Tara Brach - Turning Towards What You Love

Episode Date: July 21, 2010

2010-07-21 - For many of us, the most apparent junctures of spiritual transformation are spurred on by challenging life situations. This talk looks at how our conscious aspiration for awakening, and our practice of mindful presence, can help us find peace, compassion and freedom when difficulties arise. Please donate at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

Start with a story I wanted to share with you. A friend of mine told me about this. He was teaching an introduction to meditation class for seven to 11-year-olds at a Montessori school. And as one of the practices, he took a gong and he said, I'm going to call out the gong, play the gong, and I just want you to listen to the sound and listen to where it goes. listen to the sound and listen to where it goes with interest, just watch where it goes.

And he says, if you follow and watch, you might get closer to God. That's what he told them. So they did that, and one of the children went home and told his mom about the experience. His mom knows my friend, so she relayed what happened. And the child said this. He said, well, when I watched and listened

to where sound went, different kind of sounds. It's not quite like a gong, is it? When I listened and watched to where the sound went, I didn't get closer to God. I was God from the mouth of the young ones. So there's this inquiry of what happens when we become fully present. And it may be, the Buddhists don't use the language of God as much that when we really watch and listen,

when we're really fully here, we become what we are. We rest in the wholeness of awareness, of spirit, of heart, whatever you want to call it. We embody the truth of what we are through that full presence. And the challenge, as we know, and this is for every one of us, and it's our evolutionary conditioning, and it helps to frame it that way. It makes it really not personal, right? It's just how it is. Our attention gets hijacked all the time.

So even when we come to sit down to meditate, almost more than ever, you can just, it's not our fault. The mind just goes all over. And sometimes it's meandering. And the times when we're suffering, it's a more charged reactivity. You know, if you just say, okay, I'm going to sit quietly for the next five minutes and pay attention to sensation, deep Dharma is revealed. We find that when there's pleasantness, something in us wants to hold on to it. When there's unpleasantness, we all want it to go away.

Unpleasant sensations, unpleasant feelings too. And if we're able to watch during the day and really watch closely, we'd notice that throughout the day, we're in a constant reaction to pleasantness and unpleasantness. We're constantly in some way contriving to have more pleasantness, less unpleasantness and we get inattentive when it's neutral so this is what sometimes

called the trance we're reacting but we're not really here and the deepest suffering is wanting life to be different than it is right now even the slight wanting like waiting for something to happen

there's a discomfort there's a tension in the body and in the mind and because we get afraid that things are going to go wrong, we spend a lot of our day trying to control what's happening. A lot of it's with our thoughts. We try to control. And so those of you that have sat with me before have been listening,

know I often language it that we pursue these false refuges. We try to manipulate or maneuver our life and other people and our own body, mind, in ways to feel better, there's very little letting be wakefully. We're usually trying to maneuver things. And so the suffering is that in any moment that we're controlling, because in some fearful way it could go wrong, things could go wrong, we're cut off. In those moments, we're cut off from the true tenderness and compassion

that's our capacity. And from the true wisdom that sees life as it is, we're cut off. One woman, Sandra Maitre, said, pain and suffering are barometers of how disconnected we are from ourselves and the ground of being. So false refuges, controlling, we get cut off.

The overt flags of it for us, if we look at our lives, are that we get addicted, and that's a flag that we're cut off. Are we, and when I say addicted to food, it could be to busyness, to anger, that's a big one, to judging people. We get stuck, we recycle conflicts over and over again. We recycle our patterns with other people that really get in the way of intimacy. Again, these are flags that were kind of in that trance and in false refuges.

Chronic anxiety, depression. We know them. When the flags become clear in our life, when we notice, okay, something's off, there are really two options that are in front of us. And one is to more vigorously pursue the false refuges we hope will work. In other words, try to fix ourselves,

try to make somebody else different, try to get more done, all those things. We either go more energetically, something in us uses that painful time to wake up. It goes either way. This is roomy. Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you. As a fish out of water hears the serfs, come back.

