Radical Compassion - Part 1: Loving Ourselves & Our World Into Healing

Drawn from Tara’s new book, Radical Compassion (2020), this is the first of three talks that explore how the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) can loosen the grip of difficult emotions and limiting beliefs, and awaken the active, embodied caring that heals and frees our hearts.

Transcript

The following talk is given by Tara Brach,

Meditation teacher,

Psychologist and author.

Namaste and welcome.

I begin with a story of two women whose boys had gone to high school together about eight years or so after they graduated.

They ran into each other and were kind of exchanging stories and one volunteered that her son now was actually with a very preeminent law firm and another congratulator and then she said,

Well,

My son,

He is still unemployed but he has begun meditating.

And so a friend said,

Well,

What is meditating?

And she goes,

I don't know but at least he is not sitting around doing nothing,

You know.

So tonight and the next two classes,

Really the remainder of this year,

We are going to explore how the path of meditation and in particular the RAIN practice which is mindfulness,

The weave of mindfulness and compassion,

How that really can awaken our heart and spirit,

No guarantee about our income level that we will leave but whether you are new or familiar with the practice of RAIN this is a way to really deepen this way of working with difficulties and challenges that really can free us up.

And these three talks are really what the primary themes will be are the grounds of my upcoming book Radical Compassion which is coming out December 29th available wherever books are sold.

So I'll be referring back to the book and to some of the stories in the book.

And for those of you that often listen live stream just to let you know these talks are all available on tarabrak.

Com on my website.

And the book you can find out more about the book there also.

So I wanted to begin by saying that more than any feedback that I've received over the decades about this path and practices and so on,

The message I get the most often is that RAIN has saved my life which is a pretty intense statement but because of my own experience and again when I say RAIN it's the practices that weave mindfulness and heartfulness because we need them both.

That weave really can free us.

And so we'll explore in these talks how we bring the practice to the emotional tangles inside us,

How we bring them to tangles in relationships and really how they can serve the healing of our world.

But that message from people so it motivated me to write Radical Compassion which is basically a guide book in using RAIN.

It's really how do you do it.

So I'd like to start with the core teaching that a lot of the book is based on which is that in the mid-1700s in Siam which is now Thailand they were being invaded by the Burmese and the monks in one monastery were very fearful that this… they had a beautiful huge pure gold statue of the Buddha and they were fearful it would be looted by the invading Burmese.

So they did a real tricky thing,

They covered it with plaster and clay so it looked like this kind of ordinary old statue.

And as happens the Burmese did sweep through.

Every monk was killed but the statue remained intact.

And so it was over two centuries that it remained intact.

It was so big they couldn't fit it into a temple so it was put under a tin roof somewhere.

It wasn't given a great glorious temple until a couple hundred years later they did build a very large temple.

And when they were moving the statue a rope broke and the statue fell and some of the covering cracked open and lo and behold they saw the gold and the historians realized what had happened.

We just got a picture,

A photo of our manager Glenn who was over there a few weeks ago right by the golden Buddha so it was fun to kind of bring that home a bit.

Ten feet tall,

Five and a half tons.

So here is what this story has me reflecting on regularly and I find it so powerful to consider this that the gold is our spirit,

The gold is that awareness and love that really is living through all of us.

And it's quite natural that we all take on protective coverings – another word for it's ego-coverings – so that we all have to as a way of navigating a difficult world.

And the suffering comes because we get identified with those coverings,

Our strategies to protect ourselves and further ourselves,

And we forget the gold.

That is the suffering.

And in Buddhist psychology and the teachings of the Buddha it's described basically as ignorance,

Ignoring the truth,

The gold,

The true nature that's here.

And when we forget the gold our lives get very caught in always trying to further ourselves,

Our thought patterns all center around the protagonist,

Moi,

And it's filled with a lot of anxiety and it's filled with a lot of loneliness.

So the spiritual path,

One way of really understanding it,

Is discovering the gold,

That we're all,

You know,

Learning to start to trust that awareness and heart that's right here and see it in each other.

And you can see this expressed in kind of the most simple way as a movement from a felt sense of separateness where all of our thoughts and feelings lead us to feel like we're kind of in our own enclosed contracted bubble in the world's out there to a sense of belonging that we really belong to each other.

