After the RAIN (Part I): The Flowering of Awake Awareness, with Tara Brach

namaste and welcome when i first started practicing meditation it was uh 1973. the view from the mainstream world was that meditation was really something very esoteric mysterious otherworldly i'd like to share a story that was told that the first meditation retreat i attended and in this story uh a woman in her 50s told her travel agent that she wanted to go to india and her travel agents was thinking well why don't you go to miami like you normally do but she went ahead and made the reservations and first the woman had to take this bus uh when she flew into india across you know probably about six hours of driving and on the bus she told somebody where she was going and she said oh you know that's at that place you know you can only she said she was gonna go see the guru you can only speak three words and the woman said i know i know so then she gets off the bus takes a long train ride again runs into people that knew this guru and reminded her that you can only speak three words finally she's you know takes the final jeep ride from the train station over to the encampment where the guru is with many disciples holding court and gets in the long line to speak to the guru again attendance remind her of the rules the three words and she she knows it finally it's her turn and she goes into this this open tent where the guru is with his saffron robes and his wispy beard and she looks them in the eye and she says sheldon come home this is one of the early stories and i've always loved it because now in contrast to when i started practice in our contemporary society meditation's pretty household type word pretty accessible science has shown a lot about it so people are more comfortable with it but here's the thing there's still for many a sense that deep spiritual realization is something that only happens to other people you know to mystics or to people from other times or those who live in monasteries in asia or maybe a bit for ourselves but way down the road and it's interesting if you sense how you imagine your own path often it's literally like a path from here to some far off destination some future time and place and there's a sense that we're we're this small separate self on our way somewhere we're trying to get somewhere else experience something that's not here and here's what we miss which is that the only place where we can find what we seek where we can find love presence freedom peace the only place is right here right now what we're seeking is the awareness that's looking out through these eyes and the awareness that's listening [Music] you know what we're seeking is that tender heart space that of course gets blocked but is always and already here so in a deep way what we're seeking is what we truly are it's our own true nature and we take ourselves to be something smaller we take ourselves to be a limited self where something's missing something's wrong there's a a wonderful poet why who says why are you unhappy because percent of everything you do is for yourself and there isn't one so the most radical liberating teachings present in buddhism and all the non-dual wisdom traditions are those that support us in realizing who and what we are beyond a separate and limited self beyond that illusion of a separate self i find it really helpful to imagine a boundless sea with changing waves and these are the ways of our thoughts and our feelings and behaviors and the teachings remind us that you're not a wave you're not a set of waves you're the boundless sea you're that boundless sea that formless awake awareness that includes the changing waves that expresses through the changing waves but you're the boundless see that's your pure identity and the understanding is that we're never separated from this formless awareness might get blocked but we're in terms of what we're perceiving but we're never separated from it any more than a wave can be separated from the sea and in moments of realizing that belonging that sense of being the ocean including the waves the felt experience is love everything is part of us we belong with everything and and here's the thing to remember that even at the times we feel most stuck most contracted most blocked we're actually never alienated from that intrinsic loving awareness and this is true for all of us no matter how wounded or neurotic or whatever it's it's the truth that that awake awareness really is what animates our life okay so this is really where the hope is that our potential is to awaken beyond the limiting narrative we have about who we are and to realize that that formless presence and as we do what comes with it really is peace really is happiness and the buddha said i would not have taught you about happiness if it were not possible so this is what we're going to be focusing on that the very grounds of happiness and freedom is a shift in identity it's a shift in identity from that small separate self to a sense of belonging and the way it shows itself in a day-to-day manner is a shift from a focus of i to we you know and and with that a natural caring towards all living beings because they're a part of us there are two primary ways that we wake up that we discover or realize the truth of who we are and again if you think of it in terms of an ocean or sea with waves the first way of waking up is that we actually pay attention to that great vast boundless awareness we sense awareness is here we we sense that that wakefulness is really what we are that formless essence and