Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Making it RAIN | Tara Brach

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Today we’re going to talk about a massively useful acronym, which can be used both on the cushion and in your free-range living. The acronym is RAIN -- R-A-I-N -- and rather than explaining it myself, I will leave that to my guest, who has become one of RAIN’s primary proponents. Tara Brach is an author, therapist, and meditation teacher. She has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, she founded the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, and she has written several books, including her latest, which is called Radical Compassion. We first posted this interview in January 2020, shortly after that book came out. In this conversation, we talk about: What RAIN is and how to apply it in many areas of your life, including relationships; a Buddhist list called The Eight Worldly Winds; and whether most people harbor a suspicion that there's something fundamentally wrong with us. But we start and end the conversation with a touchy subject. In my first book, I made fun of Tara a little bit, which didn’t go down that well with her, although I didn’t know that until this chat. I really respect how warm and open she was during this tricky discussion. Stay tuned until the very end, when we fully wrap that subject up. Also: We would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to help us out by answering a brand-new survey about your experience with this podcast. Our team here cares deeply about you, our listeners, and we are always looking for ways to improve. Please go to https://www.tenpercent.com/survey. Thank you! Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/tara-brach-repost See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, today we're going to talk about a massively useful acronym, which could be deployed both on the meditation cushion and in your free range living. The acronym is RAIN, R-A-I-M, and rather than trying to explain it myself, I will leave

that to my guests today who has become one of RAIN's primary proponents. Tara Brock is an author, therapist, and meditation teacher. She has a PhD in clinical psychology. She founded the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and she's written a whole bunch of books including her latest which is called Radical Compassion. We first posted this interview in January 2020 shortly after that book came out. In the conversation we talk about what rain is and how to apply it in many areas of your life including relationships.

We talk about a Buddhist list called the Eight Worldly Winds. And we talk about whether most people harbor a suspicion that there's something fundamentally wrong with us. But we start and end with a conversation on a touchy subject. In my first book, 10% happier, I poked fun. I thought gently at Tara. It turns out it didn't go down that well with her, although I didn't really know that until this chat, I really respect how warm and open she was during this rather tricky discussion. Stay tuned until the very end, though, when we fully wrap it up. One thing before we dive into the episode,

we would really appreciate it if you could take just a few minutes to do us a solid by answering a brand new survey about your experience with this podcast. We care deeply, as I think you know, about our listeners and we're always looking for ways to improve. So please go to 10% dot com forward slash survey.

We'll put a link in the show notes. Thank you in advance. Okay, here we go now with Tar Brock. Nice to see you. And you. I think this is the second time we've met. The first time we met in my memory was backstage at some meditation event. And I remember being a little hesitant because I saw you there and I thought, I made fun of her a little bit in my book and I didn't know how it was gonna go, but then you gave me a big hug.

So where are we with that? Are you mad at me for a little bit? It was actually a really great experience for me because it's fame and distribute. And you made fun of me some, and you also appreciated the thing that most mattered to me, which is the practice of rain. And I figured, I can survive this.

Well, I've talked about this a lot on the show, so my apologies to folks who've had to hear me hold forth on this too much. But I got a 360 review, is if you ever heard of it. Yeah, yeah. So I got one. And basically all the people in my, or many of the people in my life, anonymously commented on my strance and weaknesses. And one of the weaknesses was being judgmental. You, I think, were really an early victim of mine on this score in the meditation world. And there was a message for me in it too, because I'm basically out to wake up

and be able to present things in a way that are gonna reach people. And I suspected for you, my way was, had too much of a kind of uigui, too sweet flavor. And I realized, oh, there's gonna be a message people like Dan that that's the way they receive it. And I think as we keep growing, we just get more flexible in ways we present things. So there was room for that.

Yes, I agree. I think, yeah, you have a way of talking about this that works for hundreds of thousands of people. My way of talking about it or thinking about it or acting it out in the world is very different. And that's the importance of having many folks out there talking about the Dharma. That's where I land on this. Me too. Me too. It's really exciting to me actually. And it's exciting when the dialogues happen because basically we're free when we all stretch. Say more about that. Yeah, the more, first of all, as a teacher, the more flexibility I have,

and how I present things in the more sensitive I am to the different ways people receive things, the more effective I can be. And as a practitioner, for instance this morning, I was talking to my husband about a book that right now I'm rereading for the 20th time and I am that by Srinar Sargadatta. And it's a book about non-dual reality, about seeing how really constantly looking at how am I getting identified right in this moment, like really seeing past the coagulation of self and recognizing, okay, I'm not this particular personality, I'm not this body, and recognizing a larger sense of beingness. And so we were talking about that, and then I just said, you know, that is fantastic when my mind

is quiet enough. But if I'm caught in some anxiety, for me to say, oh, I'm not this anxiety, actually is a subtle way of pushing it away. And what's more important is for me to feel the wave of anxiety. And in some way say, okay, this belongs. This is a wave in the ocean, you know, and to actually feel it. And in opening to it and not resisting, the identification actually dissolves. So the pathway taught in the book that I'm riveted by right this moment isn't the pathway at any given moment and our will it work for many people when they're stuck in a certain

way. So it's just having that, keeping the whole domain of practice fresh. So in any given moment, there's an intuitive way to respond to what's arising now that actually deepens freedom and not going by road really is actually what works in the most deep ways. So you talked about implicitly a change that I've seen you make in my observation of you as a teacher since the first time I saw you speak until reading your most recent book. So in the teaching of rain or AIN which we're going to walk through in detail, the first time I heard you speak the N stood for non-identification. Now you teach it as nurture, which in your

last answer, I think I heard you say that nurturing leads to the non-identification. If you can be cool with whatever is coming up, and you mentioned anxiety, and you've talked about personally the only thing that's on your own life, if you can be cool with the anxiety, if you can be warm in the face of this unwelcome visitor in your own mind, that can ultimately, if I'm hearing you correctly, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, lead you to seeing, oh yeah, this is just a visitor. It isn't me. That's exactly right.

And if we bypass the nurturing, and it's not like every time something comes up, we have to put our hand on our heart and offer all sorts of phrases of self-compassion. But there are times that bringing a kindness and a warmth to what's there softens the resistance in a way that we're embodied and yet more spacious. And if we skip over it, if we go too quickly to saying, Oh, this isn't me, I'm not identified, it's actually a subtle kind of dissociation. We're not really embodied. So the more full freedom is to be with the wave and realize your oceanness through the process of being with the wave, which for most of us take some quality of kindness or compassion.

