Tara Brach on the RAIN of Self-Compassion

namaste and welcome Anthony de Mello many of you might know as a well known Jesuit priest and writer wise man and in one of his books he describes a key moment of waking up for him the moment I call radical acceptance he says he it's been decades and decades really depressed and anxious and selfish and the worst part of it and he felt despairing about how to change and the worst part of it was that even as friends kept telling him that he really needed to become less self-absorbed and so finally one day his world was kind of stopped when one of his friends said don't change don't change I love you just the way you are don't change I love you just as you are and he said that the words were like pure grace he kind of just they just flooded through them and he said paradoxically is only when he got permission not to change to be just as he was that he actually transformed in a profound way and to me that describes one of the deep principles of healing and transformation which is it's only when we stop the war stop the accusation towards ourself that we're bad and wrong as we are that we actually are free to flower free to become all that we can be so for him it was fortunate that he had a friend that helped him and many of us have friends that are mirrors in positive way but ultimately for us to really move forward on our path we need to be able to give ourselves the message of of care of deep love and acceptance in the moment to open the door to change so tonight's talk is titled the reign of self-compassion and many of you are familiar with the acronym rain and I'll be going into it some the way I'll be sharing it tonight is slightly different than many people are familiar with it from the last decades and it's it's a practice in a way of deepening and self compassion that I've gotten a lot of feedback has been really helpful to people so I wanted to to share this practice the rain of self compassion and some of the context for it and if it's something you find helpful I've written out a document on it that you can find on my website if it helps you to have something written out just go to Tara brach comm slash self compassion all one word so I've probably talked more about the suffering of self aversion and the need for self compassion than any other single theme and that I come back to regularly and the reason is that it's so pervasive a suffering and also it's I'm so familiar with it it's like as much as I talk about it I keep having to recognize Oh back at war with myself again and oh I need to be kind over and over again so I feel like it's it's worth coming back to and I've noticed that even when it's other emotions that are prevalent even though it for you it might feel like no it's anger are it's fear are it's you know jealousy or judgment deep down there's a sense of something's wrong with me we're going to let that helicopter do its thing if you look closely whatever difficult emotion is going on it's not just that emotion it's just it's not just the fear or the jealousy there's also another feeling which is I'm bad for having this feeling this feeling reflects badly on me I feel bad I am bad they seem to go together and in the Buddhist tradition this is described as second arrow in that the first arrow is the feeling of fear and the second arrow is the feeling of I'm bad for feeling this fear so rather than the first arrows fear rather than bringing healing energy to the fear instead we lock in the trance by saying this is bad or this is wrong so I got an email last week woman said dear Tara my 12 year old niece is quick to worry and often gets wound up with anxiety after one such experience she and I left to run some errands she started apologizing in the car and expressed how badly she feels that she has panic attacks the second arrow I explained the concept and then offer what seemed like a year's worth of Dharma talks into 15 minutes so focus on the breath bring yourself to the present the feelings are real but the story or believing is not bring passion and good being compassionate kindness to yourself she mentioned again have feeling bad how about feeling bad for having gotten so worked up and I said something like yeah the second arrow can be really difficult and she said yeah and then there's the third arrow when you realize that what you're worried about isn't even true so these stories we have of personal deficiency of badness are the most sticky of all the beliefs they're the ones that are really hard to wake up at oh and by the way many people will say yeah but I actually go around feeling kind of like I'm special and better than other people and superior and what I've noticed is that that's swelling of inflation it's totally true we tend to be bulimic we either feel like we're the worst or we feel special and important we kind of go back and forth but underneath that specialness is a real hollow feeling and my separateness a feeling of separateness it's a very fragile kind of superiority and deep down there's a lot of vulnerability feeling unlovable and feeling unworthy is a trance it's one of the common pervasive forms of trance that we go into and when I talk about trance I'm talking about a narrow distorted reality that we are living in for just a time and for instance we know how much we judge ourselves I've done many hand raises and said how many of you think you dread yourself too much and mostly it's 