Tami Simon: This episode of Insights at the Edge is taking place in honor of World Mental Health Day this October where we’re joining with others To thank the therapists in our world. And here at the start, I’d particularly like to thank those therapists who bring together both the psychological and the spiritual dimension in their work.
I’m here for this special episode with Beloved Meditation teacher, author, and clinical psychologist Tara Brach, who is an expert on this intersection of spirituality and psychology. Tara, welcome.
Tara Brach: It is my pleasure to be here. Good to be with you, Tami, and with all who are listening.
Tami Simon: In preparing for this conversation, thanking the therapists, I, I did a kinda life review, if you will, but it was just a review of my time, uh, with therapists and in conversation with them over my life, and I made a list of the People that I wanted to thank from my heart, and I realized that in each instance there was this some quality where I was able to be met.
A, a same quality, A through quality, where each of these people, they could find me at a time where inside myself, I wasn’t sure I was findable. And I wanted to start our conversation. Hearing from you, what do you feel it takes for someone to meet another person? And it doesn’t even have to be a therapist, but when someone’s in pain, how do we meet them?
What inner. Attitude, posture, capacity. Do we need to have to be able to do that?
Tara Brach: Yeah, that’s a beautiful question. I mean, ’cause there is some place in us that knows what it’s like. be the other. I mean we, we have this shared realm of experience, but I could say for myself, there has to be. For me to meet someone, some sense that this could be me. That, uh, I kind of know this, I know this from the inside out, what it’s like for you. So, um, I’m not, so there’s not a, a relating from a distant place or an above place. Oh, poor you. You know, it’s like, really? we know this one and feeling with another. And then there’s a, um. A genuine tenderness that’s there, an embodied tenderness. And at the same time, I know when I’m with people, there also has to be enough a kind of mindful presence that I’m not overwhelmed.
So it’s that balance, you know, of, that open, tender resonance and enough space to help hold a container for what’s going on.
Tami Simon: I, I’ve heard people say, you know, you can’t meet someone else in a painful state that you haven’t explored in your own experience. Do you think that’s true?
Tara Brach: On one level, I think it’s that you have to have. Courageously open to what has presented itself in your life, but we get presented different things. Um, meeting with a woman this weekend who lost a child in the, uh, flood in Texas. Last month, I think it was, I, I haven’t lost a child. It’s like even going near it, I can feel how wrenching, but that hasn’t been one of the ago I’ve experienced, um, you know, I’ve sat with people dying and I’ve, I feel like I’m dying all the time on one level, but not, not this body going.
So yeah, think that we have to have opened to what presents itself. And really opened to keep company, but not necessarily the same content or the same exact expression.
Tami Simon: This is a bit of an oddball question, but it’s something in my experience, which is I know when I am looking to share something inside of me that’s really difficult with another person. Part of what I test out is how big is their holding? Space, like can I sense that it’s at least as big as, as what I’m bringing forward?
It’s almost like an energetic field, and I need to sense that in them in order to come forward. Otherwise, I just won’t do it. It’s not the right place for me. And I, and I wonder what you think about that in this notion of a field that comes with us in our human presence that is a welcoming. Space for others and our ability to sense that in each other.
Tara Brach: Yeah, well, I think you’re naming it actually really well that it is a field, it’s kind of a resonance field that’s awake, spa, awake, space. And there’s a phrase I love, which is, um. To meet our edge and soften. It’s like, can we, when with whatever arises, is there kind of capacity to allow it in a very, in a really unconditional way. In a really courageous, unconditional way. And so like you, when I’m with others. I just sense how much is allowed in that field. Is that, is it, is it a wide, open, accepting field? Um, because we pick up, really, our antennas are up for judgment and for capacity, and it’s just not, um, safe enough or we won’t sense it as valuable if we don’t sense that capacity.
Tami Simon: One of the things that I am extraordinarily curious about. Is the notion in that openness of being open in awareness and being open In what I’ve heard more and more people in the mindfulness field refer to as loving awareness. Like we’re bringing loving awareness, not just awareness to this conversation or challenge.
To ourselves. And I notice when I hear those words, when I hear awareness, I get kind of big and vast and sky like, and when I hear loving awareness, it’s a very different quality actually. When I’m like, oh, I’m gonna bring loving awareness. I, I center more in my heart. There’s a warmth. And I’m like, okay, how, how does someone like Tara see this?
And are you intentionally invoking, quote unquote loving awareness?