Swami Satchitananda at one point – he's a Hindu yogi – was asked really what's the nature of true healing and he wrote two words on a board and one was illness and the other is wellness and he circled the I of illness and the WE,

The we,

Of wellness.

That true healing is the movement from the I sense to really a sense of this field that you can actually feel your way into when you start relaxing.

This shift from I to WE is the trajectory of evolution also.

So as it goes for millions of years,

Primates and early humans,

Hunter-gatherer groups,

And the way it worked was there was internally collaboration,

There was internally care,

There was genes for cooperation within the band,

It's pro-social behavior,

In other words the wiring for empathy and compassion.

But then between bands there was aggression,

All the wiring for fight-flight-freeze,

For seeing an other that looked different and immediately having everything in our body register as dangerous,

Bad,

Watch out,

Flee or fight.

So that's what we inherited.

It was only… That's millions of years.

It was only ten thousand years ago that the collaborating and the caring and the cooperation started spreading beyond the small group and beyond kin to wider and wider circles.

That was only ten thousand years ago.

So here we are today.

And where does that leave us?

And what we find out is that we are witnessing often when we get disturbed it's because we are witnessing the millions of years of conditioning that had us identify the different other as bad and be in that fight-flight-freeze.

We see it this last week with the really vicious and brutal crackdown in Iran against protesters.

It's horrific really,

This brutal massacre of unarmed protesters.

I mean that's that limbic reaction from millions of years of conditioning,

Bad other.

And you know we see it and thinking in the United States in particular the virulent racism in this country that just shifts forms over time but has such a grip,

That unreal othering.

So our trajectory is to wake up from separation.

And evolutionary psychologists actually see it as a trajectory.

There is more peace in general over time.

I mean if you look back a few hundred years there is a lot more bias and reactivity and more going on than even now.

So that's our trajectory.

And then we are going to spend more time in our individual lives.

What was today like?

How much was today coming from the more primitive conditioning of kind of the grasping,

I need this for myself,

For the anxiety or the defendedness versus a sense of generosity,

Of we,

Of caring?

And when we bring it to today it's absolutely essential – and this is going to keep coming back to this – that we bring tremendous amount of forgiving and acceptance because inevitably we are going to see we each are rigged to have all the stages of evolution play out through us.

So each day we are going to see how greed or fear arises,

Defensive,

Wanting things our own way,

Insensitive to the needs of others,

A shift from any sense of we to I want my way.

Somebody sent me recently this cartoon it's got these three turkeys and they are reading a book on turkey anatomy,

Okay,

That's a set-up.

And the glances began shortly after they learned that inside each of their friends was a magic bone that could grant them their greatest wish.

That is from we to I.

Let's do a little reflection,

Okay?

Let's… why don't you close your eyes and I invite you to sense your life in terms of evolution,

These kind of evolutionary forces,

And begin by bringing to mind a domain of suffering for you,

It could be that's current or one that you've gone through in recent years where you knew at that time,

Okay,

I'm stuck,

This is hard.

And when you bring it to mind examine it as a season of really being caught in the coverings of the golden Buddha,

In the I,

The identity was with the coverings,

The defenses,

The beliefs about a separate self,

The beliefs about what's wrong,

The behaviors of defense or aggression.

Just sense,

Okay,

This is how this body and mind is when it's living from that I sense,

From the millions of years of conditioning to be at war – in this case with yourself maybe – you might sense during that period of time how much were you in relationship with others and what was the quality of that relationship?

Let yourself kind of take a snapshot of this body-mind when it's caught in that more primitive conditioning without judging,

Just curiosity,

The quality of I,

The sense that you're caught in the coverings,

The ego coverings but forgetting the gold.

And take a few full breaths.

And now remind yourself of a time,

Current or recent,

When you felt you were in touch with in some way your more awake self,

Your more open-hearted self,

A moment in nature,

Appreciation,

Awe,

Feeling of gratitude,

Feeling of real tenderness towards another person,

Feeling of kindness.

What's it like when you're aware of how the gold lives through this body-mind?

And what's your sense of your relatedness or belonging with others?

When the gold is more lit up?

Can you sense how we get more forgiving,

More attentive,

Living from a wise heart?

Take a few full breaths.