99% you know huh but what we're not aware of is how many life moments are squeezed by an undercurrent of not enough should be doing more something's wrong there's some sense of a problem and the problem is me that's an undercurrent and I often think of it like a fish in water that it's so familiar that we don't even realize that we're breathing in that kind of toxicity of not okay so many people wonder or why is this kind of insecurity about self so pervasive how come so many of us deep down feel like you know we're not okay and we can see it as a kind of mirror to the larger culture that there's so much striving and so much competition and so much bias and fear and for most of us rather than the assumption of belonging the assumption that we are acceptable and lovable we have to meet certain standards and they're in the culture and they're in our in our family life growing up that it's that we have to be a certain way we have to look a certain way and act a certain way and succeed to a certain degree in order to have some confidence at least for the moment that we're okay and the standards of course are in a society or set by the dominant culture so if we don't belong to the dominant culture there's even more hurdles you know were of a different race than white you know more hurdles if we don't fit into the dominant culture in terms of religion right now being Muslim more hurdles deepens the trance and then underneath all those standards that we need to make there's a basic negativity bias in just existing that we tend to remember the things we did wrong and it's part of surviving that you know in the old days when there might be a lion around the corner it was really worthwhile being vigilant and thinking something was going to go wrong in any moment you know it helped to have a nervous system right but now for us to always be fixating on any mistake we've made so we don't make it again just makes us more nervous and anxious about making mistakes it kind of locks us in so there's a lot of research that shows how our minds are designed to remember what's wrong and to get then anxious and then make more mistakes I have a really early memory of it where I was maybe six or seven years old and my parents had taken me to a restaurant and the waiter was chattering me up and he said something like well you like a smart young lady and of course then I needed to proof asking or smart so he says I have a question for you what color was George Washington's white horse so I just you know I my brow about furled and I really started thinking about and I went through everything I remembered from you know any stories I had ever heard about George Washington's horse and so on I would try to remember if I'd seen pictures of the first present I finally made my best guess which was black you know true story you know so anyway failure and shame get entrained I you know there's this mess it's like the brain knows let's remember this so we don't do it again so we can look back in in our memory banks and that's what will jump out to us one physician described it happening to him he says that a new young MD and doing his residency in obstetrics I was quite embarrassed when performing a female pelvic exam to my embarrassment I'd unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly the middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing and further embarrassing me I looked up from my work and sheepishly said oh I'm sorry I was like tickling you and she replied this she had tears running down her cheeks from laughing so hard no doctor but the song you were whistling was I wish I was an Oscar Mayer wiener he wouldn't submit his name so we remember the trance of unworthiness I mentioned the in the moments were in trance when we're thinking something's wrong our attentions narrowed and we're focused specifically on the beliefs and feelings of what's wrong so we're forgetting a larger reality now you might consider for yourself what's really happening like if you really start investigating trance because the only way to wake up out of the trance is to literally shine the light of awareness on it so I want to do that just for the next few minutes just look at what is really going on when you for instance when you're defensive with a colleague or when you're too harsh and parenting or when you find you're drinking too much and and or you're insensitive to your partner's needs and then you turn on yourself and you feel really like I'm a bad person well what's really going on it's not our name three key elements that are going on in the moments that were really caught at war with ourselves okay three things when we're room we've really turned on ourselves and one is that we're taking it personally what's going on as my fault I'm bad and forgetting all the past causes and conditions so we absolutely had no control over okay now when I say that what am I talking about one thing that is becoming clearer clearer in recent research is generational trauma so what that means there's more and more evidence that genes passed down memories of violence so what about the violence done to First Nation people what happens is it's passed out generation to generation and then all the symptoms all the PTSD symptoms we're familiar with occur in future generations Holocaust survivors african-americans refugees so whatever the pts symptoms are that we know about attentional deficit anxiety disorder eating depression