Tara Brach - Wholehearted Living

Episode Date: August 24, 2011

2011-08-24 - Wholehearted Living - What stops us from being wholehearted in our relationships and life? This talk explores the conditioning that keeps us from an engaged presence, and the key elements to manifesting heart and spirit in all that we do. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

I'd be remiss not to name what's on a lot of people's minds, our recent shared experience. How many of you felt the earth shaking under you? Let's see. A good number. Okay. I was reflecting on how these are the moments that really get seared in our memory, because those, when you're right in the midst of it, there's true uncertainty. Like all the normal orientations and consciousness.

for what's going to happen next, gone. And so we're living in maybe fear, but also intense aliveness. Isn't it so? You're right there. You're not often thought, right? Pretty much. And interesting how when it's done, the amazing amount of communication, how instant it is, how within just a few hours on the web, we found this,

thanks to all of you for your kind words of support as we look to recover from the devastation of today's quake in Washington, D.C. Then there's a picture and it had some plastic lawn chair furniture and one little chair was toppled. It was perfect. One of the most interesting questions to me and it's central to, I think, all spiritual paths, is what is, what is, what is, it that really allows us to wake up? I mean, what is the ground of spiritual transformation and healing? And this was a key question at a conference I went to, a Buddhist conference I went to pretty much exactly 10 years ago. And it was held in the Twin Towers. So three weeks later, the Twin Towers went down. So it's interesting to be in a Buddhist conference.

that highlighted impermanence and then 9-11. This was an interesting conference for me because I was one of the five people that was invited to present, to open the conference. And the other four were well-known elders in the Buddhist tradition. And I was the new kid on the block and incredibly nervous. I was told that I was speaking second.

And I went, thank you. that meant that I had a little time to sit on stage and compose myself, but then I could get it over with, right? So the person in front of me was Baker Roshi, who is Suzuki Roshi's disciple. So he gets up and I'm just, and I sit back to just become composed. And he responds to the question, which was posed to all of us, what is the center, piece, what allows us to spiritually awaken? And he said, what allows us to awaken and be free is intention and attention. And then he bowed and he sat down. Now, we had been given 10 minutes, so that wasn't fair. It was like all of a sudden I was like up on my feet. And so I was up there.

Now, if I had had my wits about me, I would have gone like he said. You know, and I have no idea what I said, but I really remember his teaching, intention and attention. Okay? And when we think of it, these are the elements of full presence. That there's this intention to really be here. Like our heart is giving itself to the moment. and then we're learning to pay attention to just what's happening.

It's a full presence. There is a description of our lives that I find really, really helpful. And this is definitely not original to me. And it goes like this, that most people think of ourselves, we think of ourselves as humans on a spiritual path. But what we really are is spirit, incarnated in a human existence. And there's a huge difference in how we engage with our world

when we shift, when we flip that. Not humans, a small self on a spiritual path, but we are spirit, we're awareness that's incarnated. And then the inquiry is, how do we manifest that? How do we move through our days and manifest and live, from the love and the wisdom and the inner freedom that's inherent to spirit. How do we manifest it? And the reason I started with intention and attention is because those are the intertwined capacities that allow us to really manifest. And I think of it really as we're just learning

to be who we are. We have a very. a false understanding of who we are. We move through the day most of the time with a very limiting story of who this being is. And so our path is to wake up out of that story and begin to recognize what's here is spirit, is awareness, is compassion that's manifest. That's manifested. through this body mind. And how do we learn to pay attention and keep connected to this compass of the heart so that we can really be who we are?

A word that I'd like to use in exploring this tonight, because this is the exploration, is the word wholeheartedness. Because what I've found when I really sense, well, what is an expression of us when we're really manifesting spirit, there's a quality of wholeheartedness. And I see it again and again.

Wholeheartedness is when we bring our care and our interest, when we bring our whole being to whatever we're doing. And in those moments, in the moment that we bring wholeheartedness to our work, our wholeheartedness to our relationship, our wholeheartedness to a meditation, those are the moments that we begin to manifest these essential qualities of what you might call spirit,

our soul, our God, our Buddha nature. Everything that matters we know takes wholeheartedness. I mean, you can't compose a masterpiece of music half-heartedly. You know, you can't put half-hearted attention to it. And an athlete can't be half-hearted. if they're going to master that particular sport. And if we want to really have an intimate relationship with a partner or a friend, it's not a half-hearted attention. We know that.