One of the keys,

One of the main things that we start to notice if we compare when we're caught in our kind of more primitive nervous system versus the more awake,

Evolved,

Recently evolved nervous system that has to do with the vagal nerve that has feeling the oxytocin that moves through us that feels bonded with others and empathy that wakes up in our brain,

The key difference is the sense of how we are with our inner life that we're not at war,

We're at home with ourselves.

There is a wonderful movie,

It was years ago,

Gorillas in the Mist,

And Diane Fossey is this field biologist who stars in it and she follows in the footsteps of George Shaler who is a primate biologist,

His renown came because he returned from the wilds with more intimate and compelling information about gorillas than any scientist had ever gathered.

Now how did he do that because that's what… that was what's so interesting about the movie and about her role too.

He didn't carry a gun when he went into the field.

How did he find out more and get intimate with the gorillas?

How do we get intimate with ourselves?

Not to carry a gun.

So previous generations of observers,

Of field biologists,

Had entered the territory of these large wild gorillas with the assumption that they were fearsome or dangerous,

Bad other,

You know,

And so they went with these… toting these big rifles and it appears the gorillas could actually sense that and feel the danger and fear from these rifle-toting guys and they kept a distance.

But George Shaler was interested,

Respectful,

Really curious and open-hearted towards these amazing creatures and he gathered an amazing amount of information.

So I feel like this captures kind of the essence of the attitude,

The evolutionary attitude that allows us to be in relationship with ourselves and others.

It's we,

Not to carry a gun.

We explore then how do we,

When we notice – and this is for each of us – today or tomorrow we notice the more primitive conditioning coming up,

How do we relate to it without judging it?

Because I can say for myself as soon as I find myself getting selfish or irritable or any of the whole huge list of things that I can get along with it comes that second arrow is what we call it of judging myself,

Carrying a gun.

And yet the only way that we can break our patterns of separation and wake up is if we shine a light on all that conditioning.

Carl Jung said,

Whatever is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate.

Now here is the deal.

When I meet with people or talk to people on retreat and the ones that are most despairing are the ones that have the fear,

I'll never change.

Does that make sense?

I'm caught in something,

I'm repeating the patterns,

I'll never get close with other people.

I'll always end up going back to,

You know,

Pushing people away because I'm grasping.

In other words,

The fear I'm going to keep on playing out the same patterns.

The only way we can break our patterns is if we're willing to go without a gun and start deepening our attention.

And this is where RAIN comes in,

This willingness to really deepen our attention to where the tangles are.

Jackie Mason in one of his monologues – some of you might not ever have heard of him,

He's back from another century – but in one of his monologues he's talking to a psychiatrist and a psychiatrist says,

We're here to understand your unconscious.

And Jackie Mason's response is,

My unconscious is none of my business.

So it's really this dedication like out of interest that we want to know.

And I often describe it in terms of Joseph Campbell's image of a circle of awareness,

A line is going through,

Whatever is outside of our awareness is under the line,

Okay,

That's why we keep repeating things and making them our destiny,

They're not in consciousness.

Either we have a gun or we just haven't paid attention.

Whatever is above the line is an awareness and therefore we're not identified,

We have a choice,

Okay.

So let's take a moment and say,

Well,

What are the key experiences that in general we need to bring above the line so that we can be in loving relationship?

And I think the first which I've already alluded to is how quickly we turn on ourselves in what I call the trance of unworthiness.

And I'm wondering how many of you think that trance applies to you,

The trance of unworthiness?

Don't be shy,

We're all in it together.

Remember the we?

Okay.

So we know we judge ourselves a lot but what we're often not aware of is how pervasive that sense of not enough is,

How pervasive the sense of falling short is,

So that it affects everything,

It affects every conversation we're in,

On some way we're monitoring how am I doing now.

And there's often a gap between where we think we should be and what we actually are experiencing in ourselves.

There's a sense of not enough or not okay.

And I wrote about this in Radical Acceptance because it was the first really big like,

Oh my gosh,

This is really big suffering.

One of the first places I went to teach at Nairopa is a Buddhist college.

They had a big poster of me to welcome me and say,

Here is the course that she is doing.

And it had a big picture of my face and underneath it said,

Something is wrong with me.

It's a trance of unworthiness.

It was very weird coming to teach and having that as my presentation.

So the first thing we bring above the line is we start noticing just how much we're down on ourselves.

