EP 105: Healing Feelings of Unworthiness |Tara Brach PhD

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi, Fleet Maul here for the Radical Responsibility podcast. In today's episode, I'm really excited to share with you an interview I had the pleasure of doing with my friend and colleague Tara Brock, a renowned meditation teacher and psychotherapist. And in this interview, I spoke with Tara about issues of both individual and collective unworthiness and how that impacts well being and how we can shift that at an individual level through self compassion, self acceptance, and the healing potential within various contemplative skills, tools, meditations. And we also talked about this at a societal level and some of the ways that some of the structural and systemic forces still present in our society encourage feelings of unworthiness for many people simply because of the color of their skin or their gender or their gender expression, their sexuality and so forth, or just where they're born, the zip code they're born into, or being born into poverty and so forth. So we're exploring these issues of unworthiness and worthiness and how to develop greater well being individually and societally with renowned teacher Tara Brock. So enjoy the episode.

How are you today, Tara?

Oh, I'm doing really well today, thanks. And I'm really happy to be with you, Fleet.

Yeah, it's exciting because your work, you know, grounded in mindfulness and acceptance and compassion, just goes to really to the heart of this conversation about resilience. So I want to tell our audience a little bit about you. Most of them are probably very familiar with you already, but in case they're not. So. Tara Brock is a clinical psychologist, a PhD clinical psychologist, a psychotherapist and a meditation teacher who founded the Insight Meditation center of Washington D.C. which is really one of the largest non residential meditation centers and communities in the US And.

Tara is really one of our most popular western mindfulness meditation teachers. 1.5 million downloads from your podcast weekly. That's pretty amazing. And Tara's the author of a book that was really a big best seller and beloved book by so many Radical acceptance and then also true finding peace and freedom in your own awakened heart. And then her most recent book is Radical Compassion, Learning to love yourself and the word world with rain. And we'll talk. That's, that's the acronym R A I N. And we'll talk more about what that means if people are not aware of it. Already. And you lead the Awareness Training Institute with Jack Kornfield, and you have a mindfulness teacher training program and much, much more. And you've been. You founded the Insight Meditation center of Washington, D.C. back in 98, I think. And all these years, you've been introducing probably thousands of practitioners to meditation, mindfulness and the dharma. And you've been training teachers for a long time. So I'm sure you've trained countless teachers that support the very large community you have now.

Anyway, it's really great to be able to have this conversation with you today.

Thank you.

Yeah. The overall context of this summit is obviously it's happening right here in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic and all the incredible disruption that we're all experiencing and danger and risks and so forth. And it's also happening in the midst of what is either looming or already present climate emergency. As we all know, that's already been manifesting with things like the brush fires in Australia, where billions of species lost their life, potential famine in Africa related to locust plagues right now, incredible disruptions from extreme weather around the world. And so this may actually be the first wave of many kinds of disruptions. Hopefully not, but many could be more severe than even what we're experiencing now. So it seems like at this point, resilience is no longer a luxury. It's only, as the Dalai Lama has often said, that compassion is no longer a luxury, but essential to human survival. And I think resilience in some ways is even more foundational, because without resilience, we don't have access to our best self and to our compassion. So that's kind of the context of what we're exploring. And. And I'd like to start maybe just with your first book, Radical Acceptance, which has been so powerful, meaningful for so many around, the connection between that work and what we think of in terms of individual resilience, relational resilience, community resilience, and so on.

Yeah, well, I love the inquiry. And what we can see in our own lives, and we can certainly see.

It as a species, is when there's.

Huge disruptions, we can either contract and go into our primitive survival mode, or we actually can adapt. And 10 to 20,000 years ago, the great adaptation of humans was that we expanded our capacity for compassion and collaboration beyond kin.

That was horrifically.

