Tara Brach - Trusting Who We Are

Episode Date: July 28, 2010

2010-07-28 - If we investigate, we will find that much suffering arises out of mistrust--of ourselves, others and life. This talk explores the genesis of the great challenges of doubt and mistrust, and the pathway to trusting the goodness that is our essence. Please donate at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

I begin with something that was emailed to me this week, and it's a picture of a couple watching their flat screen TV, and the caption says, this week on the amazing race to enlightenment, can Jim and Susie achieve right mindfulness? And will Barb and Candy be eliminated for relentless clinging to the self? And what I love is it's so in the culture now. Have you noticed? I mean, the New Yorker, any cartoon, there's just mindfulness everywhere. And when I check around, you know, ask different teachers and so on, and I see here is that people are drawn for a really wide range of reasons to practice.

And for some, which is completely good and valuable, reducing stress, you know, learning to calm down some, to get more. more calm, to get more concentrated, to clear the mind, be less reactive, really, really important. And then it goes all the way to what the Buddha would describe as realization of true nature, this yearning to realize and trust who we really are, to truly awaken to that awareness and boundless love that's our essence. And it's the whole range for us. I sometimes call that true nature our natural goodness,

not in contrast to badness, but that goodness which is the truth of our belonging, of our wholeness of being. One Buddhist teacher, Munindraji, was asked some years ago by a student, come he practiced. And his response I thought was really important, which is to live the life fully. And Campbell put it similarly that we, more than anything, more than meaning, more than anything, we really want to sense that we're living it fully. And there can be an undercurrent

almost of despair when we feel like we maybe are skimming the surface some. I think of this really as the Buddha's invitation. Like if there's an invitation to the Dharma or to the practices, it's really fulfilling our potential to be fully alive, fully awake, and to love without holding back.

And I think we long for that, to love without holding back, to really live from our fullness. It's a deep yearning. And yet, if we're honest with ourselves, it's somewhat like we're at this banquet and there's all this potential that we intuit and yet we're tasting the appetizers

or we're not really we're really not partaking in the fullness of our potential and what the big inquiry is well what stops us I mean what stops us from fully engaging in practices the mindfulness and heart practices that really can free us up. Or what stops us from wholeheartedly engaging in our work

or in creative projects, are engaging in our intimate relationships, like really, really paying attention and being there. What stops us? So this is kind of the inquiry, and the Buddha's response, and the Buddha's basic teaching is, we live in what's called a trance or a dreamtops,

are a dream state much of the time. I mean, through huge swaths of the day, we're lost in thoughts, and we're not so in touch with the kind of ground of being. We're not in touch with maybe what some of you tasted a bit through the meditation, where there's actually a sense of, oh yeah, being here.

You know, these sound, this breath, that ding, you know. We're not always there for it. So the Buddha described this trans, the main characteristic, is that there's some driving force that wants life different than it is in the moment. This is the kind of nutshell summary of the Buddhist teachings, that in some way there's a sense that something's missing right here. We're kind of waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not. There's some waiting for something. are even maybe more acute,

there's some sense of want to get away from how it is now, there's just something more comfortable and better. But it's rare, and you can check this in your own life, it's rare that there's really that arriving and saying, this moment just as it is, and a real resting in it, without the kind of sense of, in some way, waiting for something else. It's rare that we have that sense of,

I could die now, you know, like this is it. This is it. Even that sense. Like our life is in some way in the past or the future, but what if this is it? I mean this right this moment, just as we're sitting here together, right, this moment. This is it.

