Tara Brach - Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk) - (2017-12-30)

Episode Date: March 23, 2018

Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk) - (2017-12-30) - The sign of spiritual freedom is a deep trust in our essential nature, and in the light of awareness that lives through all beings.  This talk explores the conditioning that entraps us in a trance of separation and believing in a limited self.  We then explore the evolutionary shift in identity that is possible as we deepen our attention and presence to the life that is here, and the loving awareness that is the source of existence. This talk was given at the IMCW 2017 New Year's Retreat. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations 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. Namaste and good evening. So I thought I'd start with one of my favorite templates for the spiritual path and in a way a retreat as a kind of microcosm when we are paying attention that it's like jumping off an airplane and realizing that we don't have a parachute and then realizing really that there's no ground to hit because everything's changing and then realizing there really was no one that jumped.

So you're jumping up playing and really is that it's no parachute that really we can't control what's happening. And you've got that one you know, right? That it just happens. And we start getting that we think we're going to hit ground. Maybe we hit something, but then there's something else and something else. Things keep changing. And then the one that might seem more elusive is, but really nobody jumped.

It's not really happening to somebody. It's happening. But not to somebody. But we'll explore that a little. That's part of what I'd like to look at. When we're suffering, it feels very much like, even though we don't have a little. a parachute, we're trying to invent a parachute moment by moment. We're trying to control. And when we're suffering, even though things keep changing, we think that in some way we're

stuck. It's not going to change. And then of course, when we're suffering, we think intensely it's happening to me, our um-causing it. There's just some of the signposts. So the inquiry tonight is one of the core inquiries on a spiritual path, which is really how do we realize and how do we trust this path, this process, this beingness that's here, so that we're not so wildly trying to grab the controls, so we're not always fearing the ground we're going to hit. How do we trust? The suffering self goes around with the sense, that there's a problem. How do we get it that things can feel bad, but it's not a problem? So there's a kind of a metaphor, kind of legend from India, that talks about a musk deer,

that detects this kind of mysterious, heavenly fragrance, and it has a sense of peace and love to it. And so it feels like it's being beckoned. And the whole purpose of its life is it's compelled to find the source of this fragrance. And so he sets out and he just travels, you know, goes over these icy forbidding peaks and through, you know, torrential storms and steamy jungles and across endless desert sands and so on. Finally, No finding of the scent. Just finally, at the end of his life, exhausted from the effort, he kind of topples over and his horn pierces his belly, and that scent that he was pursuing his whole life fills the air.

So it is with most of us that there's a sense that, and these are what I consider like the key delusions of the separate self, that there's something that. something we're wanting that's down the road. It might even be, you know, tomorrow at the end of the retreat and it might be 20 years from now, but it's down the road and it's out there, it's outside, it's not right here, it's not right now. And it's either, if it's possible, it's not yet, and sometimes it's not even possible. And that who we are is really a self-with-the-problem.

that has to get through the problem first. So the musk deer does not trust what is right here and what is right now. And the Buddha and every major spiritual, mystical tradition, teaches this, it's really a radical reminder that what we seek is what we are, that even when we're most neurotic and confused, and most hopeless still, that which we're longing for, that awakeness and freedom and open-heartedness

is available right here, right now, that we're no more separated from it than a wave is from the ocean. So those are the teachings, and the process of enlightenment or spirit, spiritual awakening is one of awakening from the separate self that feels I've got a problem, you have a separate self that's trying to get somewhere, to this realization of beingness that it's here. It's a widening and an opening of our sense of identity. I sometimes like to think of it in terms of waves and ocean that awareness hitches its identity to a pattern

of waves and that the awakening is realizing the ocean esthet is filling this pattern of waves is really what we are. So the realization has got all sorts of different language to it. And this came up the other morning. For some people, the realization would we be discovering our true nature, our beingness, or divine love, our God, the mystery. all these different words, but they all point to this original intrinsic nature that we have, this awareness and love that's really our essence.

