The One You Feed - Embracing the Full Spectrum of Emotions: A Guide to Mindfulness and Self-Discovery with Tara Brach

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

In this episode, Tara Brach explores embracing the full spectrum of emotions, providing a guide to mindfulness and self-discovery. She helps us experiment with a variety of approaches that are guided by a simple compass intention. Tara also discusses stepping out of a trance, the tight story of what’s wrong with me or what’s wrong here, and in the direct experience, where kindness and awareness can flourish. If you’re ready for practical ways to be here, not perfectly, but more fully, this episode is for you.Key Takeaways:Meditation and mindfulness practicesEmotional awareness and self-compassionChallenges in meditation and dealing with difficult emotionsThe metaphor of the two wolves representing good and bad aspects of ourselvesBalancing acknowledgment of difficult emotions with cultivating gratitude and joyThe impact of trauma on meditation practice and presenceThe importance of intention in meditation and personal growthStrategies for overcoming feelings of numbness and depressionThe concept of “trance” and its effect on perception and sufferingUniversal practices for awakening: awareness and compassionIf you enjoyed this conversation with Tara Brach, check out these other episodesThe Path of Aliveness: Exploring Mindfulness and Awakening with Christian DilloInner Freedom Through Mindfulness with Jack KornfieldFor full show notes, click here!Connect with the show:Follow us on YouTube: @TheOneYouFeedPodSubscribe on Apple Podcasts or SpotifyFollow us on InstagramThis episode is sponsored by AG1. Your daily health drink just got more flavorful! Our listeners will get a FREE Welcome Kit worth $76 when you subscribe, including 5 AG1 Travel Packs, a shaker, canister, and scoop! Get started today!BAU, Artist at War opens September 26. Visit BAUmovie.com to watch the trailer and learn more—or sign up your organization for a group screening.LinkedIn: Post your job for free at linkedin.com/1youfeed. Terms and conditions apply.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do we become present enough and open enough and courageous enough to really be with the life that's here? Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower. us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

how they feed their good wolf. for years I tried to meditate by following my breath and honestly it never seemed to work it just seemed like my mind raced and raced I used to joke it was like the dark circus coming to town if that's you when it comes to following your breath and meditation it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you you may just not have found the way that works best for you Tara Brock who's a psychologist a world-class meditation teacher author of wonderful books like radical acceptance and true refuge helps us experiment with a variety of approaches that are guided by a simple compass, intention. We talk about stepping out of trance, the tight story of what's wrong with me or what's wrong here, and into direct experience where kindness and awareness can grow at the same time. I share how shifting my own practice from the breath to listening

to sounds uncovered more aliveness and peace for me. If you're ready for practical ways to be here, not perfectly, but more fully, stay with us. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Sometimes a single idea can change how we see ourselves, but real growth, it comes from weaving those ideas into daily life. And that's what I like about the Life Compass, 111 rules for navigating personal growth by Samir Abdo. It draws on voices like Rumi, Marcus Aurelius, and Robert Green.

and organizes that wisdom into 111 clear practical rules across 11 areas of growth. They're memorable everyday principles. Other people's opinions of you are not your business, or avoid the if-then model for happiness, which is always a good idea. And here's what makes this book stand out. It has wonderful reflection questions and an integration process. 10 minutes a day or once a week, if that's all you've got, turn these rules from something you read into something you actually live.

live the life compass 111 rules for navigating personal growth is available now because wisdom is good but wisdom that you practice that's transformation hi tara welcome to the show it's lovely to be with you eric i am very excited to have you on i think i've been trying to arrange this for a while when i started the show you were one of the guests right away that i was like i definitely want to get her on the show your your writing and your teachings have been a big influence on me and on several people that I am close with. So I'm really happy to have you. Thank you.