And it's the same thing with spiritual life. You know, I've been in the game a while now. You know, if I count the years, it's been 30 some years, 35 years now, since I joined an ashram, I think. It's been that. So I've watched a lot of us, you know, get exposed and have a lot of fervor and passion about meditating and praying and Sufi dancing or whatever it is, yoga. And I've watched kind of the ebbs and flows. Many people have plateaued. And plateaued doesn't mean they're still not getting benefits.

They may find that the meditation keeps them, keeps their stress level. down and they might find that they're feeling better about themselves and just more even, more able to get in touch with metter, loving kindness, but there's not a deep sense of the adventure of presence. It doesn't have that sense of really that kind of uncertainty of the quake where we're really living here and we don't know what's going to happen. But there's this unfolding, this awakening that we're trusting. So, there's a plateauing out and I noticed that those that keep on seeming to unfold that are in this adventure where there's a freshness and a sense of wonder have this quality of wholeheartedness.

It doesn't mean they're always happy. It doesn't mean their practice is always, you know, skyrocketing off the charts with bliss, you know, but there's wholeheartedness. One of the descriptions of wholeheartedness that I have run into that I like, because I think of it as a kind of devotedness. We're just really devoted to manifesting in this life, the fullness of what we are. One teacher, Mnindraji, was asked why he meditated, and his response was to live the life fully,

to really be what I am. be this aliveness. And then I was reading Joseph Campbell, who many of you know, who's a great writer and philosopher and on myths and so on. And he says this. He says, people say that what we're all seeking is meaning for life.

I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive. So this has the sense of wholeheartedness, that we're bringing all of our being to what's happening, our full aliveness, our full presence. And when we see others who are wholehearted, and I mean wholehearted in an intelligent way, and we can be wholeheartedly foolish too, right?

But wholehearted in giving themselves to something, when we see that sincerity, we're touched. We trust people that are sincere and wholehearted. So what I'd like to explore tonight is what stops us from engaging wholeheartedly in the things that are important to us. Okay. You know, what stops us from being wholehearted in creative pursuits, in our spiritual practices, in our relationships, and then, of course, what allows us, what will free us up, what will, enable us to engage with a wholeness of heart and spirit. Okay. So let's begin by reflecting,

because again, I'd like this to be a very a practical thing for you. Let's take a moment to check in. And as you close your eyes and let your attention go inward, you might feel your breath at your heart and just connect and feel your own heart. And as you do, you might sense a part of your life where you'd like to have a more wholehearted presence. A part of your life where you'd like to see who you are, your spirit, your awareness, your heart manifest more. So you might be thinking of, oh, in my relationship with my daughter, or in my artwork, or in helping others in a certain way.

Or maybe it's in my meditation practice. Just identify an area, a situation where you'd like to be more wholehearted. And then that simple inquiry, is there anything between me and being wholehearted? What is it? What's between me and wholeheartedness? Whenever you'd like, you can open your eyes and yet I'd like to invite you to keep reflecting on that, keep sensing in really what is stopping me, what's between me and wholeheartedness? And just to consider that, and I'm going to name some of the ways that we stop ourselves when I do this kind of an inquiry in workshops, so people come up with.

And one thing is just a habit of inattention, that we are just habitually mechanical, and it seems to override a more full presence. We forget our intention and we don't pay attention. So one is just kind of mechanical. But often there's something underneath. that. And it usually comes down to that in some way we're grasping and hankering after something else and it's hard to just be wholehearted with this. That's one of them. I'm going to spend a little time with that. And the other is there's some fear that doesn't let us settle and open to

what's happening. Now, on the grasping side, and we've talked about this a couple of weeks ago, there's so many things that we are kind of using as substitutes to feel better that we habitually grasp after and it's hard to put them down we sometimes are grasping after attention or approval or accomplishing more hard to be with my child because there's something in me that just wants to get more done I would ask for a handraised but I won't I know how it is so there's the grasping sometimes the grasping is a very consuming kind of thing where we want to take in. It has to do with addictive. It's it's, it's, we cannot really bring our whole heart to something that matters to us because something in us needs to fill that hole that was so painful, a painful wound from so early. And we're

just habituated to doing it with food or with drugs in some way. So there's this grasping that we go after to, um, that makes it very hard to, to, to get into, into something wholeheartedly and often the grasping is if it's at work it's to prove ourselves. Rather than a wholehearted, creative engagement with our work, in some way it's competitive. In some way it's not so wholesome because we're trying to disprove our unworthiness and get some more stars by our name. As was the case with one new reporter who wanted to make a name for himself, he was in a very small town and the there was an accident, a very, very small town. And an accident, and there was crowds, and he couldn't get through them.