This turn toward what you deeply love saves you. this turn towards what you deeply love saves you so tonight what we're going to explore is turning towards what we deeply love how whether we're in the midst of one of the real heavy experiences in our life are just the kind of milder flags that things are off balance how do we turn towards what we deeply love and we're going to explore it because the more in this moment you sense, oh, how in this moment do I remember what I deeply love? Do I turn towards that? The more that becomes pattern on a physical basis, neurologically, in all our intentions, the more free we are. How do we turn towards what we deeply love?

So maybe let me just ask a question to you, and that is, how many of you would say that over time in your own personal life, you sense an evolution of consciousness that you're in some way waking up. How many of you sense that? Don't be shy and keep your hands up for a moment. This is a genuine question. Okay, so some people sense that your consciousness is waking up, that there's more awareness, there's more capacity to notice what's going on. And I won't ask the opposite, which is those that had their hand down thing. I'm not changing a bit. But that's okay, because at some phases of our life, that's the way it looks. So when I explore this with people, you know, the sense of how our consciousness is waking up,

I'll often ask, were there particular times in your life that there was kind of a spurt or you kind of was very distinctive that you became more aware or more loving or more compassionate or more free? I'll ask that question. And some people say it's been very, very gradual, and that is true for most of us on one level. But I often, in fact, most of the time here, yeah, there were certain times when I totally hit a wall, I hit bottom. You know, with the divorce. You know, when somebody I loved died, when I faced a biopsy of malignancy, you know, there's something. in a person's life that they'll describe to me that they hit that they hit that and they were

forced to dive deeper into their soul their spirit their being to make it and those times really spurred them on so i think of it kind of like when the ground underneath us shakes we get everything that we were holding on to really doesn't work and then we have to say well what really works what can I turn to that really works. I was reminded of that a lot. When I had been away, I'd been on the West Coast, I'd been traveling. In fact, I went to, I was in the San Francisco area, and every time I go out there, I think,

okay, are they going to have the big one this time while I'm there? Then I come home and what happens? We have an earthquake here, you know? How many of you noticed it? How many of you were awake for it? Wow. Okay. So it's like the Earth is supposed to be more,

reliable, you know, and so that's the, you know, it's an amazingly wonderful wake-up in a way that there is nothing that's reliable in terms of the worldly circumstances. These bodies, this earth,

relationships, people die, people go through stuff that causes separation. The only refuge, the only refuge is awareness, is loving presence.

how do we turn towards it Rumi describes it beautifully that when the earth starts shaking when we're in trouble there's something that is saying come back come back home something wants to come home to loving presence how do we listen

in the Buddhist tradition the Bodhisattva vow is almost the most perfectly designed or part this is part of the vow a perfectly designed reflection to help us cultivate that kind of movement back, coming back home. And the language is, and this is a little

bit more, some of my terms, but the language is, may whatever circumstances that arise in this life, may whatever arises serve the awakening of this heart and mind. May whatever arises serve the awakening of this heart and mind. And then the bodhisattva of vow goes further and says, and may this life be of benefit to all beings with the understanding, not of this heroic thing, but that we belong to all beings. We are interconnected

and as this being wakes up, it naturally ripples out. So this aspiration is going to be kind of the centerpiece of what we explore together. How, when the earth shakes in our life, can we in some way sense that prayer, okay, may this serve awakening?

Now the beginning of waking up, of being more present when the earth is shaking under us, is recognizing how we take false refuge. And if I asked you to sense a difficult circumstance in your life, something difficult going on, maybe a conflict with someone else, are some real insecurity financially or with work, or maybe an addiction you're struggling with, or maybe something going on with your children or your parents. And if I said, okay, so what are your false refuges?

I'd be really asking you about the kind of habitual ways that you try to control things but avoid presence. And Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did it in a profound and helpful way when she described people's false refuges in facing their own mortality, right? most of you are familiar. I mean, she's described how as soon as we get quaked by the reality

that, okay, it's finite here, there's anger. You know, we're angry at God, at life, at what we had depended on. And then there's the bargaining with a real maneuvering where we try to outwit what's going on. And then there's kind of a depression.