Thank you. So let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather, and he says, well,

grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. And I know you know it because it was in one of your books. Yeah, it's a familiar one. And I remember it was coming out right after, you know, the bombing of the World Trade Center and so on. And that was kind of one of the ones that was circulating. And I think what it means is that every one of us has the conditioning towards greed and aversion and aggression. You know, we all have that in our nervous system, our kind of primitive limbic conditioning. And we also, each one of us has this evolving brain and evolving consciousness that's capable of unfathomable amounts of loving and of creativity and of

presence. And so the question is do we get hijacked and is our life run by the fear parts or do we have more increasing access to our highest potential? And so the parable says it's whichever one you feed. And I would say that's partly accurate. And by that I mean it's really important to pay attention to and nourish our hearts and to bring to mind the goodness and other people and be very compassionate towards where they're suffering. And when the more primitive conditioning arises, which it does, I think, for every one of us every day. Yep. At least me. Every single day. Yeah. When you have a judgment, that's a more primitive part of our conditioning. When that arises, it's not about starving that wolf. It's more

about bringing that into our awareness with interest and with care. So when the fearful will appear, not to make it bad, it's just a frightened part of ourselves, but to not be, not buy into the narrative, not buy into the narrative that the only way that people will do what I want is if I threaten them or if I judge them or, you know, not buy into the narrative. of watch that part of ourselves with interest and with care so that we're not, our identity doesn't get captured by it. Yeah, exactly. And I'd like to talk about clarifying that idea just a little bit because in your work,

you talk a lot about being present with the emotions. You know, here is this situation, here is this emotion, being present with it and opening to it. At the same time, also in the Buddhist tradition and a lot of your work, we talk about the direction that we point our mind is going to be more of what we get. If we think more about hostility, we get more hostility. And I'm always interested in where's the balance between those things. What's the right way to tell I'm genuinely feeling and emotion? I'm going through what I need to go through versus I'm telling myself a story or I'm taking a point of view that is painful and should be dropped? I think the way you asked that question,

Eric actually points to a response, which is that if you're paying attention to the storyline of, you know, the repeating stories of somebody else is wrong and bad or I'm wrong and bad, then you're just going to be perpetuating the cycle. In other words, whatever where thoughts are going through have a certain biochemistry and we get stuck in that state. But if instead you actually come into the body and in a very unconditional and kind way open to the feelings and the energy in the body. Then there's actual transformation. Then what happens is that there's a shift in awareness where you open into a larger sense of being and the emotions are current in your ocean but you're not identified with them. So I would say whenever there's a strong, sticky,

charged emotion, that's the time, it's asking for attention. A great sage once said that if there's one question you ask yourself, it's what am I unwilling to feel? And it's the raw, sticky, vulnerable stuff we're unwilling to feel. And it's in the moment that we become willing that it no longer has so much control. It's like the shaman say that when you begin to name a fear and then touch into it, it's no longer controlling you. So I would say that that's a key element in healing and spiritual awakening. And sometimes it's described as, you know, in the Tibetan art, you see these animal-headed goddesses that represent delusion and fear and hatred and so on.

And you see them really at the gateway to the temple, that you have to go through them to enter sacred space and you see them around the circle of the mandala that you have to go through them to get really to the place of stillness and peace. So that's one key domain in spiritual life. But then there's another one which is to be able to remember and visualize and pray for and turn towards the light. In other words, it's already there in us. Our awakened potential is already there but there's a real value to remembering the goodness to on purpose remembering what we love remembering what we're grateful for because we can get a habit we can get in this habit of being addicted to the suffering so i think that's kind of what you're pointing to and that balancing of

yes be with the difficult emotions feel feel them in your body and take time each day to remember what you're grateful for or when you see something beautiful pause and savor it Because we don't take in really sometimes the goodness and the beauty. We tend to kind of skim over it. We're so busily on our way somewhere else. Yeah, I love that whole description of it's kind of not one or the other. It's kind of it's both, right? Exactly.

