Flowering, From Within, of Self-Blessing - Tara Brach

so ten years ago or so I was completing the book radical acceptance and this was around the time that yoga and meditation I think of yoga as a form of meditation we're beginning to really gain some acceptance there was more and more around in the culture that was saying oh this has has benefits so even though and against the currents in some ways there was more of an embrace and I remember somebody sending to me this little cartoon and it had a group of bats and they're all hanging from the top of a cave and they discover a single bat is standing on below them on the floor of the cave so they're surprised of course by this unusual behavior and they ask well what's wrong with you you know what are you doing down there and the standing bad answers yoga and of course in the meditation community or is always that phrase don't just do something sit there you know just because it goes against this culture that is so active so busy and and it's gotten a lot more again over this last 10-15 years very much a part of the culture so that now the message that we explore so often you find in this the psychotherapy world and education and other domains which is simply if we want to be happy if we want to have some real clarity if we want to have some real peace we need to learn how to come into the present moment that's simple and that is really huge and radical and it's actually something that no longer sounds so wild so exotic it's like yeah okay there's a message that this begins with our inner life we have to come into the present moment and be able to be with what's here people go yeah that sounds right and then there's that message of and being with what here means being with what's here with some sense of presence and kindness and people go yeah that sounds good and it is so difficult it is so difficult for so for many of us to actually come into the moment and regard our inner life with the quality of compassion it's so difficult so that of course spurred me on to that was the reason I wrote radical acceptance was this recognition of the pervasive suffering in this culture and in others of being at war with ourselves of really not being able to be at home with our inner life so instead of presence what we find when we begin to really check is that either we're ignoring you know our loneliness or our sorrow we're ignoring the fact that we're feeling really insecure or alienated or so there so there's a neglect or ignoring or else there's a judgement there's an undercurrent of this this means that I'm flawed in some way sometimes it's actual aggression towards ourselves violence towards ourselves but the basic core sense is often that I'm not okay as I am so at the beginning of radical acceptance for those of you that didn't read it I shared a story that touched me deeply a woman was sitting with her mother when she was in a coma dying and at one point her mother opened her eyes and was completely lucid it was the first time in weeks and said you know all my life I thought that something was wrong with me and then she closed her eyes and went back into a coma and died shortly after so for this woman it was actually a dying gift it was it was it was a wake-up for her to recognize how by always feeling something was wrong with her her mother had not lived fully she hadn't really blossomed into the fullness of who she was she was kept kind of dampened down caged in some way by her beliefs so seeing that actually gave this woman a resolve and it has become you know it sends very compelling to me that how we pay attention to ourselves determines in a very deep way the quality of our well-being and it's springtime right now and we're seeing all around us especially those of us in this part or this climate we're seeing how son how light and warmth brings out the blossoms and it's the same way when the light and warmth of our awareness is directed to our own being or to each other it brings out the beauty the goodness the wholeness so this is what I'd like to explore tonight is this quality of attentiveness that allows us to blossom and there's a wonderful poem that many of you might be familiar with by Galway Canal it's called st. Francis and the so-so and one lime he says for everything flowers from within of self blessing for everything flowers from within of self blessing that this spirit wakes up as we offer the blessing of our attention and that's a possibility for every one of us this is the Buddha's essential teaching and promise that enlightenment wasn't something that some guy did twenty five-plus hundred years ago that it's the natural quality of mind the essence of mind is this radiance and this expression of loving and that when we offer the blessing of our attention it's not like right away we just you know explode into this luminosity but in time we decondition these beliefs and feelings that something's wrong we kind of start letting go and that frees us to blossom so we'll look at that a bit tonight I found very useful from in teaching radical acceptance the term the trance of unworthiness because it draws attention to this how much we're at war with ourselves and what I often like to do we can just do it for fun tonight is to say how many of you do feel that you judge yourselves too much and we just don't be shy just limit just I like to look around it's somewhat somewhat reassuring just like okay so we're all in the same boat yeah and yet what we don't recognize is how much it's happening and the impact on our bodies of kind of keeping us tight because when we're judging ourselves if we think something's wrong