a kind of, yeah, he didn't believe that we should go out and into social activism. It was very rigid and hierarchical, and I had a hard time with that and with him. So I started having this self-doubt arise, and it was about, you know, I'm not a really good student because I'm not devoted to this teacher, but then I started to started deepening the self-doubt because I started seeing that in my striving to look good,

that it was all very self-centered. I just wanted to look good. I started, it was like all of a sudden this veil was lifted and I saw how many moments of my day what I was doing was to get approval. And so I got this flash of this egoic self trying to be spiritual and really discreet. disgusted by it. And I remember when I was driving in a car, somebody was driving, and I just had this flash of, I can't trust myself. So we had a women's group that would meet, and I remember building up my courage and going in there, and people were doing sharing about, you know, what homeopathic remedy did you use for what sickness and this and that. And I come out with, I realize that I can't trust myself. I realize now, in retrospect, I realize now in retrospect, respect that I was just like dropping this and I don't even know how they took it. I know that

the impression I created like I was doing great and everything was fine and all of a sudden to say you know I really actually hate myself. I hate the way I'm so selfish and self-serving and trying to prove myself and I'm disgusted by this. I don't know even what happened because I was so in the depth of the shame about it. I do know that I left the meeting and I went back to my room. The first thing I felt like I was just torn apart and I thought okay I'm going to do a whole lot of yoga right now and I said no no no no no that's more doing because the whole problem was this doing self you know that was always doing something okay oh well but I'll read from the scriptures as good a grand side these seeks nope no

no no I can't do that so I kept being stuck like I just got stuck how having to feel it. And it was hours of being torn up with shame and grief about badness. Hours. And but there was a consciousness that just knew that the only way to freedom was to be with as you are all getting more and more. By the way, this is before mindfulness training, but it was what happened. Gradually, the thoughts quieted. They do quiet over time, and the being with allowed for some more space,

which became more and more tender. And then I started from this vantage of tender, awake space, kind of viewing my life and seeing that self-character that was busy doing things and busy trying to get attention and approval, but just seeing that as just a... a human ego doing what human egos do. It was no longer with that additional, this is bad. And the more I watched and recognized that the more I could sense that the what I was was

this beingness that included those waves of personality and so on, but just was not identified by them. I remember having a thought that I'm of resting in reality. Like there was just this, I had found this resting back in reality. Years later, Srinar Sargadata, who's a wonderful non-dual teacher, found this quote where he said that really to be fully realized or enlightened is to have the realization that nothing's wrong with me anymore. I have, again, born witness here to the blessing of the being with that so many of you are experiencing.

and what it really comes down to is a shift in identity, that there's a movement from being identified as the fearful self or the ashamed self or the grieving self or whatever it is to a quality of beingness, of presence, of tenderness that is really felt as home. It's something we can trust. it's more essential or more core or more truth than any of the stories or narratives are temporary conditions that move through. It's like the sky and weather moves through, but there's a trust.

And I remember having a conversation with my mother about four years ago. She would come to the Wednesday night class and go back with me. I just taught a class on basic goodness and trusting our basic goodness. And so we get in the car and she says, so darling, what makes you know that goodness is more basic than our fear or our aggression or anything else? This is classic vintage, my mama. And it was a great question, you know, because we talk about really trusting who we are and the who we are is bigger than and that these are just changing, passing waves. It reminded me of the Buddha just that invitation, Ehi Pascico, which is, come and see for yourself, which really is to say that you here who have touched a quality of presence, tenderness, being with,

It's not like you can argue and say, oh, that's more basic, but there's a knowing that that's more the truth of who you are and you can watch the changing waves. There's a knowing of that. There's also a longing to trust it and that longing itself comes from some wisdom and love in us. When we're awake, when we're realized, there's the experience that nothing is wrong with me anymore. So we can look at what's happening here, this evolution of consciousness that we're all a part of, and we can look at it in terms of neurophysiology, that the brain's getting more

integrated, that you are activating parts of the brain, that instead of being dominated by the, you know, brain stem and the limbic looping going on, that you're activating parts of the prefrontal cortex, it's getting integrated, and with that integration, you're realizing a larger sense of identity. Or you can just think of it as psychological development that we go from an exclusive identity with the ego to recognizing something larger that's including the ego but resting in something bigger. In other words, we're never getting rid of anything. We're just larger. So from a spiritual perspective, we're realizing the awareness, spirit, the love that's awakening through these body minds.