And we had Rick Hansen on who I, I know that you also know. And he, you know, he talked a lot about that idea of taking in the good. Positive thinking sometimes is presented as a panacea for a, like, lot of things. And that's not what this is. This is just choosing there is good there at any time. You don't have to make it up. It's that which gets the most of our attention, if we can, to place it there. And so I love what you're saying because, and Rick talks about this a lot too, we do have our survival conditioning, that negativity bias that gives us the habit of looking for what's wrong. And one of the things I've become aware of in the last decade or so is how often

we're in a mindset where we think we have a problem, that there's something we need to solve or figure out or there's something that's wrong about what's happening right now and we need to change it. And I have become very aware that in the moments that we stop thinking of it as a problem and just say, oh, so this is what's happening, it's asking for my attention, we actually have a lot more access to creativity, to empathy, to a real vitality. So it's an interesting inquiry, and I invite your listeners to consider this of, you know, if right now there's not a problem, really what's the moment like? I mean, if there's really no problem, if there's nothing wrong. And we can get without a taste of freedom to not add the negativity bias in.

Yeah, that's such a powerful idea. I was asked that question once by a meditation teacher. Like, what is here, you know, just pretend for a minute that nothing is wrong. You know, you may, you may not believe it, but just pretend that everything is perfect right in this moment. You know, there's nothing you have to do or solve. What is it like? And there is a, you know, I had a pretty profound experience in that moment when I kind of went, whoa. And I think that second thing is a guest recently referred to our brains as a problem factory. Like if, you know, once one is gone, it just creates another. And I've noticed that for myself. If I'm not, if I'm not consciously working on being more present and more aware, it's just I just go from one to the next. And I'll probably

find one because that's what my brain is used to doing is working on problems. Yeah. It's almost like if we're not being vigilant and, you know, tossing around a problem, we feel like there's something that's going to blindside us. So we're always, you know, in that kind of defensive mode, that sense that around the corner something's going to be too much to handle. So it becomes very powerful when we challenge that. Because in a way, if we're living all the time, like around the corner, something's too much, we're not really bringing our wholeheartedness and our tenderness and our clarity to what's right here. And so this idea of coming back to the present moment, you know, that being the one of the solutions to a lot of what troubles us is one of those things that

is easy to say, but is hard to do, at least I found certainly earlier, and still sometimes like I would come back to the present moment, but I wouldn't know what was here. And then my brain would be back in two seconds. And there I would be again. And I would come back to the present moment. And again, same thing. It's like, I'm here, but wait, there's nothing compelling enough in this moment. Is your perspective that that's really just a thing of training, that the formal meditation process and the formal process of awareness allows us to come back to see the deeper nuances in the present moment so that we're able to stay there longer? Yeah, I think you're saying it in a really powerful way. One teacher said, you know, when asked to describe the world,

his response was lost in thought. And we spend so many moments in a virtual reality where we're in some trance of thinking, we don't actually have that much experience staying in our senses. And if you ask yourself right this moment, how aware am I right this moment of the energy inside my hands are my feet or the feeling in my heart? it's like for most of us we're mostly in the head and in our ideas of the world so the training really of coming into the moment is coming into our senses so if we can pause and start practicing bringing the attention down into the body and feel the throat and the chest and the belly and get the knack of staying a bit more than all the nuances of what we call presence start coming alive because in the space where we're not

not lost in thought, really the light of awareness begins to shine through. There are a lot of Holocaust films that focus on the horror, and rightfully so. But what struck me about Bao, artist at war, is that inside all that darkness, you see something else. Love, humor, creativity, even moments of laughter. It's people insisting on their humanity when everything around them is trying to take it away. Joseph Bow was an artist and a dreamer. risked everything to help others survive and to keep his love for Rebecca alive. In the middle of the concentration camps, they secretly married.

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the trajectory of your business. So if you're hiring, try it out. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash one you feed. That's LinkedIn.com slash one, the number, Y-O-U-F-E-D. So LinkedIn.com slash one you feed to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Eight years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. My life was full with good things, a challenging career, two teenage boys, a growing podcast, and a mother who needed care. But I had a persistent feeling of, I can't keep doing this.