anger over drinking addictions they play out and then the people of this generation feel like I'm bad I'm weak willed something's wrong with me Masoud I'm saying though it's genetically passed down then there's the causes and conditions that happen right this lifetime both because of the cultures influence and also in our families that we can't do anything about that then installed in us the programming to behave in the very ways that we think are bad and I'm thinking right now of a friend of mine who has an eating disorder that's gone through decades of overeating used to be binging really bad binging and now it's it's just regular overeating and the degree of shame she has lived with and for for that eating behavior well the situation was she her mother was drinking when she was pregnant so was fetal alcohol syndrome she got addicted to sugar in the womb and her mother neglected her in her early years that's a set up for binge eating and overeating I'm thinking of another person a very high achieving african-american friend of Mines attorney now a judge grew up in a really violent neighborhood very profound poverty and there's calm in a system and then he has shame about that he feels like an imposter even and it's like nobody in the world with he's so respected yet he feels like an ' there's this kind of cut off part of them that he doesn't want to be identified with but it feels very vulnerable and very traumatized a lot of shame so what I'm saying is that the things we often think are the worst it's not our fault it doesn't mean we can't be responsible and mind you that's a really important distinction and I'm saying that because I've run into it so much that there's a fear that well if I don't blame myself I won't be responsible we are not able to respond with wisdom and compassion if we add that second arrow of self blame so the causes and conditions don't just come when there's you know the dramatic traumas that I've mentioned because I'm naming some really big ones like for African American men and there is now research that if you grow up in a situation with a lot of violence literally it changes your biochemistry around so that your stress reaction gets locked in and there's a feeling of ongoing danger and a reaction of violence potential violence but it's not just with trauma there's different degrees of severed belonging that we all experienced every one of us just by being in this kind of society but for many of us if we really look at our early years and we ask you know did our parents really listen and understand and get who we were were we given that kind of mirroring that helped us to trust ourselves and trust our essential goodness did we feel a sense of trust that we belong that we were acceptable lovable worthwhile and to the degree we look back and say we get it that it was conditional and not to not our parents fault they were scared they were self-absorbed they were depressed or anxious or addicted or whatever but it was conditional well to that degree our nervous system picks that up and then does behaviors to try to make up for it and then we don't like ourselves for those behaviors okay so thus far the the I'm talking a little bit about the dynamics of this tranche the first one is we take it personally like what we're blaming ourselves for is really our fault we forget the causes and conditions the second thing that happens when we're in trance is that because our attentions narrowed and tightened we lose touch with the actual vulnerability that's current in us with our feelings of hurt or wounded Nisour sorrow or fear now there's a moment we're really turned on ourselves we don't register the simple truth of oh I'm suffering this is hard this hurts which means that we're cut off from compassion if you can't touch the vulnerability you can't feel compassion so in the moments of trance were not touching our own vulnerability there's a woman who is practicing Buddhist meditation in prison I went to one of my friends was teaching a class in this maximum-security prison and so she took a course and I - I share this story in true refuge and this is a tall large woman who would became very intimidating she's known her award as a bully and she would protect some women but she'd relentlessly insult and intimidate others and during the meditation classes while other people participants would share in discussion she would sit with her arms crossed kind of silent and scowling but she never missed a session during a course and at the final class they wanted to go around saying well what did you like or what touched you or what you learned and she spoke last and she said well I really liked that about the pirate so this is the poem Jews referring to I'm going to read you a piece this is by tick not Han and it's called call me by my true names I am the Frog swimming happily in the clear pond and I'm also the grass snake who approaching in silence feeds itself on the Frog I'm the 12 year old girl refugee on a small boat who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate I'm the pirate my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving please call me by my true names so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once so I can see that my joy and pain are one please call me by my true name so I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open the door of compassion scepter so after she said you know I like that poem she said