then there's a bit more of the fight/flight going on we have to protect and defend and and we find out that you know when we look around it's we're not aware that we're doing it but if we start looking at any moment our life when we're stressed often the undercurrent is I'm falling short so you can just even reflect right now just for a moment any situation in your life right now that's bringing up emotional difficulty if you're if in some way you're facing something that you're really afraid of that's going to happen or you're in a conflict with somebody or you're dealing with a great loss you're angry about something if you check into that situation and ask yourself well how am i relating to myself what's the kind of attention I'm paying to my inner life in this situation and often we find it's not a kindly accepting presence there we've added on to the situation I'm in some way not doing a good job with this I'm falling short this shouldn't be happening now often we've riveted our blame on someone else - I'm not saying we don't blame outward but there's usually some undercurrent of something's not okay with me and if you bring your attention to any situation where you're just feeling uncomfortable with another person let's say there's somebody in your life you're aware of feeling really uncomfortable with if you have someone in mind and bother when I ask these r you to do these reflections it's quite natural that for some of you things won't jump into your consciousness right away but if you have someone in mind that makes you uncomfortable or you feel uncomfortable with then you check underneath you'll sense often underneath that discomfort is the sense that I am falling short something's wrong with me I'm not worthy I'm going to be judged when we're stressed at work what's the worry I'm going to fall short I'm not going to perform so what I found for myself I'm asking you to kind of check out your experience is that the times that I feel most stressed most in a bad mood when I dig under a little bit under the surface what I find is that on some level I have latched on to the notion of feeling like I'm not enough that I'm falling short and then we say well what's the genesis of this how does this happen that it's so pervasive this kind of insecurity and in an existential way all organisms are worried about survival so all organisms are wired to anticipate that something's going to go wrong and and so that they can defend and protect and address so there's a perception of separation in some sense that something's going to go wrong now that can either be modulated let's say for humans if we have in our family in our tribe in our culture a very deeply ingrained sense of belonging that feeling of something's wrong gets modulated we still know how to call on fight/flight but it does not override some basic sense of okayness or belonging that's usually not the case for most of us we would say at least in this culture and the fant our families as messenger of the culture the sense of not belonging actually gets exacerbated and so that something's wrong with me feeling gets very locked in and sometimes it happens in real horrific ways through trauma and abuse but often it's quieter ways so we can't even always put our finger on it we're in some way there was an expectation that we'd be successful in a certain way we got compared to our siblings or you know father's disappointment that the son is not an athlete or the son stoled you're being too needy if we got the word needy that's the swamp of shame right there okay so the consequence is there's some message that comes through family that be different and if you're different and you meet certain standards of being attractive or smart or behave well you're not too loud you're not too shy whatever then you'll be accepted so we have hoops to jump through and then of course in our culture it's very competitive and we have to meet standards there whether it's to feel like we're okay at school and that rules out a lot of people would have different learning styles to belong to sports team are to belong to a social group or a spiritual group we still have these ideas of standards that were supposed to meet our culture idolizes those that have power and status and wealth and certain kinds of intelligence or beauty or whatever and a huge majority don't make that mark so there's this undercurrent of not really so great not really belonging and then our culture perpetuates it by serving those that have the power and the privilege and may the dismay continue the separation between the haves and the have-nots and it doesn't in all sorts of ways but the way I'll mention right now is that it directly alienates and oppresses the under classes and brands people's psyche with something's wrong something's wrong if you're poor it's your fault you're not working hard enough I was reading in the New York Times on Monday on the opinion page an article that said are black men born suspects and it was written by this is by Neil Franklin who's had a 34 year old career with the Maryland State Police and the Baltimore Police Department he writes this he says 53 percent of black boys never finished high school among those who drop out 60 percent end up spending time behind bars and this by the way matches the national statistics I just take that 60 percent 60 percent behind bars a teen being arrested is a rite of passage that one brought to yours you know that being arrested as a rite of passage your belonging is to a gang that behaves in a certain way and you just land up getting arrested he writes this he says many schools treat kids a suspect