So he got this idea. And he said, I'm the father of the victim. And the crowd started parting, and he kept saying it, I'm the father of the victim. I'm the father of the victim. And they parted and they parted. And much to his embarrassment, when he got to the scene, the victim was a donkey. So it can get weird.

We know how it is when we're grasping in relationships. when we're grasping for a relationship to be different than it is. One friend in a new romance is having this, and she's very aware of it, that she's enjoying it, but she's also, her mind so much wants the certainty of this is going to work out, that she's not able to be wholeheartedly, spontaneously present. There's some tightness around what's yet to happen, right? So that's a bit of the of the grasping side. On the aversive side, on the resisting, we can't be wholehearted with each other

when there's a sense of the way you are is not okay and you need to change. And that's the big one. We cannot be wholehearted in our relationship, engaged in a way that really manifests who we are. if we're fixated on how you are needs to change. And when there's conflict, we can't resolve conflict. If we're fixated on you're wrong or you're bad. One woman posted this in the personals in the classifieds. It says, free to a good home.

Beautiful, six-month-old male kid in Orange and Carmel Tabby, playful, friendly, very affectionate, ideal for family. with kids are handsome 32-year-old husband, personal, funny, good job, but doesn't like cats, says here the cat goes. Call Jennifer and decide which one you'd like. So again, the inquiry is what is between me and a wholehearted presence and engagement? You know, am I grasping after something so I can't really arrive here? Am I pushing away? What I find is that there are really deep fears that if we don't look at, make it very hard to be here. And one of the fears in relationship is, if I was really wholehearted in my engagement,

and if I really open to this, I'd be rejected. That's one big one. Or if I'm really open and I'm wholehearted, in some way I'll get suffocated or taken advantage of. That's another side of it. One I find on the spiritual path a lot in meditation is that if I'm really wholehearted and give myself to this, I won't have enough time. Something else will fall by the wayside. In other words, I'll fail in some way if I really give myself to spiritual practice. I see that again and again that there's a sense of don't have enough time and a fear that something,

something bad will happen if I give my heart to this. So again, just putting these out there for you to check out for yourself. There's another fear about giving ourselves, about devoting ourselves, which is it won't work out. If I'm wholehearted about this, in some way it won't work out. It'll fail. I'll fail. I'll lose interest. I'll run out of energy.

So we're afraid to give ourselves because something will go wrong. Or it might be simply, I can't be wholehearted. I don't deserve to give myself to this. I'm responsible to something else. So again, you might just check into yourself, you know, in sense, if I was more wholehearted in this particular domain, what bad might happen? What bad might happen?

Is there some belief, some story about something bad happening if you really devoted yourself more in this area? Again, as you continue to reflect, what I've noticed when I investigate within my own being and when I talk to others is that being completely wholeheartedly engaged is giving up control. In a way, it's like facing death because we're letting go of all our normal ways of holding back or controlling things or thinking about things and really giving our hearts. and we are joining a flow which will empty into the sea. In other words, really letting go of a kind of separate selfness

and engaging fully. In a way, it really is a form of dying. Now, we might think of it, so it sounds like a beautiful form of dying, and yet we are afraid, we hold back, we hold back from things that we value. And one of the ways that, in Buddhist psychology it's sometimes described as the body of fear that we have this fear that

keeps us separate, keeps us wary, keeps us vigilant about what's going on around us that stops us from really entering the flow and giving ourselves. And it's very much a kind of contraction that is installed in an evolutionary kind of wiring. In other words, not being wholehearted is part of the way we're conditioned. Think about it. And I talk about this often about our ancestors or mammalian ancestors

needing to be vigilant, needing to always keep an eye around the corners see what's going to happen, looking behind them. It was not conducive through evolutionary history to just wholeheartedly

give ourselves to the moment, to wholeheartedly give ourselves to intimacy with anything, our inner life, each other, because the brain was installed with this kind of wariness that was always scanning the environment for danger. Can you imagine a squirrel-like creature meditating? You know, it's like darting around. So I often say, you know, we have a nervous system on purpose.

