Speaker 1: Hi, friends, we are running a survey right now, and
Speaker 1: getting your feedback is so important to us. I want
Speaker 1: to know whether the podcast guests that we're having, whether
Speaker 1: the topics that we're covering, are important to you. I
Speaker 1: want to make sure as we create additional content and
Speaker 1: new things for you, that it's what you want. So
Speaker 1: please go to one you feed dot net slash feedback.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from each and every one of
Speaker 1: you about what's important in your life right now. The
Speaker 1: more we know about you, the more we can create
Speaker 1: and give you the things that you want. That's one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash feedback, and there's a link
Speaker 1: very near the top of your show notes that you
Speaker 1: can click on to take you right to the survey.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. How do we become present enough and
Speaker 1: open enough and courageous enough to really be with the
Speaker 1: life that's here? Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward
Speaker 1: negativity self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we
Speaker 1: don't have instead of what we do. We think things
Speaker 1: that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's
Speaker 1: not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Tara Brock,
Speaker 1: an American psychologist and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She is
Speaker 1: a guiding teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community
Speaker 1: of Washington, d C. Brock also teaches about Buddhist meditation
Speaker 1: at centers for meditation in yoga in the United States
Speaker 1: and Europe, including Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California,
Speaker 1: the Crapolu Center, and the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.
Speaker 1: Brock is an engaged Buddhist specializing in the application of
Speaker 1: Buddhist teachings to emotional healing. Her two thousand three book
Speaker 1: Radical Acceptance Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a
Speaker 1: Buddha focuses on the use of practices such as mindfulness
Speaker 1: for healing trauma. Her two thousand thirteen book True Refuge,
Speaker 1: Finding a Place of Freedom in your own awakened Heart,
Speaker 1: offers practices for tapping into inner peace and wisdom in
Speaker 1: the midst of difficulty. So this is a rerelease of
Speaker 1: one of our most popular and best episodes that now
Speaker 1: that I look at it is over two years old,
Speaker 1: so it's about time you're here it it's with the
Speaker 1: wonderful Tara Brock. And the reason we're doing a re
Speaker 1: release this week is because our dear friend Christopher, who
Speaker 1: does all the voiceovers and the amazing audio production and
Speaker 1: editing of this show, is getting married, so we're busy
Speaker 1: with all the preparation for that. So I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy this interview, and if you want to give Chris
Speaker 1: some wedding wishes, send him an email at Forbes dot
Speaker 1: Chris at gmail dot com. Hi, Tara, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: It's lovely to be with you, Eric. I am very
Speaker 1: excited to have you on. I think I've been trying
Speaker 1: to arrange this for a while. When I started the show.
Speaker 1: You were one of the guests right away that I
Speaker 1: was like, I definitely want to get her on the show.
Speaker 1: You're you're writing and your teachings have been a big
Speaker 1: influence on me and on several people that I am
Speaker 1: close with. So I'm really happy to have you. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. So let's start, like we always do, with
Speaker 1: the parable. There's a grandfather father who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second. He looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. And I know you know it because
Speaker 1: it was in one of your books. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: familiar one, and I remember it was coming out right after, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the bombing of the World Trade Center and
Speaker 1: so on, and that was kind of one of the
Speaker 1: ones that was circulating. And I think what it means
Speaker 1: is that every one of us has the conditioning towards
Speaker 1: greed and aversion and aggression. You know, we all have
Speaker 1: that in our nervous system are kind of primitive limbit conditioning.
Speaker 1: And we also each one of us has this um
Speaker 1: evolving brain and evolving consciousness that's capable of um unfathomable
Speaker 1: amounts of loving and of creativity and of presence. And
Speaker 1: so the question is, um, do we get hijacked and
Speaker 1: is our life run by the fear parts? Are do
Speaker 1: we have more increasing access to our our our highest potential?
Speaker 1: And so the parable says it's whicheveryone you feed, And
Speaker 1: I would say that's partly accurate. And by that I
Speaker 1: mean it's really important to pay attention to and nourish
Speaker 1: our our hearts and to um bring to mind the
Speaker 1: goodness and other people and be very compassionate towards where
Speaker 1: they're suffering. And when the more primitive conditioning arises, which
Speaker 1: it does I think for every one of us every day,
Speaker 1: every single day. Yeah, when you have a judgment, that's
Speaker 1: a more primitive part of our conditioning. When that arises,
Speaker 1: it's not about starving that wolf. It's more about bringing
Speaker 1: that into our awareness with interest and with care. So
Speaker 1: when the fearful wolf appears. Not to make it bad,
Speaker 1: it's it's just a frightened part of ourselves. But to
Speaker 1: not be not buy into the narrative, not buy into
Speaker 1: the narrative that the only way that people will do
Speaker 1: what I want is if I threaten them, are if
Speaker 1: I judge them, or you know, not buy into the narrative.
Speaker 1: Watch that part of ourselves with interest and with care,
Speaker 1: so that we're not our identity doesn't get captured by it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I'd like to talk about clarifying that idea just
Speaker 1: a little bit, because in your work you talk a
Speaker 1: lot about being present with the emotions. You know, here
Speaker 1: is this situation, here is this emotion, being present with
Speaker 1: it and opening to it um at the same time.