We're getting ahead of ourselves by getting to the end of rain before we've even done the R. But I just want to get back to our discussion about my first encounter with you and the way I wrote about it. You used a phrase that comes right out of the Buddhist canon of fame and disrepute, and I didn't want to let that go by without letting you talk about it, because just to remind listeners of if they've lost the context, you said when you were reading what I wrote about you, you had this thought of, oh, this is fame and just repute. This is part of, and you'll correct me because you're the Buddhist teacher here, but in my understanding of Buddhism, they talk about this thing called the Eight Winds. And I've always been fascinated by this because it's pain and gain and loss, fame and infamy

and I don't know, there's a bunch of them, you know. But the peace on fame and distribute is a really interesting one to me because we are all pretty conditioned to want to look good to get approved to be liked. I mean, it's so deep in us as social creatures, we are rigged to connect love with being impressive, achieving, and so on. And so how we looked at others really matters. And so for me to be scanning my own psyche and seeing how when people love what I'm teaching and tell me how I'm changing their lives, I, you know, there's a swelling up and a feeling good and just to note that. And also to notice that some people are giving me feedback of using a poem that was incredibly

insensitive to a part of the population are teaching something that for a traumatized person actually could make things worse and then the sinking, the contracting, and to really become awake and free in the midst of that inflating, deflating is absolutely essential for the ride if we're going to find any real peace. Well, what I like about describing them as the eight wins, and I can't remember all the things I've told you about. You get blown by them. You get blown around.

It's also impersonal. The wind isn't you. There are times when you're going to have fame, it can be big fame, like truly famous person or just sort of a good reputation in your circle of friends. And there are going to be times when you have a bad reputation and it's going back to your thing about non-identification. And that to me, there's freedom in viewing things that way, I think. It's the reason I often talk in an evolutionary way also, is that we take so personally all the

different emotions that are absolutely wired into our nervous system and have an intelligence. And yet, you know, we feel fear and it's my fear. And I feel too much fear, rather than realizing we'd be brain dead without fear, and that every single organism on the planet has a version of it. So it's the same thing with the worldly winds, whether it's gain or loss, fame or disrepute or feeling fear or anger. They're not personal, but it takes a lot to pay attention in a way that gets it. I mean, one of the things I'll often do in a workshop is I'll have people sit in the circle and write down three things they're really afraid of, and fold the paper up and put it in the center

and we'll mix the pile around, and then people just pick from the pile and they just read them out loud and everybody just listens as each person's reading. And the realization that comes out of that really is, I'm just getting, it's not my fear, it's the fear, that sense of it just not so personal, which is why I really feel like we need to do these practices with each other. Because it's not until we start sharing what's going on that we realize that what we've been taking so much as mine, I, self, is really part of our shared inheritance. Okay, so I'm going to further delay the diving into rain because I suspect this is a habit of yours.

You say interesting things and then I'm going to force to follow up on it. Doing the practices with each other, I can imagine in my endless skills of empathy, that's sarcastic for my audience, that some people out there listening are thinking, well, I'm going to take it on my own. I listen to some app or I have a practice that I, you know, it's been part of my life, but I'm in my living room doing this. I'm not doing it with other people. So does that mean I'm doing it wrong?

No, when I say doing the practices, in a way, I'm saying doing the path. And what I mean is I meditate alone many days of the week. Sometimes I meditate with my husband, but it's more sharing the unfolding with each other, sharing what's happening, being vulnerable, real, with both the, you know, what were the insights and also the blocks. And that's what enlarges us. And I'll add something. And this is going to be, again, tossing our sequence completely. It's frashing it a little bit. But one of the beauties of rain is that more and more people are doing rain partners, where they're doing rain together, which I think just catalyzes a whole other

level dimension of waking up. So I can speak more to that at some point and I can direct people to the website. But we have people in our training programs, we have people in our local community, actually all over the globe right now, are in pairs doing rain partners and there's different levels of how you can do it. And finding that, first of all, keeps them with the practice. It's like when you do something with somebody else, you're more accountable. You kind of go through the whole process rather than drifting and dropping it

and makes a kind of container that's safe and friendly and inconduceive. And then in the sharing pieces, it actually, when you start naming out loud, something that's happening, you become more aware of it. It brings it more into more aware of it. It brings it more into the light of awareness. So that's another piece of practicing together.

I mean, the most obvious is go to classes, have small spiritual friends groups or clusters that you meditate with. But more, do the path together and do some meditations together. I think interpersonal meditations are part, they're going to be the wave of the future, because we spend a whole lot of time getting more intimate with our own heart and mind, but we don't practice intentionally how we speak with each other.

So when I'm talking to you right now, am I actually in my body? And when you speak, am I really listening, putting down my ideas and taking it in? And when I speak, am I speaking from as much of a place of heart and presence as I can? So we don't practice that that much. It's hard.

I've done some of this work, die-ad work, where you sit and have to stare into somebody's eye and then like a death stare. It's hard. I've done some of this work, die-ad work where you sit and have to stare into somebody's eye and then like a death stare. It's hard. The resistant ones call it a death stare. Yeah, from the resistant one. To everything. You just scale that through the rest of this conversation. Yes, it's really, really hard.

And yet, actually, I did find that it somehow reduced for me this sort of sitting there and then the aforementioned death stare with some stranger. I actually think the first time I ever did it was you made me do it at this event I went to that I ended up writing about and I was so mad at you I didn't know you but I was really mad at you for making me stare at this nice young woman who was sitting next to me who I didn't know. But over time as I've been in other programs where I've been forced to do the diet work, it does kind of whittle away a little bit. In my case, I'll just speak for myself at the inherent awkwardness that I've felt in

myself of dealing with other people, because you're really just mainlining wordless connection. That's exactly right. And it builds your tolerance almost for the discomfort. Yes, that's right. It's affect tolerance. It's really being able to stay present and not have it matter so much that it's uncomfortable. And then you start sensing, once you relax a little,

you can start looking and seeing vulnerability. You can kind of see the vulnerability. You are too busy in your mind to notice. And you can see the goodness, which is what's so beautiful. And see the sameness. You can start sensing that that, which is looking out through your eyes, is the same basic awareness as mine. And that kind of catapults you into another place.

But just to say, when I talk about rain partners, that's actually not a eye-gazing process. People do it on the phone and they do it online and they do it in all different ways. It's more has to do with moving from an inner kind of contemplation to sharing, to inner to sharing. Well, let's dive into how that works in a minute. Let's finally walk through rain As discussed I had never heard of rain before her you speak at an event here in New York City and it

Really is a profoundly useful Schema, I don't know with that acronym whatever you want to call it so can you just talk through your history? How did you I think was Michelle McDonald's who came up with it. The great teacher Michelle McDonald's has never been on the show. She came up with the acronym and then. Michelle came up with the acronym probably 1990s, early 1990s. And I began using it then and loved it. And both for myself and students, there were a couple of blocks or problems that people would run into and talk to me about.