well that poem got me thinking it maybe know something and then she spoke so softly that everyone had it restrained to hear she said all my life I was the bad one the problem one now I know I'm suffering too she kind of looked down she had tears in her eyes and everybody else looked down too but they were respecting her words and in the months to come and I heard from word of mouth that she really changed in a deep way she became a much more quiet person coming to terms with her own suffering so we disconnect when we're at war with ourselves we can't be tender towards her own suffering and that's part of the trance we also can't be tender and aware of our goodness again our attention to narrowed and we have that negativity bias so we forget how much we long to be honest and and see what's true and we forget how much we really want to love and not hold back our love we forget the goodness of our being we are fixated in a narrow way okay so that's the second part the forgetting the truth of who we are the third piece when we're in trance okay it's my fault and we're forgetting what's true the third piece is then we're propelled into a reactive behavior to in some way try to feel better we're trying to get more comfortable we're trying to feel better about ourselves but that very reactive behavior actually sustains the trance so transfer Gatz behaviors that the contrast' and the examples that you might sense 'el when you're feeling insecure about it bad about yourself what do you do what are the behaviors well we usually have a self dialog going on to self justify you know tell ourselves that were okay or else we start blaming other people or else we start working harder or else we try to get other people reliant on us in some way trying to prove that we're we're worthwhile this is from Saturday Night Live here's a good thing to do if you go to a party and you don't know anybody first take out the garbage and go around and collect any extra garbage that people might have like a crumpled up napkin and take that out too pretty soon people will want to meet the busy garbage guy it's pretty silly I know okay so what happens is whatever our ways of trying to feel better about ourselves that consolidates the identity of the not okay self trying to feel better and we usually add on I'm bad for the ways I'm trying to feel better in other words we feel ashamed of our trance behaviors so those are the three it's that second arrow of taking it personally it's my fault okay not seeing our vulnerability and our goodness and then reacting out of it and consolidating our persona of the not okay person the healing begins in the moments when we sense that that's going on that we're living in the trance of unworthiness and we make a kind of u-turn so that instead of blaming ourselves or blaming another or acting out we turn the light and tenderness of attention right to where the wrongness is and that's what we're going to explore next is how do we really bring a quality of presence that can heal us to the moment and we'll use as we have in the past the acronym rain and in and as I've mentioned a a slightly changed version to explore this and the way the acronym goes is this that you recognize and allow that you're in a trance there you go okay I'm judging that the signs are this you might notice you're judging yourself so that's the big one usually there's that voice of the inner critic going on but you also might notice that you're justifying yourself you're rehearsing what you're going to say to somebody else or you might know that you're overeating or overdrinking or you might notice that you're speeding up and worrying there may be a lot of different reasons but you stop and go okay in some way I'm not feeling good about myself recognize it and just allow it we just let it be there because you can't begin to deepen press make that u-turn if you keep behaving you need to pause okay the eye which is investigate we investigate with curiosity with gentleness we investigate baskin you know what's really going on inside me right now again this is the same rain you're familiar with we we investigate with the eye by sensing where do I feel it and what does it feel like maybe what am i believing what's what is this place most need this place it's feeling so inferior so bad that's the eye and the N is 2 then nourish with compassion nourish with compassion there's a little poem someone sent after they did the self compassion practice terms of endearment help they pad the burden even when we cannot breathe through our most menacing demons something simple as it's okay sweetheart just may save we nourish with the end of rain after rain after recognizing allowing investigating an urge we just simply rest and notice okay what's it like right now and what we'll discover is at the beginning of rain we were in the trance of unworthiness a small self that felt deficient after the rain after we've nourished we'll discover the sense of who we are is enlarged rest as that notice what you are and rest in it that largeness more spaciousness more tenderness I'll give you an example of how the reign of self-compassion works and we'll practice together so in this example I was working with a minister who had reached an impasse in his marriage and his wife was really dissatisfied she wanted him to be more intimate more vulnerable more real with his feelings not so spiritually detached he wanted her to look earners