that allows us to then as i mentioned cherish all beings so one way is direct attention to awareness itself and the second pathway is bringing our attention to the waves that are arising the pleasant ones the beauty and the suffering and in paying attention to the ways we discover they're made of ocean that that's really what we are and there's an art there's an art to knowing what to attend to when and we each have to customize it's it's often a kind of back-forth flow but we each have to customize and there are some general principles that help me and the first is that if your mind is busy if you're feeling emotionally reactive you know if there's charged waves like anxiety or fear anger blame judgment it's wise to first pay attention to the waves there are what asking for attention and if in those moments you try instead to look towards awareness you'll either get frustrated and blocked or you might have what's called premature transcendence which is actually a kind of avoidance of feeling and trying to open to something larger but what happens is that the awareness is disembodied it doesn't have the the fullness the richness of pure awareness so the guidance is really start where you are and if the waves are strong then pay attention to the ways and so that's how we'll be starting with this exploration we're doing together and it'll be an exploration in several parts over several talks and so we begin with how do we pay attention to the waves of what are arising in us in a way that really awakens us from that sense of separate self that reveals the ocean the awake awareness the loving presence that's our deepest nature the signal to pay attention to the waves is usually discontent restlessness some form of suffering and it might be slight or it might be more severe that it's a sense of not okay something's missing something's wrong and sometimes it's really gripping as in when we're gripped by fear or jealousy or anger sometimes the signal is just obsessive thinking it might be numbness with an undercurrent of anxiety but something lets us know oh okay there are waves going on and there's some identification with them whenever you're suffering the message is that you're living in too small an identity it's uh i think of often like the caterpillar and a cocoon that we're meant to keep growing enlarging our sense of who we are and when we get caught in the egoic self and preoccupy with the egoic self the fears and the wants it's like an arrested development where it's part of what naturally unfolds for us humans and we're meant to keep growing and when we don't keep growing then it's that feeling of a cocoon like we're caught in something and you might even notice that you can sense in that this kind of intuitive experience of there's something more there's a larger space to live in here's a poem by the poet to karum that i really find delightful i was meditating with my cat the other day and all of a sudden she shouted what happened i knew exactly what she meant but encouraged her to say more feeling that if she got it all out on the table she would sleep better that night so i responded tell me more dear and she soulfully meowed well i was mingled with the sky i was comets whizzing here and there i was suns and heat hell i was galaxies but now look i am landlocked in fur to this i said i know exactly what you mean what to say about conversation between mystics the land locked in fur and and it happens you know when we're caught tossed in the waves and reactive in that separate sense of self so that's when we start right where we are and deepen attention and bring those waves of experience into the light of awareness so we'll look at that how we do that and we'll focus on first the waves of thoughts and then the waves of emotion and how with each we can wake up to a larger sense of our being so incessant thinking there's one master who was asked to describe the world and his response was lost in thought and we know it we spend so much time in a virtual reality and lose contact with our senses you might just think about today and sense the kind of swaths of time that you're thinking versus being here in a kind of wakeful present way this is uh carlos castaneda he writes you talk to yourself too much you're not unique in that every one of us does we maintain our world with our inner dialogue a man or woman of knowledge is aware that the world will change completely as soon as they stop talking to themselves our ongoing thoughts our beliefs actually fuel a trance of not just a separate self but a deficient self a threatened self and as we know anxiety uh anxious worry planning figuring out these are primary survival tools of our ego we're very addicted to them and they lock us in this came to mind a lot when uh we had our dog hakuna jonathan's dog hakuna is this royal standard poodle and i would take him walking a lot and it was a lot of you know he just had he just was so happy he'd go around you know sniffing everything his tail wagging and then now and then the akitas that also lived in the neighborhood would appear and of course i i started feeling dread because i'd have to wrap his leash around the tree uh and hold on you know he weighed more than me and and he would get ferocious and growl and tug and bark and then they'd be out of sight and abruptly it was all over and you'd go back to being fine again sniffing and wagging his tail and enjoying everything and i think about how with humans you know we would have kept fueling the fight with stories in our mind those damn akitas who do they think