That's radical and not so common. So the Buddha described this kind of drive and its fear and wanting that keeps us from that presence and the characteristic of it is that we don't trust the life that's here. There's something not trustworthy about it and if we look closely

and this is going to be the theme of tonight's talk we don't trust ourselves. There's a chronic sense that this person who's here needs to work out something to then be able to relax and be in the this is it moment that the person that's here

is in some way deficient, in some way wrong, in some way off. And so we doubt our potential. We doubt this unlimited possibility to realize loving presence and really live from it. We doubt that. And that doubt, and I talked about this last week, was the final challenge that Buddha had and this is part of the myth of his awakening, as he awakened under the Bodhi tree and was confronted by all these challenges

from Mara, which is the shadow side, the final challenge that was flung at him was this question, who do you think you are? Meaning you claim to be a Buddha, you claim to a Buddha nature, who do you think you are? So, tonight we'll

explore a bit both the nature of that doubt and how do we come to really trust ourselves? And by that, as we'll see, I don't mean trust that our ego is going to always do the virtuous thing or have thoughts that are high-minded or that we won't get caught up in fear and greed. That's a given. We can trust we will, right? But there's something deeper when we can see pass the veil that really is essence that we can trust. So when we start looking, we see that much of the day we're inside stories and the stories have a subtext of some limit, they're limiting stories about ourselves, that I have to do this to be okay and I'm not doing this right. And if it's, if it's about meditation or the spiritual path, the stories are often, I'm not meditating enough

are I'm not meditating at all on what's wrong with me are I'm not cut out for this or you know maybe I should do Sufi dancing that might be more engaging but I certainly can't quiet this mind and you know so we have that I'm not the spiritual type and then in daily life and we know it if we admit it to ourselves and look we know what our minds are like that we can be small-minded and jealous and critical if you've been with me before you'll know this is one of my favorite prayers and I like to share it

when I remember dear God so far today I've done all right I haven't gossip been greedy been grumpy nasty selfish or overindulgent and I'm very thankful for that but in a few minutes God I'm going to get out of bed and from then on I'm probably going to need a lot of help so so so the Buddha, who was then Gautama Siddhartha, doubted his Buddha nature. And that's basically the predicament we're in. We doubt our true nature.

And I'll share a story of one woman who came really face-to-face with Mara and this doubt. This was several years ago. I was teaching a radical acceptance weekend at Krapaloo in Massachusetts. And so this woman is

very, very responsible person. A dedicated in successful therapist and parent of three. And I asked a question to the group that I often will ask, which is really, what is between me, what is between me and living this life fully? What is between me and really living fully in this moment, or this day or this week?

And when I asked that question, she was quiet for a moment and then she started weeping. So there was something that got stirred up there. And for her it really was this flash of how much she was skimming the surface, waiting for things to be different to live her life, and that what she was waiting for was to be a better person. And her basic theme, as with so many, is not good enough. She always had the sense that she needed to do more, help more, be more,

before she could relax and have that, okay, this is it. This is the life right here. I'm not on my way to something else. Does that sound familiar to you? I'm hoping that this is, okay. So this was what she was living with. And she said to me, you know, Tara, I'm 62. I've raised three children.

Full therapy practice. I try to help. She, you know, was very involved in her congregation with diversity work and peace work. And she says, and I'm still on my way to being better, and I'm not here now. So this is, I remembered this and took notes because it felt like it captured so many of us who on some way don't feel like we deserve to be happy or to really rest or to really enjoy because we have to do more to be better first in some way. way. And sometimes the limiting beliefs are much more of a knife in our chest where we've done something unforgivable and it's not even a, doesn't even feel like a possibility. We don't even think we can dig ourselves out of the red. You know, we've done so badly. So it's not,

whether it's a strong self-story of failure or that more subtle one of still need to check more things off the list to be okay. That doubt in our inherent goodness, that doubt keeps us from really relaxing and inhabiting our lives. So we start to look then and we can start seeing that when it's strong, when we really mistrust ourselves, we mistrust others. And the stronger it is, the more animosity that we fixate on imperfections. I mean, it's never I don't trust myself that I see your goodness in a real way unless it's on a pedestal and very abstract and so of course globally it's that mistrust that sense of being cut off from ourselves and our own goodness that fuels the violence that's there because can you imagine someone