from the moment they walk in the door making them pass through metal detectors or administering urine tests as a condition of joining after-school clubs cops move about the school like prison guards it's like we're conditioning them for a life of incarceration now let's just bring this to what we're talking about tonight we have a pervasive sense of not good enough look how the branding happens for elements of this society that are in some way through the institutions of society being kept down not good enough so how we solidify the trance of not good enough these are it's important that we see it in our own behavior and psyche that underneath that feeling is a sense of shame and a sense of a fear and so we try to control our life so we don't have to live in that and we do it in two ways and one of the ways we do it is we're trying to always fix ourselves and you'll notice it in yourselves this kind of perpetual self-improvement project this is idea I'm on this kind of track and I'm trying to get better and better you know to not be worse than worse to not be unworthy so we try to fix the problem and we try to do it by winning over others it makes us not just competitive in a healthy game anyway it becomes really important to be better than others to help soothe our sense of not enough and that can lead to kind of blaming or putting others down and it becomes really good to keep accomplishing so we're accomplishing just to have a growing staff a stack of accomplishments not out of a generative creative service full productivity and then in some ways we present ourselves and again this to me is something that often gets me really sad when I sense how we leave our spontaneity and our naturalness and feel like we have to present a certain kind of person and if you look it's very interesting to see how many moments when you're with somebody how what you're doing and saying is in some way being shaped to get the other's approval have the other's affection so this trance of unworthiness leads us to a kind of fear base manipulating example a man walks into the produce section of his local supermarket asked to buy a half a head of lettuce the young men working that department said well we only sell whole heads of lettuce but the man was really insistent so the young guy goes into the back to ask his manager about the matter he walks up to his manager and says you know some jerk wants to buy half a head of lettuce and as he finished his sentence he turned to find the man standing right behind him so he quickly added and this gentleman kindly offered to buy the other half so the manager approves the deal and the man goes on his way and later the manager goes to the employee said you know I was impressed with the way you got yourself out of that situation earlier we like people who think on their feet here where are you from son and Canada sir the young man replies well why did you leave Canada the manager asked sir there's nothing but and hockey players up there really said the manager my wife is from Canada really who did she play for the young man have you ever noticed yourself adjusting what you're saying on the way so one way that we try to control things so we don't so we're not stuck in that sense of not okay is we you know we manipulate some the second ways we directly remove ourselves we dissociate from that feeling of not okay and the way we do that and again I think this is pervasive and I call these as many of you know false refuges is we over consume or over sleep or we get lost online or lost in mental obsessing okay so we we go through these routes of just pulling away from the unpleasantness itself now whether we're in some way manipulating and proving ourselves or just dulling and dissociating these false refuges don't work as you know I I like that my favorite metaphors it's like drinking salt water it's like you're trying to relieve yourself and feel better about yourself or whatever and you get more hooked because as long as you're doing the false refuge some part of you knows that it's coming from insecurity and it never relieves the insecurity you don't in some way come to finally trust who you really are you're always on that hamster wheel of trying to get away from something George sees Scott he was describing his when he finally gets sick he got success at getting the attention he wanted and then he writes this he says there's no question you get pumped by the recognition then a self-loathing sets in when you realize you're enjoying it you know okay so as long as there's this trance of unworthiness we can't relax because all our ways of soothing it don't really take care of that deep sense of not okay not only that usually our false refuges or something we disapprove of inside so we've added on to its not only are we you know doing the over sleeping or where we've gone and bragged about ourselves right something in us doesn't like ourselves so there's a I shouldn't do this or I should do that there's a lot of shoulds and shouldn'ts when we're doing false refuges that somebody sent me this cartoon of this bear at a fancy restaurant he's saying I shouldn't but I'm going to have the garbage it's a cute one if you want to see it it's up here so we add on judgement and then there's this spiral of shame and you can see the pain of it let's say with overeating that there's a feeling of not good about yourself and then you kind of overeat the dole they're not good feelings and you feel bad about yourself for that and that deepens a sense of not okay and there's this called a spiral of shame it's very painful so just to sum up this portion our cycles that