they are the nerve they're in my neighborhood can't trust them for anything they'll do it again i'm going to teach them a lesson you know we could just go on and on with with the battle um him you know it was history and we just get hooked and even when there's nothing particular going on to trigger us there's a default network in our brain that produces all sorts of thoughts to keep us ready and vigilant you know that just keeps on resurrecting that sense of a separate self where something's missing and something's wrong and of course the thoughts we most regularly focus on are moi me you know there's that story of a guy in a bar and you're saying you know i know i'm nothing but i'm all i can think about and unfortunately these waves of self-centered thinking you know how can i get more comfortable what am i doing wrong how's this situation going to affect me they they blind us to the larger world this is pema children she says being preoccupied with our self self-image it's like being deaf and blind it's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildfire flowers with a black hood over our head it's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs so the challenge of waking up from these thoughts is that we actually take them to be reality we believe what we're thinking they shape our entire experience we live so many moments inside a virtual world sometimes it's useful sometimes it's not i'll share a story it's kind of an illustrative one it goes like this as a bagpiper i play many gigs recently i was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for homeless man he had no family or friends so the service was to be at the poppers cemetery in kentucky back country as i was not familiar with the backwoods i got lost in being a typical guy i didn't stop for directions i finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guide evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight their only diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch i felt badly and apologized to the men for being late i went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place i didn't know what else to do so i started to play the workers put down their lunches and began to gather around i played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends i played like i've never played before for this homeless man and as i played amazing grace the workers began to weep they wept and i wept we all wept together when i finished i packed up my bagpipes and started for the car though my head hung low my heart was full as i opened the door to my car i heard one of the workers say i never seen nothing like that before and i've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years apparently i'm still lost it's a man thing so illustration that we live in our thoughts we believe our thoughts and sometimes they can be good approximations of the world and guide us in other times not so much so what do we need in order to wake up out of that addiction of being inside the thought waves and forgetting the ocean because that's what's happening in the moments that you're lost in thought there's no remembrance of this larger [Music] awareness of this heart space that's really home we're cut off so the way back home is the power of mindfulness because in a moment of non-judgmental seeing of the thoughts where there's an awareness of thinking then we enlarge and inhabit that awareness and we have become the ocean that's aware of the waves so the trick is can we begin to notice the thoughts so that we become the awareness that's noticing and are no longer confined into the space of the thought because this is the shift in identity from lost in thought to inhabiting the ocean a key practice on the spiritual path and this runs through many many traditions is learning to notice the trance of thinking one teacher punjaji says just to ask yourself again and again am i dreaming you know am i inside that virtual reality it's wonderful if you can wake up from a thought and just bring yourself back to the senses let the senses that feeling and being right here be a kind of home base so we know when we're off in a virtual process and when we start practicing regularly mindfulness of thinking the most profound takeaway is i am not my thoughts i don't have to believe my thoughts it's so easy to take them as real i like the way one of my teachers soknay rinpoche puts it he says thoughts are real but not true the real events happening in the brain they have an effect on our body and our heart but they're not the reality itself the representations so this area of waking up to thoughts is a powerful and primary grounds for being able to shift and enlarge our sense of being moving from being caught inside the thought wave to the sea of awareness and you might just take a moment we'll pause here and just do a little practice take a few breaths what i'd like to invite you to do for the next minute or so is to count your thoughts so just like you're a cat at the mouse hole you know and every time a mouse seems to pop its head out you just count one two three and a thought includes sound bites images okay let's begin counting thoughts now continuing to pay attention you might stop counting and just witness when there's a thought notice it after noticing it to sense the difference between the thought and what's right here this living reality of sensations sounds feelings you might sense when you've noticed a thought the inquiry well where did this come from where does it go too and you might notice the gap between thoughts