That's what we're realizing. So talking about the first pathway of being with the waves and the Buddha modeled it under the Bodhi tree and the night of his awakening of just the waves would come, the waves of fear and shame, the ways of desire and passion, and he was just presencing, you know, be with it with great compassion and presence.

But as many of you know, the culmination of the story was the greatest challenge of Mara, which was doubt. Who do you think you are? Which is really a great question. Really? Because if we think we're a separate cell, then of course we're going to feel doubt. Because we're hitched on something smaller than the truth. So that was the challenge and the Buddha in that moment and this to me is one of my favorite

myths of the whole tradition, put his hand down and touched the ground and called on the earth goddess, called on this whole web, this living web of the universe to bear witness to his essential goodness to that awareness and love that was essential to him. So really he called on his Buddha nature and the form of the earth god. us to bear witness to his goodness. And it was at that moment that the heaven shook and lightning and thunder and that's when Mara finally backed off. And the Buddha, that's the moment the Buddha was considered fully enlightened when he woke up out of the doubt of a separate self, because that was the last tinges. And that is for us the last tinge of a separate self sense is that

doubt, that comparing mind that thinks, not there yet. Now I'm bringing that up because on this first path of being with the waves, we also have to also reach out often to what feels like is outside us to help us be with the waves. And sometimes we reach out and we've been practicing here to the love that comes through another being or we might imagine the Buddha, or we might imagine Kuanian, our God, or Jesus, our friend that represents love and wisdom. And one of the pathways that I found very, very powerful, especially in the last couple of years, that I wanted to spend a little bit more time here with, is reaching out to our own evolved consciousness. And very, very recently I've been using the language of our future self.

And just to explain that a bit, that what we're reaching out to, awareness is waking up through these body minds. So it's very powerful to sense on a relative plane that we're going to continue to emerge, that as we go through time, awareness will wake up more and more and be expressed through this body mind right here. And if you imagine how that might be down the road a little when it's more stable, more expressed, more manifest, and you call on that experience, you actually tap into what's always and already here. So you're using it as a skillful means. It's a bridge. just as you might call on the Buddha

and imagine the consciousness and awareness of the Buddha and just imagine that pouring into you and then you discover, oh, that's really what I am. That's already what I am, but we use that as a bridge. So I want to give you an example of one man who, in being in this first pathway of being with the waves, called on his future self. And this was a guy who's recovered,

alcoholic. Drinking had broken up his family. He was estranged from his daughter and very, they had triangulated and so, you know, there was a real hostility when he first left the family and so he supported her mother and but there was a lot of distance between them. So he lived in D.C. She was, she's been outside of Baltimore with her husband, five-year-old son. He did a 12-step program and through that 12-step program he then became a sponsor and he grew and woke up a lot became much more in touch with his caring and his authenticity and really his potential so he wanted to make amends with his daughter this couple of years ago wanted to deepen the relationship get to no grandchildren. So he began to make visits. And there were very civil visits. But he was really

self-conscious and he was aloof and had a really hard time being natural. And his daughter responded in kind. So the visits were kind of short and he'd bring something for a young son. There wasn't a lot of communication. So when he came to talk to me, he said, I'm stuck. Because in some situations on this, you know, it's like I'm not there. I'm just there. There's just a wisdom and love that's helping other people and I can really feel who I am. But I go and visit her and I'm back being this self-conscious tight person. You know, how do I get in touch with who I can be? And I don't know how many of you have had that, but I certainly know that experience of being in certain situations and having very little access to the more evolved, free, loving

goodness that's there. So we practiced together with rain, which is really bringing the wings of awareness to the waves and started right with that self-consciousness. And when he began investigating what he was believing was, I caused harm, she won't forgive me and I don't deserve it. that cluster. That's right back to that limbic shame, right? He was stuck in a kind of less evolved part of his being. And when he started registering how much pain, that sense of doubt in his goodness had brought to his life, that's really what had started the drinking going. If you really look back, and that's what had stopped intimacy for so long, that's when he really felt the pain of it. So, that's investigate.

And for nurture, he called on that future self, the one that was already manifesting in some situations as a sponsor and with certain friends who was deeply caring and also very spontaneous, much more natural and free. So he called on that future self and asked that that be here right now. And it was from that place that he began to bring a message to the part of him that felt undeserving. The message was really simple. You're trying. Your heart is caring.

Relax. Try to trust your basic okayness. That loosened him up. Hand on his heart. And he began to just merge and feel that he was that future self. That's who he was right now. He started experiencing life through the consciousness. of his more awake heart.