we go through of the belief of what's wrong with me and the feelings that go with it and then the activities we do to try to in some way feel better about ourselves lock us in a very limited sense of self a narrow sense of self it's an identity that we really when we're in it do not trust or remember whatever I often describe is that that radiance or that love that awareness that's really our essence we forget so this is this sense of we forget and what happens is you know it started very early on this forgetting is that when the unpleasantness would arise because it felt untolerable to feel I'm unlovable that was an intolerable feeling early honor intolerable I'm not worthy that raw feeling of it we in some way walled it off and we built a self kind of a false self that was built on those walls to try to you know be somebody and not really have to feel the difficulty one of the understandings I found really useful when I think of this walling off of the deep difficult parts of our early experience is thinking of a spore and what happens with a spore and you can see it in the plant kingdom that when times are harsh and what's needed to bloom it can't be found in other words the heat the the moisture the light certain plants become spores and these plants dampened down and they wall off their life force in order to survive I keep just sensing the parallel to survive we wall off the raw pain just to survive and it's an effective strategy and spores have been found in mummies it's kind of interesting they've been thousands of years old and then they've been able to unfold into plants when given the opportunity to nurture now they've been given nourishment okay so this is you know when children are not listened to or when they're judged or when they're told you know you're really my person you're supposed to be what I want you to be and they lose touch with their own realness you know they're forced to shape themselves to get approval and then they form spores and there's the wall off the unlovable parts of themselves and survival it's frozen life energy and yet like the pant plant spores were opportunists you know and force in waiting there's this potential aliveness that's scanning the environment for the first opportunity to bloom and so for those of us that are beginning to be aware of oh I've pushed away parts of myself I've been judging myself I've been ignoring myself the opportunity to blossom comes when we begin to deepen attention in a kind way in any moment that we pause and we sense okay so what's happening here and we begin to touch our experience with kindness we are sending in that light and warmth they can allow those walls to start dissolving they can allow resume flow of aliveness and a more wholeness of presence that is the process the flags that let us know we have those waldorf places in us the flags are the ones that most of us have some of promote for many of us it's kind of speed and busyness so I often describe it as we're bicycling away from the present moment and we're bicycling fast it's just something we're trying to get to and away from that's one of the signs that there's some unlived life in there that's wanting attention other signs is the sense of incomplete need to do something else for things to be okay need to prepare more for something Restless and then of course in a deep way something's wrong something's wrong so the practices of presence that we explore together are really the medicine that can allow us to blossom again it's this is what I think that Galway Cannell meant by self blessing that we offer ourselves we offer a real gift to our soul when we learn to pause and and deepen our attention with real kindness and we start exactly where we are the whole teaching is start right where you are if you know that there's a very compelling false refuge okay if you know that every day you get caught in a certain kind of obsessing if you know you get caught in a certain kind of judging are over consuming our bragging are procrastinating or whatever you know we usually have a nice cluster of them it's not just one right but whatever it is that's a place to start start with where you sense you're running away start with where you notice there's a lot of controlling in some way or pretending I think the key to begin to offer self blessings is our attitude I mean our tendency as I mentioned when we sense our false refuges when we sense that we're doing it again we've over eaten de Ghent or we've gotten critical or controlling is that it kind of adds on to that weightiness of not okay person so we begin by sensing okay what's the attitude that's liberating what's the attitude I like very much the metaphor I've shared here a number of times if you imagine you're going for a walk and you see a little dog standing under a tree and you go to pet the dog and the little dog lunges at you teeth bared you know growling and your first instinct is to pull back and be really angry like you know what you know here I was being friendly and then you see that the dot one of the dog's paws is in a trap and in that moment there's this real shift because you've seen something you've seen a truth you weren't seeing and that's what causes a shift you've seen the truth that they're suffering and that that behavior was coming from suffering it's the same with us you know when ever we're doing something that we're judging ourselves for we are being compelled in some way by some unmet need by some fear by something that is really painful and if we can pause the beginning of self blessing is that attitude that says we'll wait a second there's something underneath