So the key intuition on the path that brings us here and that, and when I say here, brings us in some way to situations where we can deepen our attention. that brings us to processes that help us wake up. This intuition is that it's possible, that something in us senses our potential to be more free. I remember one of the first long retreats I attended, it was a six-week at IMS. One of the teachers, I have no idea who it was now,

said something like, do you trust that you're an awakening Buddha? That you've got that Buddha nature, that potential to realize. And in my mind, and it was kind of, it wasn't quite a hand raised, but he was really asking. And I remember thinking, yeah. And sometimes, you know, I kind of deflated. And I started tracking, I had this inquiry, which was,

who am I taking myself to be at any given moment? And I started tracking how many moments I was taking myself to be, you know, a self who wanted to prove herself, as Jonathan was mentioning last night, you know, look good in an interview. And a self that was on the way to the lunchroom and was really fixated on food, or the self that wanted to look good, you know, wearing the shawl or just how I appeared to others when they weren't even looking at me, you know, that kind of thing. And in those moments, the trust in Buddha nature was at best an idea, and mostly at those moments I didn't really like myself.

I didn't trust myself. And then there were other moments that there was quietness. my mind was getting quiet, or in nature walking, you know, or doing a practice and really feeling love, when it was just, yeah, that goodness is here. So we kind of remember and connect with it and we forget. But as you've probably discovered, there are big swaths of time

that we're in that kind of trance where we're taking ourselves to be a self that's separate and in many ways not okay. So I want to look at that because almost always, if there is a sense of I'm a self here and things are happening to me and I'm on my way somewhere, deep down there's going to be mistrust and self-doubt. Why? Because we're not inhabiting the truth and fullness of who we are, we're living in it just a fragment of who we are. And something in us knows that.

So we don't like or trust the self we're inhabiting. It's too small. It's like we're in the cocoon. So the path of waking up, we start noticing that we're stuck. There's a sense of being in something too small. Being in a kind of ego trance, a virtual reality. we're believing thoughts that are limiting. Annie Lamotte writes,

my mind is my main problem almost all the time. I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out, but it likes to come with me. So we start sensing, as we're here, we start shining a light on, okay, caught in the story. And we start sensing how, when we're in the story, there's a lot of, you know, fear and anger and sometimes shame or whatever.

but we can get really lost in it. One writer describes an older gentleman knocks on his son's door. Jamie, he says, wake up. Jamie answers, I don't want to get up, Papa. And the father shouts, get up, you have to go to school. Jamie says, I don't want to go to school. Why not ask the father?

Three reasons, says Jamie. First, because it's so dull. Second, the kids tease me. And third, I hate school. And the father says, well, I'm going to give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it's your duty. Second, because you're 45 years old. And third, because you're the headmaster.

Big problem when we believe the story, when we're in the dream. And when we're in it, usually in some way we're failing or we're unlovable or we're unseen. And we need to change. else somebody else needs to change for us to be okay. That's before we've made the U-term. It's like it's your fault. There's a saying that man marries woman, expects she will not change. She does. Woman marries man expects him to change. He doesn't. Believing your thoughts, believing the virtual reality is trouble. I read that 86% of all statistics are made up.

Come on. All right. So you cannot sustain the thoughts, the trance, unless you are in a kind of one of those incessant thinking, inner dialogues, and you're believing your thoughts.

I always find that when people leave retreats, often the biggest single takeaway. This is really the number one takeaway. I don't have to believe my thoughts. If you can leave with even a little more of a sense of that, enormous freedom opens up. But we do believe our thoughts. We get caught in believing the fearful things that are coming up in our mind that they're true. There's one story, some of you might remember, that I think exemplifies some, because when we're believing

our thoughts, our body goes along for the ride and has all the feelings that go with the belief, of course, which then loops to feed the belief, which then loops to feed the feeling. Does that make sense? This looping we get in? A couple from Michigan decide to go to Florida just to get a break from the winter and they're going to spend their time at the same hotel where they went had their honeymoon 20 years earlier. But because of their schedule, they had to leave at different times, and he got there first, and she was going to fly in the next day. So there's a computer's room, so he decides to send an email,

and he accidentally leaves out one letter in the email address and sends the email. Well, somewhere in Houston, a woman had just returned home from her husband's funeral. He had been a minister many years, and he was called home to glory following a sudden heart attack. So the widow goes, she goes home, she decides to check her email, and she looks at the first message, and she faints. The widow's son rushes into the room, and he finds his mother on the floor, and here's what was on the computer screen. Two, my loving wife. Subject, I've arrived. date 20th of March 2016

I know you're surprised to hear from me they have computers here now and you're allowed to send emails to your loved ones I've just arrived and been checked in I see that everything's been prepared for your arrival tomorrow looking forward to seeing you then hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was P.S. sure is hot down here

So believing our thoughts. You know, it's a fun one, but there's a good reason we often quote Mark Twain, who said, you know, the worst things in my life never actually happened, right? And it's because our mind just runs through all these scenarios, and we live in fear of what's around the corner. And it's really quite profound when we sense how much our body is to tensing against what we think might be around the corner. How many of you have noticed that?

