Tara Brach - What Is It Like Being You? (2018-07-18)

Episode Date: July 20, 2018

What Is It Like Being You? (2018-07-18) - Compassion is hard wired in our organism, and can be cultivated. This talk helps us identify the blocks to compassion—our outmoded survival equipment—and using RAIN, offers practical guidance in mindfully attuning to others' emotional experience and awakening our natural tenderness and care. This talk includes a short introduction to the meditation: The RAIN of Compassion. 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 welcome. The title of tonight's talk is, What's It Like Being You? I begin with a email that I received recently, a man describing meditating with one of my guided meditations. And he was there and his little three-year-old son was sitting nearby quietly. I'm not understanding at all what his dad was doing, listening to this voice that was saying, sensing presence, touching presence.

So there he was. But in a moment of this excited comprehension, like kind of illumination little boy, you know, remarked real loudly to his dad, hey, I can do that too. I can touch presence. His dad loved it. And so really we're talking about what's it like being you, this inquiry, that requires presence for us to begin to attune to each other in that deep way we need to be here. And it's an evolutionary capacity that we have.

We have this capacity for affiliate of care to tune into each other and to care about each other. And really this capacity is the hope of our world. If we can develop it, which we can, I don't know how fast, I don't know what other forces at play will have an impact, but if we can keep developing it, that's where the possibilities for peace come from. So I wanted to say that if I happen to get discouraged about how it's going on that front, I do think about how many people care. And I got this one quote from Fred Rogers.

It's one of my source quotes. He says, when I was a boy, I would see scary things in the news and my mother would say to me, look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping. It's really important to know that. As I mentioned, compassion is hardwired, but it does require cultivation. So I'd like to explore in this talk is what are the blocks to awakening compassion and what are some of the particular ways of practicing that can turn it from a passing state that we sometimes have to much more of an ongoing trait, a way of moving through the world. So I begin with what to me has been kind of a wake-up, which is the distinction between empathy

and compassion. And I'm curious, before I go into it, how many feel like you're pretty clear on this? that. I'm just interested. So there's a handful of people that feel clear on it. So here's my understanding that empathy is the capacity to feel what other people feel and it's also the capacity to be able to take their view, to be able to kind of look through other people's eyes. Compassion goes further. Compassion includes empathy, you know, being able to feel with others, and it also has the quality of caring and concern that wants to help. Okay?

And one of the reasons this is so important is that what people call compassion fatigue, you know, getting burned out if you're in the helping professions or social activists, you know, compassion fatigue, is actually empathy fatigue. And there's been some really interesting neuroscience studies really in the last few years that show that when we experience empathy, just empathy, when we're feeling what others feel, we can easily get hooked in the unpleasantness of it

and get kind of stuck in that. And you can see in the brain what's lighting up is the part of the brain that really has to do with afflictive emotions and unpleasantness. If instead you're mindful of what you're feeling, you're feeling other people's feelings, and it opens you up to a tenderness and a wanting to help. A different part of the brain lights up. And this is a part of the brain that has to do with positive affect and the reward system. Actually, evolution rewards compassion because it moves us towards helping. And so what happens is that where empathy

can spiral into a fatigue around the negative emotions, and it's a thing. compassion actually feels good. Compassion actually is rewarding. And we kind of know it. We know when we're feeling upset and worried and concerned, when there's something, we're feeling the feelings of others. And if we can in some way express our care, if we can talk to others and in some way act together, even if it can't, even if it doesn't necessarily solve something, if we can in some way contribute, we're actually inhabiting a different quality of heart-mind than if we're just there kind of spiraling with the unpleasant feelings. So the definition of compassion is, you know, in a very literal way, it means to suffer together. But it really is defined.

by that quivering of the heart that wants to help. Okay, so I get sent a lot of different stories and so on, and this one, two nuns, two sisters in a very strict religious order, are at a convenience store, and one says to the other, it's very hot summer day, hey, it would be really good to get a six-pack and have a beer or two, and the other says, but sister, we can't do that, it would cause an uproar at the checkout counter. And the first one said, I think I have a way of taking care of

that. So they think, she gets a six-pack and they go up and, in fact, the clerk kind of, you know, it looks surprised, but she says, we use the beer for washing our hair. We call it our special shampoo without blinking an eye. The cashier reaches under the counter, pulls out some pretzels, places them in the bag, goes, he winks and says, the curlers are on the house. Quick Zen quiz. Empathy or compassion. Actually, just a kind of lame joke, but hopefully it serves something. So when we start in our lives looking at it, really the inquiry is, are we on a trajectory of cultivating compassion?