And if we can notice that without adding another judgment of,

God,

Am I a pathological for being so down on myself,

But just say,

Okay,

Let's bring this above the line because if it's above the line we can then work with it to begin to release the pain.

For many people it goes on for decades and decades.

For one woman,

A friend of mine was with her mother,

She was dying and the last thing her mother said to her was,

All my life I thought something was wrong with me.

That was the last thing she said.

For my friend it was kind of a wake-up because it's such a tragedy to have that sense of something is wrong with me keeping us small and tight,

Caught in the eye,

Not being able to feel the way.

Sometimes it's really acute.

Sometimes it's a feeling of failure and deficiency that's very core,

A deep sense of shame that just absolutely imprisons us.

At other times it's just the background thing that keeps us from really being relaxed and spontaneous and natural.

One of the stories that points to that from way back is a woman who went on vacation to New England every summer in the same small town where Paul Newman vacationed.

I guess again that's a little bit back in history for some people here.

But she would go every Sunday.

She'd go for her hike and then she'd go to this bakery that had her favorite ice cream and get herself a double dip chocolate cone or whatever.

She walks in one Sunday.

The only patron is Paul Newman.

And there he is with his famous baby blue eyes and he smiles graciously and she responds to him merely but inside she's saying,

All right,

Hold it together.

You're a forty-two-year-old married woman,

A mother of three.

What's wrong with you?

Pull yourself together.

You're not a teenager.

He can tell.

Just be cool.

She's really getting tight there.

And so she goes… She otters her cone.

She's trying to do it all smooth and all and she gets the change in one hand,

The cones in the other.

And without direction she… Even looking at him she just glides out the door.

But she gets to her car and she realizes she has never a cone.

Oh no,

What did I do?

She has to go back in.

It's really embarrassing.

And it's not on the cone rack and it's not with the clerk.

And then she looks over at Paul Newman and his face breaks into that familiar grin and he said,

You put it in your purse.

So this is one of the more benign versions of the trance of unworthiness but messy,

Messy but benign.

Now we don't only get caught in the trance of unworthiness,

We also get caught in the trance of superiority as we know which is a kind of a sense of arrogance and inflation and being special and the majority of people in this world think they are more intelligent than other people.

So it's there too.

We kind of often swing from being special and important to being nobody and nothing.

The point is this,

That the more wounding we have,

The more we are not given what we needed early on,

The more we tighten into I and the I feels bad about itself.

That's the simplest way.

And it's not just wounding from our family or parents,

It's wounding from our culture because our culture does a really good job at creating tremendous wounding in non-dominant populations.

The more wounding,

The more there is that defensiveness that has to evolve,

We get caught in the coverings because we are trying to protect ourselves.

And I think one of the most… if you think of yourself,

You know,

What does a child most need?

What does a child most need when they come into this world?

And they need to be seen or understood – I get you,

I'm mirroring back,

You're here,

You matter – and then what scene needs to be loved?

These two wings of they need to be understood and loved.

So when there is not good attachment and those needs are not met,

Develop a lot of coverings,

You know,

Get identified with the coverings.

And one of the analogies I thought really helpful in nature has to do with spores and what spores do.

And it's seen in the plant kingdom when conditions are really harsh and when what's needed to bloom can't be found,

The certain plants become spores and they dampen down and they kind of wall off their life-force in order to survive.

And it's a really effective strategy.

They have dug up mummies and found spores and mummies that have survived for thousands of years that then unfolded into plants when they were given the opportunity of nurture,

When they got the right conditions.

Isn't that amazing?

You don't have the right conditions of attachment or nurture so you wall off,

There is this frozen life energy,

It can last for thousands of years and then when you are given the right conditions because life really wants to live there is that blossoming.

So when children are chronically judged or not listened to or not understood or worse,

Abused,

They form a sort of spore,

There is a kind of walling off of the unloved parts of themselves.

Does this all make sense?

So it's kind of like it's a way of surviving to shut down certain places that can't keep evolving,

They just endure over time,

It's frozen life energy.

But remember,

Plants spores are opportunists,

They are life-force in waiting and so they are kind of scanning for an opportunity.

And then we come on meditation or we start sensing relationships or processes that can start actually in a healthy way feeding us.

And when that happens,

When the nurturing is really there,

Then there is kind of this blooming,

This waking up,

This healing.