Yeah. Okay. So often our, as I'm mentioning, our thoughts are fear-based. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're divided into this is good. I like this. This is bad. I don't like that.

So we're constantly evaluating what's happening, constantly putting a layer over it of, I want, I like, I don't want, I don't like. It's very much shaped by our mood. It's also developmental. There's some beliefs that are more when we're younger and then we adopt new ones as we get older. For one young person, an eight-year-old loses a tooth and she's curious about the tooth fairy.

So she asks her mom, mom, are you the tooth fairy? And her mom realizes, okay, it's time for her to step out of that old one. And she goes, yeah, I am. and seemed like her daughter took the news. It's kind of jarring news, but took it well, and so the mother heads to the door, but then the daughter says, Mom, wait, I have a question.

How do you get into the other kids' houses? So we don't let go so quickly. Anam Thubton, who's a wonderful Tibetan teacher, puts it this way. Can we see that there's a mental world that we've created somewhere in our consciousness? It's a mind-created world that we've been living in forever. The world we must awaken from is the world that the mind has constructed.

So reality, it's beyond this mind-constructed world that we're in. When we're in this mentally constructed universe, the protagonist is self. I'm sure you've noticed that, that the self is the main player. and it's all about what's happening to me or what's caused by me. There's an owning of experience when we're inside a mind-constructed reality. I own these feelings. Man says to a bartender, I know I'm nothing, but I'm all that I can think about. Right?

And then poet Wei Wu-Wei says, why are you unhappy? because 99.9% of everything you do is for yourself. And there isn't one. So as mentioned, to maintain the story of self, we have to keep telling ourselves stories about what's happening. And the power of what you're doing here with meditation is you're on purpose noticing, oh, I'm in a virtual reality.

Let's open out of it. Let's relax open. So you can begin to see more and more, and you're noticing more and more that the stories are happening. And in the moment you become mindful of a story happening, you're not as inside the wave, you're not as identified, you're not believing it as much. It becomes more transparent. that gives some opportunity to recognize what the stories have been covering over. And what the stories cover over, it's kind of if you imagine a light bulb with kind of a material over it

that just darkens everything. The stories are like that surrounding felt or material. When you start having the stories more transparent, not as believable, light starts shining. through. It's like that radiance of your being this start shining through. In the Carlos Kashanata books, the Shaman Don Juan says that we maintain our world with our inner dialogue. A man or woman of knowledge is aware that the world will change completely as soon as they stop talking to themselves. So, when you start noticing the stories, and these are limbic stories, they're driven by fear and wanting, and you start noticing them.

And in the noticing, they lose their energy some. In a kind of psychobiological way, you start having more access to the more recently developed part of your brain, the frontal cortex. When you stop burning the stories as much you actually have more access to the frontal cortex, which is the site of mindfulness, compassion, perspective. When you have access, you're more in touch with your heart and your spirit. You're more able to be true to your values, to what matters. I heard a story some years ago.

A woman was describing time with her dying father, and he had been kind of a larger-than-life figure. He'd been an architect, pretty well-known, designed buildings and urban centers. and so on. And he was a very driven guy, like his identity and his work were merged. And so being so work-focused, he had been pretty neglectful as a parent. So they had a pretty distant relationship, and there was a lot of tension, and she had to do a lot of psychological work to, you know, be with that wounding. But here he was at the end of his life, and they

they were spending a lot of time together. So she recounts a moment where she was saying, well, tell me about what your accomplishments or what was the accomplishment you felt most proud of. There was a long pause, and then with tears in his eyes, he looked at him and he said, why, you of course. And when I heard this story, I thought, well, it's amazing how impermanence,

when we're aware of mortality, it changes. The stories stop running in the same way. I need to do this and accomplish this to be better at that. And in a way, we get access to more of the depth and dimension of who we are. And I think part of what we practice is so that we don't have to wait till the end of our lives to get that perspective. Does that resonate for you? So we look at the path and we say,