And neuroscience again says that positive emotions like compassion are less determined by DNA and they're easier to cultivate, in other words, because of neuroplasticity, we actually can cultivate them than negative emotions. Negative emotions are generally more driven by DNA. We can cultivate compassion, but what blocks us is the inquiry we have here. And in a quick phrase, it's outmoded survival programming. It's from our reptilian and limbic brain we have programming that no longer serves but it's slow for us to evolve out of it. So when we get hijacked by the limbic system emotionally, it cuts us off from the parts of our brain that are responsible for compassion. And this should be familiar to many that if we had

to say, you know, what are they? if you are with a friend, and I'm going to ask you to reflect later, but if you're with a friend and they're sharing a major challenge, a divorce or a health problem that's really difficult or something with a child that they're very worried about or lost a job, what would stop you from having that full-blown, what they call that quivering of the heart that wants to help. What would stop you? This is the inquiry. What really stops us? And one of the outmoded survival programming that stop us and we're going to look at each of them a bit is the flight response that there's pain and we have a deep thing in us that goes, pain, uh-uh, I don't want to feel

that. So something in us pulls away and we kind of get, we dissociate. It's like we get abstract like, oh, that's terrible. We feel really, you feel like you have abstract compassion. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, but it's not like you're feeling with, right? The other thing that happens with pain is we get identified. So we're feeling with, but we get kind of stuck in it and we have no real way of relating because we're just kind of caught in a contraction of feeling with the empathy without any mindfulness. There's no space. Now another kind of survival programming that happens is fight, where some part of us is judging the other person are angry at what's going on.

And this happens in couples. One person will be saying, you know, I'm feeling really insecure because when you do such and such it makes me feel like you don't da-da-da-da, right? The person that's hearing that rather than compassion, what gets triggered is, fight. It's like, you're blaming me. I'll be damned if I'm going to feel with you right now, I'm going to defend myself, right? So another reason we don't get tender-hearted is because often we have a kind of defensive reaction towards the other person. Another old programming is what's called the default network in our brain where we don't pay attention

really well. We might be with them a bit but then our mind goes off to something else or as soon as we're no longer with them, we're, you know, it's been there, you know, just like that's history and we get distracted by other things. So we don't have a way of keeping a focus on something that's important and difficult because of mind wandering. Okay? So that's another way that we don't end up really embody. embody compassion. And then the last one I'll mention is that we don't embody compassion because we're preoccupy with our own stuff. It's like other people's story sounds like a story out there because we're much more concerned with can I get on time to the bank before it closes

or, you know, am I going to get caught in traffic or sometimes it's more serious? Or I don't feel well, I have a stomachache, whatever it is. But we're, preoccupied with ourselves. Does that make sense? Now, an example, three novices from a seaside monastery got caught in a mini tsunami and got stranded on a desert island hundreds of miles away. After keeping themselves alive for several weeks, they found a cave with Zafus and they sat down and the spirit of the cave began communicating an echoing voice. You found your way to the Feng Shui spot on the island. You properly assume Zazen. You get three wishes. So the first one which says, my wish is I want to return to the monastery. I miss the morning

bills and the sweeping walks. Vush, the guy disappears. The second novice says, I too want to return to the monastery. I want to learn at the feet of my beloved avid. Vush. She's gone too. Third one looks around and says, These friends have been my son, I miss them and want them back. So again, compassion. We just are fixated on our own wanton needs. I know I'm not giving you the best examples.