in her eyes and say I love you and let her know when he was scared you know really feel more connected and the more he asked it she asked that the more he felt blocked stuck and defended so we worked together and we and he got in touch with under that block whenever he felt blocked and defended and cut off he felt a real sense of deficiency and there was a real harsh inner critic who basically said you're a hypocrite in other words you know his critic was saying you're preaching love but you don't embody it that kind of thing you know his inner critic would say you can comfort and guide as a spiritual adviser you're fine with people as long as you're in the role of the minister but as soon as your peers you can't be closed his critic would say you know you've all your life you've never been close to anybody so there was a lot of shame so his practice with rain was to recognize and allow when that trance state would come where he'd feel like he's being asked to be intimate but he couldn't because he felt fundamentally like something was wrong with him he just couldn't show up then when we worked together we started investigating and when I'd say well what is that shame place feel like he said it's a sinking hollow ache and I can feel it in my heart and in my belly and I'd say you know what's the belief going on I'm an impostor and I'm defective and people will find out mostly it was his wife he felt like he couldn't be real because she'd find out that he was defective and then when I asked well what is that hollow shame place most need he said it needs forgiveness it needs love it needs somebody a presence that sees my goodness so that was the investigate and then nourish okay now when we nourish in some way want to bring love compassion to that place and so and I often put my hands on my heart because I have found and so many have found that touch really makes a difference and research is showing it too there's a whole nexus the neural Nexus in this area if we touch our heart it helps it brings a kind of warmth and a contact it actually arouses the parasympathetic and decreases the sympathetic which is calming and Sue them but nourish nourish can happen through words through a message through imagining energy for him it was he was incense calling on God's love in his own love and trying to send it in he said he was do just tried to let it pour into his chest and do his belly and had a sense of saying it's okay you can just surrender into love it's okay surrender so that was rain he recognized me loud he investigated he found out where it was living he nourished post rain and this is really important in the moments after nourishing the sense of all so what's this like he felt the kind of spaciousness he felt a vibrating loving awareness that felt spacious and that's where there's a shift in identity and by the way the shift in identity is really the signature of freedom when we're in the trance of unworthiness our identity is small and efficient after rain when we check and we've really nourished there's a sense of spaciousness and tenderness and no solid self Center itself there's just an open presence and this is what he discovered he had to do it many many rounds because of course all the old feelings and beliefs would keep coming back so many rounds of bringing his you know kind of hands was hard and calling on God's love and his own love and pouring it inward and then sensing a larger sense of being months later shared that for the first time in 26 years he said he and his wife were feeling each other's hearts came from repeated self compassion this is a poem a poem from Rumi that he liked so I thought I'd share it very little grows on jagged rock be ground be crumbled so wildflowers will come up where you are you've been stony for too many years try something different surrender for this minister the trance was actually this kind of there was an inner stone anus or he played his role but he was just armored against that fear and by rain dissolved that stone anus and the wild flowers were that he could really love from a much more free and open place I think the most challenging experience is for most of us are when self doubt is right down to the core of it's not only a belief of personal badness but it's like I feel bad it's got it's very visceral and so often when we try to offer compassion towards ourselves there's a sense that there's really no home no one home to offer it it's almost like we're just two regressed too tight too small to offer self compassion so I want to reiterate than in the reign of self compassion recognizing allowing investigating and then nourishing it can be very important to call on wherever we sense a source of that loving to be because it's not going to feel like it's posited in the small self ultimately that love is our very nature but because we're tight and contracted and separate we don't feel it here so then wherever we can turn towards and call on for this man it was sensing God's love and then sensing his own love we do that I read you a poem that that I found really points to this and it's called she dreamed of cows by Nora Pollard I knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed her body and put on the nightgown she had worn as a bride and lay down with a 38 in her right hand before she did the thing she went over her life she started the beginning recalled everything all the shame sorrow regret and loss this took a