And it's… Many people describe when they start really meditating they start feeling all this energy they didn't feel before,

A lot of creativity,

Creativity attacks.

People come on retreats and they want to write their books because they have all these books that come up in their mind because there is just all this release of creative energy.

Of course then,

You know,

The idea is to quiet down and then write your book a little later but really settle.

So to carry this forward,

The psychologist,

The evolutionary psychologist,

Cosolino writes that it's not survival of the fittest,

It's survival of the nurtured,

That what we need to really flourish is mindfulness and compassion,

Nurturing.

Sri Narsargadatta was one of my favorite all-time teachers.

If I get that question,

If you had to take one book to a desert island,

Just one,

You know,

I think it would be I Am That from Sri Narsargadatta.

He writes this.

Because all you need is already within you,

Only you must approach yourself with reverence and love.

Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.

Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of the love you bear for yourself.

All I plead with you is this,

Make love of yourself perfect.

Deny yourself nothing.

Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them,

You are beyond.

All I plead with you is this,

Make love of yourself perfect.

What an amazing invitation.

And it doesn't mean perfect as if now you have another job to do right,

It means just give your heart to it.

And this is the ground level of the book Radical Compassion because it's only when we really dedicate to loving the life here that we can fully release those frozen… the frozen life that's been kind of locked up in there that we can free our hearts.

But it's not just offering ourselves love,

It's also being in relationship.

There are a lot of processes for making that love come… bring us alive.

And I often call it spiritual reparenting just because what we are learning to do is bring the love and bring the attention that we didn't get to the life that's here.

So here is where RAIN comes in.

For those of you that are new to RAIN the acronym is Recognize,

Allow,

Investigate and Nurture.

And those are the four steps.

After we do those first steps there is what's called After the RAIN which is the time of just being and getting to know the gold.

So here is an example of just very briefly because I am going to give you a more full-out illustration.

Let's say you've got a holiday approaching and you are going to be with family and there are certain places that you know you are going to get triggered.

Now I am not talking to any of you that are here in this room but let's say there is a certain relationship that brings up resentment or anger or anxiety or something.

So how do you use RAIN?

Well you often have to kind of in some way pull away,

Have a little time out,

But you recognize,

Okay,

I am triggered,

I am feeling defensive,

Okay,

Feeling angry,

Feeling hurt.

That's the R.

You just kind of name what's happening.

The A is letting it be there.

It's allowing it.

Now allowing doesn't mean you like it.

Allowing doesn't mean you embrace it.

Allow just means you are not pushing it away and you are not trying to fix it.

In some wise way you are saying,

Okay,

This belongs,

It's part of reality just this moment.

And I find the language this belongs is really powerful.

Belongs doesn't mean it's going to belong even in five minutes.

It just means that right now this is reality.

So allow it.

Don't fight reality.

That's the A.

The I,

Investigate,

Means that,

Okay,

Since it's here let's investigate.

And investigate is not mental.

Well,

My mother always criticized me.

So now when my cousin says such and such it feels like criticism.

You know,

It's not that.

It's investigate is,

Okay,

Where am I feeling this in my body?

It may be that part of investigating is I have a belief that I am worthless in this person is playing into it but it's primarily to feel it in your body,

Your throat,

Your chest,

Your belly,

To feel it.

That's investigate because you are getting in touch.

And then nurture is you sense,

Well,

What is this hurt-defended part of me most need in this moment?

Maybe it just needs,

Hey,

Listen,

You are okay,

It's going to be okay,

Hand on the heart,

You know.

Maybe it needs something,

Just a little message of,

You know,

I love you,

I am with you,

I am not leaving.

Maybe it needs you to imagine your great-grandparent,

You know,

With their hand on your shoulder.

Whatever that part needs you kind of nurture.

And then you just get still and sense whatever has shifted.

Because if you pause long enough to recognize,

Allow,

Investigate and even go through a gesture of nurturing,

Something biologically,

Neurologically in your brain will shift some.

You won't be perfect,

You won't feel necessarily liberated but there will be more access to your more evolved heart-mind,

More access to your intelligence and your compassion and your empathy.

So that's just a brief encapsulation of RAIN.

The key is that when we hit a tangle we have to be willing to be with it.