I'll share from my own life. I like to share examples from 30 years ago. This was about three days ago, so this is a little closer in. But I've had some challenges with back spasms in the last couple of weeks, and so I get more tight and preoccupied. And I saw an email saying that our meditation community, IMCW's new website, was now up.

How many of you saw that? How many of you saying, okay, beautiful, you know. Now, background is we've had two staff members that have just been breaking their back, you know, trying to meet deadlines and do it and get it together and make it beautiful and so on. And both of them have gone through some challenging times recently to make it happen. So I go online, I see the website, and I immediately notice something that feels really important to me that's not there. So I shoot off an email to these two saying, where do I have to look to find meta-tara? Now, that was Kurt.

It wasn't until after I hit the send button that I went, oh my gosh, what have I done? And I actually got an email from one of them that attuned me to what I had done, which was they had really tried hard to create something very important. I'm a leader in this community and rather than just saying, hey, good work, something's missing, something's wrong.

I went right at it. So I share that because that was blocked. I was just, if the question is, what is it like being you, I totally wasn't noticing. Somebody sent me a little cartoon of somebody doing warrior pose. You know warrior pose in yoga? You know, where you're like that. But it's really warrior pose. thought she has doing warrior pose. Is everyone looking at me? Am I doing this right? Am I doing

anything right? What's my life's purpose? Am I happy? What do I want? Should I get chips for dinner? That's warrior. If you want to see it, it's real cute. I'll leave it out. But this is the negativity bias. This is when we're tight, we're self-absorbed and we don't have the openness and receptivity. The mirror neurons are not. not getting activated to be able to ask that question, what's it like being you? Let's take a pause here. I'm going to invite you to reflect. Because if we want to go beyond this programming, we have to recognize it in our lives.

So what I'd like you to do is, as you bring your attention inward, is bring to mind someone in your life that you know is struggling right now who's having a hard time. And after you bring this person to mind, you might first just honestly notice, have you been attending with that kind of an inquiry? Have you been attuning, asking what's it like being you. And if you sense that you've been something less than attuning, you might just ask yourself, well, what has blocked a compassionate presence? Has it been that flight instinct to, I just don't want to go near that pain? Or have you been blocked because you feel like you've been really, it's actually, you've been possessed by the pain, you feel kind of identified

with it but paralyzed? Like it's too much. much and you're caught in it? Because we can't see much then either. Has it been that fight instinct that in some way you're judging the person so you can't get past the judgment to feel what's going on for them? That's especially the case if their pain is related to something about your relationship, of course. Just honest noticing right now. Has it been the default network? Have you just been too distracted? to really land and pay attention, to look closer, to even ask what's it like to be you. Or is it self-absorption? You've just been really caught in your own wants and fears.

See if you can reflect without adding more judgment just to notice where this old conditioning is activated. Because if you have the intention to deepen compassion, this is the first step. And it won't work if you judge yourself. Then you'll have another layer you have to work with. Just to know that if you want to wake up that tender-heartedness, it really is a practice. and it begins with a deepening commitment to presence so that we can see the other person as a real person sense what it's like to be them. You can open your eyes if you'd like.

I often refer to Gandhi and his, he had a practice that I described that he took off every Monday to meditate. and what I sometimes don't mention is his followers, many of them really objected because he'd be involved with major, major campaigns and projects and state business and meetings and it didn't matter what was coming up if somebody could be have flown into India, a major person they've all wanted to get together with, if it's Monday, all bets are off, you know?

And he said that he claimed that only if he took that time to clear and quiet his mind, could he really listen to others? Could he really take in others? Could he really have presence with others? So if we want to understand what's it like being you, we have to practice bringing presence to those situations. And often when we do, we encounter the blocks. So I'm going to share a story of one man,

this is some years back from this meditation community, and the most difficult part of his father's decline into Alzheimer's was his mother's suffering. So this was the suffering that he was working with. And she told him it's like ongoing and countless deaths. So it's very painful. Many of you I know know. And he was the only one of the siblings that was local, so he visited regularly and his father was kind of sinking into increasing confusion.