But I valued everything I was doing and I wasn't willing to let any of them go. And the advice to do less only made me more overwhelmed. That's when I stumbled into something I now call this stillpoint method, a way of using small moments throughout my day to change not how much I had to do, but how I felt while I was doing it. And so I wanted to build something I wish I'd had eight years ago, so you don't have to stumble towards an answer. That something is now here, and it's called Overwhelm is Optional, Tools for When You Can't Do Less. It's an email course that fits into moments you already have, taking less than 10 minutes, total a day. It isn't about doing less. It's about relating differently to what you do. I think it's the most useful tool we've ever built. The launch price is $29. If life is too full but you still need

relief from overwhelm, check out, overwhelm is optional. Go to one you feed.net slash overwhelm. That's one you feed.net slash overwhelm. I think that's one of the things that can be discouraging for people is You do it and then it's kind of done and then you feel like you have to keep doing it. And you have a line that I love in which you say that meditation is a setup for feeling deficient unless we respectfully acknowledge the strength of our conditioning to race away from presence. It's the truth. And one thing I've noticed is that the more we have either trauma or major wounding early on, the more the strategy of dissociating and leaving our body, is pronounced. So for those that have had that kind of really difficult early childhood or whatever, it's even harder. It's even harder because the rawness feels in the body feels

intolerable. So it takes a tremendous self-compassion. I probably rate self-compassion as the single quality that most can serve us in meditating and in getting more intimate with each other and whatever matters to us in our lives. Yeah, that is such an important piece. And I think that recognition that this is a really challenging endeavor and it doesn't happen quickly. And unfortunately, right, I think we all wish we had some silver bullet to give that would be like, okay, now everything's better. But this constant coming back to awareness into the moment and to our body can take, you know, a great deal of time to get better at. And I think it's so important because I hear people say all the time, well, I can't meditate. I'm not any good at meditating.

And I'm sure you hear that also. It's that recognizing that like, A, there isn't any goal. And B, that's the human condition and it's okay. Exactly right. It really helps to know that we're not alone in it. That coming into the present moment is hard for everyone. But a it's also important to know that it's really possible. One of the challenges is if we've just been introduced to one kind of meditation or another that isn't a match for what really is a good gateway for us, then we can get discouraged. So when I teach and I offer, you know, I have like hundreds and hundreds of guided meditations. I offer a lot of different gateways in because for some people it's going to be through a very gentle, repeated scanning of the body. And for

another person, it might be through a heart meditation that helps us remember and trust our own goodness. And yet for another person, listening to sounds, just listening to sounds helps to quiet the mind. And then for another person, there's a certain kind of breathing that actually calms the nervous system and makes it easier to quiet and collect and arrive. So part of what I really invite is experiment. Experiment and trust that there's something in us that we, wants to settle and we will if we find kind of the pathway that's most of a match for us well you led me perfectly into the next question um because i'm one of those people that the breath doesn't work and that's what i tried year after year after year and you know never really was became a

consistent meditator and then when i heard about sound and the body all of a sudden kind of everything changed but my my question is i agree i think experimentation is great but but what I don't have a good handle on and that I find myself wrestling with is, okay, I'm going to meditate today. What am I going to do? You know, should we pick the one that we like and just sort of stay on that path? Or is there some degree of trying different ones or that that's what I'm, you know, kind of going through now is, should I just keep doing the same thing?

Or there's several different approaches that I seem to get results with. And it ends up being, you know, I try and make that decision before I go into meditation. obviously, but sometimes I'm in the middle of meditation, well, this isn't as good. Maybe I should be trying that kind or that kind, which is obviously profoundly against the point. Yeah. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on that? That's a great question. So two levels of response. And one is I've now watched people over probably four decades, people, all different kinds of spiritual traditions and meditations and so on. And one thing I've noticed, the difference between people that really keep on evolving and unfolding in a creative way and those that either plateau

out or quit, it's not, it doesn't have anything to do with what particular meditation or practice they're doing, whether it's Tai Chi, Chi-Gung, Zogue Chen, Zend, whatever. It has to do with staying connected with a very sincere quality of aspiration, really sincere about waking up. And when somebody, that's the longing. There's a passion about truth. Well, really, what's the nature of reality? And there's a passion about loving without holding back. Like, I just really want this heart to be free.