what's that like the teacher srinar sargadatta says that when the mind is momentarily free from its preoccupations it becomes quiet if you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it you find that it is permeated with a light and a love that you have never known and yet you recognize it at once as your own nature [Music] after sri nur sargadatta gave that teaching there was a questioner who asked him well how shall i recognize the state when i reach it the state of of quietness of the gap between thoughts where that light shines through so he said how how will i recognize that i've reached it and the response was and i want to share this with you he said there will be no fear all distinctions between the personal and the universal are no more so this is the possibility waking up from thoughts it's the pathway from the waves the ocean and the more you practice it the stronger that remembrance is that when you're lost in thoughts just to come back the more you have that remembrance there's this increasing sense of freedom of of what is when we're not hitched to those waves now you might be wondering yeah but some of the waves of thoughts are actually creative solutions and they're helpful reminders or they're necessary warnings and that's absolutely true and the idea is not to get rid of waves of thought we couldn't survive without thinking and yet when they take over when they dominate our life then we're trapped in that limiting cocoon we're just living in these reactive waves so the path is to deepen attention and learn the art of waking up from thoughts so you have discernment as to which ones to pursue and this includes thoughts that serve the spiritual path there's a classic zen story of a new monk practicing and going to the roshi the master and saying you know what happens after we die and the roshi's response is i don't know and and that really agitated the young new monk and he said but you know i thought you were a zen roshi and the response was i am but not a dead one you know so we can't think our way to freedom there are some thoughts that support us on the spiritual path but it's in the moments of waking up past the thought waves that we actually start to trust freedom okay so this is the first domain of working with the waves and coming into the ocean the second domain is working with waves of emotion and they include thoughts they include thoughts that are charged and sticky might be thoughts of blame and they come with the emotion of anger or thoughts of self-blame and the emotion of shame or thoughts of worry and then the feelings of fear the waves that are most intense in your life are the ones the ones that really entrap you keep you in the cocoon keep you blocked from feeling the ocean are the ones that represent core beliefs that are rooted in fear and we all have some because they're installed in in imperfect relationship with caregivers and by our culture and their ideas of how reality is that we take in a very deep way including something's wrong with me i shouldn't be the way i am i have to be different i'm unlovable others don't see me i'm unworthy i can't trust myself or i can't trust others i can't trust the world i need to protect myself i need to control things so these are waves of fear beliefs you know the thoughts and the feelings and they're really the foundation of our world view when when especially when they're dominant they they stir up a range of related emotions the fear stirs up also anger and shame and they shape our whole experience of reality gandhi famously uh taught that our our thoughts bring on our actions and our actions create our character and our character creates our destiny so we get our whole sense of identity organized around these fear beliefs and if we don't recognize them these waves and awaken from them they do govern our destiny they keep us in that cocoon separate feeling deficient feeling threatened they block us from spiritual wholeness and by the way this pertains to society-wide fear beliefs too the beliefs of us and them you know the set of waves of one set of waves dominating another where valuing some humans over others are all humans over other animals perceiving the earth as other as a source of supplies not as a living web that we belong to and in each example i'm giving again it's that identity that's small that's separate from the whole and then it keeps fueling greed and violence and domination so if we're to alter the destiny that gandhi talks about really of destruction destroying each other and this living earth we need a collective shift of identity we've been talking about opening up our individual identities to the whole we need a collective shift of identity from us them to we to recognizing our our shared belonging to each other and all of life to valuing all life forms so again we turn to how do we train our hearts and minds when we're caught in those waves of strong emotion and here i speak of rain the acronym rain many of you are familiar with that i know because that's how we practice bringing mindfulness and compassion to the waves where we're stuck and the fruit of rain which i've called after the rain this is where we experience that shift in identity where we can sense the shift from being identified as a small stuck self back into that that sea of awake awareness now for those of you that aren't familiar with rain the letters of the acronym stand for recognize allow investigate and nurture i'll give you an example of how rain is not just a tool for soothing difficult emotions it really is a tool