He started dreading visiting their little condo. It felt suffocating and his mother's loneliness and despair would just like wash over him. And he'd just feel like he was drowning in it and helpless. And at other times when he was stressed and busy he'd be there and he felt like a robot. It wasn't like he was feeling a whole lot. He was just kind of cut off. So let me just say that's the flight response, either getting overwhelmed or cutting off and dissociating.

So he came to one of the day-long workshops we have. It might have been in this room because we've done many of them here. And he decided to bring rain, which is mindfulness and compassion, the acronym that we use often right to this painful mix of feelings. Like he really wanted to work on it. So we started in small groups and he shared with his small group about, you know, his own sorrow in losing his father but also how he felt like he was being dragged into this bottomless pit of anguish with his mom. So he started doing rain, okay? And first recognizing allowing that he was his own empathetic distress, that he was, you know, how awful he was

feeling or the fear and the grief and the helplessness. So with rain, recognized means you just notice, okay, this is what's happening, overwhelmed. And the A, the allowing is, okay, let's let this be. We're going to pause and just be with this. And that lets us go to the eye of rain, which is investigate. drop in deeper. And as he investigated, and this is where we get really mindful, like when empathy gets mindful, it starts turning into compassion.

And that's a really important understanding. When empathy, that feeling with becomes mindful, it can transform into caring. This is how he did it. He started feeling the squeezing in his chest and the twisting his belly, and he begins naming what was going on. You know, fear, powerlessness, confusion, overwhelmed, just naming it. And one of the gifts of naming things when you're investigating and you're naming it

is it gives a little more witnessing space. If you're not as caught in the waves, you're kind of the ocean that's naming the waves. There's more space for them. So he's naming them and letting them be there. one by one. And he just started nurturing himself by saying, okay, it's okay, relax, breathe. It's okay. So he just kind of sent this message inwardly, the end of Raina's nurture.

So he'd been investigating, he was nurturing, okay, relax, breathe, relax, breathe. And he remembered particularly jarring time at the end of Raina's nurture. at one visit where his mom he'd yelled at his dad for going outside in pajamas, how afterwards she crumpled in remorse and he had to keep going, okay, relax, breathe, you know, so investigating, nurturing. And that opened some space, the more he nurtured, the more he felt space and he, what followed was he had an image of himself hugging his mom as she was weeping and there a space for it. He was holding her in this kind of spacious tenderness. And then he sensed his father was in that same spacious tenders too. So he'd done rain and now there was room for them.

And he said, he told me after doing rain, he said, after all these months of being so upset about their situation, I finally had some moments of simply caring about them. Can you sense the difference between empathy and compassion with the empathy, he was feeling all this stuff. But with the compassion, as he was mindfully being with it and investigating and nurturing, he was able to then just have the space and it takes space to care. So I want to give a little bit of a follow-up. He visited his parents after the workshop and he was really struck by the kind of trap that his mom was in. She was battling overwhelming feelings without having space herself or any support.

And he realized it wasn't right that he was the only support. So he helped her find her way to a group, which some of you might have been thinking, of course. She needed a support group. And it made an amazing difference to have that and bring in a bit of part-time nursing care. She needed space also in order to have room in her heart for the grieving and the loss.

So what he had done was he had shifted from empathic distress where he was just overwhelmed by her feelings or defended against her feelings to mindfully being with it, nurturing what was there, having space, and then being able to act in a clear way to be helpful. Because in other pieces, when we're empathetic but we're overwhelmed, our executive function isn't working so well. But once we wake up compassion, we're actually able to help in a more intelligent way. So this is just an example of when the block is flight is don't want to feel that, that there's a pathway we can use to transform what's going on into compassion. Now let's look at fight. Some of you might have in mind somebody that you're

actually close to that's having a hard time, but because you feel blamed or you feel guilty, it's very hard. Your relationships making it hard for you to hold them with kindness. And this happens a lot and I want to name it on the societal and group level. That the healing in our society is to get touched by other people suffering. we will not act on behalf of groups that are oppressed and suffering unless our heart lets itself be touched. But we block it. I'm very aware of the probably the best example is white guilt.