that's truly at home in their goodness I mean truly connecting with their own tenderheartedness and goodness and and love for others turning a set of people into evil others that deserve to be killed? I mean, it doesn't happen that way. So we begin to then say, how does this mistrust? What's the genesis of it? How does it unfold for us? And on an existential level, any being that's incarnates has a sense of separateness. That's part of the nature of being. born as there's a sense of a self in here and a world out there. And that's fine. That's part of our evolutionary heritage and we go ahead and protect that self and so on. And it's possible to sense underneath that our communion, our union, our oneness. But if there's certain conditions

present in our early life and our culture, then that severed belonging becomes really, really hard to overcome. So let's look at how does it happen we really mistrust ourselves? Severed belonging. There's some cutoff and it's usually in our early with our early caregivers that they were occupied with their own wants and fears sufficiently that they were not able to be attuned to our basic needs to be seen or understood and cared for. And the less attunement, the more mistrust. There's a sense of, I don't belong. Something's wrong.

So it's very much built into upbringing. It's not that we needed unconditional, perfect loving, but good enough, as it said, as Winnicott puts it. Good enough parenting. So there's a sense that we belong to the larger whole. I remember hearing one story about a young girl, I think a two-year-old who had, our three-year-old or something had discovered how if you put blue and yellow together turns green,

and she showed her mommy and her mom said, you know, show your daddy when he comes home. So that night, dad comes home. He's a Wall Street broker. He comes home on his cell phone. He's still on his cell phone as he walks in and this little girl, little Melissa's kind of saying, Daddy, Daddy, look, but he's on the cell phone and kind of ignores her and walks from room to room and gets some papers and goes into her office. And little Melissa's tagging after him, waving her sheets, you know, colored paper saying, look, daddy, look, he's not paying attention, he's still on the phone by his desk. She's tugging on his trousers. And finally, he looks down and says, Melissa, what are you doing down there? And she said, Daddy, I live down here. And there's something so sweet and so sad that that was her world.

and he wasn't engaging and attending. What is the message of that? Isn't it that you don't matter so much? You don't belong so much to my world? So it's the upbringing that severs that belonging and makes us mistrust our okayness. And then of course the culture, a culture of competition and greed,

and that you can't belong automatically. You have to prove yourself. you know, creates even a deeper schism. So we land up with a sense of, I can't trust myself to belong to be good enough, and I certainly don't trust the life around me. And when we begin to examine it, and here are some key points about that have to do with both suffering and freedom, that self-doubt, that mistrust that I'm okay. In order to keep, keep on being sustained has to be fueled by thoughts of what's wrong with me and the feelings that go with those thoughts. In other words, we have to keep believing those thoughts and feeling

those feelings. And the second point is that cycling of thoughts and feelings are very, very tenacious because it's part of our defense to hold on to our self-story of limitation. If we know it, not going to be hit sideways. If we know it, we can protect ourselves from being seen. We can cover it up. In fact, our personalities organize around what we think is wrong. So we hold on tight. And there's a classic Zen story whereby a guy is going for a walk on the top of a ridge and he sees a tiger, so he kind of jumps over the edge, holds onto a vine and this tiger's pacing above. Below, and thousands of feet below are these craggy cliffs. And so he, you know, in terror, he screams out, help, help. And he says, is anybody there? And then there's this booming voice. Yes. He says,

God, is that you? Yes, that's me. He said, God, can you help me? He said, yes, just do one thing. And the man said, I'll do anything. Just tell me. So God says, just let go. The man says, is anyone else there? You know? So it's like that. You know. It's like anything but. And that's playful, but consider how difficult it is to let go of our stories of what's wrong with us. How difficult is it to really trust this loving presence that's our essence and to really live from that, to trust that and be that? So the Buddha's invitation and the Buddha's promise is you have. that capacity to wake up out of trance. You can wake up out of any limiting story that is keeping

you from freedom. That is your capacity. The Buddha basically said, I wouldn't teach this Dharma, this path, if it wasn't possible. Every one of us, in some way, unless we're free, has stories we're believing that's keeping us from really trusting. our goodness, trusting our hearts, every one of us. And we each have the capacity in our consciousness to deepen presence and wake up.