Speaker 1: Also in in the Buddhist tradition and a lot of
Speaker 1: your work, we talk about the direction that we point
Speaker 1: our mind is going to be more of what we get.
Speaker 1: If we think more about hostility, we get more more hostility.
Speaker 1: And I'm always interested in where's the balance between those things,
Speaker 1: what's the right way to tell I'm genuinely feeling and emotion,
Speaker 1: I'm going through what I what I need to go through,
Speaker 1: versus I'm telling myself a story or I'm taking a
Speaker 1: point of view that is painful and should be dropped.
Speaker 1: I think the way you asked that question, Eric actually
Speaker 1: points to a response, which is that if you're paying
Speaker 1: attention to the storyline of you know, the repeating stories
Speaker 1: of um, somebody else is wrong and bad or I'm
Speaker 1: wrong and bad, then you're just gonna be perpetuating the cycle.
Speaker 1: The words whatever, where thoughts are going through have a
Speaker 1: certain biochemistry, and we get stuck in that state. But
Speaker 1: if instead you actually come into the body and in
Speaker 1: a very unconditional and kind way open to the feelings
Speaker 1: and the energy and the body, then there's actual transformation.
Speaker 1: Then what happens is that there's a shift and awareness
Speaker 1: where you open into a larger sense of being and
Speaker 1: the emotions are currents in your ocean, but you're not
Speaker 1: identified with them. So I would say whenever there's a strong,
Speaker 1: sticky charged emotion, that's the time it's asking for attention.
Speaker 1: And one of a great sage once said that if
Speaker 1: you if there's one question you ask yourself, it's what
Speaker 1: am I unwilling to feel? And it's the raw, sticky,
Speaker 1: vulnerable stuff we're unwilling to feel, and it's in the
Speaker 1: moment that we become willing that it no longer has
Speaker 1: so much control. It's like the some and say that
Speaker 1: when you begin to name a fear and then touch
Speaker 1: into it, it's no longer controlling you. So I would
Speaker 1: say that that's a key element in healing and spiritual awakening.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's described as you know, in the Ti
Speaker 1: bed and art, you see these animal headed goddesses that
Speaker 1: represent delusion and fear and hatred and so on, and
Speaker 1: you see them really at the gateway to the temple
Speaker 1: that you have to go through them to enter sacred space,
Speaker 1: and you see them around the circle of the mandala
Speaker 1: that you have to go through them to get really
Speaker 1: to the place of stillness and peace. So that's one
Speaker 1: key domain in spiritual life. But then there's another one,
Speaker 1: which is to be able to remember and visualize and
Speaker 1: pray for and turn towards the light. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's already there in us. This are awakened potential is
Speaker 1: already there. But there's a real value to remembering the
Speaker 1: goodness too on purpose, remembering what we love, remembering what
Speaker 1: we're grateful for, because we can get a habit we
Speaker 1: can get in this habit of being addicted to the suffering.
Speaker 1: So I think that's kind of what you're pointing to,
Speaker 1: and that balancing of yes, b with the difficult emotions, feel,
Speaker 1: feel them in your body, and take time each day
Speaker 1: to remember what you're grateful for, or when you see
Speaker 1: something beautiful, pause and savor it, because we don't take
Speaker 1: in really sometimes the goodness and the beauty. We tend
Speaker 1: to kind of skim over it. We're so busily on
Speaker 1: our way somewhere else. Yeah. I love that whole whole
Speaker 1: description of it's kind of not one or the other,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's both right exactly. And we had Rick
Speaker 1: Hanson on who I Know that you also know, and
Speaker 1: he you know, he talked a lot about that idea
Speaker 1: of taking in the good. Positive thinking. Sometimes is is
Speaker 1: presented as a panacea for a lot of things, and
Speaker 1: that's not what this is. This is just choosing there
Speaker 1: is good there at any time. You don't have to
Speaker 1: make it up. It's that which gets the most of
Speaker 1: our attention if we can to place it there. And
Speaker 1: so I love what you're saying because and Rick talks
Speaker 1: about this a lot too. We do have our survival
Speaker 1: conditioning that negativity bias that gives us the habit of
Speaker 1: looking for what's wrong. And one of the things I've
Speaker 1: become aware of in the last decade or so is
Speaker 1: how often we're in a mindset where we think we
Speaker 1: have a problem, that there there's something we need to
Speaker 1: solve or figure out, or there's something that's wrong about
Speaker 1: what's happening right now and we need to change it.
Speaker 1: And I have become very aware that in the moments
Speaker 1: that we stopped thinking of it as a problem and
Speaker 1: just say, oh, so this is what's happening. It's asking
Speaker 1: for my attention. We actually have a lot more access
Speaker 1: to creativity, to empathy, to a real vitality. So it's
Speaker 1: an interesting inquiry and I invite your listeners to consider
Speaker 1: this of you know, if right now there's not a problem,
Speaker 1: really watch the moment, like I mean, if there's really
Speaker 1: no problem, if there's nothing wrong, and we can get
Speaker 1: without a taste of freedom to not add the negativity
Speaker 1: bias in Yeah, that's such a powerful idea. I was
Speaker 1: asked that question once by a by a meditation teacher,
Speaker 1: like what is here? You know, just pretend for a
Speaker 1: minute that nothing is wrong, and you may you may
Speaker 1: not believe it, but just pretend that everything is perfect
Speaker 1: right in this moment, you know, there's nothing you have
Speaker 1: to do or solve. What is it like? And there
Speaker 1: is a you know, I had a pretty profound experience
Speaker 1: in that moment when I kind of went whoa um,
Speaker 1: and I think that second thing is A guest recently
Speaker 1: referred to our brains as a problem factory, like if
Speaker 1: you know, once one is gone, it just create it's another.