White guilt is that guilt of being knowing and seeing how white privilege has ended up causing white to oppress people of color over generations in ways that are horrific, that have caused horrific suffering. And the reaction often is, women, I didn't do anything wrong. It's not my fault. I'm not going to apologize for lynching. I didn't lynch anybody. That's white guilt.

Because that blocks compassion. If we feel blamed and we feel defensive, then our hearts are closed. actually registering, wait a minute, this is real suffering. Does that make sense? So here's a story that's an example because what we need to do is get together with people that are suffering, people of difference and learn what it's like to be you. That's what's going to begin to heal our world, right? So here's an example of that. This is after the 1990s Yugoslav war. And there were some peace circles that were held with Bosnians and Serbs. And in this circle, six Serbs, six Bosnians, and they're meeting to heal wounds. So the question is,

how do you awaken compassion in that situation so we can start healing and understanding each other? And you can listen to this story and translate this to any situation you're in where there are people that are in conflict and how do they end up being compassionate towards each other. So here we go. One Bosnian woman was expressing her rage and her pain at having been raped by Serbs in order to avoid having her children killed. Okay? So there's the group.

You've got Bosnian Serbs. and she's expressing that. And the facilitator made a request that everybody take in that particular suffering and express their sorrow that this happened. So here's what happened. The Serbs were not willing to apologize. They couldn't do it

because they felt like it would mean that they personally were guilty. So they wouldn't apologize. They wouldn't say, I'm sorry for this. and they were kind of protecting their own vulnerability. This is a different version of guilt. So now in situations like this, if one person can reach out

that can begin to shift the identity of, hey, I'm not the one that did anything and then create a lot more connection. So here's what happened. One Serbian woman, Dejana, she drew her shoulder. over shoulders and walked across the circle and sat in front of this woman that had been raped, Medina.

And then she held Medina's hands in her own and she said very gently, very tenderly, Medina, I believe you. I believe you completely. And tears were streaming down both women's faces as they looked into one another's eyes and convinced of the Gina's sincerity, Medina nodded wordlessly. And they really saw each other in those moments. It was the compassion of feeling with, not like you're an other over there, but we're in it together. And that was where something sacred happened, where something broke open and allowed

a deeper sense of belonging to emerge. So I share this because I think that we need to be thinking not just individually about compassion but how we as groups of people open our hearts to other groups that have been oppressed and hurting, how we get together. But it totally translates to what we need to do within our own lives. if you're in a situation right now where you're in reactivity emotionally with somebody so you're unable to feel compassionate towards them

the first step is to bring, I call it the U-turn you bring rain, you bring your care and presence to your own reaction you cannot feel compassion for another until you first feel self-compassion. There was one woman who was estranged from her mother for decades. But they made a truce in later life,

and they weren't close, but her anger was mostly gone. Her mother was very controlling and judgmental. Anyway, her mother got diagnosed with cancer, so this woman was spending a lot of time with her. And the mother, you know, who was a very... edgy character, asked her daughter when the relatives come over, let me know I'm doing, I really want to, I really want to be, you know, more open-hearted him. She was trying to work with her judgment. And this woman said, okay, I'm hired.

You know, she had been the subject of it for all those years, but she said, you know, okay, I'll, you know, so after the relatives left, she told her, my mom, you did really good. And her mom said, you did really well. All of a sudden it came, it was all up for her. And it sounds. like little to us but it was like her mother was always correcting her she was never okay as she was so her mother kind of drifted off into you know she's pretty ill and drifted off and this woman had to turn rain to that to that feeling of never enough recognized allow it investigate and feel where it is in your body bring care

it's okay sweetheart, until she could feel taken care of some, and then to see her mother just lying there. And it was in those moments she could really see through the veil. She could ask that question, what's it like being you? And sense that under the controlling was anxiety. There was some anxious thing in her that was just latched out at other people, because she just was not at peace or at home in herself. She was doing it to herself way more.