for awakening in the deepest sense from that separation from that small self back to wholeness and the example i want to give you is one friend who i worked with at one of our monthly satsangs online and she described being traumatized by her family's rejection feeling not listened to not seen or cared about so there's a very young wounded place very quickly accessible and it expressed she told me in daily ways in shame self-doubt and self-judgment real difficulty feeling close to others often felt victimized and shut out and she could sense this this casing this hard armoring around her heart so there's a lot of mistrust a lot of anger so i invited her to get in touch with a recent experience where she was felt really triggered and the most prominent emotion was self-aversion so that's where we started with the waves of self-aversion and the r of rain is simply to recognize that's there and the a of rain let it be there let the waves be there you're not trying to get rid of the waves you're not trying to ignore the waves in fact the real transformation comes when you're just in a wise relationship with the waves so she recognized and allowed the waves let them be there and then we began the eye of rain which was investigate and i asked her what she was believing when she was caught like this and she was able to get really deep down i'm unlovable that's the belief and then we moved from the ideas of unlovable into her body and again the practice of waking up from thoughts and coming into the senses is crucial for that and she we paid attention to her body and her because really the heart of investigation is to feel somatically what's going on in our bodies and she could feel her heart was squeezed she felt like they were like these straps like squeezing and binding her and there was a real rawness in the chest and so as part of investigation is to really feel that fully and then nurturing is to offer real care to that that wounded place and when she tried to nurture she couldn't says i just cannot i can't offer myself a message i can't hold myself there's nobody here to do it it just feels too big and she even tried to reach out and you know send some other compassionate source but just didn't feel held so we investigated a little more and i asked the wounded place what are you really wanting because if you ask that question when you investigate it helps you to customize the nurturing and she said i want my mother to listen to me and to care about me and when she acknowledged that when she named that after all those years it was her mother she still wanted her vulnerability dropped to even a deeper place and she began weeping and feeling grief that she would never have a mother that could do that that was the grief i'll never have a mother that can do that and again feeling it contacting it being intimate with that grief in the heart of that grief is this core longing for some loving presence to embrace her and i invite her to imagine what would that be like who would it be what would it be and it was this kind of warm field of loving very intimate and close in that totally was attending to her seeing her listening to her loving her and i said what are the words that want to come out from you to that loving presence and it was really just please love me please hold me and i had her say it a number of times and the more she did the more she said she felt the sense of being utterly washed over with loving held in loving now i want to pause here and i want to make a comment to you about nurturing and about accessing compassion and this is a place that a lot of people say i can do the rai of rain but i the nurturing this is the alchemy of compassion is the more you touch into the felt sense of the vulnerability the real vulnerability for her it was that grieving i'll never have the mother i longed for and what the more you really get this is suffering this hurts i use the word ouch it's like really getting that in the tenderness of that in the tenderness of the vulnerability a natural compassion arises and often the nurturing doesn't come because we haven't really entered into that vulnerability but when we do we become poorest we become more available but we have to get the ouch this really hurts and for for this woman that grieving put her right into it and the more she could feel bathed in the presence of love the more there was that kind of dissolving of the armoring so after some long moments she's just knew she was resting in a larger place this is after the rain something had shifted and then after the rain after those after the four steps of rain i i generally say notice the quality of presence it's here rest in that be that awareness that presence and i'll sometimes invite people to after a while notice where they were when they started that for her is that that unlovable self which is being in the cocoon being caught in the waves and notice what's here now this spacious tender presence because the more we get familiar with the shift the more we get familiar with that that spaciousness the more we know it's the truth it's more true than any story we could ever tell about ourselves this is the shift in identity that we're exploring friends this is the shift from the waves to the sea that really is the grounds of freedom and the approach to it in practice is if you're using rain and you don't have to call it rain if you're using mindfulness and compassion is when you feel more expanded get to know that experience get familiar get a sense of intimacy with what that's like because it's home it's