Speaker 1: And I've noticed that for myself. If I'm not if
Speaker 1: I'm not consciously working on being more present and more aware,
Speaker 1: it's just I just go from one to the next
Speaker 1: and I'll probably find one because that's what my brain
Speaker 1: is used to doing, is working on problems. Yeah, It's
Speaker 1: almost like if we're not being vigilant and you know,
Speaker 1: tossing around a problem, we feel like there's something that's
Speaker 1: going to blindside us. So we're always you know, in
Speaker 1: that kind of defensive mode, that sense it around the corner,
Speaker 1: something is going to be too much to handle. So
Speaker 1: it becomes very powerful when we challenge that because in
Speaker 1: a way, if we're living all the time like around
Speaker 1: the corner, something's too much. We're not really bringing our
Speaker 1: wholeheartedness and our tenderness and our clarity to what's right here.
Speaker 1: And so this idea of coming back to the present moment,
Speaker 1: you know that that being the one of the solutions
Speaker 1: to to a lot of what troubles us is one
Speaker 1: of those things that is easy to say, um, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to do at least I found certainly earlier
Speaker 1: and still sometimes like I would come back to the
Speaker 1: present moment, but there wouldn't I wouldn't know what was here,
Speaker 1: And then my brain would be back in two seconds,
Speaker 1: and there I would be again, and I would come
Speaker 1: back to the present moment and again same thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm here, but wait, there's nothing compelling enough in this moment.
Speaker 1: Is your perspective that that's really just a thing of training,
Speaker 1: that the formal meditation process and the formal process of
Speaker 1: awareness allows us to come back to see the deeper
Speaker 1: nuances in the present moment so that we're able to
Speaker 1: stay there longer. Yeah, I think you're saying in a
Speaker 1: really um powerful way. I'm one. One teacher said, you
Speaker 1: know too. When asked to describe the world. His response
Speaker 1: was lost in thought and we spent so many moments
Speaker 1: in a virtual reality where we're in some trance of thinking,
Speaker 1: we don't actually have that much experience staying in our
Speaker 1: sense is and if if you ask, if you ask yourself,
Speaker 1: right this moment, how a where am I right this moment?
Speaker 1: Of the energy inside my hands, are my feet? Are
Speaker 1: the feeling in my heart? It's like for most of
Speaker 1: us were mostly in the head and in our ideas
Speaker 1: of the world. So the training really of coming into
Speaker 1: the moment is coming into our senses. So if we
Speaker 1: can pause and start practicing bringing the attention down into
Speaker 1: the body and feel the throat and the chests and
Speaker 1: the belly, and get the knack of staying a bit
Speaker 1: more than all the nuances of what we call presents
Speaker 1: start coming alive because in the space where we're not
Speaker 1: lost in thought, really the light of awareness begins to
Speaker 1: shine through. This is easier said than done. I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that can be discouraging for
Speaker 1: people is you can do it and then it's kind
Speaker 1: of done, and then you feel like you have to
Speaker 1: keep doing it. And you have a line that I
Speaker 1: love in which you say that um meditation is a
Speaker 1: setup for feeling deficient unless we respectfully acknowledge the strength
Speaker 1: of our conditioning to race away from presents. It's the truth.
Speaker 1: And one thing I've noticed is that the more we
Speaker 1: have either trauma or major wounding early on, the more
Speaker 1: the strategy of dissociating and leaving our body is pronounced.
Speaker 1: So for those that have had that kind of really
Speaker 1: difficult early childhood or whatever, it's even harder. It's even
Speaker 1: harder because the rawness feels in the body, feels intolerable.
Speaker 1: So it takes a tremendous self compassion. I probably rate
Speaker 1: self compassion as the single quality that most can serve us,
Speaker 1: uh in meditating and in getting more intimate with each
Speaker 1: other and whatever matters to us in our lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is such an important piece. And I think that
Speaker 1: recognition that this is a really challenging endeavor and it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen quickly and unfortunately, right I think we all
Speaker 1: wish we had some silver bullet to give that would
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, now everything is better. But this constant
Speaker 1: coming back to awareness into the moment into our body
Speaker 1: can can take you know, a great deal of time
Speaker 1: to to get better at and I think it's so
Speaker 1: important because I hear people say all the time, well,
Speaker 1: I can't meditate, I'm not any good at meditating it,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you hear that that also, it's that
Speaker 1: recognized in that like, ay, there isn't any goal and
Speaker 1: be that's the human condition and it's okay, exactly right.