And one of them was that they said, well, what is not identification? Like, how do you not identify? And I had to explain that non-identifications actually the fruit of what happens. It's like you pay attention in certain ways on purpose. And then the fruit of that is this realization of, oh, I'm not that. So it's not a doing.

So that motivated me to shift the acronym around a little. But the other piece was that they couldn't really, when they were investigating, they couldn't really get in touch with fully in their body with what was going on, and it really needed the nurturing to fully embody it. So compassion was the missing piece. If we think of awareness as having the two wings of mindfulness or seeing clearly what's here and compassion holding it with kindness, we need to bring in that wing of kindness not just as a kind of background mood, but in an explicit way because we are so programmed to

actually be turned against ourselves. So it does need to be explicit. So one of the there's an attachment therapist, Luis Cozalino, and he says that it's not the survival of the fittest, it's the survival of the nurtured. Survival of the nurtured. Yeah. And so learning a pathway to self-nerturing, and it doesn't have to be, I am sending messages to myself to nurture myself, or I'm right now touching my heart. It could also be the pathway to nurturing, could be by imagining and sensing nurturing from

some larger source. But finding some pathway to feeling nurtured helps to actually soften the self identity. It actually allows us to relax and open and sense a larger belonging. I'm feeling a little bit like a failure as an interviewer because we still haven't done the R of rain. So, walk through it. So, this is the background to how come I shifted the letters. But here's how the letters go.

The R is recognized. And that simply means that when you're in some way in reaction and suffering, you pause and notice, okay, something's going on. It's an intentional, okay, something's here going on, what's going on here. So you recognize what's happening and the A is allow, which means rather than what we typically do, which was we go into fight flight freeze, in other words, we in some way try to fix it, change it, ignore it, judge it.

We do something. It's like a pause where we say, okay, just let this be here right now. I use the language of yes, saying yes to what's right here. Not yes, I like it, or yes, I want it to always stay here, but yes, this is the actuality of the moment.

This is truth-telling. So yes, let's let it be here. That's recognizing a law. That creates enough of a pauser of space to actually deepen attention. Then we make the U-turn and we begin to investigate. I see. So you have to pause the action and then you make the you turn that just means instead of moving into the reactivity, you go from that pause to okay, so what's really

happening? If recognize is the first step, the third step, which is investigate is saying okay, what's really going on. Let's recognize even more deeply. And do you imagine people doing this on the fly, like in the middle of a conversation, if I start feeling that I am anxious as I'm talking to you, would I do the rain while I'm maintaining the conversation with you? And is this also a formal meditation practice?

Both. Yeah. And so once you've kind of got in your cells, the sense of how it works, and it can become very, very like a light rain. I feel like I'm doing a light rain a lot. And it's an informal practice you can weave through the day at any moment, just noticing and letting be what's happening. But just sensing, okay, feeling it here, okay, be kind, and then just sensing a little bit of a shift and you move on.

So it can be quick. So now, there's a few things with the investigating that are always misunderstood and really important to know. And that is it's not cognitive or at least 98% it's not cognitive. 98% it's really getting somatic. It's you're investigating and bringing the attention to feeling the throat, the chest, the belly, how is this experience expressed in my body? So the investigation isn't, oh, I bet my mother's always saying mean things to me because X or Y happened in her personalistic way.

The investigation is, oh, what does anxiety actually like? It's a tightening in my chest. That's right. What is this? How is it showing right in this moment? Now, there are some skillful ways that can support that are investigating. Like, if I am in a really bad mood, I'll sometimes ask myself, well, what am I believing right now?

And generally, I find, oh, I'm believing that I've failed in some way, that I'm falling short, that I'm not okay, I'm not enough, or I'm believing that somebody else isn't liking me, whatever. But seeing that, bringing that into consciousness actually helps get back and touch more directly with what's happening somatically. So that can be a useful piece. Another part of investigating I like is, let's say I'm feeling anxious in this interview, and I pause enough to say, well, how is that anxiety really expressing even in my face? You know, if I could, and just let my face take the tightness of the feeling, and let my body kind of...

So when I'm guiding people in workshops, I'll actually get them to sculpt it because we are so sculpted. Yeah, with their bodies in their face, like actually let their bodies in face take the full expression of the mood they're feeling. And the reason why I did it is that most people are, most of us, are pretty dissociative from our bodies. And it takes some intentional extra kind of fine-tuning to really draw the attention fully to what's going on. And if there's been trauma, it's really, really hard.

And so there might just be, instead of going into the body, there might, with trauma, I really encourage people to go right into nurturing, to not even do the sequence of rain, to nurture first and find the pathways to self-suething, to safety, to, you know, get the parasympathetic going, calm down, before they actually do the real somatic investigation. And that can be for weeks or months. It's not that useful if there's trauma to go right into investigating. Why not? Because you can retraumatize. Unless there's sufficient stability and resilience and safety, going and right to where the feelings are can overwhelm, and then you just have another round of feeling powerless and unable to deal with it.

So you want to take the time to do other styles of meditation that are more loving kindness, the nurturing domain, in order to build up enough sense of resourcefulness to then do the kind of investigating and unpacking that rain does. Now I think we find ourselves back in order on N. So we did it. We did it. We've done it. I think there's a reason,

energetically intellectually, we kind of leaned in to N early and are now coming back to it because it is so important. So we started with recognize just seeing clearly what's happening, A, allowing or accepting, yep, it's not saying I'm psyched that I feel like just right, I was just saying this is the truth. I is investigating, again, that's not a cognitive process most of the time, although as you describe, one can skillfully use

thought to direct you to the direct experience, but it is more of a sort of feeling what's actually happening in your body and then we land at end nurturing. And there's a couple of final pieces on investigating that actually set the grounds for nurturing that are really powerful, that I like to teach about, which is, there's certain questions you can ask yourself, like, how does this place want me to be with it right now? Like if I'm feeling hurt, or if I'm feeling shame, or I'm feeling anger, whatever, how does this place want me to be with it? How does the anger want me to be with it? Yeah, how does the fear, the shame want me to be with it? Or another how does the fear, the shame want me to be with it? Or another way of saying is, what does this place need? What does it need right now?

Because nurturing is really a response to vulnerability. And when we investigate and finally contact, we're vulnerable, we're afraid, whatever it is. If we really feel it, there's a natural upwelling of tenderness. And that really is the dynamic of compassion, which is compassion is a response to feeling the vulnerability. So investigating gets you in touch with the vulnerability and those questions help you do that.