That was huge because before that, it had always been amongst our relations. And as soon as we could begin really caring about people outside of our own families, that is the evolution of compassion. And so what we see with major disasters, natural disasters, is humans, if they're paying attention, actually can wake up. They can wake up their hearts. One of the things that stops us in our personal life and our as a species from having that resilience is when we turn on ourselves. And I wrote Radical Acceptance Fleet because I became so aware in my own life of how trapped I was in what I came to call the trance of unworthiness. And as a psychologist and a teacher, I could, you know, many, many people. In fact, it's really pervasive in this culture that when we get stressed, we turn on ourselves. And I'm watching it right now. I've had so many students talk to me about during this lockdown, how they really are so down on themselves for not being productive with their time or keeping to their exercise that they're overeating and, you know, getting into more of their addictive habits. And I've seen people, they've come and told me about how. Not come to be with me, but have told me about how now they're facing how bad they are as parents or, you know, how the tensions with their partner. And so here we are, we have.

This huge disruption and that trance of.

Unworthiness ends up kind of getting larger. And it actually prevents us from really tapping our deepest resources, which are to sense our connection, to reach out and help each other, to maintain our humor, maintain our tenderness, maintain our creativity, and being able to move through this. So that I wrote it originally because I found it so it was so much of a suffering in myself. And in writing the book, I shared a lot about how probably the most important commitment we can make if we want to be resilient in every way, is to start by not believing the self judgments and instead really starting to learn how to bring kindness to our natural human imperfections. Because if we can do that, we become more accepting and tender towards others, and then we can hold hands and get through things.

Well, that's really so important. The.

You know, I think it is really that our individual and collective sense of unworthiness, which part of it is the human condition, but it's also been exacerbated culturally, I think, in the West. And it certainly undermines our resilience in a big way. And, you know, we're kind of in the radical club here. My book, Radical Responsibility, we have these books, radical this. And the first chapter is there's nothing wrong with you. I borrowed that title actually from Zen teacher Sherry Huber's book, you know, which is a wonderful tour de force. And Trying to convince us that there's nothing wrong with us fundamentally, but it's really how we feel about ourselves and how we feel about ourselves as humanity and is really going to drive the kind of world we create, the kind of institutions we create, the kind of communities. It's either going to be grounded in a sense of our own innate goodness and resilience and healthiness, or it's going to be grounded in fear and fear and shame and all the rest of it.

I'm right there with you on what you're saying. Right at the beginning of radical acceptance. I just talk about one woman who was dying and the last thing she said to her daughter was, you know, all my life I thought that something was wrong with me. And it was a real wake up for her daughter and also for many people that hear that, because it can shape everything about our lives, how intimate we can be with each other, how creative we can be, how we respond to our larger world. And one of the things about the trance of unworthiness is it's very shaped by our society. So for those in non dominant populations, the ongoing message is you are less than, you don't matter so much. And that absolutely imprisons in the trance of unworthiness. So as you just said, if we really want to change our world, it's not only on the individual level of learning how to be kind to ourselves, but changing the structural inequities that keep perpetuating that message to some people while giving privilege to others.

Absolutely. And you know, this, this unworthiness is something we all suffer from. And again, I think here in the west, we've all been enculturated into kind of a blame and shame based culture of unworthiness. Not that anybody designed that. It's just kind of the human condition left unchecked and, you know, influenced by some weird permutations of religious ideas and so forth. But.

You know, I think if so we're all impacted by it. And then we live in this very pluralistic society where you have a lot of people who are less privileged, marginalized around all kinds of things. Race and gender and socioeconomic status and sexual orientation, gender express and all the rest of it. So they experience it even more. So.

Right.

So we have, you know, and so you've been, you've been building community for a long time. You have a thriving meditation and dharma community that is, I know, local to Washington D.C. but you have satellite communities and you have a whole online. You know, I'm sure you reach people all around the world. So. And I know that you, you've worked at having that community become more diverse and training teachers of color. I know members of your community and some of the teachers of color in your community. And so I know you've really worked with this. And what is that process like? I would imagine when you started, it was probably a very privileged, mostly all white community, I would suspect. And then you, you've worked hard to have it become more diverse and had to work with all these different issues that you were referencing there.