One of the most classic stories from the Buddhist tradition is the Buddha waken through the night under the Bodhi tree and he had to deal with all the shadow energies which are described in terms of the god Mara – greed,

Hatred,

Delusion,

Shame,

Anger,

Whatever – and so Mara would attack through the night and the Buddha kept bringing mindfulness and compassion and woke up.

All the attacks faded away.

But throughout the Buddhist teaching career,

Forty years,

Mara kept appearing.

And the Buddha might be teaching a hundred people gathered in a field and Mara would be lurking around the outskirts.

And every time the Buddha's loyal assistant or follower and also his cousin Ananda would get freaked out seeing Mara and go,

Oh no,

Mara is here,

What are we going to do?

But the Buddha's response was different.

Remember this is recognize and allow.

He'd say,

Oh,

Okay,

Mara is here.

I see you,

Mara.

Come,

Let's have tea.

That was his response.

And that's what we're learning to do with all the activated energies that come up when we're caught,

When we're reactive,

When we're identified with the coverings.

Okay,

I see you,

Mara.

Let's have tea.

That brings it above the line.

So here is an example of a woman that was very,

Very caught and how she worked with this.

And then we're going to practice a little ring together.

And this was a woman who was in recovery from alcoholism and huge guilt and shame about the way she injured her teenage daughter who herself was now struggling with anxiety,

With depression,

With an eating disorder and also a lot of guilt around a strain on her marriage.

But in addition to guilt she was angry and judgmental at others for making her feel bad about herself.

So it was a whole mix.

So when we worked together any appearance of her harsh inner critic was kind of the signal to do rain.

And so the first step for her whenever she'd start hearing that voice telling her how she was in absolute failure was to recognize it.

And she would often recognize she was feeling anger and guilt.

And then the allowing for her if she could just breathe with it and say,

Okay,

I'm staying,

This belongs,

Just breathe with it.

For her investigating she'd start feeling in her body that bad self-feeling,

The fear and the shame.

And for her it had a kind of hollow,

Aching,

Sinking feeling in her body.

And I asked her how long she had been feeling this.

And she said,

I've been feeling this for as long as I can remember.

And then she said,

It's unlovable.

I'm unlovable.

I'm never enough.

And so that was when she was really investigating how stuck she was.

And I said,

What's it like to witness that,

That you've for your whole life been feeling unlovable and these feelings?

And she began weeping because for her that was the moment – and I think of this as the ouch moment – it was like a soul sadness where she realized how her whole life had been in grip of the trance of unworthiness.

Her whole life she had been feeling something is wrong with me.

And how many moments were stolen,

How it drove her to alcoholism.

These are later recognitions.

So the last question in investigating that I asked,

What does this young,

Unlovable place most need?

And it was clear that it needed to be held and nurtured.

And the way she… she kind of put both arms like this,

Crossed them,

Hands on the shoulders,

And basically said,

I'm here.

I'm not leaving.

I love you.

And then she told me this is hard to do by myself.

And so I said,

Who could help you?

And she said,

My grandmother.

So it was like her grandmother was holding her,

Holding her young self.

That was the way it worked for her to nurture.

And she sat there like that rocking and nurturing herself with the sense of her grandmother there for a number of minutes.

And then after the rain she said,

I'm just feeling a little more space,

A little more peace.

And that was about it.

It was like the shift from the covering,

From being caught in that self that was just felt so unworthy and guilty and angry to this space that was more peaceful and that could just be holding her inner life.

She had to do it many rounds,

Many,

Many rounds.

But she described the voice of judgment come up and the big difference was much more quickly she said,

I don't have to believe it.

And I want to just pause here and say to you that that's one of the gifts of rain is that the old things that you believed automatically you stop having to believe it.

It's one of the gifts.

You don't have to believe your thoughts.

So for her it was that she didn't have to believe it.

And she had many,

Many rounds of these thoughts coming up and she'd recognize it and allow it and investigate and go like this and realize that who she was was not the story that she was telling herself.

I want to just end this by saying that something she shared with me that I thought was really beautiful some months later – because she had a real standoff with her daughter,

They were not close at all and she always felt guilty and her daughter was kind of angry and so on – but she said some months later her daughter was upset about something and she put her arm around her.

Her daughter always would stiffen and pull away.

She didn't.

Her daughter actually leaned in and collapsed into her and started sobbing.