So this is the next step of what we'll be exploring. Now, it's interesting in contemporary science that our potential for waking up, for freeing ourselves, is very much mirrored in the studies on neuroplasticity that no matter how deep the patterning, how deep the circuitry is,

or neuronal circuitry, you know, of thoughts and patterns of emotional reaction, it's changeable. It's changeable. And evolution shows the direction of that potential change. And it's been described in simple terms as going from self-preservation to species preservation,

Todor would say then as a belonging to all of life, really revering all of life. It's RELCA's description of widening circles, that we belong to widening circles. So this is the evolutionary potential that we move from living most of our day very fixated on how's this self-doing. Am I going to be okay? What else do I need to do? What's wrong? What's going to go wrong? And you shouldn't feel guilty if that sounds like you, because it's me and it's all of us.

We have a lot of time. We spend self-preservation. To a sense of what we're belonging to. How do we take care of all of us? And of course that is familiar to your care for others. And to it not being limited to just your family and close ones, as Einstein says, that that's part of our optical delusion of consciousness. that it's just our family and close ones we belong to. So the circles get wider and wider.

That's our evolutionary potential. Research also shows that mindfulness, this mindful presence that we're practicing here, stimulates the parts of the brain that correlate to compassion and empathy in this evolutionary shift. So I love the science piece, because maybe it satisfies part of my left brain, something like that. But I love seeing how science is like poetry, another metaphor, that shows us that there is this incredible potential to be free and to live from loving presence.

It shows us that. So how do we use mindfulness? And this is going to be very specific. How do we use it to address the limit? committing stories that keep us believing that we can't really relax and open to this moment. There's something more we need to do or be. There's something wrong that needs to be fixed. At the heart of the training, and I hope this sounds familiar to those of you that have been really engaging, at the heart of the training is beginning to watch our thoughts and not

buy into them. It's the training to wake up out of thoughts. This is not a training to vanquish thoughts. It's not a training that says thoughts are bad. It just says if you're living inside thoughts, you'll have no way of waking up out of your identification with them. They will tell you who you are and you're not that. You're not that. There's now a description of how as soon as we stop being very task oriented, a default network and our brain lights up that basically keeps us our mind focusing on the past and the future to keep some idea of a self incarnated in our brain so that we keep sensing a self. It's really interesting. It means that if you start to meditate and you find that your mind keeps flipping into commentary and thoughts, that's the way it's designed. We're designed to

keep being caught in our stories. So it takes a real intentionality to kind of calm down that default network in the brain and be able to rest in the awareness that notices thoughts, but it's not lost inside them. So we train. And I've used as a metaphor that I find very useful, the training is a wheel of awareness, that the hub, which is presence, vast presence right here now, is, you know, when we're not lost in thought. But like a wheel, there's these spokes, and our mind is constantly traveling out of these spokes and going to the past and the future and hanging out on the rim of the wheel and just spinning around and around in a virtual reality.

You know what I mean by virtual reality? We're not in the actual contact with our senses. We're just kind of circling, right? So the training is actually kind of simple. Notice when you're on the rim. You know, notice when your mind is circling. And just without forcing the mind, just to notice that, and you'll find in the noticing, it's possible to relax back into this moment's experience.

These thoughts, these feelings, these sounds. In noticing, there's some space. that opens up. And that space is the hub. That space is the presence that frees us. So we begin to come out again and again from the rim back to this openness to this presence. So we can start to notice there's a certain pattern of thoughts that most snags us. And those are the thoughts of something's wrong with me, something's wrong with you. Tonight we're focusing on self-doubt. So let's look a little more at how when we are snagged by the self-doubt thoughts, it's very hard to stay in the hub.