Well, what's really interesting, Fleet, is we're. We're like every other mainstream, you know, white dominant kind of community here in Washington that has had to start facing what we hadn't seen, you know, how much the power and the assumptions was to go along with white culture. So it's been one mistake after another. But we're gradually learning, and I'm right in the thick of that. And I'm pretty humble about it because I keep having to wake up to what I wasn't seeing. I remember some years ago, my husband and I went on a. We're at a sea on a seaside trip, and we did this swim out to this island, and I just swam with athleticism and grace and I felt really good, energetic, and it was really easy getting there, but on the way back, it was a struggle and I was like, exhausted by the time I got, you know, back to the shore. And it became a metaphor to me of how I don't. I'm not aware of all the currents that are carrying me to make life easier and how I'm not aware of what others, particularly in the United States, African Americans are every single day fighting against. And I've had all sorts of wake ups in the process of trying to work and our community that had to shine the light very uncomfortably on.

My own, not seeing. So part of building community is this willingness to be incredibly uncomfortable and in the mix. And I'll share one example, Fleet, because this one really stands out to me. I was working with a group, a small group of leaders.

Interracial group, mixed race and very small. And we were meeting pretty regularly. And I. I went on this downward spiral of health over a couple of years, and I started cutting back on everything. And I told the group, I asked the group, could we, you know, shift from meeting, you know, every week or I don't remember exactly what it was to every three weeks or something like that. And one of the women in the group, woman of color, was really angry at me for wanting to shift the Schedule around and, you know, very, seemingly very unsympathetic to my health and so on. And so we. I left that meeting feeling, you know, kind of injured and angry. And I did some inner work with it. And I felt my own feeling of hurt, you know, that I've been hurt by somebody and I was kind towards myself and I came to more balance and. But I could not get why she hadn't understood. And I talked to another friend, another woman of color, and she said to me, tara, for you, attending these meetings.

Is optional, but for her as a.

Woman of color, it's life or death. And then I remembered how she had talked about her grandson who was in jail and how all these young men being killed in the streets felt like her sons. And I started to get how different the world was for her. And we talked and we, you know, she. She was doing the same inter process and on a personal level, it deepened our friendship. But then I kept having these recognitions that were really important about me as a white woman. And my assumption that, well, you know, I mean, it didn't occur to me that the group wouldn't want to accommodate me and the influence I had, both in terms of being in a position of power and a white woman and just getting sensitive to what I don't see and how it lands on people. So this is all to say we need to, in our communities, both have affinity groups where we can wake up with those that are like us. So we're free to really look at what's going on and be vulnerable. And we have to, as we are able to then have more informed conversations than in mixed group. But I don't see how any community that wants to really have a sense of wholeness and wakefulness and open heartedness can sidestep the very hard work of facing the kind of racial dividedness in the United States. I'll speak for the United States because to be on the spiritual path and not do that means that we're going to still be caught in a very narrow identity that actually will break our own hearts. We can't really feel whole. So I just share that story because.

I can't pretend in any way to be past making the mistakes I make them all the time of not seeing. But I do think it takes that kind of a commitment to just keep looking.

Thank you.

That really goes to the heart of it, Tara. And we're all in this continual, ongoing process. And this pandemic has certainly laid bare many of the inequities that are still present and the way African Americans in particular are being impacted more severely by the pandemic. And it's related to various comorbidities that make higher risk with the disease. But all that is based on years and years and years of marginalization and oppression and so forth. And so we're really having to take a whole nother look at this in fairness, in order to somewhat feel good about ourselves as human beings and socially. We have come a long way, but we also have a long, long way to go. And I think it's really important to look at that. And also what you said is, you know, for any of us individually, certainly to be part of a community, we can't have a, we can't talk about community resilience or social resilience that leaves anyone out or that doesn't do this work. Right. And even as individuals, I think it's, I mean, we can kind of build our own little isolated world and maybe have some resilience. But ultimately, I think it's really questionable whether we can even be individually resilient without participating in this work of solving the injustices and the inequities and really trying to create a society where everyone is honored and respected and has the.