And it was in those moments right at the end of her mother's life that she could feel that genuine compassion, like, oh, I just wish you could relax. I wish you could feel that sense of good enough about life. Life is good enough. This moment is good enough. Real compassion. I share this story, though,

because she first had to bring compassion to herself. And so it is with us if we're in a reaction towards somebody and we feel like I'm not going to open up my heart to this person, they're blaming me. We first have to bring compassion inward. And just another word on compassion. Opening our hearts and wanting to help people does not mean we put down all our boundaries.

You can forgive somebody, you can love them, you can have deep, deep compassion for the place they're stuck, but still hold proper boundaries to make sure that you're taken care of and people that they might harm are taken care of. It's not the Tibetans call it idiot compassion, you know, when we're just, when it's just like, oh, I feel so sorry for you and you, you know. It's, and that's, well, it's like that story of the kindly priest and he sees this little boy reaching towards a doorknob but can't quite ring it. You know, he can't quite reach high enough,

so he walks up and he pushes it for him and then he says, now what? And the little boy says, we run like hell, you know. It's not that kind of compassion. Okay, so a few guidelines on how we can cultivate compassion for others using rain and then we're going to do a practice together. And the first is that you bring someone to mind and just to recognize, oh, suffering, they're suffering, and allow that to be the case. And then you investigate. This is where the question, what's it like being you comes in,

where you're really looking to sense, well, how are you actually feeling? Now, if as you investigate it feels overwhelming, like for Mitch with his mother, then you might just name mindfully what you're noticing. Oh, there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of grief. Name it. Sense a space around it.

You know, with mindfulness, you can sense the difference between if you had dye and you put it in a sink and you put that same dye in a lake. With mindfulness, you become larger. There's room for the other person's pain. Okay, fear, hurt, sadness. Now, sometimes when we're being mindful and investigating what's going on, what's it like being you,

we feel really removed and we can't feel a thing. And in that case, the guideline is to go into your body. Imagine that you're living with that other person's body, looking through their eyes with their face. What's the worst part of what's going on for them? What do they really need? So this is how you get more connected if you're dissociated and then nurture. That's where we activate the compassion by expressing care in a meditation.

It's through words or images, but there's also in real life. I'm going to make a couple of comments now we're going to practice. One is that one of the most common things that masquerades as compassion is pity. It's like, oh, I feel sorry for you, you poor person. You poor oppressed person, are you poor mistreated person? And I'm over here, you know, the privileged or healthy or unoppressed person feeling very sorry for it. So that's one way that we can do it.

and I brings to mind Lila Watson an Australian activist who says, if you've come here to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you've come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. When we are living in mature compassion, it's a heart space that we're in it together with others. And the more we cultivate that, the more it goes, more it goes from a passing state to just a natural spontaneous trait where when somebody

else is struggling, they're part of us. A little story I'll share with you written by a surgeon and right now I'm spacing out in his name. I hope it comes because he's a wonderful author. He says, I stand by the bed where a young woman lies. face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh. I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor

in her cheek, I had it cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they? I asked myself. He in this rye mouth I have made, who gazed at each other and touch each other so generously. The young woman speaks. Will my mouth always be like this, she asks? Yes, I say it well. It's because the nerve was cut. She nods and is silent, but the young man smiles. I like it, he said. it's kind of cute. All at once I know who he is. I understand and lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a God. Mindful he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I'm

so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers to show her that their kiss still works. I remember that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as mortals and I hold my breath and let the wonder in. I started tonight saying that really compassion is the hope, whether it's in this very intimate way, or the compassion we feel towards someone that we don't know but we see struggling, or the compassion we feel towards animals knowing what the animal industry is like, or the compassion we feel towards people from other parts of the world that we might not know at all. but our heart can get, oh, what's it like to live in that situation?