Okay, so what helps us to trust who we are beyond this small self that's striving or wanting and deep down doubting itself? What helps us to trust really who we are? And when we look at the mythology of the Buddha, the Buddha's story, I think of it as a story of making an evolutionary shift in consciousness. making that shift from the egoic self that's really driven by these stories and driven by the fears and the wants and the sense of separation and doubt to the sense of our beingness, which in a, again, the body-mind way, it's an integrated brain that allows for the heart and the spirit to shine for it.

It's an evolutionary shift in human development that the Buddha modeled. And so if you look at this story, and I'll just name a few key points, we can see more clearly what we're doing right here. And the story starts getting juicy when the Buddha encounters three heavenly messengers, encounters aging, sickness, and death, the sense of change and suffering. And so he goes, he ventures forth to find a way

really to make room for all that, to be of all. all of that. And he takes it at first in a less mature way where he tries to strot, he does it through the striving and the self-deprivation and finds that doesn't work so well for him, you know, the sense that you're supposed to be perfect or make progress or deny yourself or that didn't work. So then he paused and the bode trees were he paused. And that's where we are. So we have paused before the Bodhi tree and we're sensing, okay, let's deepen attention right now. And through the night, that famous night of his awakening under the Bodhi tree,

the process going on was he was encountering all those limbic energies that we all know about, the anger and the shame and the fear and the desire in the form of Mara, the God Mara. He was encountering them and he was meeting them with the two wings of awareness. He was meeting them with mindfulness, seeing what's happening. That's the recognition, and sometimes the investigation. And he was meeting them with tremendous compassion. And through the night as Mara attacked, because that's the imagery of the metaphor, this limbic energies attacking, you know, slings and arrows and so on, as the Buddha engaged with this

presence that we're really cultivating here, of recognizing and allowing, they turned into flower petals. And by the time the morning star had risen, there was a big mound of flower petals, his feet. And the Buddha's identity was shifting. He had shifted from, you know, the one that was striving and depriving and so on to this presence, this open, caring presence that was able to be with what came. But he wasn't completely free. So Mara pulled out the final major challenge, which I know many of you know. What was that final challenge?

Say it loud. Let's hear it. Doubt. All right. Let's hear it for doubt. It's like singing, I'm not enough, you know, doubt. It's a big one. It's really big.

So doubt, doubt was the one. And the Buddha, when encountering doubt, which really took the form, the Mara said, who do you think you are? Like, who are you taking yourself to be? And that's doubt was major because it shined a light on where the Buddha wasn't totally trusting. his Buddha nature, right? So in those moments, he reached out and he touched the earth, and that's a symbol of calling on the earth goddess, which is really calling on this whole universal web of loving awareness, this whole living world, to bear witness, to nurture him

in a way and reminding him of his goodness. You are good. You are the Buddha. You are awareness. And it's in those moments. This is why I love this so much. He reached out and he called on loving presence. It's in those moments that doubt, that sense of that small self dissolved, and he rested in the trusts and the light and the radiance of his true nature. So here we are. And there are times that we feel doubtful.

And we need to recognize. doubt, really contact it, and also turn towards love, call on love. And sometimes it's going to feel like we can call on love and offer to our own self. And sometimes it's going to feel like we need to call on love and sense deities or loved ones or our dog or a child and let the love come that way. Do you know, in the long run, there's no difference. We have this. We have this idea that we're not supposed to source only from inside, there's no real inside and outside. We're calling on love.