And she told me that through rain her heart-space was able to start holding herself so she could hold her daughter in a new way.

And I was so touched by that because this is the difference of being caught in the eye that doesn't like itself and moving to the belonging of the way,

More heart-space.

The key in being able to move from the covering to feeling the gold is what I often call a U-turn.

And I talk about this a lot in Radical Compassion that if we want to break out of the patterns and not have them become our destiny we have to pause and move from reacting to something out there to making a U-turn and bringing attention to the life that's here.

And rain is a very easy to remember tool and it totally affects how we then respond to our world.

One last short story is that I shared over the years because it stayed with me so powerfully about the U-turn is one of an army lieutenant that had to do anger management training and built into his course was mindfulness,

How to bring attention to what's going on inside you for anger management.

And one evening he went to a supermarket and he fills up his card,

He gets into line,

The woman in front of him only has one item but she's not in the express line,

She's in his line and not only that she and the clerk start talking and playing with the child and so on and he,

His anger flares up,

Okay,

So he's in the covering now,

He's of the golden Buddha,

He is completely caught and identified with his anger,

This is the primitive mind going and,

You know,

I'm a busy person and they're just hanging out and talking and I've got things to do and places to go and he's kind of getting a head of steam and he goes,

Oh yeah,

Mindfulness and he does the U-turn.

Okay,

Recognizing,

Okay,

What's going on,

Angry,

Angry,

Okay,

Let it be there,

Deepening attention,

Investigating,

Okay,

There's a clutch,

Okay,

That fear of my life,

You know,

Falling apart if I don't get everything done,

We know that one.

Mind attention,

Just be with it,

Kind,

Kind.

Then he looks and sees the little girl and notices that she's really kind of cute.

So finally the woman and the child leave,

It's his turn and he says to the clerk,

You know,

That little girl was adorable.

Clerk beams.

She says,

Oh,

That's my little girl actually.

My husband was killed last year in Afghanistan and my mom brings my babe over twice a day so we have a little time to be together.

For this man just to imagine that he could have carried on and been angry and never have seen a deeper reality both in himself and in the world.

And it's not like everybody we meet has had that major drama but,

You know,

Everyone we meet is struggling hard.

And what if we could move through our day and pause enough and make that U-turn and kind of come back to our own heart and presence so that when we run into others we see past the plaster-clay covering and we see who's there and we respond to our world.

So with that in mind we'll just take a few moments now.

We'll do a brief practice of RAIN and I'd like to invite you to take a longer time if you haven't been doing this to explore it for yourself.

So RAIN is this tool of radical compassion to make love of ourselves perfect,

To make love of our life,

Love of each other,

Love of our world full.

And you might begin right in this moment and just sense is there anything between you and really being at home with your own being?

Is there any way that you are turned on yourself right now?

Just scanning for wherever there is a sense of that you are carrying a gun,

You are carrying some judgment or blame towards yourself.

And we'll do what's called a light RAIN just to recognize that.

If there is a particular situation that brings it more to the forefront see that place where you are in that situation or who else might be involved,

Any expression on another's face,

The words exchanged or whatever is going on inside you to recognize what's coming up,

Whatever is predominant when you turn on yourself.

And you might just with a mental whisper name what you notice.

Not enough,

A shame,

Guilty,

Sinking down.

And for now the allowing is just to let it be,

To be willing to have that experience here,

Just a part of reality,

It's some waves in the ocean and it belongs too.

You are not agreeing with your beliefs,

You are just acknowledging they are here.

The investigating is to sense how does it feel in your body when you are turned on yourself.

Just check your throat,

Your chest,

Your belly.

And it might help just to feel your posture when you are down on yourself and just replicate it a little.

Your shoulders droop maybe,

Your head down,

The expression on your face when you are feeling down on yourself or turned on yourself.

That will help you get in touch somatically with the feelings in your body.

You might investigate and ask,

You know,

What am I believing in this moment about myself?

What's the worst part of this?

And to feel in your body where you feel the strongest and it might be helpful to even bring your hand and just touch your heart or your belly or your throat or wherever you feel feeling strongly.

And that begins the nurturing process.

That begins it.

So if you haven't done that before you might experiment.

It's very powerful.

Very powerful to embody this with your… all with touch,

The whole thing.