It's like powerless. And only when we, if there's a sufficient amount, of presence, is there that space of acceptance that actually can allow us to touch peace no matter what? So there's, she describes them as stages, they're not sequenced actually always that way, but they're really good, archetypal expressions of false refuge. Now, we do false refuge when we're facing any of the smaller big deaths, any of the losses, any of the ways that life isn't operating. We usually go into them. So you might think about the ways you do because tonight

we're going to explore, okay, in that same difficult circumstance and you might bring one to mind something that you'd like to have more creativity and freedom around. The first step is to say, well, okay, so what am I doing to really avoid directly being present? Now, one of the things we do, and I'll give you a few examples just to kind of warm us up to this and I can speak for myself. What I often do is get absolutely fixated on trying to figure things out.

So I have for myself, one of my biggest challenges is my connective tissue doesn't hold my joints together the way it should and so I have different problems with my knees and with my hips and so on. And every time something goes out,

I'm trying to figure out out the best way, do the best strategy, should I do magnet, should I do acupuncture, what's causing, you know, I fixate on figuring things out. And a certain amount of strategic thinking is not only essential, it's what moves things along. Beyond that certain amount, it's a false refuge.

We try to outwit, as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross talks about, and one of my favorite stories that I shared a few years ago some of you might remember and I love it partly because it has a poodle in it I have a we have two standard poodles a wealthy man goes on a safari in Africa and decides to take his poodle along for company one day the poodle started chasing some butterflies

and found himself totally lost wandering about trying to find his way back he saw a leopard rapidly heading his way the poodle thought to himself Oh, oh. Luckily, the poodle noticed some bones on the ground close by and immediately turned his back to the approaching cat and started to chew on them. Just as the leper was about to pounce, the poodle called out, boy, that was one delicious leopard, but I'm still hungry. I wonder if there's another around. Upon hearing this, the leopard halted his attack in mid-stride, a look of abject terror on his face. He crawled off into some nearby trees thinking, that was a close call. That creature nearly got me. Meanwhile, a monkey had been watching this whole scene from high in a nearby tree, called out to the leopard promising some valuable information in return for the leopard's protection. The leopard agreed to the deal and of course was furious to learn that he had just been

made a fool of. The leopard, now with the monkey on his back, took off to find and eat the conniving canine. Once again, the poodle saw the leopard, this time with a monkey on its back approaching. the poodle quickly put two and two together while realizing he wouldn't have time to escape. So he sat down with his back to his attackers pretending he hadn't seen them and just when they got close enough to hear he exclaimed,

where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard. So it's silly, but we rely on our cleverness. We try to maneuver and strategize And in its fullness, it becomes obsessive thinking. So that's one of the, you might sense when you kind of focus in on what your difficult situation is, whether obsessive thinking is a way that you regularly leave presence. Of course, another false refuge that many of us do is when we're feeling bad,

we try to control others to get them to cooperate with how we want them to be. And we try to manipulate people. Sometimes it's overt, and sometimes it's just a subtle way that we're trying to get them to like or accept us. But still, we're not being what we are. In a more exaggerated form, another story, 11 people hanging onto a rope suspended from a helicopter. Ten were men and one was a woman. They all decided that one person should get off because if someone didn't, the rope would break and everyone would die. So the negotiation began.

But no one could decide who should go. finally the woman gave a really touching speech saying how she would give up her life to save the others because really women were used to giving up things for their husbands and their children and sacrificing in every way and not receiving anything in return and when she finished speaking all the men started clapping so manipulation just to notice in difficult situations whether we get more manipulative Blaming others is another big one. One friend describes her teenage daughter and how whenever she's having a hard time

she's totally furious at her parents and her parents are something to look upon with scathing kind of attitude. And when she's happy and fine, she's a dream to be around. That's the way it is. When we're feeling bad, our reflex is to blame something.

Often we'll blame something. blame others, but even more often the blame goes inwards. That's the last refuge I'll describe, which is a false refuge that we spend a lot of time judging ourselves. And that's perhaps the deepest source of suffering. We think that if we judge ourselves enough, it's almost like we'll manhandle ourselves into being a better person. So we use judgment as a false refuge. And I can again use myself as an example to carry forward that trying to figure things out that when in fact I'm not feeling well because I do have a lot of chronic pain and when it's really ongoing I find my tension gets really self-centered and I'm no longer responsive in the way I want to be and I can get irritable

and judgy and so on and then I slap onto that oh what a terrible person I am I teach about equine equanimity and being with pain and discomfort, and yet here I am all self-centered. And so, false refuge. If I can only judge myself enough, maybe I'll become a better person. So these are some examples of how we either turn on ourselves or turn on others or try to control or figure out. And And when truly each one of those, I sometimes think of it like a bicycle that we're riding away from the present moment and the more difficult the present moment is the faster we pedal, trying to figure things out or change things. And what we're doing is we're leaving ourselves. We're disconnecting from the heart that's here, from the awareness that's here, and really from the source of all that we value.