If you call on love from the earth goddess and you feel it pouring in, what you're going to find is that love was always a part of you, you just were forgetting. So if you feel caught and you can offer yourself kindness, just sense what source you might call on in the universe because there is kindness in this universe. Call on it and you'll reconnect with your universal belonging in that way. So these are the key elements in the Buddhist awakening and in our awakening and it's an evolutionary awakening and we have that potential built into us, built into us. The key elements, recognizing what's right here and then allowing it. And for me, when I'm allowing, often it's in a very simple and deep way saying,

this belongs. This pain in here, this fear, this anger, this shame, it belongs. It's like letting the energies that are here belong. And in doing that, we open to something larger. Give you an example from this last year of a friend of mine that I really bore witness to the power of trusting this basic goodness, this capacity in us. And I've spoken about her before. Her name was Sherry Maples. teacher taught here with her, and elsewhere, one of my best friends. She had a major bike accident a couple of years ago, and she died about a half a year ago from the injuries.

But before she died, I visited her in the hospital, and she knew she was never going to be able to walk again, and she had been a professional athlete. And I was really struck by how surrender and open and trusting she was of just what was unfolding. Background is Sherry had a lot of losses in her life, and one of the most recent major traumas to her system had been that she had been in a long-term relationship and it crashed.

And the loss of that relationship spiraled her into a that was so big, and this was just a couple of years ago, that she who had been very active teacher and, you know, a wonderful inspiration for many had to pull back from her activities for many, many months. It was that bad. Like, she really could barely go out. And underneath the depression was a sense that she couldn't, she didn't belong to anything. Like, it was severed belonging, which is really the core.

torment, I think. We really, every one of us wants to belong. And so that's what the breakup meant to her, some sense of I can't trust. There's any possibility of belonging. Gradually, over the months, like the buddh under the Bodhi tree, those two wings became active. And she began to recognize and really contact underneath the depression, the profound sense of wounds and grief and hurt. And she began to let it belong, let it be there. She began more and more to be able to regard it with compassion. And when she couldn't, she called on, she had a circle of dear ones.

She'd just feel herself washed over with care from others. Gradually, she began to sense that she was more that compassionate presence, than she was the depressed one that didn't belong. That's the shift in identity. That's the evolutionary shift. Instead of believing in the stories of the separate self, the rejected self, oh, okay.

The more we bring the two wings of presence, the more we become that presence and recognize that as who we are. We become the ocean. We're not as much... identify with the waves. So, when she'd had the accident and I asked her, well, how are you holding this? She said, well, I already died. I already endured the greatest loss. I already was with it. And I really trust the power of heart and awareness to be with whatever else

comes. That's what I consider a fearless heart. One teacher, Say it out, Upendita, it calls it, a heart that's ready for anything. And that's our potential. And when we have a heart that's ready for anything, we don't have to tense against what's around the corner. We get to live this moment. And there's a spontaneity and a freedom to love in this moment. One of the main pieces that as you practice and to deepen the trust, if you want a trick for

deepening the trust, is when you're going to do that you do. you have even a glimmer of feeling love or gratitude or spaciousness or equanimity, when you have a glimmer of okayness in some form, when you feel at home, pause and totally immerse in it so that you get to know it really well. If you touch a resource state and and then you just move on, the brain doesn't really register it. We have a negativity bias. We really register negative stuff. We don't register the stuff that's really life-enhancing so well.

So give yourself the gift of entraining to the states that are expressions of that deeper nature. And that's the way you turn a state into a trait. That's the way you have more access. That's the way, and I think of it as this is like we're learning the real meaning of Namaste here, so we can begin to behold ourselves, and we can see all the covering and all the defenses and this and that, but we can really see the light shining through because we've gotten familiar with it. And we can look at another and see the light shining through because that's become more

familiar than believing in the stories. There's a hospice nurse who described an incident at one of the county hospitals that she worked at. She had a patient who, 44 years old, he had served a long sentence for robbery, and he was dying from complications of AIDS, HIV, and hepatitis C. So he didn't want his mother called because he was so ashamed. of his life. But this hospice nurse, she was also a Buddhist practitioner, saw beneath his shame in some way. She saw something. And after they had a real deep conversation, she convinced him to make contact with his mother. And several days later, she arrived. And she's this frail woman over 80 years old. And she

walks in and she has a, you know, grief-stricken expression. And, um, when she comes in, she sees her son, who hasn't spoken to her for years, and there he is, he's in prison garb, and he's handcuffed to his bed. So the woman that was just telling the story, she was afraid that this dignified, stern-looking woman would judge her son. But here's what happened. Instead, after initial greetings, they looked one another all over. Then their eyes locked, and the circumstances,

and sufferings, the roles and costumes all dropped away. Nurse said that Bill's mother gazed at her son like a newborn child, like a saint witnessing a miracle, with a vast heart of all mothers. Bill and his mother saw one another in one another their secret beauty, forgiving, timeless, eternal. They sat together for an hour and held hands. There was not much that needed to be said. And when his mother left, Bill said, now he could die at peace. We have this capacity in us to see past the conditioning in ourselves to that secret beauty and in each other. And if we entrain in that, that becomes more and more the true realization of who we are.