Same kind of opportunities and access to resources and so forth.

I'm with you. And I think there's been a lot of kind of growth among spiritual communities. The getting that the inner work we do is by nature for it to.

Be full has to be expressed in.

Our engagement with the wider society. And we all have our different places that will engage. But to not look, to see how others might be struggling keeps us limited. And I'm thinking yesterday morning I was, I was listening to a podcast about, you know, the horror at Rikers island and in many, many prisons around the country. And, you know, you can tell the how evolved the civilization is by its prisons. And in this country, we're not very evolved. I mean, it's punitive and it', it's oppressive to non dominant populations. It's completely disproportionate for African Americans. And so I was listening to this podcast and you had one inmate from Rikers island saying, help, we're dying and we matter.

And I, even as I say it now, I just burst out crying because it's, you know, we have to keep like, trying to pay attention to those that are not living. So many of us are going through this with a lot of anxiety, but.

Also a lot of privilege.

And there are some that it is just, it's, it's a total Tragedy.

Being arrested, put in jail, and then condemned to die because you're in a petri dish where the virus is much more contagious. So one of the things I feel like, as for a growing community, is to keep looking. I think Ruby Sales, she's a civil rights activist, an elder, said it beautifully. She said, to ask that question, where does it hurt? And to ask it, we ask it inwardly so that we're in touch with our own vulnerability, to ask it to each other so we can see past the mask and really see where another heart is hurting. And to ask it towards those who are of difference so we really can include in our hearts the wholeness of what's here and not be caught in a bubble of privilege. It's essential.

That's a striking example what's going on.

At Rikers island and many other prisons.

My Zen teacher, Bernie Glassman, who we.

Lost a couple of years ago, often spoke about the place where we need to bear witness and bring our compassion and our action. Our work is to the places where our fellow human beings are falling through the cracks. And the cracks have actually been widening in many cases in our country and in recent decades. And I know that your community has been doing wonderful prison work in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore area for many years. And my organization, Prison Mindfulness Institute, we've been involved with some of your volunteers a bit.

And I've actually been in touch with.

Correctional executives all around the country. And in Canada, we've been trying to support them to get resources into the prisons because right now volunteers can't go in, family members can't visit. So we're trying to get in resources that they can put on closed circuit television and things like that. And I've also been working a lot with correctional executives and other first responders.

Getting resources to the frontline staff to help them. Because, you know, I mean, there are so many injustices in the system, but.

The people that work in our criminal justice system are people caught up in the system just like the rest of us. And it's not like any. You can isolate any of them and say they're, they're the one, the bad one, or something like that. In fact, I was on a call with 27 executives from the whole public safety field in Indianapolis and Indiana just a few days ago. Chief of police, sheriff, all the leaders in all the different public safety agencies. And we were going to mindfulness based resiliency exercises, and they were talking about how they're supporting their staff and the residents and so forth in dealing with all this anxiety and fear around the coronavirus and also in the midst of that, that they've lost an officer to a shooting and a domestic violence call and how they're working with grief through all of that. And I was. The reason I bring that up is I was quite astounded to see. I mean, I go all over the country and in Canada and other places in the realm of criminal justice, and some places, some agencies have not really begun focusing on wellness much yet, but some of them, including this community in Indianapolis, it was quite amazing, the knowledge they have and the commitment they had to wellness for their own staff, as well as taking care of those in their charge.

That is heartening. I do want to pause here, Fleet, and say a deep, really a deep bow because you've been right in the front lines as a leader in terms of prison work and bringing mindfulness to the prisons for as long as I can remember. So I've really appreciated your. Your leadership.

Well, having spent 14 years inside myself, it kind of became choiceless understood part of my life.

So.

So let's talk about. You know, clearly resilience and compassion are very close cousins, if not siblings. And your book Radical Compassion addresses that very directly. And you've become incredibly well known for teaching this compassion practice, which I believe is a self compassion practice, but also can be compassion for others known by the acronym rain. So maybe you could go there and talk about that a little bit.