So how do we turn towards true refuge becomes the inquiry? And there's an interesting kind of metaphor, and I think of science as a metaphor for spirituality and vice versa. But from science that it's called evolutionary effect of neuroscience, which actually means just looking at emotions through the lens of evolution, and that's a focus on brain development. But there's two systems, have in handling difficult times.

And one is called threat-focused. And it derives from the older structures in the brain, the amygdala, the limbic system. And really it just fight, flight, freeze, our defensive way of moving. And that part of us is happily active. You know, it does its thing, keeps turning along, and that's part of our evolutionary being. It's the source of false refuge. It's our reflexes. The higher centers in the brain, and I'm going to read you which ones, they're the prefrontal cortex,

but also the singulated cortex and the ventral vagal complex. I don't remember those kind of things. But anyway, the higher centers of the brain, actually are the source of affiliated focus behavior. And by that means we are hardwired when there's difficulty to move towards empathy, towards compassion, connection, it's part of our wiring too. It's like the difference between fight, flight, tend and befriend. And they both address the difficulty,

but from different parts of our brain. And isn't it interesting that in evolution, that just in terms of the development of consciousness, that the more recent and yet higher centers of the brain are absolutely designed towards affiliation, towards compassion, And in our training here, the cultivation of affiliation of intimacy with the life within us, because it needs to be the life within us and the life around us.

So true refuge, turning towards what we love, is really a part of our evolutionary capacity. And it's our capacity to consciously cultivate the ability to. the ability for attunement. We can do that, which is really what a lot of meditation is, attuning to what's here. Instead of bicycling away, listening.

What's going on in this heart right now? Feeling. Being able to look at another person and not be so preoccupied with having to defend or prove that we can sense, oh, that person's hurting. What might she need? Oh, look at that person. Look at the goodness there. We can see what's true. It slows us down. It opens us up. So the beginning of this shift is there's some longing in us that wants to wake up out of our old conditioning. We don't want to keep living in that sense of a small self that's being defensive that isn't authentic, a small self that has to prove.

something, a small self that keeps recycling through the same patterns and relationships, we have a longing to wake up. We love it when we feel more generous. We love it when we feel gratitude. We love feeling wonder. We love feeling love. We want to wake up. So there's a longing to kind of activate those higher centers and live from really a fullness. So the beginning of this turning towards what we love is that longing, that there is something you would not be here tonight. And if you're not here, you wouldn't be listening. If there was not some awareness in you that knew what it meant to be home and wanted to live at home in your being. So the beginning is this bodhisattva aspiration. And you might adapt it however you like, but it's the spirit of

it is may what's happening may this difficulty awaken compassion made it awaken my natural wisdom may it serve so I share with you one story of one man who used this bodhisattva aspiration in a powerful way that it really touched me he and his wife involved with Buddhist communities and had had in their own way taken the bodhisattva vows and they They were a racially mixed marriage. He was an African-American man, a photojournalist. And she was white. And right from the start, her family, very kind of a white conservative family,

her mother in particular not only disapproved, she really shut down to them in this marriage. And a lot of fear. She was convinced her daughter was ruining her life and would never be, they couldn't be happy because of their. differences, that kind of thing. So here they were and they did these holiday visits.

They went across the country to visit and it was enormously painful for both of them and for him it just touched off very deep old wounds of not belonging, not fitting in something's wrong with me. And he decided

he was going to practice this Bodhisattvaspiration. So he said, okay, may this whole situation that was really ripping them up, you know. May this somehow serve awakening. May it serve, may it wake us up like a ringing bill or ringing the phone, bringing us right here now, now, now.