And wholeheartedness is an evolutionary development that goes beyond that. It's our capacity, but we have wiring that's different. In Buddhism, it's described as the first noble truth, that this uneasiness, this discontent called duca, our suffering, that keeps us from a kind of a wholehearted presence, is just a part of the human existence. It's part of it.

It's not the whole thing, but it's part of it. And the second noble truth says, if we act out of that and then we grasp on to things and we push things away, we lock into that sense of separate being. We become that separate human self that's trying to be spiritual but feels separate and apart from things. And if we keep playing out the grasping and the aversion and we don't learn to arrive in presence, then what we encounter is the pain.

of unlived life. Some of you might remember, this is Carl Jung, who says, nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parents. I mean, when we think of it,

unlived life are the moments that were not wholehearted, the moments that were busy scrambling to get something else. Unlived life are the relationships where we really didn't allow ourselves to be intimate with each other. Unlived life is the loneliness we didn't let ourselves acknowledge within our own being. Unlived life is that passion that we didn't follow, the adventures that we didn't let ourselves go on. And unlived life is that spirit that's right here listening and looking and aware that we didn't. allow to really blossom and manifest. That's unlive life and that's suffering. This is

Martha Graham. She says, there is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And there's only one of you in all time. This expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. So as we begin to intuit more and more that what's here is really spirit, awareness, in a human incarnation, we get more dedicated to living the moments. We get more dedicated to saying,

okay, let me investigate what's between me and being wholehearted. We deepen our attention. So I want to talk about the two pathways to deepening our attention. This is really the pathways of awakening intention and attention. And I'll start with intention. I'm not going to spend too long on it. But to say just as we begin our gatherings here and so many spiritual rituals and human gatherings in just a sense, well, what matters?

What's our purpose? Any time you ask that question, you know, what is it that? really matters to me. And then you wait and you listen and it takes some time because what first happens is you'll get some sometimes some canned responses. You know, some of the things you've said to yourself a lot of times. You want to get down to the level that's much more juicy and sincere and tender where when you say what matters, something in you really, really wants to love without holding back. You really want that. something in you wants to let in love

something in you wants to be spontaneous and real and does not want to live according to expectations or your own kind of messages to yourself of how you should be and when we get down to that level that's when we're hearing

the voice of our own awareness or spirit wanting to manifest it's the voice in us that wants to be who we are that's intention that longing to be who we are to love fully to live fully

it's that longing to really sense awareness itself to sense our source so that one reflection that we explore here and explore regularly is absolutely central to waking up the more you wake up

the more you'll be in touch with what matters, and the more you're in touch with what matters, the more you wake up. Now, there's handy reminders, and many times when you're on a path of manifesting spirit, you will choose reminders that help you to get back in touch when you've forgotten. And one of the reminders is you'll pick people

that are like mirrors, that they in some way feed back to you. this is what we care about. This is what's important. This is who you are. This is the goodness in you. They remind us. So we pick friends and we pick, you know,

practices that we do together as a way to remember our intention. And then there are ways material ways. I have a mullah, which has got skulls on it, which is really a reminder of impermanence and of this preciousness of each moment that's here. And there's something about wearing it and kind of playing with it.

I just kind of play with it. On some level, it keeps me remembering this right now matters. It's not like we're doing this so we can get to the end of class so that we can then get to September so we can have our kids go back to school. We're not on our way.

This moment right now, right this moment, matters as much as any moment in creation. really it matters and if our habit is to think we're waiting for something else that matters we'll always be waiting

will always be leaning into the future and we won't be wholehearted right here in what's right in this very present moment so we use things to help us remember and I want to share a story

that I love on this theme there was an old woman whose son was a traitor. He often joined caravans and traveled on business to far spots in India. When his mother learned that her son was going to be near Bodhaya, where the Buddha had become enlightened, she asked him to bring her a relic from there, something she could use as a focus for her devotion.