let me get a larger truth on this can I see how in some way I've got one of my legs in a trap okay now I think of these false refuges as decisions we made early on that you know okay this is too much here this is going to at least make it better for now you know it's it's like a best decision that we could have in the moment but then we get habituated these neural pathways have kind of grooves that we just keep running the same decision over and over again to judge in the same way or obsess or blame or eat or sleep whatever it is so how can we look differently at these decisions it's like some of you might remember this reporter asks a bank president who's known in the business world sir what's the secret to your success two words okay what are they right decisions and how do you make the right decisions one-word answer what is that experience and how do you get experience two words okay sir what are they wrong decisions so our experience is that we see these patterns of ways that we seem to be caught in creating separation or our life distance from others distance from ourselves and we go okay this is the false refuge it's caused by some suffering this is the place to deepen attention this is the entry place this is the gateway to freedom to healing so I do this with myself a lot one of my one of my false refuges is over being over busy and kind of getting lost in that and and I'm sharing with you a current ongoing process I'm in where I watch myself over committing and being busy and underneath that if I investigate there's this fear of letting people down and it's you know I'm not living free from this thing of how do people relate to me I'm very much in this I get caught and psyche that wants everybody to be happy and everybody to feel taken care of and feel like I'm right there and and I can't be and I'm not and so of course I fixate on the places where I feel like I'm falling short and then I overextend to try to you know make up for it and of course that makes it worse so more and more both when requests come in and when I'm in the thick of my process I just pause and just as I described with that dog when I mean that kind of speediness or I'm defensive or aggressive about something or irritated I'll say okay what's going on and underneath there's that sense of falling short I'm letting people down or in some way not meeting my own standards for being patient and generous and open and peaceful or whatever they are you know and if I can really see and this it's not just an idea if I can really get the pain of falling short of that feeling not just say Oh trance of unworthiness I got it there but really feel like gosh how many moments of this life do I want to give to this feeling of not okayness how much am I going to subscribe to this and how many live moments are not lived are not loved because there's some sense of a not okay cell at times that will become poignant enough that I'll begin to then offer myself those blessings oh okay I'm sorry I love you let me be here with you know this inner part the spore that's you know walled are and then they'll be then there's this energizing that comes and what happens is not like I feel like oh I'm not letting anyone down I'm a great person it's not like a new identity what happens as I see it as just an identity and there's a resting and something larger that just trusts belonging and essential goodness that awareness is here care is here so this is a pathway from being stuck in a trance of not okay to coming home again into that openness and tenderness and presence it's really the source of what we are then we play out our roles but it's with a much lighter touch with a lot more humor more spontaneity a lot less of an obligation to try to be who others think we should be freedom freedom so let's reflect together but I'm going to invite you to explore a little your own entry into this and as you set yourself for this reflection as you begin pausing I'd like to make a comment about the guided reflections we do together that is that we're all in a different body and mind and state of mind and and some you'll sometimes be hearing me guide you and it won't relate to where you are you might not have an example you can draw on I might say get in touch with your feelings about this and you might feel completely cut off on your body or I might ask you what you're believing and nothing comes to mind please know that these are just templates that you can explore on your own at your own pace and adapt trust yourself to adapt these inquiries so that you can find out more about who you are so letting your attention settle you might feel the breath and let the breath help to collect and relax you and for now you might scan and sense when you're stressed when things don't feel like they're going the way you want them to what's a false refuge that you find yourself moving towards regularly in other words what's some way of either grasping or resisting some way of judging or obsessing or consuming or whatever it is what's a habit that you find in your life that maybe you have a judgment about that not only are you doing the false refuge maybe your false refuge is judging but you're also judging the judging so there's some shouldn't I shouldn't do be really doing this is it blaming others is it blaming yourself is it getting lost in busyness or some addictive behavior that you know isn't good for you whatever the behavior whether it's a mental one or a physical one see if you can have that attitude that like the most kind grandmother gentle being in the world just sees truly okay so how is my leg in a trap what what is it I'm attempting