Tara Brach: Yeah, I don’t, first of all, I’d say it’s not an intentional evoking, it’s a spontaneous but maybe, um, an imperfect metaphor is that. Many of us go to is an ocean with waves, and that the ocean is this the formless awareness you talked about that has, it has its own, it’s just vast and empty and formless, and yet there’s waves in the ocean of form that arise and so that when awareness is attending two waves. Okay. When it, when awareness is attending to the arising our passing of a wave, it, it cradles the wave awareness realizes the waves belong. And that sounds like that a little bit gives it, uh, more of a personification. But awareness senses that waves are an expression of itself. There’s a natural belonging and the felt sense of that is love. Um, the, the Tibetans, I think have a really, uh. Powerful, helpful way of describing the, the qualities of awareness. And that the qualities are that, that vast openness, you know, an empty openness, wakefulness, and then a responsiveness, uh, a warmth, the compassion, and that arises. When we pay attention to the particulars of what’s going on to, if I pay attention to the fear or to the hurt, then awareness if it’s in its fullness or respond spontaneously with compassionate spontaneously becomes loving awareness, not just empty awareness, I dunno.
Tami Simon: No, you, you, that, that’s helpful. And I like the metaphor and I like the, the cradling of the waves. You said something that got my attention though, that it’s not intentional. It’s a natural arising and I wanna zero in on being in a state of pain. Oneself. And in my experience, when I am suffering, I do need to bring on an intentionality to work with it in some way.
I wish that loving awareness just naturally arose and cradle the pain and there you go. You know, a baboom, but a bam. But, uh, it doesn’t seem to be a bao, but bam or whatever. Although it’s a really fun thing to say, it seems to be more of a. Uh, crucible of some kind. And so I, I’d like to hear more and I’m, I’m gonna add on to this question for a moment, if you will, Tara, because in some ways I think it’s, uh, part of the.
Central expertise that you carry that I wanna bring forward part of your central medicine, which is metabolizing our pain and how we do this with the aid of loving awareness.
Tara Brach: First, I want to, um, honor what you’re saying. In the sense of the difference between spontaneous and intentional because it is the nature of awareness to spontaneously get tender in the face of pain, and is incredibly skillful and powerful for us to know that, and in whatever way we can become available to invite that, to lean towards it, to look towards it.
So they’re both true. Um, and that’s again, uh, for those that are interested in Tibetan Buddhism, that’s the, it’s described as spontaneous compassion and the compassion that comes from intentionality. So I wanna honor that. And the way, if I had to say, you know, the, basic. Ingredients of what helps metabolize pain. Um, I teach a whole lot about rain, and the reason I do that acronym because it includes the basic ingredients of mindfulness and compassion untwist and free up our identity with pain. And I’ll, let me say a little more on how that would work. So let’s say um. What arises is fear. ’cause that’s one of the great forms of pain we, we work with. Uh, the first step of rain, the R of rain, is that recognition of it to be able to just even recognize the wave as a wave. To be able to say this is fear itself gives a little more space. We’re a little more inhabiting the awareness that’s aware of the fear versus being totally possessed by the wave and forgetting the ocean.
I’ll stay with that metaphor for now. So the R is to recognize what’s there. That’s part of mindfulness. The A arranges to allow, which says. This wave belongs in the ocean. It’s not a mistake. It’s not bad. It might be painful. It is painful, but it’s here. So just to be able to recognize and then sense this belongs adds more space. There’s more freedom for what’s here to be here, and it allows us to begin to deepen our attention in a really important way, which is. To, for awareness to fully cradle the wave, it has to be intimate with the wave. It has to kind of investigate and sense. What does this feel like? investigate means to get close in and discover what is this like in this living body and heart. To really ask that and inquire, and it takes curiosity and courage to get intimate with the fear. That’s really, really challenging and it’s liberating because what keeps us identified with the fear, with the wave and forgetting the ocean is that we’re in some way fighting it or resisting it. So when we get intimate with it, our identity opens even further. There’s more space, and that’s where we can see the pain. And there’s a, that arises, and the end of rain is to nurture, which as you brought in, has an intentional quality. It means, okay, let’s actively bring compassion to where this fear is. And in the moments of that compassionate presence, identity gets freed up from. am fear. Fear is me to more the sense of being that field of compassion that’s holding the fear, being the ocean versus the wave and the end of rain is really what I call after the rain, which is more just where does that leave us? That we have a more true sense of what we are, that our identity is no longer hitched to a wave, but rather resting in a more open space of awareness and tenderness. So I hope that’s helpful.