You just go right back circling on the rim of what else you need to do or what else you're upset about. How do we wake up out of that pattern? Okay. And of course, as you know, with most of these classes, I'll be asking you to consider a story about yourself that is limiting, something that you tend to get caught in where you feel in some way like this is unforgivable or I'm a failure or I don't have the potential to or something like that. So keep that in mind.

In describing how we begin to free ourselves from this mistrust, this self-doubt, I'll go back to the woman I was describing from this weekend workshop. And for her, when I would mention the words basic goodness, it was a far-fetched idea. It was like, okay, I get the abstract concept, but inside her there was just a sense of, yeah, I have these virtues, but, you know, I've got a long ways to go. So I did a what I call sometimes mindfulness and action kind of practice. and I had the participants each come up with in some way some event or experience when the sense of not enough was really strong.

So if you were doing it, you'd be thinking of sometime recently that really triggered your sense of falling short, your sense of failing. And I had them do that, and her event was, or a series of events, was that her mother had been sick, and she was being very, very responsible in helping to take care of her mom and providing for her needs, but she felt like she wasn't really giving her quality time.

She was being dutiful but not heartfelt. And in her mind, not really providing companionship was just a perfect example of how selfish she was in a deep way. I then had the folks at the workshop take a posture that expressed that feeling of failure or whatever it was and for her it was kind of like her body was facing her mother but her head was turned away as if she was there but not really there okay

and then I'd ask them to really get inside that and feel the feelings and so this is really no different than when we're practicing meditation and something comes up and we say okay really feel what that's like and this is just a kind of a helper to feel it strongly so she went inside the feeling of that and in the selfishness and it was shame you know shame that I'm selfish she was ashamed of her egotism that that in some way she couldn't she wasn't open-hearted enough to really give meaningful time that she was still numro uno kind of just doing or doing things on her own priority list and that opened to a feeling of shame and failure with her partner and with her children and so on.

Again, she had been a responsible good mother from external criteria, but inside she felt she wasn't enough. So that was her contacting the experience and the story. And then I had them step out of the posture and call on presence. And now I'll remind you of the story of the Buddha again, which was, When he was challenged by self-doubt, he reached out and he touched the ground, and he called on the earth goddess. He called on the earth mother. He called on the web of belonging, what he truly belonged to, the wholeness and love and aliveness.

It was really his nature. He called on that to bear witness to his goodness. And when he did, and I described this, last week a bit, the skies darkened and there were thunderbolts and, you know, Mara basically backed off, the shadow God backed off, and the Buddha was free. And that was the moment of his enlightenment when he woke up out of that self-doubt. So what he did was he reached out and touched the ground of presence, of loving presence. And this is what in this exercise, I had them do, step out of the posture and kind of really reach out to and occupy that kind of loving presence

and look at themselves through the eyes of loving presence. So what you'd be doing is looking at yourself through those eyes and seeing what is really true. And when she did that, she saw, yes, my ego does get occupied and self-centered. And I love my mother. And when she saw that and she was again standing outside the the she had stepped out of that posture that's when a different kind of tears started flowing because she realized yeah there's an ego but there's love there and she was able to then communicate to her own heart to the place that was mistrusting saying forgive the conditioning it's there it's in everybody and trust the loving that was her message to herself trust the loving We finish the exercise by me asking a question I ask often, which is really, really important,

which is what would your life be like if you weren't believing in any limiting story about yourself? Now, this doesn't mean that you're in some kind of glossing over where there's things that need to be paid attention to. If you're caught in an addiction or you're lashing out, it's not glossing over that. But it's seeing that, and with an incredibly wise and forgiving heart, also being able to see behind the veil to the goodness and trusting that. And some people wonder, well, if I see that, maybe I'll never really take care of the stuff that needs attention. Doesn't happen that way. if you more and more begin to taste and trust that really pure good heart that's right now listening and feeling in there I guarantee that that will guide you in terms of working with the conditioning of the ego that's difficult

I've never seen change come because we criticize and hate ourselves into changing. It's because we get more in touch with who we really are. And then the ego begins to find its way of aligning more with the heart. I share this story partly because for this woman, and I heard from her afterwards, when she asked that question, who would I be if I didn't believe in these stories and what would my life be like. I mean, she really got a flash of the joy that's possible, if not living inside, that something's wrong with me story.