That and there's coming back again and again to that aspiration. There's a certain intuition then about finding our ways to the practices that serve. There's less inclination to pull away from a practice just because it's challenging. There's less inclination to hop around because we're restless, but there's less inclination to stick with something out of duty when we might be experimenting. So it's really very individual. I mean, if you're the kind of person that is restless and is kind of always needs to sample something else on the menu, then I'd encourage you to let some roots go down and just

gain some real familiarity with some meditation practice that you know. know in some way is helping you become more present. If on the other hand you're a person that doggedly just always stays with one thing or doesn't, you know, just somebody tells you something, you just keep doing it, take a chance and an experiment. For you, it sounds like, you know, you might want to have a weave that you do that includes something that you know is going to keep on letting go of armoring around the heart, but also bringing clarity and then keep going deeper and deeper with that. So it's always going to be case by case, but there are some guidelines that we can kind of stay alert to. The deepest thing, though, is your intention.

And I really encourage us all to, at the beginning of every, whether it's an interview like this or a meditation sitting or being with somebody to just remember what about this really matters to me because our heart is a compass it will show us where to go yeah that's great advice and it's something I took from reading your book again in preparation for this interview that I don't think I had landed on before which is to set an intention why am I I I find that helpful in keeping a steady meditation practice for sure is remembering why am I doing this yeah it's not another chore on the list. There's a reason that I'm doing this. We will not stay with meditation unless there's a certain degree of fun and pleasure in it for us. It just won't work. If you're grim, it just won't work.

So I know for myself, part of what's going on is I really want to follow my interests and an interest, not like conceptual, but I want to stay where it feels alive. And I also, there has to be a certain amount of pleasure in it. So weaving in the heart practices, really bringing a live sensation and whatever helps to feel us most vibrant in it, play around because humans don't keep doing things unless they feel gratified. That's right. It's that elephant in the rider analogy. The rider is your conscious brain and it's trying to direct things and the elephant is your emotional side. And, you know, the elephant is only going to go where the rider wants it to go so long if it doesn't want to go, right? You've got to get the elephant engaged in the game and that's the emotional

piece of it, the reward and the enjoyment and the feeling of satisfaction. Exactly. So one of the things that I wanted to explore a little bit more is there's this idea, we talked about it right out of the gate, about dropping into the body, about feeling our emotions, dealing with difficult emotions, But a lot of people that I know and myself firmly included in this camp, depression is one of the things that I tend to wrestle with more. And I get this question from listeners a fair amount, which is, I don't feel much of anything. So what am I dropping into? I don't have a strong emotion I'm working with. What I've basically got is numbness.

And I drop into my body and I pay attention to my hand and honestly doesn't feel like there's much going on there. What's the way that we work with that in order to deal with that condition or that situation? I'm really glad you brought up depression because I've had many people say, you know, I'm either that I try to get in touch with it and it's numb or when I get in touch with it, I sink. And it's just like an endless sinking downward. It's like it doesn't, there's no real insight or anything refreshing that comes out of it. I just feel more depressed. So there's a few things.

You know, for all of us, the deepest place of transformation is when there's just pure awareness. Awareness is what wakes us up. And there are all these different skillful means that help us to be positioned in a way that we can be more aware. And for depression, the skillful means really often have to do with exercise. exercising and engaging our body in mind with nature, with the elements, and with other people. Getting enough sleep and then being physically and emotionally engaged is a skillful means if there's depression to activate enough so then as you bring the attention inward, you actually can connect with the aliveness.