Tami Simon: It, it is, and it’s not. And I’ll tell you the part that it’s not, uh, the part that it is is that the rain practice I’ve found tremendously helpful in different moments of my life. But then the part where it’s not is that I’ve found more and more that when I’m really suffering, a word that I could use for it is I’m overwhelmed.
Like, I know I no longer, I’m, I’m outside the window. You could say the window of tolerance, the window of my capacities, the window of my, to practice the rain practice. I’m someplace else. And in, in that place, I need more like someone to, uh, hold my hand and squeeze it or like something else. And I don’t, I can’t go through the four steps and do that.
It’s not, I’m like, okay, now I’m gonna do the four steps. Really? Like, I don’t have it. I don’t have it.
Tara Brach: Yeah.
Tami Simon: on tap in that way. So I wonder if you could speak to that overwhelmed place where I think people find themselves when they’re really suffering.
Tara Brach: Yeah. So as with anything, there’s different pathways depending on where we’re at, and we might need an emergency bypass of the steps and instead go directly to, uh, reaching out for comfort, for nurturing, and. What I have found with people is that if you prearrange, what’s your, helps you when you’re really, really overwhelmed, when you’re really scared, uh, when there’s a sense of the background of trauma creeping in there. what helps you to reconnect, what helps you to remember some larger, safer space of connection. And so I investigate. And so I would say to you, Tami, Assuming you’re not overwhelmed right this moment, what have you found that in some moments begins to give you a little more sense of safety and connection?
Tami Simon: Well, I think that’s where connection is the key word and this theme that we’re weaving through our conversation of thanking the psychological and spiritual mentors in our lives. That’s actually, I think one of the great gifts is just. And something that we can offer to each other. And I try when I’m not overwhelmed in all those other spaces to offer it to other people, which is just this, you know, I’m here for you.
I’m here with you, I’m here with you. I feel you. I sense you that connection when I feel that in a really genuine way, not just the words, but it’s more a kind of sensing heart, uh, resonance. With someone. That’s the number one thing that helps me.
Tara Brach: Yeah, and if you think of a young child, what does it most need when it’s. Uh, freaked out is to be held. And so we, that is the most direct way, somatically, emotionally on all levels restore connection is with another being. And it’s the power and beauty of therapy that when we feel that companionship, we’re not so alone. You know, it, we, are feeling en large belonging. So it is relationship, uh. Because often people are stuck without another person there. Then it becomes really helpful to find, well, what are your pathways where you can invoke another person’s presence you can in learn actually, and it’s very powerful to do, to really feel that others are there that your belonging when you don’t have that access. so even in therapy, I think one of the things really good therapists do is. Which is really empowering is help, uh, clients find those pathways to feeling that larger belonging and companionship without having a person there. it’s a real both end in this case, and many people, the. uh, the word prayer really makes a difference.
Like if they utterly stuck and overwhelmed and, and then in some way ask for some larger loving presence to be with them. And it might be the presence of their grandmother might be a spiritual figure or what, whatever that longing to have, that companionship actually is like a bridge to belonging. Expressing that prayer actually helps to call in and invoke that loving presence. I think we need pathways, all of us, to be resilient overwhelm is so many are feeling it.
Tami Simon: I, I like that a lot, Tara, that notion of prayer, because it seems like there are all kinds of inner ways, as you said, even without another physical person present, that we can create that quality of being contacted and held and the inner visualization. And invocation. It’s amazing how well it works if, if you’re really in it, if you really feel.
That sense of a, of a holding presence as it could be in prayer with a, a, a form of a greater compassionate hold. But, you know, I found even invoking certain friends and their love of me or my wife, or, uh, petting the belly of my two beautiful dogs, even from a distance, it, it’s almost like even from a distance, there’s some quality.
Of the presence of the other that’s truly there.
Tara Brach: Isn’t it? It’s beautiful. And here’s the thing that most I, I did a talk recently on the power of Imagination is it’s actually a skill we develop. And it is every bit as powerful as the actual presence of someone. I, I’m doing a, a whole program on grief right now and for so many, if they can begin to sense the spirit, the. Field of that’s gonna sacred beingness of the person they’ve lost and call the, and you know, connect to that. a powerful, timeless, kinda loving that emerges. And sometimes it takes somebody to die to be able to tap into the formless spirit, but you can use your imagination your way there.
So I feel like part of our, um, training in terms of. Waking up to, um, strengthen that capacity
Tami Simon: And how do you suggest people strengthen that capacity?