What does this place really need right now? And often I invite people to ask that and put their hand on their heart at the same time the kind of thing that would have freaked you out a number of years ago and still might get you like that. So for the part of the population that is drawn to it, you're actually beginning to create a kind of nurturing atmosphere even when you ask that question. And then that question will invite forward what's needed. And for one woman I wrote about this in the book, who is really afraid of CEO and her organization,

and she'd go into meetings and have brain freeze. And she was really qualified, brilliant woman, but his temperament intimidated her. And so I had her doing rain before she'd go into the meeting. And she got to that anxiety and she felt it, she felt the clenched in her chest. And then she asked, well, what do you need? And the anxiety basically responded, I need you to be okay that I'm here, just to let it be okay that I'm here. So she just sent the message, you know, it's okay, this belongs. It's okay, this belongs. And

there's a real power to the message, this belongs. Because in the moment that we say this belongs, it's metaphorically we become the ocean that has room for the waves, rather than another wave fighting a wave. This belongs, creates just the space we need. It wasn't like the anxiety dissolved. It was more that there was just more space and she wasn't as in the grip. That was her end, just to send that message. So there's a lot of different ways

that nurturing emerges. For some people, it does include, you know, one hand on the heart or two hands on the heart. Some people put their hands on their cheeks. For others, and it can be a combo, there's a set of words that really are the message that a part of us most needs to hear at that time. For me at times when I've, everything I've tried in terms of self-nerchering hasn't worked, I finally get down to this place of, please love me.

I'm just kind of asking the universe, please love me. And there's a sense in some way of something larger, some presence that is compassionate and tender and washing through me. So it's when I get very vulnerable and call out that I can feel that and then I realize that that presence wasn't outside me. It just appeared to be outside me. It's just part of my own heart. But at the time of being stuck, I needed to call out. So sometimes for some people, just kind of in some prayerful way, asking for nurturance helps.

Some people have a friend they'll imagine holding them. So there's many, many different ways. But the nurturing tends to soften as we were talking about in a way that we actually feel enlarged, no longer hooked or identified. So if it was anxiety, I'm not the anxious self anymore. I'm kind of that space of tender, wakefulness that is aware of and kindly towards the anxiety. That is what I call after the rain.

And I put that in quotes because people tend to, after they do the end, just go back into whatever is next in their lives, but not notice the shift that's happened. And for, on the path of waking up, noticing the shift in identity, this is where non-identification comes in, actually deepens our familiarity with who we really are beyond an ego itself. So after the rain, are those moments when we just notice, oh, who am I right now? You know, it's not no longer stuck in that small hooked place, and there's usually some quality of spaciousness or openness or tenderness, more freedom.

So I invite people to pause and rest in that and just really get familiar with it. That's kind of the instructions in the Tibetan tradition is when you touch a moment of freedom just, get familiar with it. All right, so there was a lot there on the end part. I have a bunch of questions. I'm just trying to order them correctly in my head. One of them is, so you talked about some of the ways we can operationalize the nurture part of rain.

What about for somebody like me who does have a, it doesn't resonate much with me, the idea of putting my hand in my heart, although I have spring wash them, who's a great teacher, who's been on the show a couple of times, mutual friend. She's had me do that before and I'm embarrassed to admit it did kind of work, but I was in the middle of a deep, I was on the like the seventh day of a meta retreat at that point, so it's a little bit different from my regular life. But generally speaking, I think I'm not alone in feeling like putting my hand in my face or my heart or whatever doesn't immediately

jump out at something that I want to do and the asking the universe to please love me too doesn't land for me is something that I would do. So how could I do the end part of rain? So then I would ask you when in your own experience have you found that there is something that you pay attention to that Worms you tenders you softens you toward myself in any way like in with any person in any situation with nature With you know, is there anything that when you think of it just tenderizes you? Yeah, my son, our cats, animals generally. Yeah, those types of things I do to put it in the language you used before.

I do see the vulnerability, and then I think the compassion, another way of saying that would be just the desire to be helpful arises uncontrived. That's right. So that's an example of how connecting with vulnerability brings your nurturing towards the world around you. Now what happens when you're cut off in some way from feeling good about yourself? I mean, do you have times that you get caught in self-judgment and you get turned on yourself? Do I have times? I would say that I have occasional times when I'm not.

Okay, so when you get hooked, what helps you? What helps you on hook? Rain. You know, I mean, would you taught me 10 years ago? I mean, I think it's become second nature now, but I've been doing it the way you taught me low these many years with non-identification. Now, I have to say, I don't have a history of trauma that I'm aware of.

So it's not triggering for me to go into non-identification instead of nurture, but maybe there's a certain coldness in that too, which is also. So let's look at that for a moment. Who is it? Is it your son or is there anyone else that when you feel them loving you,

you can let it in? Yes, definitely my son. Your son. Well, the cats love me it's a little annoying. I'm kind of working, they're jumping on my desk. My wife, my parents. Okay, so, and how old's your son? Five.

Okay, so when you see your son? Five. Okay. So when you see your son and he's loving you and you're letting it in, what's he doing, how close is he, what's the expression on his face, what actually lets you feel love and actually receive it? We chase each other around a lot and he gets a mischievous look like you can't catch me and then I go catch them. So yeah, something like that or we in order to tire him out, I make them do wind sprints in the hallway of our before bed and so sometimes we'll be running up down the hallway together and I'll see that he'll look up at me with a look of like wow

this is awesome. This totally fun. Yeah, yeah. with a look of like wow this is awesome. It's totally fun. Yeah, yeah. So if you, even right now, just, and I can tell you, you were accessing it some as you were visualizing it, see him looking up at you and just so appreciating the fun and aliveness and just the good stuff

you're bringing into his life. And how does that feel? Very good. Yeah. So what you would do just to translate this is that if you're feeling really stuck and you're feeling down in yourself and you've done the investigating and you want to nurture, you might in some way imagine and sense in the background your son and just that energy and just let that add more information to your

heart. It's like when we're down to ourselves, our attention is very narrow, it's very fixated on what's wrong, and that's widening the lens to something that's really good and letting it in. So you're just adding a certain dimension of loving kindness into the mix to soften where you've hardened against yourself. I think that's great. That I could access. That I have no block with that. Here's the thing, Dan, is that most of us actually have trouble letting in love.

Most of us have very limited number of people that we can even begin to let it in. And even the people we think we let it in, we don't in a very physical, somatic way actually let our body know, get washed over. It's just not what we do. And yet when we're really hardened, that's exactly what we need. I mean, the issues are in the tissues. They really are, you know. And, you know, for most of us in our parenting, there was some, we might have had great parents, but there was some lack of really being seen or really being unconditionally, tenderly

embraced. Like, and we all need that. So to the degree, there was a lack, there's a kind of spiritual repair, that we're doing with meditation that actually helps us to process that so we can inhabit our wholeness. And so we each need to find where in our life is there even a tendril of what we needed to experience that we can build on because whatever you practice gets stronger.