Speaker 1: It really helps to know that we're not alone in it,
Speaker 1: that coming into the present moment is hard for everyone,
Speaker 1: but it's also important to know that it's really possible.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges is if we've just been introduced
Speaker 1: to one kind of meditation or another that isn't a
Speaker 1: match for what really is a good gateway for us,
Speaker 1: then we can get discouraged. So when I teach, I
Speaker 1: and I offer, you know, I like hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of guided meditations, I offer a lot of different gateways
Speaker 1: in because for some people it's going to be through
Speaker 1: a very gentle, repeated scanning of the body, and for
Speaker 1: another person it might be through a heart meditation that
Speaker 1: helps us remember and trust our own goodness. And yet
Speaker 1: for another person, listening to sounds, just just listening to
Speaker 1: sounds helps to quiet the mind. And then for another
Speaker 1: person there's a certain kind of breathing that actually calms
Speaker 1: the nervous system and makes it easier to quiet and
Speaker 1: collect and arrive. So part of what I really invite
Speaker 1: is experiment, experiment, and trust that there's something in us
Speaker 1: that wants to settle, and we will if we find
Speaker 1: kind of the pathway that's most of a match for us. Well,
Speaker 1: you lead me perfectly into the next question, um, because
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people that the breath doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and that's what I tried year after year after year,
Speaker 1: and you know, never really became a consistent meditator. And
Speaker 1: then when I heard about sound and the body, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden kind of everything changed. But my questions,
Speaker 1: I agree. I think experimentation is great. But what I
Speaker 1: don't have a good handle on, and that I find
Speaker 1: myself wrestling with, is Okay, I'm going to meditate today,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do? You know? Should we pick
Speaker 1: the one that that we like and just sort of
Speaker 1: stay on that path? There is there some degree of
Speaker 1: trying different ones. That's what I'm you know, kind of
Speaker 1: kind of going through now, is should I just keep
Speaker 1: doing the same thing or there's several different approaches that
Speaker 1: I seem to get results. With UM, and it ends
Speaker 1: up being you know, I try and make that decision
Speaker 1: before I go into meditation, obviously, but sometimes I'm in
Speaker 1: the middle of meditation, this isn't as good. Maybe I
Speaker 1: should be trying that kind or that kind which is
Speaker 1: obviously profoundly against the point. UM. Yeah, So what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that. That's a that's a great question.
Speaker 1: So to two levels of response, And one is I've
Speaker 1: now watched people over probably four decades, um people all
Speaker 1: different kinds of spiritual traditions and meditations and so on.
Speaker 1: And one thing I've noticed the difference between people that
Speaker 1: really keep on evolving and unfolding in a creative way
Speaker 1: and those that either plateau out or quit. It's not
Speaker 1: it doesn't have anything to do with what particular meditation
Speaker 1: or practice they're doing, whether it's tai chi chi, gung
Speaker 1: zog chans and whatever. It has to do with UM
Speaker 1: staying connected with a very sincere quality of aspiration, really
Speaker 1: sincere about waking up and when somebody that's the longing.
Speaker 1: There's a passion about truth, really what's the nature of reality?
Speaker 1: And there's a passion about loving without holding back, like
Speaker 1: I just really want this heart to be free that
Speaker 1: and and there's a coming back again and again to
Speaker 1: that aspiration. There's a certain intuition then about finding our
Speaker 1: ways to the practices that serve. There's less inclination to
Speaker 1: pull away from our practice just because it's challenging. There's
Speaker 1: less inclination to hop around because we're restless, but there's
Speaker 1: less inclination to stick with something out of duty when
Speaker 1: we might be experimenting. So it's really very individual. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're the kind of person that is restless and
Speaker 1: it's going to it's kind of always needs to sample
Speaker 1: something else on the menu, then I'd encourage you to
Speaker 1: let some roots go down and just gain some real
Speaker 1: familiarity with some meditation practice that you know in some
Speaker 1: ways helping you become more present. If, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you're a person that that doggedly just always stays with
Speaker 1: one thing, or doesn't you know, just somebody tells you something,
Speaker 1: you just keep doing it, take up a chance and
Speaker 1: an experiment um for you, it sounds like you know
Speaker 1: you you might want to have a weave that you
Speaker 1: do that includes something that's you know is going to
Speaker 1: keep on um. Letting go of armoring around the heart,
Speaker 1: but also bringing clarity and then keep going deeper and
Speaker 1: deeper with that. Um So it's it's it's always going
Speaker 1: to be case by case, but there are some guidelines
Speaker 1: that we can kind of stay alert to. The deepest thing, though,
Speaker 1: is your intention. And I really encourage us all to
Speaker 1: at the beginning of every whether it's an interview like this,
Speaker 1: are meditation, sitting, or being with somebody, to just remember
Speaker 1: what about this really matters to me? Has our heart
Speaker 1: is a compass, it will show us where to go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great advice, and it's something I took from reading
Speaker 1: your book again in preparation for this interview that I
Speaker 1: don't think I had landed on before, which is to
Speaker 1: set an intention why am I? I find that helpful
Speaker 1: in keeping a steady meditation practice for sure, is remembering
Speaker 1: why am I doing this? You know, it's not another
Speaker 1: chore on the list, It's there's a reason that I'm
Speaker 1: I'm doing this. We will not stay with meditation unless
Speaker 1: there's a certain degree of fun and pleasure in it.