Tara Brach: to, um, take what already gives them some sense of some tendril of connection. What, wherever it is, whatever it is with my dog, when I lean against a tree, you know, when I think of dear ones and to practice in, in my own mind, sensing that and sensing and then going past the actual object, like in the sense of, okay, I’m leaning against a tree and feel the feeling. Through my body, an embodied experience, and then let that be as big as it is. So it’s really going from the, the activity with another to the field of loving and just practicing it over and over again.
Tami Simon: As we’re talking, what I’m reminded of, and I’ll just be brief here, but you know, as a. Alienated teenager. I remember reading a short story by Carson McCullers called A tree, a rock, a Cloud, and it was this tendril of connection in a tree, a rock, a cloud, before even connecting with human beings. And I thought, there you go, Tami.
A tree, a rock, a cloud. Start there. Okay. Tara, one of the things I,
Tara Brach: I just wanna
Tami Simon: yeah, go ahead. Sure.
Tara Brach: to hear. I love that because, um, when we are most, uh, undone, can be the hardest sometimes to imagine a human loving us or being with us. ’cause we’re turned on ourselves and it’s often easier with the dog or the tree or the rock or the cloud. So that’s the power of finding that tendril and then building it.
Tami Simon: Yeah, I love this word tendril too. It’s beautiful.
Tara Brach: too.
Tami Simon: One lock of hair. Just hold onto that one lock.
Tara Brach: It’s got the whole world in it.
Tami Simon: Now, I promised our listeners we were gonna talk about the. Intersection of psychology and spirituality and practicing from that place. And there’s a lot of discussion about this dialogue. Is that a psychological approach or a spiritual approach?
Which one, are they woven together in some way? Are they separate channels that we can work on? And I’m curious how you see it.
Tara Brach: All right. Um, I’m gonna go a little conceptual on you again first, and then we’ll ground it. That, um, the metaphor for me that works best is like. Imagining us as, uh, you know, kind of waking up in concentric circles. And, you know, the first, the, the, early primitive is I am a body, you know, the, I we’re identified with this body and then feelings, but the feelings include the body and then thoughts and beliefs, but that includes the feelings in the body.
And then I’m part of the whole, I belong to the whole, I am the whole, and it includes everything already inside it. The task of each circle that we’re growing into is to integrate the prior ones. You know, if I’m gonna be, you know, feeling being in a conceptual way, I need to be integrated with feelings and emotions and so on, and to keep on widening. Because just like a tree needs to keep growing when we don’t keep widening, We’re contained in something too small, we’re suffering. So I. Most of us have pretty, um, familiar identity with the kind of ego egoic self, with the mental self, um, to different degrees. We’ve integrated, you know, the feelings, the different shadow experiences, most of us have some. of something larger of um, know, a kind of mystery or beingness that’s greater than this identity as a separate self. And so that’s where a lot of us land and a lot of therapy will focus on. Integrating the emotions that have not yet been integrated. And in that process, in the process of, um, opening to the fear, the way we were talking about it, we discover an openness and a presence that’s larger than the fear.
So it actually leads us. To the spiritual and many people you know, will practice spiritual practices and find that they become resources to do earlier unfolding of the mental level. So let me, I’ll give you some examples ’cause I think it’s better to do examples that, uh, one woman I was working with, an executive coach. She felt like she was letting down a client that was really important to her, that she was falling short and she kept trying harder and harder to, to fix him and, and just felt like she was letting him down. And so we did some work. We’re doing kind of a. Psychospiritual therapy, but we are focused on, okay, let’s focus on this emotion of letting down falling short. what she got down to is this deep belief and feeling that I’m only lovable if I’m helping, if I’m providing some value. And it opened her to a kind of soul sadness. She could see the landscape of her life and how. Many relationships she didn’t really trust. She was loved and couldn’t really feel intimate, and it brought up a lot of self-compassion where she could, you know, and I put my hand on my heart.
’cause, you know, just start offering herself care, like trust. Trust your lovable trust, your lovable. And so for months, that was her practice. And what happened over time, and she really became aware of it, is that that space of compassion that was holding the hurting part more clearly who she was. It’s like that field of compassion is more the truth of who I am than any narrative, any story. And so, so her, her emotional work, very, uh, explicitly enlarged her sense of spiritual belonging. So that, that’s an example on. level. Um, you know, I had, I was thinking like you are of, um, the therapist I’ve worked with. I had a therapist who was also a meditator and we’d meditate together and when I was stuck he would. Help me invite forward my most away cart. It was really a blessing it was also a blessing to be processing in a field with another person. ’cause that deepened my sense of, oh, okay, this isn’t like that’s alone. I also have seen. Um, in this kind of what we’re really talking about, this utterly domains of and spiritual, um. I’ve been offering a lot of, uh, workshops where the format is that people will, share different things that are going on and we’ll do some work together in a larger group.