So for me, if I, you know, ten times a day imagine that washing through of love from some formless being, are you ten times a day, sense through your son or your wife just kind of letting in, there's something our neurons learn about. There's new pathways that grow and we have quicker access to it and in a sense then by channeling that Look my son gives me when we're running down the hallway Teaching myself through him how to provide this for myself. That's exactly right because We are using a bridge. I mean in some way we are using wherever it comes through in

the universe as love. We are using that. But ultimately it is inside us and everywhere and we are just trying to access loving kindness in as direct away as we can. I am going to see if I can unpack that because I think what you just said is interesting. I want to see if I can restate it because part of me was thinking, well if I am using my son's love for me, which is Not always there because I love the time. See things I'm annoying But in those moments where it's really obvious though. Yeah, he's there's a lot of love in the room or in the hallway right now I was thinking part of me was saying well, that's external. That's not me having love for myself But you're I think saying well love is just sort of a force in the universe. However, you get it

into your tissues is fine. Right. And there's no self-loving a self, really. I mean, it's, we're just accessing love. And it appears to come through our minds make it that it's your son or yourself, or I might call the, you know, beloved of the universe. And it's all just, those are ideas. The thing we know is that there's some tenderness that's vast, that's really my sense is the source of who we are that we're coming home to. And so use whatever pathway you use, because you're not going to get hooked on those images of your son. In fact, the more you, as you use that, you'll find yourself receptive to love from many sources. And, you know, I can do something that will totally get you, which would be, you know,

I walk in the mornings and I'll often pause and see a tree and say, we are friends. I'll just use the phrase, we are friends. And it brings the reality of an affinity with, I just read the over story, which was fantastic. It's a Pulitzer Prize winner about trees and connectedness. But, and I do it now with people. I do, you know, a clerk at the supermarket. I'll just mentally say, we are friends.

And all of a sudden, the reality of our interbeing becomes more evident. So I figure use whatever we can to open ourselves to something that's always and already here, but in our stress and our tightness, we don't notice. Comment and a question. Comment is, quote is coming to mind from a previous guest on the show. I don't even know if we've aired her interview yet, but this person was telling me about something that a teacher said to her when she was complaining about

how cheesy, loving kindness practices. And the teacher said, well, if you can't get comfortable at cheesyness, you can't be free. So I think it's really, for me, that really lands. The question is, you said something like, love is the source of who we really are. What does that mean? I knew that wouldn't go by on question.

Well, my experience is that when I'm not caught up thinking about a self, when I'm not inside thoughts about a self, there's a changing flow of experiences that's happening, and the sense of what it's all happening in is an awareness that is tender. In other words, it's awareness, it's pure awareness, but when that, and I'll use the ocean wave metaphor, when that ocean perceives particular waves, the natural response is tenderness, so that when I'm free from self-occupation, there's a natural love or compassion

towards whatever is experienced. And that's what I mean by the source. When we're not identified in a fear-based way, there's a pure awareness that naturally responds with love. Much more of my conversation with Tara right after this. Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke. we're the hosts of Wunderys podcast even the rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen.

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Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. You have a PhD in psychology. Is this feeling you have in any way backed up by Is this feeling you have in any way backed up by psychological research or anything about the mind? No, and I wouldn't go out in that way because it's really an experiential path. And all we can talk about is, we're talking about now, like what is absolute truth and there's not going to be science or research that's going to point to, you know, what's the very nature of our beings. I can point to the perennial philosophy that underlies most spiritual and mystical

and contemplative practices, points to a oneness, that it's not like the mind is in the body, it's like there is an awareness that is the source of all creation, but because the perennial philosophylospi says so, that doesn't mean it's proved by science. But even the Buddha said, look, I'm going to say a bunch of things. Don't take it on faith value and come and see for yourself. Exactly.

Aheopastico, it's really just to keep turning the attention to what's right here in the present moment and to what's experiencing what's here in the present moment. And to have the intention to do it with kindness makes it a lot easier. So, for me, I get that there is this awareness that's beneath all of, you know, it's, I don't know if that kind of spatial positioning makes any sense, But I know I'm having thoughts and most of them are self-centered, but that if I dip below that level of discursivity, there's this pure awareness of whatever I can hear at the sound of my own voice right now. I can see you involuntarily, right? There's this awareness that just undergirds, whatever's happening in my mind. So I get that, but that awareness is naturally tender.

I get a little lost on. My experience is that when I'm not caught in fear and grasping, in other words, not identified the self, then when awareness encounters something in that encounter, the naturally response is a sense of we and a sense of care. Connectivity. Exactly.

It's everything's connected. Yeah. And there's some, if you look at the development of the species, if you look at human evolution, you know, our brains are designed to perceive separation. We're designed to experience a self in here and a world out there. The primal mood of the separate self is fear. The fight flight freeze comes out of that. And so, for millions of years, we were in these small groups and perceived other out there.

Any group that wasn't part of our in-group was the enemy and bad and different and not as human as us. And in-group, there was growing sense of collaboration because that's one of our defining features. That went on for millions of years and it's only been the last 10 or 20,000 years that we've expanded beyond

kin relationships and felt a sense of we. But that's our trajectory. So this is actually what gives me hope, is that, and I ask groups a lot, I say, do you believe that consciousness is evolving? Because I'm curious to see what people believe, that I feel like the consciousness in our species is evolving from a sense of separate eye,

completely self-centered, and reacting out of the limbic fears to a sense of we that not only is collaborative, but actually cares. Like you are part of me. I care about you not because you're over there, but you're part of my heart. We're part of me. I care about you not because you're over there, but you're part of my heart. We're part of the same essence. And I think that's the direction we're going as a species and meditation facilitates it

because meditation awakens the parts of the brain that need to be integrated and awake. So it moves us from kind of our limbic hijack place were really in reactivity to where we can kind of go meta to what's happening, become mindful of it, and respond with compassion. And there now is research that shows that meditation does wake up and integrate our brain in that way. And that gives me hope. I'm looking out right now today, Dan, where we are in the news. It's been so disturbing what's going on in our world.

And you can see around the world how much the fear and the limbic hijacks happening. It's not just the United States with, you know, a tendency towards, you know, fear and right wing and, you know, that whole thing, it's, you know, many countries around the world now. And when humans don't face their fears, when they're run by them, we've come incredibly dangerous. And so the only way out of tribalism really is training our hearts and minds. It is the way out, and I feel like we're doing as individuals, we can kind of sense that, that we expand and become more able to care about each other.