to soothe what's this unmet need or fear or belief what are you trying to get away from you begin to investigate I mean if you weren't doing that false refuge if you weren't lashing out or obsessing or whatever it is what would you have to kind of sink down and feel is it a sense of being flawed not lovable endangered not worthy just take your time and feel into your body in your heart in a very simple way as you touch whatever's there underneath you might just note it as suffering this is suffering may I be kind that simple this is suffering may I be kind just even the idea of being kind is the beginning of self blessing the beginning of offering that light and warmth to that spore that's been walled off by your behaviors you like you can choose right now just offering some message of kindness if you'd like to put your hand on your heart as we often do to really activate that way of relating to yourself very gentle touch just really sensing may I be kind letting that place in you that feels afraid or unworthy or unlovable unsafe just let it know you're there this is self blessing notice what your experience is as you offer kindness inwardly everything flowers from within of self blessing to even have the intention to be kind to yourself opens the door begins to soften and free up that's for begins to let the blossoming happen deepen in the inquiry you might just ask Who am I when there's this offering of kindness this offering of presence Who am I what's the sense of your own being can you sense that you're resting and more of a wholeness of being enlarged sri nisargadatta says that when we're resting and the truth of what we are and that that wholeness he says nothing you can't really say what's changed all you can say is nothing is wrong with me anymore nothing is wrong with me anymore what would it be like and just check it out right this moment just to trust this even for a little bit nothing is wrong with me anymore what would that be like what is it like how might it change your life if that was the realization that guided you taking a few full breaths and then opening your eyes as you're ready so I began tonight saying that you know we kind of have a general growing wisdom in our culture that to be happy to heal to be free requires bringing this kind and wakeful presence to the life that's here and of course it naturally extends to all life we're not just paying attention inwardly we're paying attention inwardly and outwardly to each other into all beings as you begin to trust this kind of essence of basic goodness of awareness and love doesn't mean you're rose-colored lenses and not seeing the conditioning that can often be really harmful but you're trusting this this essence you begin to look around and you begin to see that you begin to truly see that you actually see in the eyes looking out at you and others that same spirit that same beauty you see the defenses the walls that around that person's pores and you also see what's shining through and in you're seeing you actually are nourishing another person's blossoming when you can see your partner or your child or your parent and see past the defenses to that shining awareness that loving presence you call it forth now the inquiry I think is really interesting I spoke earlier about a culture that's down that locks down on minorities that brands them the psyche with this this something's wrong with me and you know really dramatically well what would happen if the culture and the messengers of this culture instead or or offering warmth and light of attention that they could see with anybody was struggling economically or otherwise anybody they committed a crime that person has their leg in a trap how can we help so one of the I was sharing with you from reading that you know about the how many the prisons and 60% of black young men in prison wanted to read you something else that this writer rode if I can find it in my notes ah here we go so this is Neil Franklin he said perhaps if we spend less money in a futile attempt to eliminate drug use through suspicion arrest prosecution and punishment we could invest resources in improving our schools to ensure that more of our young people get the preparation they need to succeed so now let's look at how this shift can be possible instead of mass incarceration we pour money into schools where there can be a nurturing for success now this is a story it's called how mrs. Grady transformed Ollie Neil alley meal in the late 1950s poor a black kid with an attitude he was one of 13 brothers and sisters in a house with no electricity and his father was a farmer with a second grade education Neil attended a small school for black children this was in the segregated south and was always mouthing off he remembers reducing his English teacher Mildred Grady to tears I wasn't a nice kid he said I had a reputation I was the only one who made her cry a regular shoplifter back then neil was caught stealing from the store where he worked part time he seemed headed for a life in trouble one of his teachers Carolyn Blakely described him as he disrupted her class by addressing her as Carolyn and she had a kick him out he was a risk at-risk kid prone to challenge authority to deal with kids like him Blakeley told me I'd go home and stand in front of the mirror and practice being mean now one day in 1957 in the fall of his senior year Neil cut Blakely's class and wandered into the library and it was set up by Grady that was his English teacher from that he had made cry okay so his English teachers now the librarian said it says here set up by Grady the English teacher whom he had