And it’s, really powerful to see just this mix we’re talking about, about waking up to the shadow and last week. Just looking at how much spiritual practice helped in that waking up. one of the men who I worked with, uh, he’s Mexican. A uh, an immigrant legal immigrant. Right next to his building.
ICE has been coming down on, uh, you know, like raiding and taking people away, and he is stuck with this huge amount of fear. So he was sharing this in the larger group, and as you can imagine, uh, those heart emojis were coming and he could feel himself being. Held in something and I asked the question you and I were just talking about, I said, what gives you the kind of tendrils of connection when you’re on your own that helps you to be with this fear?
’cause it’s traumatic fear. And he told me that, that what he would do is listen to Christmas music. And that in some way reminded him of this possibility of peace and of love. And the other thing was that he lives in a. Condo with 36 other people and he buy plants and put them around outside. Um, ’cause he said that if 36 people can see plants and feel more of their connection to nature, then he feels his belonging to all of them.
And that that opens him. So I’m sharing this ’cause between the space of the heart, the heart space of the group, and his own pathways of connecting that helped create the space that the fear was there, but he had room for it. And it feels really for me to think of how many. People right now, so deeply need a taste of a larger taste of their larger belonging and to be able to work with all the shadow emotions that are coming up.
Tami Simon: I’m gonna take this question, if you will, from a different angle for a moment, which will show a different pair of glasses that I bring to this conversation than what you’re describing, because the model that you’re offering of the concentric circles from body to. Feelings to thoughts to the spiritual realm that includes all that makes sense to me.
And then in my experience working with very gifted spiritual teachers over the years was people who could be in that outer boundless space, but we’re clearly missing. Some of the work that’s required, and it came up relationally in different situations, and this was very apparent to me that they weren’t, even though they could be in a huge expansive, meditative state, and I would meet them there, then I would witness other instances relationally where they were clearly reactive and.
Mean and other things, and I thought, okay, this big expanded circle doesn’t resolve all the other, you could say, psychological levels of how we interact with each other when we get triggered in situations or, and this became such an important issue for me, Tara, in my own life. For whatever reason, that kind of meditative, expansiveness has come to me more naturally than relating successfully, consistently with other people, which has been much more challenging for me.
And so in my own life, I was like, okay, I have gotta do a lot of therapeutic work. And I also love meditation and being on the cushion, and they felt really separate for a long time, almost like I was working on different channels. Of
Tara Brach: Yeah.
Tami Simon: not so much like this concentric circle. They were all, it felt like they were different channels.
Like, oh, now I’m on the cushion. Oh, now I’m working out why I, uh, barked at that person and interrupted them, and et cetera. And so I, I just first of all, just wonder what you have to say about that before we take it further.
Tara Brach: Yeah, I’ve seen it happen too. It’s, it’s really, really common that people can have all sorts of spiritual experiences, but if they haven’t done the inner work of integrating the shadow, then it is very compartmentalized. I have, I watched that, know, I was part of a sect where we had a very charismatic, brilliant teacher who, for some people could bring all sorts of insights and healing and, uh, he created enormous harm. You know, sexual abuse, enormous harm. I mean, I, he harm, he hurt me. I had less trauma in my body, so it didn’t, so I ended up growing through it. So I just wanna say absolutely people can have what appears to be, um, big spiritual experiences and have it not integrated into their life. So it just feels really important to say. For each of us, it’s, it’s very much in our culture to compartmentalize spirituality and we’re a church on culture and go off to, you know, we’re still, the idea is what happens at the retreats and what happens in the monastery, and then you come home and blow up your partner. Our eye can say, I come home and blow up at my partner. So I think that is the work of our culture. To, um, to integrate. And the biggest signs of spiritual experience that do not have that integration that they’re somewhat disembodied, because I found that the more that we meditate and experience that awareness, but keep feeling how our bodies are experiencing it, more we end up coming right into the places that have been. Unen encountered the blocks, the fears that which has been in the, in the darkness and we start naturally processing it. So that’s one of the big signs, is a, um, disembodied spiritual practice. And it feels really important in our culture today to. Support each other in, uh, walking through what’s difficult so that we don’t have that kind of experience of, thinking we’re more awake than we are and actually causing harm.