Yeah, I think that's such good advice. And I think for me, it's that active movement and nature that are the same. two best antidepressants I know me too me to anti-anxiety too yeah and of course the challenge that can make depression such a monster is that it's that the energy to do anything is so lacking it's like this sort of catch-22 like if I if you do something you'll feel better but I really can't you know I don't have the energy and so for me I think over the years it's become a I've made it into just sort of a habit that like when I start to feel that way like I just I have learned to propel myself into motion. Depression hates a moving target is the saying I love. It's a very good saying and it

helps to have other people, you know, on the team with you. In other words, sometimes whether it's having a running partner or walking partner or whatever, engagement. Depression needs engagement. And it needs one other thing, which is it needs to be forgiven. Because whether it's depression or shame or whatever we take it personally like it's my depression or my fear and then that brings more of a sense of something's wrong with me which actually deepens this cycle so to add to engagement commit and this I'm speaking to all of us commit to truly forgiving the presence of the difficult emotion it's not our fault it's like depression is not our fault it whether it's genetic or epigenetic having to do with early childhood stuff or the culture, it's just not

like we, you know, got born and pressed the button saying, this is the emotion I want to be living with, you know, we didn't choose it. And so there's something about forgiveness that actually creates space. Like I'll often, I do it with anger. You know, I have anger will come up and I'll have this idea of, oh, I shouldn't be angry. I mean, it's not a spiritual, you know, feeling. And one of the first things I'll do is go, okay, forgiven, forgiven. I send that message into the anger. Like, it's, it's just another weather system. It's coming just like the outer weather. And when I forgive the anger, I'm not so identified with it, and I can then just feel it as sensations and not believe the dialogue that goes with it. And it comes and it goes in a much more wholesome way. So, forgive the

depression. Yeah, I think that's such a big one and such an important one. And, the parable of the, I don't know if it's a parable, but the Buddhist teaching of the second arrow is one that I talk about on the show all the time, because it's that I'm feeling bad about feeling bad. Yes. That we can actually work with, right? Like, it's very hard to not feel depressed, right? There's things we can do, but I do feel like we have more control over what we layer on top

of that, you know, the, and you talk about this in your book, and it kind of leads into that next question, which is your first book was really about accepting ourselves the way we are and the suffering that happens to ourselves. And your second book is more a little bit about, hey, there's going to be suffering out in the world. That's an inevitable fact, you know, or pain that comes in from the outside world. But how do we deal with that in the most skillful way?

And that's one of the things I love about the Buddhist teachings is it really normalizes for me that things are not going to be going well in life. Like difficult things happen. That's part of being human. And to your point, it's not our fault, and it's not our, you know, it's not a failure. But what are some of the more skillful means we can use in, you know,

when life presents us with things that we really wish it wouldn't? Yeah, no, it's a powerful question. And that is why I wrote True Refuge. I had in my own life, I got really sick and the spiral of sickness went on and on. So I was going pretty downhill. And that's an example of, okay, stuff happens. And, you know, I went from being very, very athletic to not being able. able to even walk up a slight incline, I am now much, much better than I was. But for about eight

years, I didn't know what was going to happen. And what that did was it forced me to find a way to get my arms around sickness, death, dying. At the same time, I lost both parents. And, you know, so all the encounters and the teachings, both in Buddhism, and I think it's really all the perennial teachings, basically point us towards finding. the awareness and heart that's really timeless, it's accessible to each of us, that helps us to rest in something large enough so we have room for the waves. And that can sound abstract, and yet if you've been with somebody that's dying and you've sensed how the only thing that's big enough for that dying is the loving that's there, that's the only thing that allows, it still

hurts, but there's space for it. And that's the way it is with everything, that there are things that are still going to hurt us tremendously. But if we find access to that, what I sometimes think of as the fearless heart, the heart that is big enough for fear, the big enough for the losses and the grief, then we have a way to take refuge, a way to come home to beingness that can move through things with a sense of tenderness and open-heartedness and grace, even when it's really, really difficult. That's the essential message in True Refuge, my second book, and really how to then find our way to that timeless heart. How do we become present enough and open enough and courageous enough to really be with the life that's here?