Speaker 1: For us, it just won't work. If you're grim, it
Speaker 1: just won't work. So I know for myself, part of
Speaker 1: what's going on is I really want to follow my
Speaker 1: interests and an interest not like conceptual, but I want
Speaker 1: to stay where it feels alive. And I also there
Speaker 1: has to be a certain amount of pleasure in it,
Speaker 1: So weaving in the heart practices UM really bringing a
Speaker 1: live sensation and whatever helps to feel us most vibrant
Speaker 1: in it. UM play around because humans don't keep doing
Speaker 1: things unless they feel gratified. That's right. It's that elephant
Speaker 1: and the writer analogy. The writer is your conscious brain
Speaker 1: and it's trying to direct things, and the elephant is
Speaker 1: your emotional side. And you know, the elephant is only
Speaker 1: going to go where the writer wants it to go,
Speaker 1: so long if it doesn't want to go right, you
Speaker 1: get you got to get the elephant engaged in the game.
Speaker 1: And that's the emotional piece of it, the reward and
Speaker 1: the enjoyment and the feeling of satisfaction exactly. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that I wanted to explore a little
Speaker 1: bit more is there's this idea we talked about it
Speaker 1: right out of the gate, about dropping into the body,
Speaker 1: about feeling our emotions, UM, dealing with difficult emotions. But
Speaker 1: a lot of people that I know and myself firmly
Speaker 1: included in this camp. Depression is one of the things
Speaker 1: that we that I tend to wrestle with more. And
Speaker 1: I get this question from listeners of a fair amount,
Speaker 1: which is, I don't feel much of anything, So what
Speaker 1: am I dropping into? I don't have a strong emotion.
Speaker 1: I'm working with. What I've basically got is numbness. And
Speaker 1: I drop into my body and I pay attention to
Speaker 1: my hand and honestly doesn't feel like there's much going
Speaker 1: on there. What's the way that we work with with
Speaker 1: that in order to deal with that condition or that situation.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you brought up depression because I've had
Speaker 1: many people say, you know, I'm either that I try
Speaker 1: to get in touch with it and it's a numb are.
Speaker 1: When I can get in touch with it, I sink
Speaker 1: and it's like it's just like an endless, endless sinking downward.
Speaker 1: It's like it doesn't if there's no real insight or
Speaker 1: anything refreshing that comes out of it, I just feel
Speaker 1: more depressed. So there's a few things, you know, and
Speaker 1: for all of us, the deepest place of transformation is
Speaker 1: when there's just pure awareness. Awareness is what wakes us up,
Speaker 1: and there are all these different skillful means that help
Speaker 1: us to be um positioned in a way that we
Speaker 1: can be more aware and for depression, the skillful means
Speaker 1: really often have to do with exercising and engaging our
Speaker 1: body and mind with uh nature, with the elements and
Speaker 1: with other people. Getting enough sleep and then being physically
Speaker 1: and emotionally engage is a skillful means if there's depression,
Speaker 1: to activate enough so then as you bring the attention inward,
Speaker 1: you actually can connect with the aliveness. Yep. I think
Speaker 1: that's such good advice. And I think for me it's
Speaker 1: that active movement and nature that are the two best
Speaker 1: antidepressants I know me to to anti anxiety too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course the challenge that can make depressions at
Speaker 1: your monster is that it's that the energy to do
Speaker 1: anything is so lacking. It's like this sort of catch
Speaker 1: twenty two, like if I, if you do something, you'll
Speaker 1: feel better, but I can't. You know, I don't have
Speaker 1: the energy. And so for me, I think over the
Speaker 1: years it's become a I've made it into just sort
Speaker 1: of a habit that like when I start to feel
Speaker 1: that way, like I just I have learned to propel
Speaker 1: myself into motion. Um, depression hates a moving target. Is
Speaker 1: the is the saying I love. It's a very good saying,
Speaker 1: and it helps to have other people, um, you know,
Speaker 1: on the team with you. In other words, sometimes whether
Speaker 1: it's having a running partner or walking partner or whatever,
Speaker 1: UM engagement. Depression needs engagement, and it needs one other thing,
Speaker 1: which is it needs uh to be forgiven, because we
Speaker 1: whether it's depression or shame or whatever, we take it
Speaker 1: personally like it's my depression or my fear. And then
Speaker 1: that brings more of a sense of something's wrong with me,
Speaker 1: which actually deepens the cycle. So to add to engagement,
Speaker 1: commit and this I'm speaking to all of us, commit
Speaker 1: to truly forgiving the presence of the difficult emotion. It's
Speaker 1: not our fault. It's like depression is not our fault.
Speaker 1: It whether it's genetic or epigenetic having to do with
Speaker 1: early childhood stuff or the culture, it's just not like
Speaker 1: we you know, got born and pressed the button saying
Speaker 1: this is the motion I wanted to be living with.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't choose it. And so there's something
Speaker 1: about forgiveness. It actually creates space. Like I'll often I
Speaker 1: do it with anger. You know, I have anger will
Speaker 1: come up and I'll have this idea of, oh, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be angry. I mean, it's not a spiritual, you know, feeling.