Tami Simon: Now, it’s interesting that you bring up this word com compartmentalization being part parts of us being compartmentalized and not wanting to compartmentalize spirituality to the cushion or to a Sunday service. I’m with you there, but the use of that word, what’s really interesting to me is it seems that, and I’ll speak from my own experience, that there are shadow.
Issues. And what I mean by that are areas of deep pain driving different parts of my behavior that feel compartmentalized when I discover them. Almost like they’re hiding in a little, uh, cartoon bubble someplace deep inside me. And I finally have come to see it and bring it to awareness because certain things have happened in the external world that are like Tami.
Do you, if you have a, a clear truth telling conscience as you say you do, you need to look at this girl. And then I look and it’s like, oh, it was hiding down there. I didn’t even know it was there. And I’d love to hear from you because this is my inner experience, but I don’t have a psycho-spiritual explanation exactly that I’m a hundred percent clear.
Oh, that’s how that happens. And I wonder what your view is. Of that, these, you know, little cartoon bubbles of hidden pain that are driving us.
Tara Brach: Yeah, feel like we, a lot of us have that we haven’t gotten at those pockets because our habits are designed to keep us from, uh, paying attention to what’s difficult, our day-to-day habits and. Spirituality is considered something that we’re doing on the cushion or in the monastery as opposed to something that we’re doing or exploring.
How is this living in this relationship right this moment or in the way I’m working or in the way I am eating or in the way I am serving? in other words, if it’s compartmentalized, unearth. The those, those pockets. So in the moments that we actually bring spirituality into daily life, we start seeing all sorts of things.
And for me, of the big ways, one of my practices that really was incredibly revealing was to have. To have this intention to pause anytime I found myself judging in an aversive way. So this isn’t on the cushion, this is like go through the day and I start running thoughts And what I started finding was the first thing. That I notice when I’m judging is, you know, some that somebody else is wrong. And if I could make that U-turn and say, well, what’s really going on inside me, right in these moments, oh my gosh, you know, I started finding all these layers of unintended, uh, insecurity and needs that I just had not. Been having my eye on a whole gold mine. So I had to bring spiritual practice to my relationships. Like I had to like consider this a spiritual practice watching, judging. I, I just wanna say that it’s really helped to do that and also do that with a therapist so that you bring those daily life situations for deeper, witnessing and feeling and opening into the therapy situation because. We have such a habit of avoiding what we don’t wanna feel, and it gives us more safety and more encouragement, more accountability to explore them, uh, with the companionship of another.
Tami Simon: This, uh, judgment example is really powerful, Tara, and I’m curious, what did you discover about what it was that you didn’t wanna feel? In pausing every time. I mean, ’cause if I think to myself, it’s, it’s something I’ve actually been starting to do, but I, I notice I don’t like doing it because I enjoy judging so much.
So I’m a little bit like, really Now I have to drop this one too. This has been so fun, this little jag that I’m on, but I come back and, uh, think what’s really going on here? But what did you discover about what you didn’t want to feel?
Tara Brach: Yeah. Um, it comes down to fear, but different versions of fear. One form is, uh, some basic narcissism or need to inflate myself and have, and be better than I need to be special, I need to be better than, and so there’s some way this habit of, putting, putting others down, but a deeper one in a way is. Let’s say with my, all my judgments around what’s going on in our world, in our society is that when I’m judging, when I’m angry, when I’m blaming, if I really pay attention to it, underneath that is fear, um, of what’s, what’s happening and a sense of powerlessness. And I don’t wanna feel fear and powerlessness, so I want, so that blaming gives me some sense of control. But if instead of blaming. let myself feel powerless, despair, go into grief, which is underneath all of that, I end up landing up in a place of caring I’m grieving a loss. There’s something I’m that I love that I care about, so. What I have found is that if I can do the U-turn from judging and anger, it brings me, ’cause whenever we’re angry, there’s something we’re caring about, it brings me down to care and then I can respond to my world from a larger, uh, place.
Tami Simon: That’s really helpful. Does this work with self-judgment as well? And what have you found underneath that that you don’t wanna feel?
Tara Brach: Yeah, well, self judgment’s the same thing in a way. It’s that, um, there’s an insecurity that, uh, if I don’t change, I’ll never be lovable. I’ll never be okay. And when I can see that a tremendous amount of tenderness that comes up. I can see how much that runs. The moments, you know, that I have to be different to be okay if I can get to self-compassion. Then there’s a sense of a larger beingness that it’s like my spiritual heart can hold my human heart and I’m not so identified with the deficient self. So the kind of pathway there.