A reminder. Her son went to the holy place, and when he returned to his mother, he realized he had forgotten her request. seeing a dead dog on the street he tore a tooth from its mouth and wrapped it in silk when he presented the tooth

to his mother he told her it was one of the Buddha's canine teeth it was truly a holy relic the old woman put the tooth on her altar and began praying and prostrating before it soon the tooth began to emanate countless tiny pearls and rainbows

bounced around the room the old woman for the first time in her life found the unshaped peace of mind she had always sought. And when she died soon after, an aura of rainbow light surrounded her, a sign that she had attained enlightenment. There's a power to intention. And whatever helps us remember, whether it's, you know,

some wooden beads, or something we post on our wall, are some other ritual we have where we just keep asking what matters, what matters. When we get in touch with sincerity, And that's what happened with this woman. It didn't matter whose tooth it was. She contacted her own awakening heart, the longing of her own heart. And that energized her to freedom. Intention. Very powerful. So we cultivate this remembrance of our intention. And that, what our intention really usually does is it tells us pay attention. So that's the second part, which is this train.

that we do here and that is, if I had to say in the simplest terms, it's a training to recognize what's happening in the moment without judgment and to allow it, to let it be. So this training of paying attention, which another word is mindful awareness, paying attention to what's happening right here, this moment by moment by moment experience, with this allowing heart. I sometimes put it that says yes. And by yes, I mean energetically that makes room for what's happening,

does not fight, is not at war with the moment. A story I sometimes share that for me was a beautiful expression of this, was a woman who was taking care of her mother during the final stage of her life. Her mom had cancer, and they had had a very difficult relationship, one where her mother had been very controlling, and this woman had developed a lot of resentment and pain around that.

And so it was a little testy, but she was game. And her mother wanted to change. Her mother had intention. So her mother basically said, you know, when relatives come, let me know how I'm doing, so I can, you know, so I can really be the person. person I want to be. So one day, in fact, they had a, they all visited. And after they left, this woman's mother said, so how did I do? And this woman's response to her mother was, you did really good, mom. You did really good. And her mother paused and she said,

I did well, you know, which in many relationships would be just fine. I mean, my mother does. does that to me all the time. But in this relationship, it wasn't okay because it tripped off in her a very, very deep sense of I can never do it right. It tripped off in her, and then she started paying attention because her mother kind of laid back and kind of drifted. So she stayed present and she began this practice

of paying attention. Okay? Her intention was to stay, okay, with her. experience and she started paying attention and the first thing that came up for her after that comment was real anger but she stayed with it and underneath the anger was a really deep hurt you know that I've never been good enough and underneath that hurt because she said yes to the hurt she said okay be as big as it is was this grieving okay again recognize the grieving say yes She let the grieving really just move through her like waves and waves.

And in its wake, she felt this kind of compassion for just her own experience. It was like, okay, this is really hard. I sometimes say, ouch. It's like, ouch, okay, so I've lived my life feeling not enough with my mother. And so when I'm putting my hand in my heart, that was the experience of holding herself with self-compassion. when she could do that there was a shift and this is what happens when we pay attention

there's a shift in identity we're no longer this human self on a path there's a shift in identity and we become more spirit compassionate presence that's holding the being that's here do you understand that

with paying attention there's a shift in our sense of who we we are. So for her, rather than being the victimized daughter, she was that tender heart of compassion holding her own experience. That shift made all the difference in terms of wholeheartedness. She could then look at her mother and see much more clearly. We can't see clearly through the eyes of a victim. It's distorted. Does that make sense? We can't see the other person. They're just the abuser or the offender.

But when we're holding our being with compassion, then we look through those same eyes that are open and tender. We see, oh, okay. So she is controlling, and underneath that, she's scared. Nobody controls if they're happy and feeling free. She's controlling me because she wants me to be a certain way, so I'll be happy. It's been her habit for, you know, 57 years, but it's a habit.

So she saw that. She saw the fear, and underneath the fear, she saw her mom's good heart. And for the remainder of their time, she was able to bring that presence we're talking about tonight, this quality of wholeheartedness. It didn't mean she was always in a good mood, as I'm saying, but bringing her whole being because she had faced that kind of pain that she had been pulling away from. The point that I'm making with paying attention is that we can't come to wholeheartedness unless we bring a courageous attention to what's here. And that often means facing something we've been moving away from. We've been avoiding. It's a kind of dying. We have to be willing to put down the controls, face the layers of our psyche we've been avoiding,

and then come to an enlarged sense of our beingness, wholehearted presence. I want to read you a poem from Mary Oliver that really speaks to this willingness of our heart to have that courage and to open to all that's here. Sometimes it's called the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. And we opened it for the sake of really freeing our spirit. When death comes, like the hungry bear in autumn, when death comes and takes all the bright coins, from his purse to buy me and snaps the purse shut. When death comes like measlepox,

when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering, what is it going to be like that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility. And I think of each life as a flower, as common, as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does towards silence,