This is what he practiced over and over and over again. Every time he'd think about being with his daughter, he would pause and he'd feel the tightness. And the way he did, and this is a shortcut, and we're going to try it out together in a few moments. But what he'd do is he'd just imagine that his future self was in front of him, kind of looking at him, and just bringing awareness to the whole selfing process.

and then the future self was spreading through him and around him and just saturating his shame and his fear with love. Well, what happened was the visit started loosening. He became a lot more natural. He described one summer a day, he brought an ice cream maker for his grandson, and then his grandson fell asleep soon after eating a huge amount of ice cream, which is what happens. So rather than leaving, he sat on the porch with his daughter, and he had done enough rounds

that he felt like he had some access to who he was, and he started just naming what was going on for him. In other words, he revealed his vulnerability. He let her know how stuck he had been and how much he wanted to be who he could be with her and find their connection. And for her, she thought he was being dutiful in his visits. And that was when they both could really cry. And it came out of him calling on his potential

and bringing it to the waves of the moment. And I want to say that he still had the fears and the self-consciousness. He was just resting in something larger. So I just want to briefly try this out with you. So you get a taste because I have found whether you like the name, future self, you can drop that completely. It's really calling on your own awake awareness, pausing. And just as you sense yourself right here, you might scan and notice where today or yesterday

you felt caught in the selfing, in the waves that kept re-resurrecting that, that sense of small self, scared self, agitated self. A shame cell, grim cell, confused cell, caught below the line. Just take a moment to let yourself know about that. You can imagine that you're going to be bringing this and you don't have to use this guided imagery every time you want to practice but it can be useful for now. You'll be bringing this selfing self here and just imagine ten years, you know, and just years, 20 if you're younger, into the future.

You have to figure out what frame fits you. And imagine that you're going to your home in 10 or 20 years and you're going to see the self that's there, your future self, in some kind of feng shui place in your home, either standing or sitting, but just sense that that future self is a future self. is embodying, expressing, it's awake heart and mind. It's more stabilized, it's more available, it's living through your future self-body mind. You're going over to be with your future self and the future self is there very welcoming. Just imagine that you could shift positions and be looking through the eyes.

And with the consciousness of your future self at the selfing that's going on, at the looping of fears, the thoughts, the self-doubts, the mistrust, the anger, the hurt. You can be looking through the eyes and with the heart, the consciousness of your future self, bearing witness just the way the earth goddess bear witness for the Buddha. And then letting that awareness just circle around, embrace and permeate so that you're really merged with, that you're experiencing that consciousness of the future self, just filling you, surrounding you, permeating, and just notice for yourself how the consciousness, this evolved, the wake heart, is experiencing these changing ways of selfing.

how it holds these ways, regards these ways, letting the selfing unfold itself as it does in this consciousness and heart of the future self. Rumi writes, 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 cell, I am 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 the stars come through me. I'm the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival. So we open to the waves, bringing a presence, a kindness, a clarity and sometimes calling on that presence and kindness and clarity so that we can experience that we're the ocean

and the waves are rippling on the surface. We sense that enlarge belonging or beingness. The more we're familiar with it, the more trust. That's one pathway. The second pathway which we're going to be exploring more experientially and directly is looking right into awareness itself. I'd like to invite you as a way of exploring that to begin, just to open your eyes and in the quietness here, just stand up and move around for a few moments so that you're fully right here in your body for the next part of our exploration.

See what your body wants to do in terms of moving, stretching, breathing. When you're ready, please come seated. So, if the first pathway is the foreground, the second pathway is looking into the background of experience, which is that which is experiencing. And I'm curious how many of you have been as part of your practice exploring, looking back into awareness? Can I see by hands? Good number.

Okay. For those that are and those that aren't, the trickiness is that any time we begin to think about awareness, we're a million miles away. So, because awareness is prior to thoughts. That other thing to say is sometimes looking back into awareness can be the most scary and disconcerting and disorienting and jarring thing in the world because it reveals the very groundlessness that we are most of the time frantically trying to avoid. We're trying to seek ground.

So it's like the opposite. But there's an attitude that you can hold as you, you explore, they can really make a difference which is truly a light touch, just curiosity, letting go over and over again into whatever you're experiencing. And if it feels like it's stirring stuff up, either go back to paying attention to the foreground, which is the stuff that's stirred up, or shift your attention to calm yourself down. So take good care of yourself in the process.