I'm going to ask a question that I'm going to ask a question that I don't think there's really an answer for. But I'm always, I'm fascinated by it. And I find more and more. people asking me this question so which is what is the meaning of life or why are we here or and and I'm just curious to get your your take on that I don't actually believe you have the answer if you do though I'm very excited to hear it you know that's not the kind of question I pose in my own inquiry it's I don't pose the why questions so much, you know, why are we here or whatever, but a similar question is what matters the most to me or to us. And that has a similar feeling tone to it. And I could say, I could say, you know, for myself, what matters, and sometimes described as the two wings of

awareness that we really need both to be free, what matters is deeply understanding. truth or understanding reality, not like in a mental way, but a lived way. And the other side of that is loving fully. And so if I had to say what's our purpose or anything, it's to love fully, to totally inhabit our being in a way that we feel our belonging to all other beings and can express that, really express that authentically in the way we live our lives. And do you think that you don't think about and ask those questions because you have an experience of being alive that feels meaningful? The word meaning sometimes trips me and others up because it's a cognitive word. So for me, what matters is more mattering, what I long for, what my heart cares about, has a more visceral experience than meaning, which is a little more mental.

So it may be just that I'm going at it with a more feminine quality of inquiry. I'm not sure. Yeah. I like that word matter because the analogy I've been thinking about lately is intellectually, I'll never have any idea of why this is and what's happening. And I could never intellectually convince you of why something was important. But if I walked out my door right now and I saw a dog laying in front of me suffering, I would know, do your word, that it mattered that dog not.

suffer. I could never explain it intellectually. There would be no way I could be like, well, you could be like, well, there's billions of dogs. I mean, we could go through the whole, you know, but you could never talk me out of in that moment that that dog's suffering mattered. And for me, that was a big turning point when I went, oh, I'm never going to answer this question intellectually. I'm never going to get there, but I can feel kind of, and I think it's exactly what you just said in a more eloquent way than I had been saying it is that what matters is what connects us to those bigger things and it's a felt sense not an intellectual sense and the reason I asked you if you thought you didn't ask those questions is the more I have moved into that part of my life

and in that way the less I've had those questions also and I'm just kind of curious because I do get them you know from people I'm sure you do too and and it's it's a genuine yearning but it seems to come up less in people who are truly engaged in life in a deeper way. Well, that's why when I get a conceptual question, I reframe it in a way that allows a person to discover what is true for them in a more visceral way. And that's why I would shift the word meaning to matters. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You use the word trance a lot.

You talk about different types of trances, but let's talk about what you mean in the use of that word in general. When I talk about trance, I'm talking about a kind of narrow, distorted, contorted experience of reality. And it narrows because there's an overlay of mental conceptual, you know, words, ideas, interpretations. And so to step out of a trance means to step out of our mental interpretations and into reality back into our bodies and our hearts and what we're directly experiencing. And the biggest way we have a trance in our lives, the most immediate, is that we move around with an ongoing storyline about moi, about who I am, what I need to do, what's wrong with me, what's going to make a difference and so on. It's like our world is very

narrowed into this self-conscious, self-centered narrative. And it's not that we're bad for it. It's more that it's just keeping us from a much more mysterious and vibrant experience of being this. So the way out of trance is just to recognize, oh, okay, I'm living right now in a thought realm, you know. And thoughts are like a map. We need them. In other words, it's what allows humans to be the most dominant species on planet Earth. It's surviving and thriving and so on. We need them.

But if that's the end of development, then we're stuck in. a conceptual world. There's a further evolution beyond a self living inside thoughts. And that's a self that's actually awake in awareness. Yeah, I like the way that you have addressed it before because I hear a lot of Buddhist teaching saying that the sense of a separate self is an illusion. And I like the way that you sort of describe it as, well, it's not exactly an illusion, but it's only, it's a very small part of the picture. It's a very limited way of viewing it. Because I think when people hear it's an illusion, they go, well, it feels so real. And I like that instead of saying what it is, is giving a context of it as it's not the only way to view reality.