Tami Simon: You mentioned, Tara, that you’ve been. Working recently, helping people with grief and bringing, if you will, and I’m gonna put this language now forward, a psychospiritual approach to working through grief. And I wonder for someone who’s still asking this question of what, what would be the psychological part of working through grief and what would be the spiritual part and how would you see them supporting or coming together?
How, how you see that. As an example.
Tara Brach: yeah. No, that’s, that’s actually a really good question. Um. We will avoid grief until we can’t avoid grief. And so there’s the, you know, the standard ways we avoid it, but they’re actually really big. Um, we have grief about a lot of stuff. It’s not just the official grief stuff we grieve, but there’s just the loss in our world, as we’ve known at the changes in our environment, there’s all sorts of levels that we’re, there’s deep sadness underneath, but we don’t go there. Because we have these patterns of trying to stay away from pain, and the big ones that we use are, um, anger, blame, negotiating, numbing, depression. often when people are working with grief, they’re actually working with, uh, those emotions that are showing up instead of grief. They’re working with the numbness, they’re working with the depression, they’re working with the anger or anxiety. So often the first step is to be willing to bring attention there and to say, this belongs, you know, this, this too. Make room for it, really bring that tender presence so it can unfold itself. we let it unfold itself, we’ll find underneath there’s a sorrow and, and the teaching is like Francis Willer, who wrote a wonderful book on grieving that we become an apprentice to sorrow.
That sorrow becomes a portal actually to us a very timeless kind of loving. We have to go through it. We have to be willing to feel it. And that’s for all of us. All of us have layers of sorrow and grief that, um, need attention and actually have an enormous, beautiful underneath it, uh, field of loving that we can open to.
Tami Simon: This phrase, this belongs. I read this in your book, trusting the Gold With Sounds True and it’s had a big impact on me. I use it a lot, Tara. I really love that practice. Just this belongs. I wonder how you apply that in our world today and somebody who says, looking out at things, you know, this does not belong.
This does not belong here on the human. Uh, collective dimension and if spirituality, this is the second part to this, is not gonna be compartmentalized and instead it’s gonna transform how we live, how we do that and still be able to work with this belongs the atrocities that we see and are experiencing.
Tara Brach: Yeah. Yeah. I got a similar question with radical acceptance, like how do we, what does it
Tami Simon: Sure.
Tara Brach: to accept the atrocities? And we’re not accepting in the sense of saying, this is good, this is, I’m for it. We’re accepting that reality is reality. It’s what’s happening. It’s a kind of courageous acknowledgement of the what’s happening and a courageous. Acknowledgement of what we’re feeling about it, which might be horror or hatred or anger or whatever it is. It’s like it doesn’t matter what wave comes up in response to the atrocities. It’s a wave in the ocean. And in the moments that we don’t in some way fight reality that we Fully allow reality to be as it is, we become more of the awareness that’s aware and more able to process, digest, and respond from wisdom. So we take it to what’s going on today. There’s not a day by now I don’t go into a trance in some way of reactivity where I don’t read and hear news and go right inside the narrative of. guy, bad guy, bad other. And so me to be able to keep pausing sensing my anger, my blame, my horror, what’s going on and say this belongs immediately, gives space for what’s there and more, allows more room for presence with what’s there. And then I can do that process we talked about before where I can get down to where I care, but if I fight it and say, this shouldn’t happen. I basically, uh, lost access to any possible connecting with a larger sense of being.
Tami Simon: When it comes to thanking the therapists in our world. I know that a lot of therapists, people who are my friends, not only like you, are they suffering every day in some form of finding their way of working with the news reports so that they can be heartfully present, but then the people that are coming into their therapy sessions are not.
In this individualistic way, isolated from the collective evolution that we’re all going through. And I think this is an important thing to talk about. How much of what’s happening in the world is present in the therapist’s office, and I’m curious how you see that.
Tara Brach: I feel like one of the biggest, um. Challenges and delusions in Western and spirituality is this idea of a separate self on its path to healing. Um, uh. What we’re waking up to is that there’s no separate self here and it’s a belonging that can either be described as completely connected with everything or everything itself. You know, we’re either the hull or we’re waves that interrelate with the hu. And so just to ground that, ’cause I realize that’s, you know, out there statement. What feels like we need in the West is more of a sense of our collective belonging that we get through practicing together, that we get through sharing our suffering, so that in these groups that we do online, it starts becoming clearer that we’re in a field of anxiety.