And I feel like we need these kind of trainings brought into our group interactions, and they already are. This isn't, I mean, whether it's truth and reconciliation or restorative justice kind of activities or insight dialogue or whatever. There's all sorts of group modes, but to me that's the hope is changing consciousness that way. And that's what these practices do. Related to the question I asked you before about, you before about love being the source of all of who

we are, you talk a lot in the book about Buddha nature that we are inherently awakened and loving, but it's obscured by the ego, the sense of self, the greed in a version, and all the stuff we also evolved for. And I have an instinct that that's true, just based on my own personal experience, but I don't know if there's any evidence for it. As far as I know, there are at least two ways to think about this, probably more. There's the Buddha nature argument, which again, I don't know if there's any, you would know the evidence better than me because you're a trained not only in the

Buddhist tradition, but in psychotherapy. And then there's the two wolves idea that we have a wolf of greed and hatred and we have a wolf of sort of compassion and generosity and the one that wins and that fight is the one you feed. So it'll give you a sense that you can train up the better angels of your nature, take them to the gym as it were. And then there's also then the Christian view of original sin that we're actually, no, fundamentally, that seems to be the spectrum, you know,

either fundamentally good to, it's a mix and it's what you train to, fundamentally bad, and we can only get to the good part by accessing God. So I think I know where you are on that spectrum, but like so what's your sense of where the evidence points? It's kind of what you asked before. It comes back to come and see for yourself that it wouldn't matter what belief system I have. And I'm not as interested in talking about beliefs.ome of what is more primary, is love more primary. I don't think that serves as much as saying, look, we've all had tastes of when we're more who we want to be. Everybody has. We know what it's like when we're caught and we act in ways that we regret and we know

what it's like when we feel generous or kindly or creative or joyful. We just know it's more we feel more at home with our being when we're more who we want to be. And there are ways of paying attention that can cultivate that. So I'm ultimately much more pragmatic. We could get off the air and I could talk about the cosmology, but I don't think that's as useful. I mean, my big inquiry down is, how do we wake up caring more?

I mean, our world's in trouble. How do we wake up caring? Because more there's caring and a sense of, it's all of us on the moral response. So that's... Wake up in the morning, caring or wake up the sense of caring that's inherent in every human being. Wake up the sense of caring in's inherent in every human being wake up The sense of caring in all of us. Yeah

How do we expand that and how do we widen the circles of our caring because as Einstein said it's Generally pretty limited to those in our tribe and that feels like the most compelling question for all of us and It's if I'm hearing you correctly You can have a at a physical debate about what do we like at our core? Do we even have a core? Is there a Buddha nature or are there two wolves? Is there a original sin? Yeah, I find we can get into that. Or you can ask yourself a very simple question, what feels better when you're a jerk or when you're not? Yeah, what feels more true or at home, where do you feel most at home? What do you want?

Who do you want to be? And we can be encouraged by the trajectory of evolution. I mean, I loved reading sapiens and I love reading evolutionary psychology because it does show that we are not quite as much controlled by our limbic system. We have more choice. There is less violence in the world, and where we see it, it's very gripping and painful. And so how do we keep waking up from that?

One of the things you also talk about in your book is, I think this is a quote, one of the most challenging blockers for us is the belief that there's something inherently wrong with ourselves. After my 360i struggle a lot with the sense that I'm inherently selfish. I know you've talked about, I think this is a phrase you've used, the trance of unworthiness. So how universal do you think, because I was caught in this thinking of, I'm actually uniquely selfish, which is total navel gazing and getting caught in the self. How do you universal do you think this suspicion that there's something fundamentally wrong

with us is? And how do we deal with it? I think it's super pervasive. I'm not an expert on cross-cultural comparisons, but everyone that I've worked with, and I'm doing teacher training with people from 50 different countries and so on, everybody I've worked with and I'm doing teacher training with people from 50 different countries and so on. Everybody I've worked with has, that's an element of what people struggle with. Is some sense of, I'm not okay.

Does it take many flavors? I'm inherently a bad person or I'm inherently sort of not up to the job. Are there a bunch of permutations of this? Yes, absolutely. Some it's like, I'm fundamentally flawed and it's disgusting and shameful. It's got those kind of twists to it, to smell, you know, shame. For others, it's like the chronic never enough and the striving and the frustration, but it's not as deep a twist in the psyche. And I think that partly,, it all comes from whether we have a basic

sense of trust and belonging early on. And so our culture right off the bat is a set up for not belonging because to be part of anything, you have to meet these standards that are imposed by the culture, including have a certain kind of intelligence. I mean, we worship a certain kind of intelligence, and we have a huge percentage of our kids that go through school, and they don't have that kind of intelligence, and they come out feeling like they're stupid. And that is really, and that's, that really saddens me.

Well, that's just one level, then we have the kind of body a woman's supposed to have, or we have, you know, just basically looks, or we have the most insidious level of messaging from the culture, which is like racism, like this grouping of people is inferior. And that message gets sent through every institution to African- Americans that you are less than, and that creates a huge, huge grip of something's wrong with me. So it's like Toni Morrison said, you know, to be American means being white, everyone else has to hyphenate. So all our non-dominant populations on some level are getting the message less than. So we get messages through the culture.

We get messages through our parents, be this way in order for me to love and respect you. And we come out of that shaping a self that we hope will get as much love and respect as we can. But in that process underneath feeling like the who I really am is not okay. And for many of us selfishness is the big one. I mean, that for me is the big one. Really? I thought it was, I had a sense that there was a little bit more of a male thing.

No, well, we're all in droidges in our own ways, but no, for me, it's the self-centeredness. It's, has been a big one. And because it's, you don't come off as self-centered. Well, thank you. That really boosts me. I'm surprised. That boosts me.

Okay. My self-centeredness is swelling like crazy right now. Right. Right. That had the opposite effect. Yeah. So, I'm so interested in that you have some fundamental suspicion that like you're incurably selfish or self-centered.

Well, I think as I do. I know that this ego by nature is selfish. I mean, ego by nature is concerned with ego. So what I've come to piece with is that ego is not the exclusive identity of what I am. So if I can hold it with humor and kindness, I'm okay. Right. By the way, what I just said took decades. I got on to the spiritual path and I joined Kundalini Yoga ashram and it had to be the

most vigorous yoga around. I was one of these very vain yogis because back then I was super flexible and I was kind of like teaching it but showing it off and you know I was very I was up on myself and of course I have a genetic disease that now I can't do yoga at all because I'm my connective tissues too loose so it kind of swung on me, which was really interesting, because I was so identified with being good at it. But then I got identified with being good at other things. But all along, I started realizing how much underneath I felt shame at my sense of importance

or pride, or self-centeredness, or whatever it was. And that's what got me to write radical acceptance was the sense of being stuck in a self I didn't like. And radical acceptance basically helped me see how it was a trance that most anybody that is identified with their self doesn't like their self. Now, they might sometimes be on an inflated self-importance thing, but underneath that there's doubt and shame. So if we have an identity with self, we don't like that

self. And a part of the spiritual path is seeing that trance of not liking ourselves and with wisdom and compassion opening to something larger. But transcending the self really. Transcending the identity, but the way it happens is by bringing kindness to the very feelings of shame or self-dislike. We're back at N. We're back at N. Yeah, that's why for me, radical compassion, the book, it just, it feels so central that any transformation we make requires cultivating

a quality of self-kindness. Just to clarify for listeners, you wrote radical acceptance many years ago and the new book is radical compassion. I just want to make sure people... Thank you, Ed. You should get them both. I'm clear. The one was first.