and each body a lion of courage and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say, all my life, I was a bride, married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened are full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. So it's natural that we pull back from wholeheartedness we have a lot of conditioning and it's also part of our natural capacity to deepen our intention

and to pay attention and there's no way to do it without kindness if you encounter a block to wholeheartedness and we're going to end with the meditation so you'll get to practice this as you pay attention let

your quality of heart be very gentle and very kind because if we're trying to push ourselves into wholeheartedness it doesn't happen it's just being pushy so I'd like to I'm going to share one last story perhaps before we close and meditate but just to say that this is a life training as much as anything we talk about here in terms of bringing presence into our life tonight we're talking about how we bring presence very actively manifesting it in our activity with each other, with meditating, with practice, with being in the world. And it takes an ongoing training. I recommend every day seeing if you can practice doing one thing at a time, at least sometimes, you know, whether it's,

whether what you're doing is, you know, taking a shower or the dishes or Facebook, I was going to think how do you do that mindfully, but you can do everything mindfully. See if you can do one thing at a time. When you do, you start sensing more and more of you there for what you're doing, and your expression comes more and more out of your intelligence and out of your tenderness and out of your creativity. So life is more and more serving and savoring. Last story, this took place at Lincoln center, New York City. He stocked Pearlman, 1995, giving a concert. And as many of you know, he struck in with polio as a child. So he moves on braces and crutches. And he walks across the stage as he enters one step at a time, and it's slow and it's painful. And then he reaches his chair

and he slowly puts the crutches down and does the clasps on his legs. And he gets into position, picks up the violin. It's a whole ritual. Well, this particular time, and the audience is used to this ritual, this particular time they're all sitting quietly as they do, kind of reverence in the room. And something went wrong, which was as he began, he just finished the first few bars, and one of the strings on his violin broke,

and everybody could hear the twang. So it broke, and it was like, as this guy writes, it was like gunfire across the room. And they figured that he'd have to go and put his clasps on again and get the crutches. and go slowly across to get a new string, but that's not what happened. And so I'll read to you.

Instead, he waited a moment, close his eyes, and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head. At one point it sounded like he was detuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

And when he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then everyone rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet us. And then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone. You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left. Sometimes it's the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left. So when I heard that story, what it really brought me to was the blessing or gift of this past.

that when we really have this intention to manifest spirit, to manifest who we are, to manifest awareness, and when we learn to pay attention, we are freed up to express that who we are in quite a beautiful way. And it doesn't matter that, yes, this life comes to an end. It's like death can be there, and as Mary Oliver put it, we live our life.

we live our moments and they are precious to us and they serve our own freedom and they serve the awakening of others because it's contagious when you're here others start joining you so i'd like to close as i promised we'll do a brief meditation in these moments again as you did earlier just to go to that place in your life where you would like to be more more than you would like to be more wholehearted in your presence. And take some moments as you do to feel the sincerity of your intention. Not that you have to measure how much progress you make but that you know this matters to you because that's a huge part of this, that you care. You might sense what makes this important to you. Feeling

your intention and then letting yourself deepen your attention for just a few moments if you bring yourself to that particular situation and sense what typically might arise. If you sense what might pull you away from wholeheartedness. And for now, just to notice what it might be, whether it's a fear that you don't have enough time or that you'll be perhaps rejected by another person or that it won't work out. Or maybe it's a habitual grasping onto something else that you just keep having to try to go and accomplish something or in some way soothe yourself. Whatever it is, notice what might be pulling you away from wholeheartedness and forgive it. In as deep a way as you know how. And if forgive isn't the word for you

with real gentleness, except that it's there. It's not your personal fault. It's just conditioning. The more kind you are towards the conditioning, the more you'll be inhabiting your own awakened heart. Forgive it. You might just mentally say, forgiven, forgiven. Or if it helps you to put your hand on your heart, just put your hand on your heart and just offer forgiveness to whatever's keeping you from that wholeheartedness. Forgiven, forgiven. And a sense, can you imagine, this situation what it would be like if you were more wholehearted, if you were able to then in some way stay more, be more there for another person or yourself or your practice, what

would that be like? Just to imagine manifesting more who you are in this situation, more of your inherent awareness, awakeness, goodness, kindness. And knowing that this is the possibility, this is the potential. Being very clear, it's not an expectation to put on yourself,

but a gift just to hold it as a potential that you're inviting yourself to remember. Again, Mary Oliver, when it's over, want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something

particular and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website,

which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is imcw.org. Thank you very much.