Of course, it where it’s the air we’re breathing. So of course when I feel anxiety. I feel more than I often do. Um, it’s society’s anxiety, you know, kind of running through my nervous system and so that when we’re together and we’re naming what’s challenging, we start realizing it’s not my anxiety, it’s the anxiety. It becomes less personal, it becomes less, my project to get free of and more becomes part of the collective environment that we’re all waking up through. And that seems really, really important there. There’s a number of different pathways that help us up to that kind of um, belonging.
It’s the saying, you know, I am because we are. It’s that understanding that it, it’s happening together. So one of them is, yeah, practicing together, practicing looking at the difficulties together and waking up through them. Another serving, you know, if we can, if we can offer ourselves. And sometimes just even the activity of serving reconnects us with the reality that we are serving what we belong to. And, uh, I’ll share a quote with you that I actually, uh, pasted in here so I could read it I thought that I just, that ran into and loved. It’s by John Rodell. He says, whenever I feel helpless in this overwhelming world, I become a helper. Oh, oh my love. On the days when it feels like I have no power, I serve others. You see, whenever I wash the world’s feet, hands immediately stop shaking. We, we need to know, we belong through talking together, crying together, celebrating together, serving together. And I feel like that’s than ever right now in these times, if we wanna resist what’s going on the, the shadowy stuff, we need to hold hands and remember our belonging.
Tami Simon: One of the things that’s occurring to me is the teaching, uh, that it’s not. Person that quote unquote wakes up and becomes an awakened separate self individual. But that the more we open to that spiritual dimension, the more we know our wholeness with everyone. And I’m saying that in this context because then you’re walking into a therapist’s office or having a meeting, and this is one of the things I even look for when I’m working with someone is.
Who’s the self they’re working with? Are they seeing it as this sort of separate, isolated, you know, Tami story or is there an appreciation of the web of interconnected life and full force aliveness that’s coming forward to the conversation? And I’m saying that ’cause it changes everything in a way when you’re looking at, uh, you know, the whole talking to the whole in two different.
Locations of beautiful individual expression, but still the whole, it changes the whole, uh, meeting and conversation.
Tara Brach: That’s right. And it’s both the therapist sees themselves and how they see you. If they see themselves as a, he, a healer, fixer in any identity, that actually gets in the way a bit between this kind of waking up together, that’s that’s happening. Awareness, waking up through us, you know. The more we hold lightly the, all the narratives of a self, whichever role it is, the more, um, all sorts of power and majesty can happen.
Tami Simon: All right. The final question here, Tara, has to do with this desire. I have to actually, from my heart, thank the individuals who have done so much inner work that they can be effective. As psycho-spiritual therapists in the world. And I think to myself, you know, and this is where it may sound like I’m patting myself on the back, and maybe I am gonna go ahead and pat myself on the back here.
It’s taken so much work. I don’t know from the outside, people might not know or recognize that and, uh. Even with all of the privileges that I’ve had, which are immense, and the exposure to tremendous teachers and influences and all of the support that I’ve received, which is immense and I’m so grateful for it, it has also taken so much and takes so much.
Courageous inner work to stay with the openhearted love, uh, uh, the quote that you read, uh, uh, serving the feet of others and my hands don’t shake in the same way. It takes a lot of continual showing up, and I wonder how, how you relate to that when you hear me say that.
Tara Brach: Well, I actually love that you’re saying it because showing up has a lot of different dimensions. But again, when we, we compartmentalize the path, um, it gets focused inwardly and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how we inhabit life with each other or with our world. And so, to me, showing up means our awakening in relationship. And the reason I. Makes me happy that you bring this in is because this is the dimension that I feel we need to bring more and more consciousness to right now, which is, um, that as much as there’s the inner work, there’s how it is then manifested in how kind we are, how much we’re in some way, let ourselves. Feel broken hearted about the world and then in whatever way matches who we are, show up. Whether it’s writing a poem or writing an editorial, doesn’t matter that we in some way are responding to our world and showing up because it’s not, we’re not fully mature and inhabiting, uh, who we are. It’s just kept as that kind of inner work component.
So, um, yeah, I’m not sure if that’s where you were going with this one, but that’s what came up for me.
Tami Simon: Well, and it’s a beautiful note to end on our continual call and response of showing up. And Tara, here you are. Thank you for showing up what sounds true with this special episode, thanking the therapists in our world, especially those bringing together a psychological and spiritual dimension and a big bow to you.
Thank you.
Tara Brach: I had like to say the same. Tami, I really, I love the way you show up in the world.
Tami Simon: Thank you.
Tara Brach: I really do. I value it so much.
Tami Simon: Thanks everyone. Keep showing up with each other. Much love.