I have a phraseology that came to mind when talking about this my own phraseology, which I don't, you may not like given our differences in terms of getting stuck in your own stuff and how that can have so many deleterious effects internally and then externally. The way I've been kind of thinking about it in my head is the view is so much better when you pull your head out of your You know, it's that's just the way I think of it But I love that I love that because the other side of it is When we're turned on ourselves

it feels horrible and the way that I end up working my way out of it is And the way that I end up working my way out of it is I'll give you an example. I got sick in my early 50s for about six years and I was a spiraled down and I went from being athletic and you know, very vigorous to, you know, really not knowing if there was a way out, I lost mobility, you know, I'm much, much better. What was it, can you say what that was?

It had to do with the connective tissue disorder, but I just went into a spiral of pain and fatigue and just, it just, yeah, I just got worse and worse. So I'm telling you this because I would go through all these, I would feel miserable, but then I'd get down on myself for being a bad patient. Like, you know, here I am irritable and I'm, you know, impatient and just being down on myself for the way I was dealing with illness and I would often go into what I do to create this, you know, so I turned on myself.

And the way I started practicing down was I would see myself caught and I'd kind of name it, recognize and allow, okay, trans-of-unworthiness, shame. And I'd investigate it and I'd feel just how painful it was to not only be physically miserable, but to be turned on myself, they call it the second arrow. The first arrow is that I was feeling miserable, The second is I was blaming myself for it. And when I could get really in touch with how many moments I have suffered from being down on myself and just like think of the landscape of your life

and think of how many moments instead of appreciating somebody else or the mystery of the night sky or whatever it is, there's been that self-oriented, down-on-self feeling. It's a real deprivation of life, moments. And so when I could get in that honest recognition of the suffering of being down on myself, that's when I'd start getting tender. That's when I could then say, oh, I'm sorry.

I care about this suffering in some way. And that would be it. As soon as I could really directly contact the vulnerability and offer kindness, I was no longer living inside that bad self. But is there like a skitzoid old thing of offering, you said this before, a self can't offer kindness to a self or I think you said something along those lines. How does that work?

I'm saying I'm sorry to myself. In a way, what's happening is you've investigated and there's contact with the suffering. So awareness is contacting suffering and awareness and you kind of get enlarged when you can see something directly. That's the whole power of mindfulness is once you recognize that you're no longer as identify with it, you're resting in a larger awareness. And when awareness directly sees the suffering as suffering, not, well, I deserve this, or well, you have it worse, but, ouch, this hurts.

When awareness gets that, then there's a tenderness that emerges, and then when that tenderness is expressed, and you can just use the vehicle of words, oh, I care about this suffering, the eye is really coming from a larger place. It's almost like awareness is offering care. And I often think ultimately when I'm meditating, one of the ways I kind of wake myself up is to say it's not like I'm meditating. Awareness is meditating. I mean, awareness is speaking right now. Awareness is experiencing this moment, but it feels like a self for a while.

And in the vernacular, we say, I'm offering myself kindness. But by that moment, the eye is really resting in a larger space of awareness. This is, I think, one of these things that, if it's confusing to you as a listener, it's, um, it's just one of these things that becomes clear. you're trying to add words onto an experience that is very hard to describe in words. And so you just have to kind of practice over time and you get, start getting tastes of the type of thing you're describing. That's right. Type of not-thing you're describing. Well, what it is is that there's a sage that was once, people would bring them their troubles and he would swear them to secrecy and say, okay, I have just one question and this question is, what are you unwilling

to feel? And when we investigate and actually start to touch what we're unwilling to feel, touch into that vulnerability, directly contacting what we've been pulling away from actually frees us up. It's like when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone. So there is more space and it actually becomes more natural to offer care from that space. So you can actually feel it. So it's getting me thinking about part of your book has to do with fear. You write about fear and bringing rain to fear. And that leapt out at me because I've had panic attacks.

Quite famously or infamously, I had one on television, but now I get them in elevators. So I've been walking a lot of flights of stairs recently because I had one, a bad one about six months ago and it kind of messed me up. And I was reading a book recently by a guy named Barry McDonough. It's called the Dare Response. He's got his own.

Dare is his reign. And I don't know if I'm gonna be able to reproduce it, but part of his, I think the R is run toward it. And I've been practicing this in elevators. His attitude, and I think it might be a little bit at an oblique angle from nurture. But his attitude with panic is, say to yourself, bring it on. Do your worst.

I'm going to count to 10 and see how, it's just going to be a set of sensations. You have 100% track record of surviving panic attacks. So, invite it in and turn the hunter panic fear into the hunted. And I have found that to be in my early explorations, really interesting. Tell me how it goes for you, because it fits in with, I mean,

a lot of desensitization modalities or just like that. You turn towards it, usually do it gradually, you ratchet it up, but it's like, if a dog's running at you, whistle for it, if it's racing towards you, it's like in some way you're reversing your conditioning and the conditioning has locked into place, the panic. It also picks up on, yes, what you just said,

it also picks up on some things you've been saying throughout the course of this interview, which is it's like this unwillingness I've had to accept the discomfort. Yes. The fear of the fear. Yes. And reframing it as it's going to be a set of physical sensations that you've here to forbidden unwilling to fully experience.

But if you not only have a willingness to experience it, but you're inviting it in saying, come on, let's do this. If I'm going to have a panic attack, let me just feel it. Instead of feeling the tiniest little bit of it, and then it's spiraling out of control from there because I'm just unwilling to, I literally the other day I was in, I got stuck in an elevator in my own building. And I, not a strong person, you've met me, I'm not big. I was able to tear open the doors because I was that scared.