Sure. And thank you for asking. I wrote Radical Compassion, really with using the word radical, getting right to the roots of the grounds of what compassion is, that if we're really awake in compassion, we're feeling it as a felt sense, tenderness. It's not an idea. You know, we can have an idea of being compassionate towards people somewhere suffering, but unless it's in our bodies and alive, we won't act on it. So real compassion is felt. It's a felt sense and it's acted on. It's an active. It comes as an active expression of caring and it's all inclusive. And that's why I wanted to write a book on how do we train towards that, because it's actually the trajectory of our species and we can cultivate it. And so the RAIN practice is both so that we can open up our compassion towards ourselves and. And when we do that, we have a much more inclusive kind of a heart where we can be present with and tender with others. And the way the RAIN practice goes, it's an acronym, as you mentioned, and it's a mix of mindfulness and compassion. And the R is to recognize. So if there's fear coming up, we recognize that fear. And the A is to allow it to be there. The I is to investigate. And it's not a cognitive investigation. That's the mistake people usually make. It's really somatic. We feel where it is in our bodies and we, you know, we actually lean in and touch and experience it and find out what it needs. And then the N is to nurture and to bring kindness to what's there. And then there's. After that we have what's called after the rain, which is the most central part, because after those steps we then discover the quality of presence and how things have shifted. And the gift of rain is a shift from feeling this separate fearful self being identified there to really being opening to inhabit a much more spacious field of tenderness. And to maybe give you an example, just a pandemic example with myself, I.

Became.

Really aware of the magnitude about a month ago at the beginning of March where my daughter in law who's pregnant and also a mother of a one and a half year old is a nurse at a major hospital. And so, you know, the feeling like, oh my gosh, you know, my family, you know, this is high risk. My ex husband, who's a dear friend living with them, he moved in because if he was in heart failure, you know, just sensing the risk of my family and then my mind went out to oh my gosh, all these people I know who could, you know, are going to be financially devastated that aren't well off. And then I went to, you know, all the people who are vulnerable and thought of those that are stuck in prisons and those in refugee camps. And I got really agitated. I was sitting by the Potomac river meditating and I was just really fearful. So I started practicing rain and I recognized, I said, okay, fear, fear. Allowing. The way I allow is I sometimes.

Will just say this belongs.

It's like any wave in the ocean. This is part of the ocean. So let it be there just to pause and let it be there, which allows a deepening attention. And I investigated it and usually it's the throat or the chest or the belly where emotion most gets felt. And we have to feel it in our bodies. Our issues are in the tissues, as they say. So I felt this kind of twisting in my chest and you know, squeezing. And when I'm investigating, I put my hand wherever I'm feeling it, both because.

It helps keep the attention there.

We tend to run away from vulnerability. So it keeps the attention there. It's also the beginning of nurturing. And any moment you can bring in some tenderness and gentleness, it helps. And I kind of asked that part.

What did it most need?

And it really needed to feel belonging to a larger, loving universe, just to.

Feel safe, you know.

And so then for nurturing, I just imagined a larger universe, light and love and warmth, just kind of bathing this place and really coach myself to let it in, just let it in, feel it in the spaces between the cells, you know? And so I just felt this incredible washing through of loving presence. And I went and let it go right to the epicenter, you know? Right to the epicenter.

Feeling that sense of, you know, being held and washed through. And then after the rain, what I noticed was rather than being a scared.

Separate self, there's just a sense of.

Heart space, really inclusive heart space. And the fear was there, but it wasn't my fear. It was the world's fear.

And what I keep finding over and over is every time I do rain.

Every time I bring presence to the.

Fear, if I am willing to stay with it. And that takes some real commitment. Gradually there's this opening to being the heart space that's holding the world's fear. The interesting thing about rain is the more you do it, whatever you practice grows stronger.

It doesn't take that long.