May this wake us up. May this serve love. May it serve wisdom. May it serve freedom. So he really had that prayer. And while he was dealing with what was coming up anticipating Thanksgiving, the way he kind of embodied the prayer, May it Serve Awakening, was he really paid deep attention and said yes to what was going on inside him,

yes to the herd and his anger, he said yes to, and underneath the anger, you know, just the sorrow and the fear that they were going to live with this strained relationship with her parents, but also marriage. He came to a real place of self-compassion, that kind of place. where you go, Ouch, this is a hard one. This is a hard one. And I put my hand on my heart because that's the gesture

that really says, okay, kindness towards this life that's right here. So they went to Thanksgiving, and he had more ease. And he kind of, his refuge, and this is probably a wholesome,

was he brought his camera, and in an inconspicuous way he took a lot of pictures during Thanksgiving of her parents with each other and with their grandchild, the older sister's daughter, and he got some pictures, but the mother still was pretty blatant in the way she treated him, kind of ignored him, and he did feel invisible, and it

was still painful. Goes back home, still having this prayer, may this serve awakening and freedom. And then he asked, how might this serve? And the message to him when he said, how might this serve awakening was that in some way his heart was going to be bigger than he had ever experienced it. They go back on Christmas and again the mother is extreme. She gives him socks, probably the wrong size in a box of candy and he's a total health freak, you know, just really just weird. And his present to her was some framed pictures. She opens them up and what she sees is that he caught a very spontaneous sweet exchange between her and her husband and even more than that he got a picture of her cradling her grandchild and she started tearing up when she looked at it and then she started

sobbing uncontrollably and there was something about the openness that he had created in his own heart that made it possible for her to something in her armor started melting. And I wish I could say all of a sudden they hugged and everything was great. That was about eight years ago. Things are really okay and it's slow. But there's this power to this aspiration that allowed him to be with what was there in a way that even if she had not melted at all, he was more free. Now, saying may this serve awakening does not mean that we become passive. And it doesn't mean that we become a doormat. Doesn't mean we say, okay, may this serve awakening go ahead, step on me. May this serve awakening, what it does is it brings us right away into presence.

we come right away into presence with our experience and that presence informs us on how to behave wisely and for him it was to hang in there and take pictures and for someone else it might be saying I'm not going to put up with this anymore and that would be still wise for that person the presence is what guides us to know how to respond what creates transformation

is our attitude towards what we're experiencing. And when you investigate your own experience, if your attitude is one of, this shouldn't be happening, I'm a victim, this is a bad thing, that's a very different way of framing it than if your attitude is, this is what's happening right now,

please, may this awaken my heart. I had an experience about 15 years ago. I had been in a relationship that I was really hopeful about. And when it became clear it wouldn't work, I was pretty devastated. We lived in different places. He was somewhat younger than I was. He wanted children. I already had my son, Narayan.

I didn't want children. And it became clear that neither of us was going to move, and I wasn't going to have children. It just wasn't going to work. And so I had to let it go. and the grieving process was really, really intense. And it was also a feeling of rejection. Now, I wasn't willing to move to where he lived, but he wasn't willing to move to where I lived,

and I didn't have this. For some reason, I took that as well. I'm not really loved, you know, how we do that. So the grief and the feeling of hurt was really strong. So I practiced with the practices we do here of okay let me be with it and I I often call on the bodhisattva of compassion I kind of you know offered it to the bodhisattva of compassion I did everything I knew to try to honorably be with the grief and the hurt and felt really caught like just really caught and some of my mind kept

spinning and you know how come and what was wrong and it wasn't until I hit a point of really getting that I had kind of turned on myself and I was sinking that I remembered the Bodhisatt aspiration. And it became something that was really, really poignant because I just gave my whole self to that bodhisattva aspiration. I said, please, may this grief, this hurt, may this wake me up. may this wake up my heart please may this wake up my heart and I just said it over and over again and

it was only with that that it's almost like it provided a larger meaning like okay I have to let go I have to accept this is happening but there's something larger that's possible that larger meaning

was actually what I most deeply longed for which was an awake loving heart and then like self-compassion and the compassion for him and the sense of space, that there was space for losing this and for all the losses, I began to trust that more. It's a powerful reflection. So, let's, I would like to invite you to now just take a little time to explore yourself,

this one. And as you set yourself, you know, just kind of set yourself however, you want to sit for this reflection. I read you, Heldegaard of Bingen, her little prayer. She is Holy Spirit, giving life to all life, moving all creatures, root of all things, washing them clean, wiping out their mistakes, healing their wounds. You are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep. awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.