And in fact, she found that she went home and she had much more of a natural way of arriving with her mom that was playful and alive. And she also took up photography, which she had put down for many years, and she just became more inhabiting herself. But I share it partly because when going through that process with her reminded me of what I had gone through as a parent with my son Narayan.

And I had been writing radical acceptance during key years of, I think went between his ages of 9 and 15. And it gave me a lot of fuel for writing. I mean, I got to share some stories about it. But one of the undercurrents was this ongoing sense that, in some way I was short-changing him and a lot of pain around feeling that I wasn't the mother, that the ideal mother that I had in my mind. And it was very, very painful. And what I came around to was pretty much what this woman came around to, which was if I could pause enough

to really check in and really sense, I love him. And I'm doing it imperfectly, but the love is pure. then it was okay and in fact the more I relaxed about it being okay the more I actually would come through for him because if I wasn't resenting myself I was much more fluid with him there's a lot of ways of beginning to trust our love but one simple way

and you can try this right now if you just close your eyes and just take a moment to pause right now and you might as I do have somebody in your life that you know you love, but you also feel guilty or feel like you're not coming through in certain ways. And you might let that person come to mind. You might sense how your habit is to kind of judge

yourself or not being attentive enough or being too reactive in some way, too judgmental. So just to notice that. And this is just a brief exercise. You can practice it more fully on your own. And then maybe let that all fade to the background and as if you could bring the person right here, front and center, and just see the person's eyes and sense what those person's eyes look like when they're loving you or when they're happy, when they're laughing, when they're feeling good themselves. Just sense the goodness of that person, what you do love about that person. And you might imagine just whispering mentally thank you. Thank you for being alive and thank you that this love is here.

You might imagine touching them lightly or kissing them on the cheek or whatever it is that is affectionate for you. Just saying thank you and offering that. So you can put aside a lot of the other stuff and just really let yourself know that love is here. Even if it gets all kind of weighted down by other stuff, it's here. And just to honor that. Because honoring that is part of trusting who you really are

and having there be a shift from fixating on the conditioning, the small self-trance, to really beginning to trust the essence. of being. The poet Dana Fawlds writes this. She says, why wait for your awakening? The moment your eyes are open sees the day. Would you hold back when the beloved beckons? Would you deliver your litany of sins like a child's collection of seashells prized and labeled? No, I can't step across the threshold you say, eyes downcast. I'm not worthy. I'm afraid and my motives aren't pure. I'm not perfect. My meditation isn't deep. Do you value your reasons for staying small more than the light shining through the open door?

Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself. Now is the only time you have to be whole. Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true self. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Please, oh please, don't continue to believe in your stories of separation and failure. This is the day of your awakening. You can open your eyes. So one of the beautiful things about this path of opening out of the self-doubt, the mistrust, and beginning to choose to trust ourself, to pay attention in a way that wakes up that trust,

is that we then start seeing who else is there. Instead of seeing the limited self, what I sometimes call the spacesuit self, we start seeing who's behind the veil. We start seeing another person's heart, another person's beauty. I was very moved with one parenting story, a mother described a son who had pretty serious disabilities now in his 20s, living independently,

but struggling. And so she worried about him incessantly and asked me, you know, should I send him white light? You know, what should I do? And as I often do, I say, sure, if that feels right, go ahead and send him white light. But more perhaps is the deepest gift is see who he really is. see who he really is. In other words, step out of your role as mother and him as son, and remember what you are. Remember this mystery and presence and truth that's what you are, this living presence.