long time into the night a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief until sleep captured her and bore her down she dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree she dreamed of cows she dreams she stood under the tree and the brown and white cows came slowly up from the pond and stood near her some buttered her gently and they licked her bare arms with their great coarse drooling tongues their eyes wet as shining water regarded her too came closer and began to press their warm flanks against her and as they pressed an almost unendurable joy came over her and lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly she flew over the tree and she flew over the field and she flew with the cows when the woman woke she rose and went to the mirror she looked a long time at her living cell then she went down to the kitchen which the son had made all yellow and she made tea she drank it at the table slowly all the while touching her arms where the cow's head licked so the reign of self-compassion means that we make that u-turn from the trance where we're at war with our self the self is always an object we make that u-turn where we stop the behaviors that come out of trance and we bring attention right here to where the wrongness and the pain is and we recognize it and we allow it and we investigate it and we bring a nourishing attention for me one of the most powerful experiences of the reign of self-compassion was some years back I was at a retreat up at the forest refuge where I go and do retreats I'm going to be going in a few weeks actually in January and right before going I had a real busy period so it was very stress I was kind of in a stress tighter place and when I landed at the forest refuge I started reviewing those weeks I became kind of horrified at how I had been playing out playing my life out from such an impatient and self-centered kind of place especially if I thought of with Jonathan how I had been just really not very attuned or sensitive and just very self-absorbed and it triggered off some judging that then went more and more into a very very old place of this is just plain unacceptably bad bad selfness you know for very very cheap so I said okay you know recognize and allow it and I said okay this is the trance and I began to investigate and felt that pain of not okay and as much as I tried every time I kept trying I said you know it's okay sweetheart and I said some of the things I normally say to myself there's some very very deep stubborn play said go ahead and do that but it just plain not a okay you know bottom line core not okay alright so the end the nourish I it was almost like a desperate sense of that a very very young helpless place in me that just you know I can't love myself please love me and and that in those words just saying those words and I said them over and over I said please love me from that just helpless I can't love myself I cannot do the nourishing by myself and so came from this real depth of yearning and from that yearning out of that yearning I sensed a presence very very close in that was simply warmth and tenderness that kissed me on the brow and that kiss on the brow is absolutely like a loving blessing that vibrated and through my whole body a silly other way as just pure loving just flowing through a pure care and the more I let it in the more the I dissolve and that nourishing was just loving presence loving what is it wasn't a presence out there wasn't even me nourishing myself it was just loving presence loving I started this practice then at the forest reffered with whoever I'd see I would imagine in some way energetically that I was kissing them on the brow and I know this sounds like a little invasive or whatever but you know but it was very respectful but just energetically that with that same just pure tender caring and each time I would feel this exquisite sense of relatedness not this like grand me kissing them but just this absolute tender field that we were part of together and it became my kind of custom-designed loving-kindness practice where if I was feeling at war with myself I would just imagine you know I'd recognize that and allow the trance and just investigate and feel where it was and there's just imagine that an arraignment nourishing that kiss coming in and then I would offer it out and it became and it still is one of the practices that cuts through the trance and this is one of the gifts of the reign of self compassion which is that if you practice it and it's like any other practice you have to do it over and over because the conditioning is strong to regard ourself as a self that's deficient and doesn't deserve it so takes over and over again even if you're just going through the motions the language is neurons that fire together wire together and to decondition that over and over recognizing allowing investigating nourishing but each time you do it pause after the rain practice because the true flourishing of our flowering of the practice remember roomies poem you know the wildflowers are right after the rain after the rain just rest and discover who you are when there's no longer a war going on that's the question Who am I when I'm absolutely allowing and caring for the life that's right here so we're going to practice together this this reign of self compassion again if if you find that this practice support you you'll find the steps of it written out you can get hold