We encounter difficulty when we're suffering, when we're hurting. It's really because there's a part of us that's asleep that doesn't yet realize who we are and what's possible in this life. Holy Spirit, you are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep. sleep. So we take some moments to reflect on the difficult circumstances in our own lives. And I invite you to choose one that's very, that's distinctive. Whatever, wherever you get thrown really off balance, as I mentioned, it might be something challenging going on with your children or parents,

a partner at work, with your body. And you might, as you sense this, situation or circumstances, you know, sense what's most challenging about it, the fear it brings up or hurt or anger. And you might ask yourself, how have I been relating to this? I mean, what's been my whole, my overall attitude? In other words, have you been wishing it away? Just thinking it's a mistake that this is happening in your life, something wrong, something bad, trying to get past it so you can really live your life. Have you been blaming yourself or someone else? Have you been trying to figure it out mentally?

Have you been angry at God, yourself, life? Have you felt betrayed in some way? See if without judgment you can just be aware of the attitude that has surrounded what's difficult. we all take false refuge. We all judge and blame and wish things away. And still holding the situation in your mind, try on the Bodhisattva aspiration.

May these circumstances serve to awaken my heart and mind. May this situation really be a part of my path. May it awaken compassion. and you can shift the language a little and you might say, how may this situation awaken my consciousness, my heart, my mind? Sensing the possibility of,

if you were really present with it, what might be possible? What could happen? How might this situation be part of awakening the heart from its ancient sleep? Sensing your potential when you encounter the situation in the days and weeks to come, to maybe pause and sense that even though you wish it was going to go away,

that there's some deep place in you that really wants what's going on to be part of awakening and freeing your heart. But you can pause and remember that. Just to speak a little bit more, that this prayer is for every level of loss, even the greatest losses, even as you're dying, may this process awaken, gives a meaningfulness to what seems intolerable

because there's something we want more than even this body to survive. There's some belonging to, loving presence, to a timeless presence that we all long for. And so no matter how great the loss, it can break us open to even a more vast and tender heart than we could have imagined. And what allows that is the longing, that when you get in touch with your longing for really recognizing and living from who you are, that longing carries you. In the Buddha's story of waking up, the part of the myth that I like to tell most regularly,

because I think about it all the time, is that he, the classic stories that he, through the night, encountered difficult circumstances, just the way we're exploring right now. The same thing that you might have contacted in your life, Mara, the god of the shadow side, was tossing all these difficult circumstances at the Buddha. You know, really, he was tempting the Buddha with seductruses and attacking the Buddha with, you know, with all sorts of fire and swords and arrows and so on. And through the night, the Buddha called on presence to be with these attacks. And this, as it says, the swords and the arrows turned into flower petals and ended up creating this great mound at the Buddha's feet. But as the morning came around, the Buddha was not yet fully awakened.

And then Mara issued his greatest challenge. And that was the words, who do you think you are? Which is really the challenge of doubt. When you talk about difficult circumstances in your life, the difficult peace in those circumstances is self-doubt, that we don't trust or like our... believe in who we are. So that was the challenge. And the Buddha's response really fits with what we're talking about tonight that when that came at him, he didn't fight back, he didn't try to

prove himself, he didn't build the muscle of presence up to really try to ward off Mara's attack. Instead, he reached out and touched the ground, and he called on the earth goddess. He called on his belonging. He called on his belonging to wholeness, to love, to truth, to the world, the living world. And when he called on the earth goddess, the sky darkened

and thunderbolts and so on, and then Mara backed off and it was at that moment that the Buddha was liberated. So he was liberated by reaching out in longing and in prayer and calling on that to which he belonged to. And in the same way, when we get stuck, when we have that prayer,

may this serve to awaken this heart and mind, we're really praying to awaken to the truth of our belonging, to the truth of wholeness, to the vast loving presence that really is our source. We're calling on that. So we practice in our meditation as we sit here and sometimes it's huge difficulty that comes up and sometimes it's little difficulty, sometimes it's simply a wandering mind.