So I want to pause here and just invite you to check in. I'll do a little bit of just a brief reflection here. This little practice in training because it's so valuable if we want to deepen trust. I'd like to invite you to bring to mind someone who's easy to love, an uncomplicated kind of love. Could be a child. It could be your dog.

It could be a friend that really is close and comfortable. It could be someone you don't know, could be so well that you feel love with, maybe spiritual figure. Whoever it comes to mind, just sense what it is about them that makes them lovable. What is it about their way they express their aliveness? as you're scanning and sensing, you might see them loving you. Like, what's the look in their eyes when they're appreciating you, loving you, enjoying you, entertained by you, feeling close to you? Just feel your heart's appreciation, and you might even bring one or two hands to your

heart, and just feel what it's like to really appreciate. love of that being, you might mentally whisper their name and say thank you, perhaps a few times. Heart space, letting it be as large as it is. Again, just saying thank you or I love you to that being. Just let sense how love can fill your body and go beyond your body. Be that heart space. Get to know it some.

What's it like when you're feeling that warmth towards a another. The more you get to know this way that light and love shines through your body, your heart, the more you start trusting beyond any story that this is what you are, this heart space. The Radiant Sutras put it this way. There is a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. mind, 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 ecstasies 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. Sensing as you are right now, who you are, what's your deepest sense of your own being when you're experiencing heart space? In the mythology of the Buddha, One of the pathways of waking up is to bring these wings of mindfulness and heartfulness to the changing forms.

And another is just to look back into awareness and sense this formless presence that's here. That's the second pathway. I'm going to just invite you to explore that a little bit before we close tonight. because both we can pay attention to the ways of experience and then sense that oceaness. And we can also turn our attention right back and say, really, what's this awareness right here? So I'm going to move right into this kind of exploration to sense the awareness that's here. One of the descriptions that's helpful sometimes, and if you'd like, you can open your eyes for a bit, Either way, you can sit eyes closed or eyes open.

One to Ben teachers had a big poster and he said a little V on it and he said, well, what's this? And most every, all the students said, well, it's a bird. And his response was, it's the sky with a bird flying through it. So this next little piece is we're just going to do a figure ground switch. We usually pay attention to the bird. Can we sense the skylight quality of what? we are. This awareness, it's a space that everything's happening in. And this is where we get to that part of the, you know, jumping off the plane with the parachute, not hitting the ground,

and realizing nobody jumped. This is what's sometimes called, you know, recognizing that there's no solid self in here. There's a story on the terrace of a monastery high in the mountains, and old Zen Buddhist monks did next to a much younger monk while they both contemplated the great void the misty space out yonder the old monk at one point gently declared ah my son one day all of this void

will be yours this is where we get to go so awareness what is awareness let me just ask you to check out for a moment and if you've done this 20 times it still really works so for the next

15 seconds, your assignment. Try not to be aware. Okay? Starting now. Try not to be aware. By not to be aware. Last few moments. Okay. Okay. That's good. Okay. How many were able to not be aware? Yay. I was hoping somebody would raise their hand. Okay. So for most people what you find is that awareness is just there. It's like it is just, there is a presence registering. It's an open presence registering. Now close your eyes again just so you can pay attention and you might say yourself, okay, I'm going to try not to be aware, again, sense this in the background, this awareness

just keeps going and going and going, and turn the mind and sense, well, what's this awareness? awareness, what are the basic qualities? What is awareness? What can you sense about awareness? That's just true. Can you sense that awareness is innately open, that there's a boundlessness? There's just no boundary, no limit. Can you sense that awareness is innately wakeful? There's a knowing quality. Sometimes described like a a sunlit sky, that there's openness and there's light. And you can't really separate them. It's a sunlit sky, knowing and open. And can you sense that when awareness encounters a wave of experience, there's a natural tenderness or responsiveness. When there's