You can do a light rain. One woman who lives locally, her son was positive for the virus, and she got a lot of fear around her family getting it and so on. Other members of her family, and he was okay, and it seemed like they were okay, but just had a lot of anticipatory fear. And she was practicing rain, and she'd recognize it and let it be there, the fear. And she'd investigate and find it. You know, for her, just feeling that tightness and her nurturing was to say.

Thank you for trying to protect me. We're okay right now.

And it's such a profound message because fear is nature's protector. And to find our way back to.

Resilience, we need to honor the different emotions that come up in us.

And they all have an intelligence. If we get swept away by them, possessed by them, then we'll struggle. Then we'll lose any access to resilience, and we'll go right into fight, flight, freeze. But a practice like rain allows us.

To include the waves. But remember, we're the ocean.

It gives us a pathway back to that larger space of presence, and that's the very source of our resilience. From that place, we can respond with Our full intelligence and with our full care and we can bring that to others. It widens out naturally that we can be then present and resilient with others. So I just thought I'd share a.

Little bit of just some stories to.

Give you a sense of how for waking up resilience, we can bring rain to our inner life and then start holding others with it.

This is just such a wonderful pathway. You know, I think many of us recognize the need to be more self compassionate. But then how, how do you do it right? And to have such a, you know, the way you teach it, it's such a wonderful, very doable, simple pathway into self compassion and greater resilience. And, and I like what you said about.

You know, making that shift from the kind of scared, separate self into that heart space. Right. And you know, I think in some ways you could say at least my understanding with compassion and in the dharma traditions and other contemplative Asian tradition, it's not so much a value like in our Western society, compassion is a good thing. It's a value. There's nothing wrong with that. Be compassionate, but it's actually the experience of less self and more other, more access to other. Right. It's a, it's a recognition of our interconnectedness, our, our interdependence and non separateness. And then compassion arises quite naturally. And that heart space, the bigger it grows, it can only hold our own fear and suffering. It can begin to hold the fear of the world, as you said. So this is just such a beautiful pathway.

You know, what you just said, Fleet, is there's so much truth in it that we're not trying to cultivate something that's different or more some alternative state. It's actually our nature. And when we are fully present, we sense we belong to each other. So naturally we care and live out of caring. And there's a palliative caregiver that has kind of sat with thousands of people when they're dying. And she says that the greatest regret of the dying is I didn't live true to myself. I lived according to expectations or judgments or reactivity, but I didn't live true. And to me, when I heard that it was not just the dying, I feel like a lot of us when we're suffering, we feel like we're not living true to our heart. And we have an intuition of what it could be like to love without holding back. And yet we keep on playing out old patterns of acting out. So really, as you said, it's actually a Coming home to who we really are.

Wonderful.

So I wonder if you'd be so kind as actually lead us in a contemplative exercise to lead our audience here in a contemplative exercise, perhaps through the steps of rain or whatever you'd like to journey you'd like to take us on.

Well, thank you for the invitation. I would love to.

So for all who are listening right now.

Take these moments to sit in whatever way is most comfortable.

And close.

Your eyes and allow yourself to come into stillness.

Just invite yourself to arrive right here.

And you might take a few long deep breaths to collect your attention.

Inhaling deeply, filling the chest and the lungs.

And a slow out breath so you can actually feel the releasing and letting go with the out breath.

And again inhaling deeply, filling the chest and lungs.

And a slow out breath again, letting go, letting go, letting go.

Then allowing the breath to resume in its natural rhythm.

Just sense the quality of presence that's here.

And take some moments to scan your.

Life and you might sense any way.

That the current crisis is triggering you.

Any way that in these recent days or today you've felt caught in fear or anger.

Or maybe there's some relational discord and there's hurt.

Anxiety, shame.

Just taking a.

Moment, sensing it may be fear about.

Your own health or concerns for someone you love, maybe some anxiety around work, money, relationship.

Not to pick something that's traumatizing because.

That won't serve you so well for a short exercise.

When you've chosen something, let the situation.

That evokes it, or if there's something you're imagining is going to happen in the future, imagine that. And so you can actually get in touch if there's someone else involved in the triggering, see that person's face, hear.