But we practice by turning towards what we love by choosing presence over and over. And that starts strengthening that capacity. And then we practice may this serve to awaken in little ways through our life. it may be we're stuck in traffic. And instead of just habitually going into our resentment to traffic, and as I say sometimes a friend of mine described this, we always have the idea that traffic is everybody else. Not us, it's so interesting.

But instead of that, okay, may this moment be part of awakening, may it serve awakening? Or maybe somebody criticizes us instead of getting defensive, okay, may this serve awakening in some way. Maybe that we go to the doctor's office and were kept waiting for an hour. You know, things that are irritating but not devastating, may this serve and may this serve.

And it doesn't have to be that language again, but in some way, whatever comes up, the attitude is, may this be part of turning towards what I love, may this remind me to be present. And then we do it with the larger experiences. And when we train in that, then when something comes up,

There is less conditioning to respond with fight-flight and more conditioning when something comes up to touch the ground to turn towards loving presence. And you can see it in yourself over time that the old conditioning is still there to be defensive or blame back, but there's a little more chance of pausing and of saying, hey, there's something that matters.

I'd rather choose love. I'd rather live from a more full and good place in my being than play out the old conditioning. For one man who had been practicing a lot of the loving kindness practice, turning towards what he loved, his difficult circumstance was that he was, his name is Phil, and this is a story I got from Sylvia Borstein. He was on a small side street in Soho

and a dishevelled man with a scraggly beard and dirty blonde hair, costed him demanding money. Phil gave him over $600 that he carried in his wallet. The mugger shook his gun and demanded more. Stalling for time, Phil handed him his credit cards in the whole wallet. Looking days in high on some drug, the mugger said, I'm going to shoot you. Phil responded, no wait, here's my watch. It's an expensive one. Disoriented, the mugger took the watch, waved the gun, and said again, I'm going to shoot you. Somehow Phil managed to look at him with loving kindness. He said, you don't have to shoot me. You did really good. Look, you got nearly $700. You got credit cards, an expensive watch. You don't have to shoot me. You did good. The mugger confused, lowered the gun slowly.

I did good, he half asked. You did really good. Go and tell your friends, you did good. Days the mugger wandered off saying softly to himself, I did good. So I share that not because that, that's the way it'll always work for you when you're accosted. But that your reflex can be instead of that looking towards threat and reacting can be in some part of you that call that Rumi describes come back. And something in you pauses and says, wait a minute, I want to choose presence. I want to see if I can live from my heart.

and that becomes more and more the possibility that you actually are not just realizing who you are, you're living from who you are, from your fullness. So to sum up tonight really just started with the child listening to the gong, we keep turning towards presence. When we turn towards presence, we do get closer to God, to goodness, to awareness, to what we are. and the injuries that happen get us reactive in our lives, so we get these habits of false refuges, but every one of us has within us that pure longing to come home. Listen to it and strengthen it intentionally with that prayer.

In your own words, whatever circumstances are arising, may they awaken this heart, this mind. close with a poem I like from Havis. So you might want to just sit and close your eyes and listen. Love wants to reach out and manhandle us. Break all our teacup talk of God. Love wants to reach out and manhandle us. Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and could give the beloved his choice some nights, he would just drag you around the room by your hair, ripping from your grip all those toys. in the world that bring you no joy. Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly and wants to rip to shreds all your erroneous notions of truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others, all your erroneous notions of truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others, causing the world to weep on too many fine days. The beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor, hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. But when we hear

he is in such a playful, drunken mood, most everyone I know quickly packs their bags and high-tails it out of town. The difficulties are the places where we have the most profound possibility of waking up out of that ancient sleep. and discovering the love and the presence that's our nature. So as we take these final moments together tonight, turning towards what you love, towards the aliveness that's right here, towards the heart, towards tenderness,

towards awareness itself, this radiant wakefulness, this inner stillness and silence that's our essence. As Rumi put it, this turn towards what you deeply love saves you. Namaste, Namaste, namaste,

blessings to all. 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.imcw.org.