But what if I had just said, all right, well, we feel this. It would have made it entirely different. But I guess my point in bringing all this up was, is that too aggressive the attitude? The, come on, bring it on, turning the hunter into the hunted rather than nurturing. First, I don't think of them as either or and it's really case by case. For some people, that's exactly what's needed in some way to just fully inhabit your confidence and courage and just go at it is actually the energy that can undo the old conditioning. For another person, it could lead to a panic attack that would increase the feeling of

trauma. For many people surrounding it with nurture, and nurture again can be something, a message in, look, you've done it before, you can do it, you've got the, you know, it's the message that our heart and mind needs in the moment. And I think of the same thing with loving kindness, that there's not a loving kindness practice. It's whatever way we pay attention, that in some way wakes up our heart, opens our heart,

softens our heart, gives us courage. So for you, it sounds like it could be a real match. Yes, for this particular story. Yeah, yeah. So another thing in your book is, and again, this is probably phrasey algebra I wouldn't use, but nonetheless it's meaningful to me, which is discovering your deepest longing. Can you talk about that? Yeah, one of the stories I tell in there is of a palliative caregiver who reported

that the greatest regret of the dying was I didn't live true to myself. And in a way, that's not just the dying. I mean, I think I run into a lot of people that in some level are disappointed in their lives. They feel like they're skimming the surface, they're just batting away at the problems, but they're not arriving and really living, according to who they know they can be. So that chapter on really discovering your true longing is that question,

kind of like if you were at the end of your life looking back, you know, what would really most matter? What would most matter today? What would most matter with you and I speaking here together? Like really what would most matter? And so that we get aligned with what we care about and not hijacked by the habit of kind of chasing after immediate gratification or defending ourselves or avoiding what we're afraid of. So it's a very powerful inquiry, and in the Buddhist tradition, connecting with aspiration, connecting with what your heart really longs for is really what energizes on the path.

It's what will have us stay with meditating because we'll remember it's not a discipline that's punishing or something. It's because we love waking up, we love truth. You know, we, this fascination with what's real. I love love, you know, it's like remembering that keeps us so that our days are really aligned in a meaningful way. There's a section in the book about rain in relationships.

How does that work? In the same way that rain helps us face and process and wake up through our own fears or hurts or whatever, because that's what it's really doing. It's having us be with the stuff we don't want to be with, but in a way, so that we can find out, discover a larger sense of our own presence. Stuff comes up between people that needs the same attention. So, for instance, with my husband, with Jonathan, who's sitting in the room. Who happens to be listening right now? You know, we have certain dynamics or patterns that will replay where we get stuck and one of our practices is we'll do the time out, the official time out where we each do rain inwardly in our own way, where we'll feel where we're caught, sense the beliefs that are going on,

breathe with it, bring care to it, just hold it ourselves so that we're not speaking out of a stuck place. And then when we start naming what's going on for us, it's without as much blame. The other person can hold it. There's more of a container for us to do it together. So if we're doing rain together, we might both be sitting together, working inwardly, and then we can exchange what's going on in a way where we have a lot more resources. We have a kind of a joke, which is the first person who can roll reverse wins. And what that means is that can really see it through the other person's eyes, that can

say, I get why that hurt you. You know, I get why when I set it with that judgmental tone that would have made you pull back and not want to do what I want to do. So it brings empathy and compassion to do rain together. I feel like we could do a whole separate interview on this subject, which reminds me you should come back more often. That's sweet, because I'm passionate about what we can do in relationships. And we started much earlier talking about rain partners. And again, this comes back to the state of the world, Dan,

is that I feel like as long as we're living from fear or defense, we're gonna keep on hurting each other as individuals and globally, and learning to do these kind of practices with each other creates a sense of we that then ripples out. And so, rene partners is really powerful for that. Because then you can start moving through the world.

And one of my favorite lines, and this is from Ruby Sales. She's a civil rights activist, older woman, icon. And she has this phrase, where does it hurt? She brings it to white America, the white America that's most caught in the grip of racism, and asking, where does it hurt? And she senses a kind of a sense of meaninglessness and spiritual pain in certain segments of white America.

But moving through our lives and being able to see somebody who's in some way just see where does it hurt? And one of the metaphors I love the most is if you imagine walking through the woods and seeing a dog who's by a tree and you go to pet the dog and the dog lures you at you, you know, like, fangs, beards, and so on. And then, you know, you get angry at the dog, but then you notice that the dog's paws in a trap. And then everything shifts. And you don't necessarily go really near the dog

because it might be dangerous, but you're hard to shift it, because you see that the dog's suffering. If we can learn to move through the world and when somebody acts in ways we don't like, instead of locking into our judgment, fight, fight, freeze, in some way ask, where does it hurt? The world would be a different place, really would. Let me say one final thing. I've realized I've actually had some anxiety during this interview. I don't, and I kind of landed on me midway through why it was, and I think it was that

you described that I hurt your feelings, and that made me feel bad, so I want to apologize for that. Wow. So I want to slow down here because mostly I feel touched and I want to say thank you. Thank you for coming on the show. Yeah. No, it's there's something beautiful about like I wasn't even going to go there. I wasn't going to bring up the past. And the fact that you did is modeling really what we've been talking about, which is to go into the elevator or go towards the dog that looks dangerous. You went right towards where it was most vulnerable, but in so doing, you created more connection.

So thank you. Here's the beginning of an ongoing relationship, I hope. I'm on for it. Thank you. Final thing before I let you go. I want, we force all of our guests to shamelessly plug. Many of our guests don't like doing this, and I sense you're probably one of those people. But can you just list the books you've written, including the new one, and give us the name of your podcast and your website where we can learn more about you just so that we have it all. Okay, I told you I had myself as self-important self, so I'm not actually minding it all.

Okay, great. No, in fact, I'd love to invite everybody to tarbrock.com and that's my website. And I have a weekly podcast that I give a talk Wednesday night on Washington DC area, and you can download it from my website, or you can go on to Facebook and downstream and just become part of live stream, become part of the weekly event. So that's one thing. The books are Radical Acceptance, which was 2003,

which has really had a really see the trans-of-unworthiness and wake up out of that true refuge, which was 2013, which is when I got really sick. And how do you find a way to face when life is most difficult and find peace and joy and freedom in the midst? And then most recently radical compassion, just a few weeks ago, which is really learning to love ourselves and each other into healing. And it's really for the rippling out for our world. So those are the primary things to plug right now. We'll put links to all of this in the show notes. So if you didn't have a pen out, don't worry, you're right there on your phone. Thank you again for doing this. Thank you. A totally mine too. Thank you.

Thank you again to Tara. That conversation was well worth reposting, I believe. Before I let you go though, a quick announcement. We are on the lookout to hire a senior meditation producer to work on courses and other content for the 10% happier app. This is a great opportunity if you're really into the Dharma and you also have some experience with curriculum, design and content production. If you want to check it out or if you want to share this with somebody you know who you think might be a good fit, go to 10% dot com slash jobs. Of course that link will be in the show notes.

This show by the way is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Cashmere, Maria Wartell, and Jen Plant with audio engineering by Ultraviolet Audio. And as always, a big thank you to my guys from ABC News, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hey, hey, prime members.

You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with 1-3 Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.