who you really are okay we're gonna practice in a few moments um but before we do just to say that we've been exploring how to the really the first approach that i mentioned of the two how to pay attention to the ways and become the ocean and when we're really landlocked how do we how do we work with that and as i mentioned the other pathway is turning directly to the sea of awareness which we'll explore together next time so let's let's practice and as you uh as we often do take a moment to adjust your posture so that you're sitting in a way that's really comfortable relaxed alert if it helps you to close your eyes or lower your gaze bring the attention inward we start with the words of rumi i am water i am the thorn that catches someone's clothing there's nothing to believe only when i quit believing in myself did i come into this beauty day and night i guarded the pearl of my soul now in this ocean of pearling currents i've lost track of which was mine you might scan your life and sense which of the currents that are reactive currents right now for you the waves that that you get stuck with stuck in you might bring to mind a situation where you feel like you get caught perhaps in maybe you turn on yourself or turn on another where there's separation and when you have a situation in mind you might want to focus in on it and sense the particular moment when you get most triggered what's going on maybe if it involves someone else look on their face what they're saying or maybe what room you're in what activity you're doing this could be anything that triggers you pause when you get to the the worst part of the experience and take a moment to sense what's most difficult what's most upsetting and just notice whatever feelings are strongest right now it might be anger hurt fear shame self-judgment jealousy you start the art of reign recognized by mentally whispering whatever is most predominant the emotion that's here the ways that seem the strongest it might be one emotion or two the a of reigns to allow and if you can just to let it be okay they're here for now that you're not going to judge them you're not turning away from them not trying to fix anything you can investigate begin investigating by asking yourself well what's most upsetting what's the worst part what am i afraid of it's going to happen [Music] deep in your connection with what's going on and what am i believing when i get triggered are you believing that you're in some way failing or that another person couldn't be treating you this way if they cared about you what do you believe in and when you're believing in this way what's it like in your body and this is where you move right into the body the throat the chest the belly if you put your hand on your heart you can help to keep more attention in the body and also it's the beginning of nurturing it's never too early to nurture and just feel and breathe breathe and feel you my sense what's most vulnerable what's the worst part where is it in your body what's the shape of it the felt sense of it you might as that woman did inquire and sense what does this part most want or most need does it need to be forgiven does it need to be accompanied understood seen loved held the sense that you're experiencing this and feeling that vulnerability but also that there's a witnessing presence that's noticing what's going on and let yourself from that most wise heart of yours begin to offer some nurturing to the part of you that needs it sense what's needed and perhaps there's a message to offer yourself some reminder it could be simply i'm here i'm not leaving i care about the suffering or trust your goodness or if there's fear there thank you for trying to protect me but i'm okay right now just offer whatever message feels most deeply healing and you might feel with the touch that you're actually communicating care and if it's hard to offer to yourself then as that woman did imagine the source that you want to feel loved from could be a person that you know person that's no longer around friend a grandmother could be your dog could be a spiritual figure could be formless loving awareness intimately holding present tender with you whatever the source let in the loving let that at least be your intention to let that that love and care and whatever form is most healing bathe the place of vulnerability just bathe it you might sense what you'd experience what your life would be like if you no longer believed the belief if you really believed there was nothing wrong with you there's nothing wrong that that belief's real but not true the one you're holding that kept you in the cocoon real but not true just sense who would you be without it and notice the presence that's here notice the quality of spaciousness of awareness tenderness just be that awareness and you might notice and remember where you started the sense of a small self triggered caught in the waves and this presence this sea of awareness knowing this is your true home day and night i guarded the pearl of my soul now in this ocean of pearl and currants i've lost track of which was mine [Music] thank you friends for your attention for exploring together i wish you all blessings a deep bow of appreciation namaste [Music] you

Channel: Tara Brach

Views: 44,227

Keywords: tara brach, dharmarain108108108108, dharma, meditation, mindfulness, RAIN, awake, awareness, spiritul path, love, homecoming, being, ocean, waves, identity, freedom, guided

Id: QzICySUds_k

Length: 56min 56sec (3416 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 27 2021