And you might ask yourself,

What is this part of me most need right now,

The part that's feeling judgmental or critical or blaming?

What's the reminder?

The message?

Is it forgiveness?

Acceptance?

If the most loving part of you could offer just the right words right now,

What might be helpful?

And there may be somebody in your life that is a loving being and you can imagine them reminding you of what you need to remember right now.

And let the words in and let the message in and let the care in.

The frozen spores begin to soften those walls and open if we let in the loving.

What would it really mean to make love of yourself perfect right this moment?

Let the light and the tenderness wash through.

Let it wash through.

And the more you let it in the more you can start resting and after the rain and just sense the gold that's here,

Sense whatever has shifted.

Perhaps there's more of a sense of heart-space,

More care.

You might sense the difference of the self and the story when you began,

The bad self,

In this heart-space that's holding your own being with care.

That's more the truth of who you are.

All I plead with you is this,

Make love of yourself perfect.

Deny yourself nothing.

Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them.

You are beyond.

And taking a few deep breaths when you're ready.

Opening your eyes.

Namaste and blessings.

Thank you.

For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list please visit TaraBrakh.

Com.

Reviews

Definitely a Greatest Hit. I keep coming back to this one time and time again! ever so grateful teacher! Namaste. 🧶

Wonderful. So glad to have found this. Thanks for sharing

Wonderful course thanks to the loving wisdom of Tara Brach.💞

Tara has a way of weaving together snippets of stories, cartoons, poems throughout her talks and each has a practice intertwined to imbed the pearl of the day’s teaching. She has brought me a life raft in my most troubled times. I am deeply grateful.

I received a lot of insight and healing through this talk and meditation. Thank you for this gift Tara.
I recognised the part of me that was my imposter syndrome.
I know I am a gifted engineer and problem solver who loves to help others. My co-workers, managers and client recognise this. Ironically, my family do not and dismiss my suggestions, leaving me hurt. RAIN helped me investigate this. As I hugged the part of me that needed nurturing, the insight was to simply get on with what I love to do- build and create.
Then by seeing my creations and hearing how I sold a problem, my family would naturally recognise that.
I also made peace with the part that felt it needed the acknowledgment of those around me. I held myself and understood that the only acknowledgment I needed was my own. The love I needed the most was my own.
I taking a step forward to self compassion, self love and acceptance every day.
Thank you Tara💗🙏🏾

Fascinating and powerful description of a way of being that I’m starting to recognise and embrace and I can feel slowly turning my life around. Tara’s analogies and stories are powerful images to take with me as a reminder. I’m so glad I gave myself the time to listen to this today.

Excellent.Really helpful.Thank you Tara🥳.Best wishes Olivia

Beautiful work ❤️❤️❤️ I’m finding this so helpful and validating.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. What a beautiful talk! I want to share it with everyone, thank you for sharing this with us. Thank you and blessings Tara 💖

beautiful. Thank you, Tara for graciously sharing this powerful teaching. ✨

I'm very grateful for this RAIN practice and the story of the woman who always felt unworthy her entire life. Hearing this helped me to deeply cry and grieve years of running , avoiding, and an addictive personsonality to avoid the pain deeply stored within. Just like that woman, I practiced Rain method and loved and nurtured myself. I forgave myself for abandoning myself and so many others. Powerful work and Im beginning to learn to love and accept myself . I am working on reparenting myself so I can have a loving life filled with a healthy loving relationship with myself and can open my heart to letting others love me.

I listened to this in the early hours of the morning when anxiety has been waking me up. It bought calmness and peace back to me.

A wonderful talk, full of compassion. It gives me hope

Outstanding and life changing message. Looking forward to the next two sessions

Wonderful, as always Tara - thank you for your kind words and imparting such a wonderful message of wisdom from yourself and others - always a pleasure to hear your voice

Thank you, Tara. This talk is exactly what I need to hear, and do every day. 🙏

Beautiful talk, needed to hear it today, Thank you🙏🙏🙏

Just what I needed right now! Thank you, Tara! 💝🙏🕊️

I needed this so badly. Thank you Tara! Peeling back the plaster one layer at a time <3

❤️❤️❤️💗💗💗💗🙏🙏🙏🙏😘😘😘🎄🌞Thank YOU for your wisdom and sharing this wisdom.