of this in not only will you find the steps written out but there'll be a link to this meditation we're about to do on on my website on Tara brach comm slash self compassion there's no hyphens or spaces so let's take some moments to set ourselves for a guided meditation Oh as you come into stillness take a few full breaths a nice deep in breath and a slow out-breath and again a nice deep full Ren breath filling the chest filling the lungs and then a slow out-breath feeling the sensations of the breath as you exhale letting the breath resume and its natural rhythm just feel this body breathing and take some moments to scan in your life and you might notice where your relationships with others or in your own behaviors you feel like you've turned on yourself in some way you might be in a situation where you're in conflict with another person but feeling bad about yourself maybe you've turned on yourself you're at war with yourself for a way that you're behaving as a parent a partner a friend you might be judging yourself or down on yourself or something to do with work or maybe it's for an addictive behavior where do you get into the trance of unworthiness the trance of not okay and let your attention go to that place where you know you get into the trance and for now just let yourself kind of get close into it so you can feel the sense of how it is to be living inside that mind state of the belief that in some way you're falling short we should be different perhaps there's a sense of not lovable not okay not respectable something's wrong we begin the reign of self-compassion by recognizing oh this is trance at war with myself recognising the thoughts and feelings of the trance just allowing that all to be here right now making a room for what's here the a of rain is just to allow this is how it is right now we begin to investigate with curiosity with gentleness so what's it like when I'm in this trance you might sense what you're believing about yourself and other people if that comes quickly just you know which which is a belief right there I should be different I'm bad because I'm hurting others no one could love me I'll always fail sense what might be built in there what kind of core belief and most important feel your body and sense when you're in the trance of unworthiness what is it like in your body what your throat feel like your chest your belly when you're really feeling bad about yourself the most important part of investigating is connecting with the embodied experience since the most vulnerable part of you where you feel the worst since what that part most needs the part that feels deficient not okay what does it need does it need to be seen in a different way and loved understood held just sense that and as you're listening into that as you're feeling into that place in you that is feeling not okay you might experiment with putting your hand on your heart just lightly a very tender touch miss the beginning of turning towards loving towards the end of rain the nourishing and since the possibility of offering what's most needed inwardly perhaps there's words that you might offer sometimes it's okay sweetheart our I'm sorry and I love you tick not honza's darling I care about this suffering is a powerful phrase or it might be as the minister that you send the love of the God or the divine flowing through you or for me that kiss on the brow of pure care since the possibility of calling on love and offering it inward nourish with self compassion each time you nourish the self-compassion let it be a fresh creative exploration of what really allows you to feel love flowing into your own being you might imagine light warmth pouring in just the intention to offer care inwardly begins to decondition that tendency to be at war the meditation becomes full when after the steps of rain we simply notice who am i if I'm not any longer believing anything's wrong sensing that tenderness the openness the spaciousness of being when we're not at war from the teachings of bapuji indian master he says my beloved child break your heart no longer each time you judge yourself you break your own heart you stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality the time has come your time to live to celebrate and see the goodness that you are let no one no thing no idea our ideal obstruct you if one comes even the name of truth forgive it for its unknowing do not fight let go and breathe into the goodness that you are so we closed tonight in a simple way just to feel again your breath feel the presence that's here and offer whatever blessing whatever wish most resonates in these moments to your own being and then sensing our shared wish sensing the shared heart space of those here live and those listening that heart space that really includes all beings everywhere feeling our shared prayer that all beings may realize the loving presence it's their very essence but all beings my trust and live from loving presence that all beings everywhere may experience deep and natural peace neither be peace on earth may there be peace everywhere may all beings everywhere awaken and be free namaste and thank you for your presence you

Channel: Tara Brach

Views: 186,763

Keywords: Tara Brach, Compassion, RAIN, meditation, dharmarain108108108108, trance, self-compassion, guided meditation, suffering

Id: ZxfmarLIBo0

Length: 57min 8sec (3428 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2016