Speaker 1: And one of the first things I'll do is go, okay, forgiven, forgiven.
Speaker 1: I send that message into the anger like it's it's
Speaker 1: just another weather system. It's coming, just like the outer weather.
Speaker 1: And when I forgive the anger, I'm not so identified
Speaker 1: with it, and I can then just feel it as
Speaker 1: sensations and not believe the dialogue that goes with it,
Speaker 1: and it comes and it goes in a much more
Speaker 1: wholesome way. So forgive the depression. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: such a big one and such an important one, and
Speaker 1: the parable of the I don't know if it's a parable,
Speaker 1: but the Buddhist teaching of the second Arrow is um
Speaker 1: one that I talked about on the show all the time,
Speaker 1: because it's that I'm feeling bad about feeling bad that
Speaker 1: we can actually work with, right, Like, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to not feel depressed, right, there's things we can do,
Speaker 1: but I do feel like we have more control over
Speaker 1: what we layer on top of that, you know, the
Speaker 1: and you talk about this in your book, and it
Speaker 1: kind of leads into that next question, which is your
Speaker 1: first book was really about um accepting ourselves the way
Speaker 1: we are and the suffering that that that happens to ourselves,
Speaker 1: and your second book is more a little bit about, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's going to be suffering out in the world, that's
Speaker 1: an inevitable fact, you know, or or pain that comes
Speaker 1: in from the outside world. But how do we deal
Speaker 1: with that in the most skillful way? And that's one
Speaker 1: of the things I love about the Buddhist teachings is
Speaker 1: it really normalizes for me things are not going to
Speaker 1: be going well in life, like difficult things happen. That's
Speaker 1: part of being human. And to your point, it's not
Speaker 1: our fault and it's not our you know, it's not
Speaker 1: a failure. But what are some of the more skillful
Speaker 1: means we can use in you know, when when life
Speaker 1: presents this with things that we really wish it wouldn't. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a powerful question. And that is why
Speaker 1: I wrote True Refuge. I had in my own life, Um,
Speaker 1: I got really sick and the spiral of sickness went
Speaker 1: on and on, so I was going pretty downhill, and
Speaker 1: that's an example of okay, stuff happens, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: I went from being very very athletic to not being
Speaker 1: able to even walk up a slight incline. I am
Speaker 1: now much much better than I was, but for about
Speaker 1: eight years I didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 1: And what that did was it forced me to find
Speaker 1: a way to get my arms around sickness, death, dying.
Speaker 1: At the same time I lost both parents and you know,
Speaker 1: so all the encounters and the teachings both in Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really all the perennial teachings UM
Speaker 1: basically point us towards finding the awareness and heart that's
Speaker 1: really timeless. It's it's it's accessible to each of us
Speaker 1: that helps us to rest in something large enough so
Speaker 1: we have room for the waves. And that can sound abstract,
Speaker 1: and yet if you've been with somebody that's dying and
Speaker 1: you've sensed how the only thing that's big enough for
Speaker 1: that dying is the loving that's there. That's the only
Speaker 1: thing that allows It still hurts, but there's space for it.
Speaker 1: And that's the way it is with everything, that there
Speaker 1: are things that are still going to hurt us tremendously
Speaker 1: But if we find access to that what I sometimes
Speaker 1: think of as the fearless heart, the heart that is
Speaker 1: big enough for fear, the big enough for the losses
Speaker 1: and the grief, then we have a way to take
Speaker 1: refuge away, to come home to beingness that can move
Speaker 1: through things with a sense of tenderness and open heartedness
Speaker 1: and grace even when it's really really difficult. That's the
Speaker 1: essential message and true refuge my second book, And really
Speaker 1: how to then find our way to that timeless heart?
Speaker 1: How do we become president enough and open enough and
Speaker 1: courageous enough to really be with the life. That's year.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask a question that I don't think
Speaker 1: there's really an answer for, but I'm always I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by it, and I find more and more people asking
Speaker 1: me this question. Um, so, which is what is the
Speaker 1: meaning of life? Or why are we here? Or and
Speaker 1: and I'm just curious to get your your take on that.
Speaker 1: I don't actually believe you have the answer. Um. If
Speaker 1: you do, though, I'm very excited to hear it. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not the kind of question I pose
Speaker 1: in my own inquir'es. I don't pose the why questions
Speaker 1: so much. You know why are we here or whatever?
Speaker 1: But a similar question is what matters the most to me?
Speaker 1: Are to ask and and that that has a similar
Speaker 1: feeling tone to it, And I could say, I could say,
Speaker 1: you know for myself what matters and sometimes debscribed as
Speaker 1: the two wings of awareness that we really need both
Speaker 1: to be free. What matters is deeply understanding truth or
Speaker 1: understand reality, not not like in a mental way, but
Speaker 1: a lived way. And and the other side of that
Speaker 1: is loving fully. And so if I had to say,
Speaker 1: what's our purpose or anything, it's to love fully, to
Speaker 1: totally inhabit are being in a way that we um
Speaker 1: feel are belonging to all other beings and can express that,
Speaker 1: really express that authentically in the way we live our lives.