tormented and Neil wasn't a reader but he spotted a book with a risque cover of a sexy woman called the treasure of Pleasant Valley it was by Frank yarby Oh author and it looked appealing Neal says he thought of checking it out but he didn't want word to get out to any of his classmates that he was reading that would have been humiliating so I stole it you'll tuck the book under his jacket and took it home and loved it after reading the book he sneaked back it back into the library and there on the shelf you noticed another novel by your B he stole that one as well this book was also terrific and to Neel surprised when he returned it to the shelf after finishing it he found yet another buyer be four times has happened and he caught the book bug reading got to be a thing I liked he says history ejected changed and he later graduated the harder novels including those by Albert Camus and he turned to newspapers and magazines as well he went to college and later to Law School in 1991 Neal was appointed the first black District prosecuting attorney in Arkansas a few years later he became a judge and then an appellate court judge but there's more at a high-school reunion Grady that was that teacher and then the librarian stunned Neal by confiding to him that she spotted him stealing that first book her impulse was to confront him but then in a flash of understanding she realized his embarrassment at being seen checking out a book so great he kept quiet the next Saturday she told him she drove 70 miles to Memphis to search the book shops for another novel by EUR B finally she found one bought it and put it on the library bookshelf twice more Grady told Neal she spent her Saturdays trekking to Memphis to buy books by your'e be all in hopes of turning around a route at a lesson who had made her cry she paid for the books out of her own pocket how to measure Grady's impact not only Neal but in the lives around him the big-hearted Grady is now dead a reminder that teachers may have most important jobs in America by all accounts Grady transform many other children as well through more mundane methods when I read this it just hit me so much that here is a woman and it happens all the time and in stories that you know we sometimes hear acts of kindness where somebody that's in a position to help seize pass the facade and calls out who's there a teacher a mentor a coach a counselor someone it is the greatest of blessings you know we offer our self self blessings in the moment that we can go wait a minute this is suffering may I be kind and the more we offer their self blessings the more we start living from this awareness of there's nothing wrong any longer there's conditioning there's things to pay attention to but there's nothing essentially wrong we see each other that way we don't scan for badness for ways that people let us down for the flaws we recognize the goodness and we call it out so I'd like to close with a brief meditation if you will just to come and come into quietness we begin to sense as we deepen on the spiritual path and we see it again and again as we bring loving presence to our inner life that same presence will reach out to embrace and heal our world we practice for the freedom of all beings so as you sit in this final pause of the evening take a moment to give yourself that gift of relaxing just do a brief scan through your body notice where perhaps just habitually the tension has accumulated and let go again as you scan you might sense the half smile of the Buddha that smile that really expresses our tenderness or care you might feel this life breath that sustains us relaxing through the body relaxing the heart might sense within whatever vulnerability you've contacted this evening perhaps that image of a spore that the life that gets frozen out of fear hurt the unlived life to sense the possibility of deepening your commitment to self blessing deepening your commitment to offering that kindness that will allow whatever unlived life is here to unfold itself and blossom in the loving-kindness practice we just offer a simple phrase of blessing you might offer to your own being may I live fully may I love fully now I inhabit the awakened presence that is home may I live fully may I love fully may I inhabit the awakened presence that is home and then bringing someone to mind in your life you'd like to offer your healing energy - right now perhaps someone that's caught also in self doubt who's at war with themselves just the way you put your hand on your own heart you know might imagine putting your hand on that person's heart or cheek just sending that message of kindness into where they're that frozen on live life is where the fear is sense of unworthiness and may you live fully may you love fully may you inhabit the awakened presence that is home it's trusting the goodness living from who we are and then just sense that you can open this heart in all directions you can sense this feel the loving presence of all that are here that are listening that are part of our Sangha that has no particular geography just the shared field of loving presence that we offer our prayers to all beings may all beings live fully may all beings love fully may all beings inhabit that awakened presence that is home namaste you

Channel: Tara Brach

Views: 93,597

Keywords: Tara Brach, dharmarain108108108108, meditation, flowering, within, self-blessing, inner life, loving, healing presence, trance of unworthiness, reconnect, instrinsic goodness, blessings, others, awareness, love, blossom, all beings

Id: zhYpvWXz80k

Length: 58min 52sec (3532 seconds)

Published: Mon May 28 2012