One of the phrases that I find most valuable when you think of, let's say I have a story about myself and then I'm falling short. And I say to somebody, well, if you're believing that is that belief really true? And they say, well, it feels really true. It feels like I'm deficient. I'm defective. I'm a failure. So the phrase I like is real but not true. And the reason I like that phrase is that the belief, I'm deficient, I'm defective, it's a real story in our minds and it feels real in our body.

So it's real in that way. It's happening. The thoughts happening. The feelings are happening. It's real. But it's not the truth of existence. In other words, it's not that that's what's actually the living reality. In other words, it's just an idea in our mind.

mind and a feeling in our body. And to begin to get that opens up a little space so we can sense there's something bigger and maybe more a living reality than our belief about ourselves. It helps us to shake some of the most limiting experiences that really bring suffering in our lives. That's really powerful. I love that one. I had not heard that before. And I think that is a very useful tool. We're nearing the end of our time here. But I want to ask you, you say that we all have our own ways of distancing ourselves from reality or going into trance or, you know, call it whichever of these things are. We all have our own ways for doing that that are kind of individual, but that the process of waking up is universal.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And then I'd like to maybe circle it back to some of our earlier conversation around how for each of us, some of the things on the path are going to be different. You know, some of it's individualized. So what's universal and what part are kind of ours to tailor to what we need? We all have strategies of trying to control things. You know, every one of us comes, I sometimes think of it like we come into this world and conditions are not always cooperative. So we have, you know, parents that might not see us for who we are, might not give us

unconditional love. We have a culture that's addictive and violent. So we all put on a spacesuit. We all are trying to navigate best as we can. And the space suit is our ego control systems to defend ourselves, to appear good, to try to produce, sometimes to pretend something so others don't attack us to. We have addictive qualities to numb and soothe. So we all have our strategies. And they're all ways of trying to control things so we don't have to feel bad, so we can feel more comfortable.

So it's universal that we have ways of leaving the present moment. and there's all sorts of particulars on your strategies versus mine. Some people are more have withdrawing strategies and others are more aggressive. They're all spacesuit strategies. But the universal is that when we have those strategies, we get identified with the strategies, with our ego control system, and we forget who's looking through the mask.

We forget the consciousness right now that's listening to these words, and we forget the tenderness and the heart that really cares about living and loving. So there's a forgetting, and that's universal. If they're suffering, it's because you've forgotten really who you are. You're identified with a more limited version of being, with the space suit itself. And so the way back first is just to begin to notice how that's happening. Okay, so what happens when I feel threatened? just to begin to notice our strategies without judging them, just to notice.

And the very simple, you know, strategy for coming back is just to name what we notice. Okay, defending, afraid, you know, often obsessions, just to name it. And then just very gently kind of invite ourselves back into the moment, into the body, into the heart. That's kind of a universal of noticing the way we strategically dissociated and gently bringing ourselves back. Another universal is that this is from the bodhisattva path, the path of the awakening being, is it has to be with compassion. So one of the things I teach most regularly is when you're suffering just to put your hand on your heart and offer some message of kindness inwardly. because in the moment there's a gesture of kindness, even if it's just the intention to be kind, something in the armoring of the separate self begins to soften and we begin to get a little more

of a taste of who we are beyond that space itself. We begin to sense the purity of our hearts and trust that a little more. So those are two examples of the ways of coming back that are universal to notice the strategy, come back into the body and feel what's right here. and to bring a gesture of kindness to that moment. I think that's a beautiful place for us to wrap up the interview. Tara, thank you so much. Again, I encourage everybody to check out your talks and your books and everything. You've been a genuine inspiration to me, and I've really gotten a lot out of this conversation.

And so have I, Eric. You're wonderful to talk to. I love your inquiry, and thank you for what you're offering. I feel like you're offering something that really invites others into this whole stream of waking up. So many blessings. Yes, to you also. Okay, take care. All right.

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