And look and see who he is. And I asked him, and she said, well, he is mischievous and funny and gentle and kind and creative and all these beautiful things that didn't necessarily translate to, you know, wild success on the corporate ladder, but translated to good personhood, you know. So this was her new prayer. It was, you know, may I really see who he is? And she described it that the more she could, instead of fixating on him as a problem, she could see who the light that was shining through, the more she became a healing energy in his life. She drew, she helped

him become more confident. That's the gift we offer. If we try. trust the goodness here, we begin to trust and bring out and wake up the goodness in others. It's quite beautiful. Some speaking tonight a bit about the evolution of consciousness, that it's part of our culture and it's part of the way consciousness evolves, that initially there's a sense of separation, there's war, there's turning against ourselves, there's living in stories. That's just the way it is. the invitation of the Buddha, which is such an amazing invitation,

is this message, and it's a message that says, each one of us has the potential to realize our goodness and to live from that, each one of us. And so he taught different techniques that we'll find in all the wisdom traditions. This is not limited to Buddhism, that if we choose, in other words, if we leave tonight and there's a little more of us that says, I don't want to live in a small identity. I really want to touch this heart.

I want to love without holding back. I want to sense my belonging to life and live on this earth in a way that helps to save this earth, not in a small-minded way that contributes to her destruction. If we say I want to live in a way where I'm with somebody and I actually look at that person and see past the veil to who is there, who is looking back. If that's what we have a commitment towards, then the practices of presence will wake us up in that way.

Close with that. These are the words of Shanti Deva who writes so simply. he says, as a blind man feels when he finds a pearl in a dust bin, so am I amazed by the miracle of awakening rising in my consciousness. So let's close our eyes for a moment and we'll take some of what I've described and practice a little bit with it. And you might start in a very simple way as you pause, just feeling your sincere intention to to find that healing and freedom in your own being and for the benefit of all beings, just to sense that intention and sense that possibility.

And if you were to ask what's between me and really being happy or more free, and to look and just sense, you know, what is it? What is the way that I might be limiting myself? What belief or story? And just for a moment, give it a voice so that you can listen. It might be a story of, you know, I will never have the capacity to really be intimate with anyone. I'll always fail at what I do or really will never contribute in an important way or others will never really love me or whatever the story is. might be more like that woman who just said,

I just have to do more to be okay. Whatever the story is, whatever your way of not trusting, basic goodness, just to notice it and let yourself feel how it's confined your life. Just let yourself notice how it's kept you from living the life fully, loving fully. Part of opening the door and letting the light through is just noticing what's confined us. It can start to open up compassion.

You might sense that, sense that you don't want your life to be confined. You want the best for this life. So out of that longing, you might sense how you can touch the ground just as the Buddha did and call on presence. That you can call on your own highest self, call on your own highest wisdom,

compassion or if it helps you to sense that you're calling on the bodhisattva of compassion or the Buddha that's fine too but look through the eyes of your own highest self or through the eyes of the Buddha

through the eyes of compassion at yourself really honestly look and sense both the conditioning that makes you judge yourself you know the conditioning to be self-centered or the conditioning to be fearful or the conditioning to be in some ways jealous or selfish or whatever it is just to honestly acknowledge the conditioning but also have that the eyes of

compassion and wisdom to see the goodness that's there what your deepest intention is what you really care about might be that you care about others or your care about waking up might be that you care about presence, that you care about life. Since whatever message your own highest wisdom wants to offer inwardly right now that can help you to step out of the story and into the truth of who you really are. What do you want to remember? What do you want to remember next time you're caught in the story and the feelings that will help you to reach out and touch the ground of presence.

I'd ask yourself, what would my life be like if I did not believe in this limiting story? What would I be if I didn't believe in this limiting story? Just feel your own intention when you remember to touch the ground, to remember presence. closing with the words again of Shanti-Dava. As a blind man feels when he finds a pearl and a dustbin, so am I amazed by the miracles of awakening,

rising in my consciousness. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you would like to contact the Insight Meditation Community of Washington to make a donation or to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www. www.imcw.org be.