There's a story in a classic sense story. the disciple Hu Kui asks his master Bodhi Dharma, please help me to quiet my mind. Bodhi Dama responds by saying, Bring me your mind so I can quiet it. After a long moment of silence, Hu Kui says, but I can't find my mind. There Bodhi Dama replies with a smile,

I've now quieted your mind. So the Tibetans put it this way, that the supreme seeing is a seeing of no thing. that when you turn to look if you're trying to find a thing, an object, a place to land, uh-uh, not going to happen. The way I like to begin sometimes, and I can't do it, and every time I do it, it works for me, I'll share with you, which is to take the next 10 seconds with this exercise, and that is, close your eyes.

Okay, 10 seconds now, try not to be aware. Okay, okay. That's enough. Open your eyes. And how many of you were able to do that? There's always a couple. And actually there are and that's okay too. But what you find most of the time is that awareness is just happening. It's the nature of things. So if you will, close your eyes again. This time consciously wake up the senses. So you're aware of listening, you're aware of sensations, feelings, maybe the movement of thoughts flickering in and out, sound, sensations are happening in the foreground. See if you can notice the background, the awareness that's noticing. Just gently turn the attention.

What's it like? Relax the attention and if you start straining and just again, and joy and settle into receiving the foreground of sound, sensation. You might intuit, you just gently sense, well, what's listening? That there's a wakefulness. You might sense that this background of awareness is open. Everything you're experiencing is happening in this openness, listening to sound. Just be the silence that's listening.

You might feel the aliveness that's here. your body, sensations, vibrations. Can you sense the stillness that's perceiving the aliveness? There's a Tibetan invitation into awareness utterly awake, utterly awake, senses wide open, utterly open, non-fixating awareness. The movement from foreground to background is simply to be aware with the senses, sound, sensations, feelings and gently turn and sense the presence that's here, that alert inner stillness that's aware. And then just let go and be that.

Let go and be that. You might explore how awake awareness that's here experiences the domain of heart, just resting as awareness and receiving whatever's going on in your heart right now. You sense the open-hearted awareness that's here, that everybody else that's here has the same heart space, it's really continuous heart space. We're all trusting in the same reality, resting your heart in what is true. Now we could close in the spaciousness of awareness, but one of the the great blessings of the path is that we sense this vastness, this timeless presence, and

it's with that timeless presence that we then respond to the waves, respond to the lives that are here, with love, with creativity. So as a way of closing tonight, this talk and this experience, just a sense of the that the glow of awareness becomes more and more luminous as we live from it. That our path is really to recognize above the line, this conscious awareness that's here, respond to the waves of the moment, more and more trust that this awareness is our home. I'd like to share a story that as part of closing that really brings it to living it on the path, that we leave and we are not so concentrated maybe, that we leave and we're

get lost and forget. But there's more and more of a sense when we wake up and remember of, oh yeah, this is who I am. I've touched this before. There's more and more of a sense of that there's not as much lag time that we respond to the beauty and to those that are suffering and those that are happy in a way that comes more spontaneously as the man in the story I told you. So this is written by Naomi Nye who is a Palestinian-American poet who really describes

how awareness comes alive in relationship here. She says, wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal. After learning my flight had been detained for four hours, I heard an announcement. If anyone in the vicinity of Gate 4A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately. Well, one pauses these days. Gate 4A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, has crumpled to the ground. She is wailing. Talk to her, the flight service person said,

what's her problem? We told her that her flight was going to be late and she did this. I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly. Shuddao Ah, Shubiduk, Abiti, Stana, Shue, Midfadlik, Shubit Tewa. 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 it.

them. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I'd stay with his mother until we got on the plane and would ride next to her, southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons for fun. And then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out that of course they shared ten 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? Well, this all took about two hours. She was laughing a lot by then, telling about her life. patting my knee, answering question. She pulled a sack of homemade Mamouel cookies,

glitter-powdered sugar-crumbly mounds mounds stuffed with dates and nuts out of her bag, and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single person declined one. It was a sacrament, the traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely one from Lareda. 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 children 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 that gait 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.

So we'll take a few moments again, if you will, to close your eyes. to invite the most awake, open-hearted awareness that's right here to fill your body, fill your heart, to sense it beyond your body extending in all directions this awareness, this shared heart space, field of awareness and sense what it means to trust or to rest your heart in the reality that's right here, sense the beauty and freedom of resting your heart in what is true. In the radiant sutras there is a place in the heart where everything meets, go there if you want to find me. senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that

is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon. Quiet ecstasy is there in a steady regal sense of resting in a perfect spot. Once you know the way the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here. I am at home here. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here. I am at home here. Namaste and thank you for your presence. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.