Speaker 1: And do you think that you don't think about and
Speaker 1: ask those questions because you have an experience of being
Speaker 1: alive that feels meaningful. The word meaning sometimes trips me
Speaker 1: and others up because it has it's a cognitive word.
Speaker 1: So for me, Matt, what matters is more uh mattering,
Speaker 1: what I long for, what what my heart cares about,
Speaker 1: has a more visceral experience than meaning, which is a
Speaker 1: little more mental. So maybe just that I'm going at
Speaker 1: it with a more eminent quality of inquiry. I'm not sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that word matter, because the the analogy I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about lately is, you know, intellectually, I'll never
Speaker 1: have any idea why this is and what's happening, and
Speaker 1: and I could never intellectually convince you of, you know,
Speaker 1: why something was important. But if I walked out my
Speaker 1: door right now and I saw a dog laying in
Speaker 1: front of me suffering, I would know your word that
Speaker 1: it mattered that dog not suffer. I could never explain
Speaker 1: it intellectually. There would be no way I could be like, well,
Speaker 1: you could be like, well, there's billions of dogs. I mean,
Speaker 1: we could go through the whole, you know, but you
Speaker 1: could never talk me out of in that moment that
Speaker 1: that dog suffering mattered. And for me, that was a
Speaker 1: big turning point when I went, oh, I'm never going
Speaker 1: to answer this question intellectually, I'm never going to get there.
Speaker 1: But I can feel kind of and I think it's
Speaker 1: exactly what you just said in a more eloquent way
Speaker 1: than I had been saying. It is that what matters
Speaker 1: is what connects us to those bigger things, and it's
Speaker 1: a felt sense, not in intellectual sets. And the reason
Speaker 1: I asked you if you thought you didn't ask those
Speaker 1: questions is that the more I have moved into that
Speaker 1: part of my life and in that way, the less
Speaker 1: I've had those questions also. And I'm just kind of
Speaker 1: curious because I do get them, you know, from people.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you do too, and it's it's a genuine yearning,
Speaker 1: but it seems to come up less in people who
Speaker 1: are truly engaged in life in a deeper way. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why when I get a conceptual question, I reframe
Speaker 1: it in a way that allows a person to discover
Speaker 1: what is true for them in a more visceral way.
Speaker 1: And that's why I shift the word meaning to matters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. You use the word
Speaker 1: trance a lot. You talked about different types of trances,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about what what you mean in the
Speaker 1: use of that word in general. When I talk about trance,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about a kind of narrow, distorted, contorted uh
Speaker 1: experience of reality and it and it narrows because we're
Speaker 1: there's an overlay of mental conceptual you know, words, ideas, interpretations,
Speaker 1: and um so to step out of a trance means
Speaker 1: to step out of our mental interpretations and into reality,
Speaker 1: back into our bodies and our hearts and what we're
Speaker 1: directly experiencing. And the biggest way we have a trance
Speaker 1: in our lives, the most immediate, is that we move
Speaker 1: around with an ongoing storyline about moa, about who I am,
Speaker 1: what I need to do, what's wrong with me? What
Speaker 1: what's going to make a difference, and so on. We
Speaker 1: it's like our world is very narrowed into this self conscious,
Speaker 1: self centered narrative, and it's not that we're bad for it.
Speaker 1: It's more that it's just keeping us from a much
Speaker 1: more mysterious and vibrant experience of being this so the
Speaker 1: way out of trance is just to recognize, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm living right now in a thought realm, you know,
Speaker 1: and thoughts are like a map. We need them. In
Speaker 1: other words, it's it's what allows humans to be the
Speaker 1: most dominant species on planet Earth. It's you know, surviving
Speaker 1: and thriving and so on. We need them. But if
Speaker 1: that's the end of development, then we're stuck in a
Speaker 1: conceptual world. There's a further evolution beyond a self living
Speaker 1: inside thoughts and that's a self that's actually awake and awareness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the way that you have addressed it before,
Speaker 1: because I hear a lot of Buddhist teaching saying that
Speaker 1: the sense of a separate self is an illusion, and
Speaker 1: I like the way that you sort of describe it
Speaker 1: as well, it's not exactly an illusion, but it's only
Speaker 1: it's a very small part of the picture. It's a
Speaker 1: very limited way of viewing it, because I think when
Speaker 1: people hear it's an illusion, they go, well, it feels
Speaker 1: so real. And I like that instead of saying what
Speaker 1: it is, giving a context of it is as it's
Speaker 1: not the only way to view reality. One of the
Speaker 1: phrases that I find most valuable when you think of um,
Speaker 1: let's say I have a story about my elf and
Speaker 1: then I'm falling short and I say to somebody, well,
Speaker 1: if you're believing that is really is that belief really true?
Speaker 1: And they say, well, it feels really true. It feels
Speaker 1: like I'm deficient, I'm defective failure. So the phrase I
Speaker 1: like is real but not true. And the reason I
Speaker 1: like that phrase is that the belief I'm deficient, I'm defective,
Speaker 1: it's a real story in our minds, and it feels
Speaker 1: real in our body, So it's real in that way.
Speaker 1: It's it's happening, the thoughts happening, the feelings are happening.