that openness and wakefulness, truly open, truly wakeful, there's tenderness. Often these are the three characteristics that are described. Keep exploring for yourself. Open, wakeful, tender. Now again, if you'd like to open your eyes for a moment, feel free. It's very difficult to explore the nature of awareness when the mind is busy. The more thoughts going on, the less we're able to sense the background of alert, still, open sky-like mind. So, I'd like to invite you when your mind gets quieter to let those be the times, when there's a kind of a sense of a, sometimes described as a ghost self, like you can sense behind maybe the curtain, there's some controlling, some sense of self, but more there's kind

of a quietness and you're just noticing changing experience. Those are the times that you can begin to make a little bit of a turn of attention and bring mindfulness to the awareness itself. Here's how it's sometimes described, that we're typically, if like my hands right now or like my mind, we're typically looking out and fixating on objects, or fixating on images and sounds and thoughts, looking out. And when we want to look into awareness, it's like there's a slight effort which is to look and see what's here and then there's a complete letting go being.

free. So the practice, it's sometimes called the backwards step or stepping back and just to experience awareness directly is a kind of an inquiry like what's here and then just letting go and being whatever we see. Look and see, let go, be free. The key is that it's not conceptual. There's no striving. It just comes from an interest. If you start getting conceptual, just smile at it and say, thank you very much, not now. You know, and if you find your mind as busy or sticky, drop it, then go back to paying attention to the waves of experience because that's the way that you'll begin to relax back open to the ocean, be with the waves.

But if the waves are quiet, look and see what is this ocean of awareness, this sea of wakefulness? And then just let go and be it. it. Let's practice a little bit. And I really invite you to, this is a kind of take it or leave it practice if right now your state of mind is not a match for it. Just put it, you know, file it away for a future day, but just keep open and curious. The key is once you have turned the attention, like instead of looking at the screen at a movie theater, you're looking back into the projector and into the mind that created the movie, into the light that really it's sourced.

Once you've looked back, the key is to let go and not to do anything. In fact, any doing resurrects a sense of a self, any strain in doing. So for right now, again, arrive in presence. awaken your senses so that you can listen, hearing the sound, awaken your senses so you can feel the aliveness in your body and you might relax and soften some. Feel what's here. Senses wide open, letting everything happen, utterly open, non-fixating awareness, just letting be. So you're noticing in the foreground, the changing experience. These words, words, different sensations in the body, feelings.

Remembering those hands, just turning the attention around now and looking back, what is aware, what is aware, what's listening right now? There's awareness here? Just turn around and look. And then whatever you see or sense, just relax back and be that. as awareness. Soon what happens, you start noticing this sound, this feeling, this thought. So again, utterly awake. Sense is wide open, utterly open, non-fixating awareness, letting be, and then just gently turning the attention and looking back towards awareness.

What is aware? What or who is listening right now? Look and see and then just like Let go and be free. Just rest. The Tibetans say that the supreme seeing is the seeing of no thing. Just this alert, stillness, this presence. He writes of one light, endlessly emanating all things, one bright turning diamond, one, one, one, ground yourself. yourself down to blind loving silence. Stay there until you see you are gazing at the

light with its own ageless eyes. In your eyes closed if you like, to sensing the possibility of trusting this sky-like mind, this formless presence. It said that if you can try that if you can the ocean, you're not afraid of the waves, letting the waves of experience come and go. The gift of trust, this heart that is ready for everything, allows us to respond then to our world with a very natural compassion because the whole world is part of our hearts. It allows us to walk this earth like a child of wonder, including the joys and sorrows, gives us a timeless love that senses beyond the forms, the beauty and goodness that's here, and a liberating wisdom.

Srinar Sargadatta says, wisdom tells me on nothing. Love tells me on everything. And between the two, my life flows. We started tonight with the mastere on its way somewhere. not trusting what's here. We close and you might sense there's nothing ahead, there's no future, nowhere to go, what's here? There's nothing to do.

There's no problem to solve. What's here? And can you give yourself this gift of deepening trust that this presence, light, tend to be. tenderness is more true than any story you've ever told yourself. And thank you for your attentiveness and presence, truly.