The words that were spoken.

Just sense.

The worst part of this for you. What's most upsetting.

The R of Rain recognize is just to name, perhaps mentally whisper, whatever's predominant. Whatever emotion is strongest might be fear or worry, anger, sadness, grief.

And if there's a few different emotions, just sense what most wants your attention right now.

So once you've named it, let's say.

You'Ve whispered fear, fear, the allow is.

A willingness to let it be for right now. Not to try to fix it or ignore it, but just let be it belongs like a wave in the ocean. Just let it be.

And the I investigate you might feel into your body, throat, chest, belly. And as you sense the worst part of this situation.

What you're most afraid of, what's most upsetting.

What you're believing bad could happen.

Feel into your body and sense where you feel it the most. Is it a kind of clutching in the throat.

An ache or pressure or.

Stabbing in the heart, squeezing in the belly? And experiment by putting your hand wherever you feel the most. Even if you sense that's where it is, the vulnerability. Just with a light touch, you're kind of sending the message it's okay to be here. In fact be all that you are. Just sending the message to the vulnerable.

Place and you inviting it to be.

As much as it is and notice what happens.

What does it feel like.

With the actual feelings? You can breathe with what's there. If it's difficult keeping the attention.

Sensing.

When you're believing something bad is going.

To happen, you might sense what you're believing.

What goes on in your body and.

Can you contact that.

You might even let your facial expression.

Show what you're feeling.

Just experiment with that.

Even your body posture so you're really.

In touch with the vulnerability.

You might ask, well, what is this place most need?

How does it want me to be with it?

Does it need love.

Acceptance, forgiveness?

To feel its belonging to something larger?

As you listen to what's needed, sense that you can start listening from your most wise and tender heart.

You might even let your body posture shift so you can have it that.

That awake heart and offer to the vulnerable place whatever is most needed. Again to feel the tenderness of your own touch.

Communicating, care.

What message does this place most need.

To hear and remember?

Right now.

It may be simply thank you for trying to protect me.

Maybe it's I'm here and I'm not leaving.

Or I care about you.

It'S okay.

And if it's hard to offer yourself.

A message, you might imagine it coming.

From some larger source of loving. Perhaps from someone that you trust and love.

Friend, grandparent, maybe your dog, maybe the natural world, Gaia, Earth, maybe the earth goddess, maybe Kuan Yin, Dalai Lama, the Buddha.

Sense, maybe formless awareness that love and light in the universe sense it washing into you.

Now's the time to.

Let yourself take in love.

Imagine and sense the tenderness and care.

The loving message energetically bathing you right where the vulnerability is.

Give yourself permission to let in.

To be filled by and held by loving presence.

To truly sense this. The waves of fears held cradled by the ocean of tenderness.

And as you just open to what's.

Happening.

This final part.

After the rain, sense the quality of presence that's emerged. Maybe just a little, maybe a lot.

Notice the difference between the Sense of self when you started, perhaps the fearful self or the hurting self or the angry self.

And the heart space, the field of awareness, the compassion.

That'S really more true.

About who you are than any story.

Taking the final few moments just to rest in who you are in that awake, open heart space.

And as we close to sense, how that heart space includes all others, all those who may be listening right now, all those who are suffering.

And we.

Hold the earth, our mother in our.

Lap, and all beings in this awake heart space.

That was wonderful.

I feel like the rest of my day is surely going to go quite well.

Thank you.

Really, really wonderful to just be able to relax into that heart space. Yeah. And it's just interesting all the. All the things that come up that become obstacles to that for us and that we all have and that we did, we just kind of let get in our own way of having access to that innate heart space that's really our being.

Thank you so much. Well, this has been wonderful, Tara, and thank you so much for giving your time to this global resilience summit and adding to the conversation. I know this is going to be very helpful and thought provoking for all of our attendees as well as that practice. We're going to make that practice specifically available to our audience. And so that. That'll be quite wonderful. So thank you so much.

Well, thank you for putting this together. I know it's serving into a very deep need, so I'm really grateful.

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