And when we get discouraged, I talked about Mr. Rogers and looking for the helpers. I want to read this from Mahatma Gandhi. He says, when I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love, have always won. Yes, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always. Compassion is our evolutionary potential. And when it's taught and trained in, when there's compassion training in schools, there's less bullying.

We know the sense of bullying and the global way. To be able to bring compassion into schools and have less bullying, that's the hope, right? when we bring it into medicine there's more caring we bring it into restorative justice processes there's actually apologies that happen between people nobody's worried about I didn't do that we sense the pain and suffering and we care because people are part of us

so I invite you to close your eyes for a moment and I'm going to be guiding you in a very brief taste of a meditation I call the reign of compassion. And I invite you to, on your own, take the time to drop into it more fully. Sit in a way that allows you to be relaxed and alert. And scan your body, see if you can let go of any habitual tension you might be carrying. Take a few full breaths and let your mind see. and let your mind settle.

You like to invite you to scan through family members or friends who are close to you and choose someone you know who's having a difficult time. Connect with your intention to awaken compassion toward this person. The beginning of rain is to simply recognize what most calls your attention about their challenges. You might be remembering a mood that they're infrequently or some way they appear or tone and a recent communications. Just begin by letting yourself recognize, oh, this person's having a hard time, this is how I know it.

And with that recognizing allow. So allow that experience to be just as it is. It's like you're willingly pausing with this. situation. We begin to investigate what's it like being you with real gentleness. So bring your curiosity and your interest as you attend more closely to what this person might be experiencing. You might imagine feeling with their heart and viewing the world from their perspective. You can make some inquiry asking yourself these questions if you're the person, like what life circumstances are most distressing to you?

What do you imagine? What's most distressing for this person? What are the particular fears or disappointments or hurts? This person's caring. Maybe as you're being mindful and empathetic you can sense what they're believing about themselves in their life. What's the belief? Are they feeling like a fail?

failure, feeling rejected, insecure, uncertain, and sense of you can feel and imagine how whatever emotions are strongest are living in them, maybe how they're living with fear or hurt or anger. And it feels like too much at any point just to use that noting to name the feelings and sense you don't have to be the sink, you can be like the lake. Just let it be held in a mindful witnessing way. Can you sense where the person feels most vulnerable? And you might even ask, you know, what is it that you most need? What do you think this person most needs?

Maybe from themselves or from others? And if at any point as you're investigating you find yourself reacting, then you shift and bring mindfulness and compassion to your own reaction, naming it, offering care to it. So sensing in, what is this person most need? Because this is what leads to nurture. This is how mindful empathy you've been feeling with turns into compassion. keeping this person and their vulnerability in your heart.

Expand your awareness, your whole body, sense the sounds around you, the space around you. You might sense your future self, your most awake heart, and that this being is part of you. And you can offer what's needed inwardly to this part of you, this being. Is it acceptance? Does this person need acceptance? acceptance, need to feel held, forgiven, companionship, understanding. Notice what happens when you actively nurture this person in your heart. You can send it energetically like a flow of warmth or maybe have an image of them and

sense that you're holding them or I sometimes imagine kissing the person on the brow or or send words, a message of care. The words can be very important. It could be as simple as I'm sorry and I love you. Imagine this person receiving and letting in your care, envision them as healing, as happy, as well. You might enlarge the field now to sense all of those people you can imagine who are in the same situation as this person and that you can sense your heart space as infinitely, infinitely

vast so that you're really holding and sending nurturing to all of those who are having the same struggle. If this person's grieving a loss, then you're connecting with an offering care to all those grieving loss. And if this person feels like a failure, you're connecting with all those who feel like a failure and offering care. You might sense the willingness of your heart to be touched by pain. You can feel as if you're breathing in and letting yourself be touched and then breathing out and offering your blessings and care to all beings who are suffering. And then letting go of all ideas of others. Just notice the quality of tenderness and presence and spaciousness that's right here.

Let go and rest in that open heart space, sensing the beingness that's right here, that's home. This is called After the Rain, After the Rain of Compassion, just rest in heart space. Namaste and blessings. Thank you. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.