Speaker 1: It's real, but it's not the truth of existence. In
Speaker 1: other words, it's not that that's what's actually the living reality.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's just an idea in our mind
Speaker 1: and a feeling in our body. And to begin to
Speaker 1: get that opens up a little space so we can
Speaker 1: sense there's something bigger and maybe more living reality than
Speaker 1: our belief about ourselves. It helps us to shake some
Speaker 1: of the most limiting experiences that really they bring suffering
Speaker 1: in our lives. That's really powerful. I love that one.
Speaker 1: I had not heard that before, and I think that
Speaker 1: is a very useful tool. We're nearing the end of
Speaker 1: our time here. But I want to ask you. You
Speaker 1: say that we all have our own ways of distancing
Speaker 1: ourselves from reality or going into trance or you know,
Speaker 1: call it, whichever of these things are. We all have
Speaker 1: our own ways for doing that that are that are
Speaker 1: kind of individual, but that the process of waking up
Speaker 1: is universal. Can you tell me a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that? And then I'd like to maybe circle it
Speaker 1: back to some of our earlier conversation around how for
Speaker 1: each of us, some of the things on the path,
Speaker 1: they're going to be different, you know, some of its individualized.
Speaker 1: So what's universal and what parts are kind of ours
Speaker 1: to tailor to what we need. We all have strategies
Speaker 1: of trying to control things. You know, every one of
Speaker 1: us comes. I sometimes think of it like, um, we
Speaker 1: come into this world and conditions are not always cooperative.
Speaker 1: So we have you know, parents that might not see
Speaker 1: us for who we are, might not give us unconditional love.
Speaker 1: We have a culture that's addictive and violence, so we
Speaker 1: all put on a space suit. We all are trying
Speaker 1: to navigate best as we can, and the space suit
Speaker 1: is our ego control systems to defend ourselves, to appear good,
Speaker 1: to try to produce sometimes to pretend something so others
Speaker 1: don't attack us too. We have addictive qualities to numb
Speaker 1: and tooth, So we all have our strategies and they're
Speaker 1: all ways of trying to control things so we don't
Speaker 1: have to feel bad, so we can feel more comfortable.
Speaker 1: So it's universal that we have ways of leaving the
Speaker 1: present moment, and there's all sorts of particulars on your
Speaker 1: strategies versus mind. Some people are more have withdrawing strategies
Speaker 1: and others are more aggressive. They're all space suits strategies.
Speaker 1: But the universal is that when we have those strategies,
Speaker 1: we get identified with the strategies, with our ego control system,
Speaker 1: and we forget who's looking through the mask. We forget
Speaker 1: the consciousness right now that's listening to these words, and
Speaker 1: we forget the tenderness and the heart that's really that
Speaker 1: really cares about living and loving. So there's a forgetting,
Speaker 1: and that's universal. If they're suffering, it's because you've forgotten
Speaker 1: really who you are. You're identified with a more limited
Speaker 1: version of being with the space suit cell. And so
Speaker 1: the way back first is just to begin to notice
Speaker 1: how that's happening. Okay, so what happens when I feel threatened?
Speaker 1: Just to begin to notice our strategies without judging them,
Speaker 1: just to notice. And and the very simple, you know,
Speaker 1: strategy for coming back is just to name what we notice, okay,
Speaker 1: defending afraid, you know, often obsessions, Just to name it
Speaker 1: and then just very gently kind of invite ourselves back
Speaker 1: into the moment, into the body, into the heart. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a universal of noticing the way we strategically
Speaker 1: dissociated and gently bringing ourselves back. Another universal is that
Speaker 1: this is from the Bodhist for path, you know, the
Speaker 1: path of the awakening being is it has to be
Speaker 1: with compassion. So one of the things I teach most
Speaker 1: regularly is when you're suffering, just to put your hand
Speaker 1: on your heart and offers some message of kindness inwardly,
Speaker 1: because in the moment that there's a gesture of kindness,
Speaker 1: even if it's just the intention to be kind something,
Speaker 1: and the armoring of the separate self begins to soften,
Speaker 1: and we begin to get a little more of a
Speaker 1: taste of who we are beyond that that space itself.
Speaker 1: We begin to sense the purity of our hearts and
Speaker 1: trust that a little more. So. Those are two examples
Speaker 1: of the ways of coming back that our universal to
Speaker 1: notice the strategy, come back into the bouddy and feel
Speaker 1: what's right here, and to bring a gesture of kindness
Speaker 1: to that moment. I think that's a beautiful place for
Speaker 1: us to wrap up the interview. Tara, thank you so
Speaker 1: much again. I encourage everybody to check out your talks
Speaker 1: and your books and everything You've been a genuine inspiration
Speaker 1: to me and I've I've really gotten a lot out
Speaker 1: of this conversation, and so have I. Eric. You're wonderful
Speaker 1: to talk to. I love your inquiry and thank you
Speaker 1: for what you're offering. I feel like you're offering something
Speaker 1: that really invites others into this whole stream of waking up.
Speaker 1: So many blessings. Also, Okay, take care of all right
Speaker 1: you do? Bye bye. You can learn more about Tara
Speaker 1: Brock and this podcast at one you feed dot net.
Speaker 1: Slash Rock