Tara Brach

Throughout history, deception has been an effective survival strategy. Yet, like all primitive survival strategies, when deception becomes habitual and is not directly about survival, it prevents us from continuing growth. For each of us, to the degree that we are not real with ourselves or that we withhold important truths from others, we just cannot keep evolving. The Call for a Deeper Commitment We can see in our own lives and in the larger society how dishonesty poisons our world with cynicism and mistrust. One understanding that seems clear is that our future is threatened by these toxins — greed and aggression that proliferate when we are not facing and speaking truth. This suffering is calling for us to deepen our commitment to truth-telling and being real with ourselves and each other. Adrienne Rich writes: “An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word  love  — […]is a process of refining the truths they ...

One expression of suffering is forgetting that we are intrinsically lovable and worthy. This talk looks at the pathway to trusting our belonging, and focuses on the healing that comes from letting in love and mirroring others goodness. "A blessing is in some way a reminder that helps a person come home to their true nature - to their awake heart - to their awake mind..." Talk includes quotes from Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

I often talk about how suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt parts of ourselves. Only when we become aware of what is here and bring presence to what we have been running from can we discover wholeness and freedom. The same is true when we explore our relationships to each other and the world. We cannot be free if we are pushing anyone out of our hearts. If we are discounting, rejecting, or turning away, we are not living from our wholeness. It creates suffering. When we live in resentment, we have separated ourselves and pulled away from our belonging. Trance of the Unreal Other All life forms are designed to perceive separation. It is part of our evolutionary story. And in moments that we find ourselves stuck in reactivity or in some conflict or division, we create what I call an  unreal other . Rather than a living, feeling Being with wants, needs and fears, another person has become an idea in our mind and is not subjectively alive or real to us. They are two-dimens...

I remember when I was on a book tour for  Radical Acceptance , one of the places I stopped was the Buddhist university, Naropa, and they had a big poster with a big picture of me and, underneath the photo, the caption was:  Something is wrong with me. The Trance of Unworthiness: Forgetting Who We Are I wrote about the  Trance of Unworthiness  in  Radical Acceptance  14 years ago, and I’ve found, over the years, that it is still pretty much the most pervasive expression of suffering that I encounter in myself and in those I’ve worked with. It comes out as fear or shame —  a feeling of being fundamentally flawed, unacceptable, not enough.  Who I am is not okay . A core teaching of the Buddha is that we suffer because we forget who we really are. We forget the essence — the awareness and the love that’s here — and we become caught in an identity that’s less than who we are. When we are in the  trance of unworthiness , we’re not aware ...

Tara shares a dear friend’s end-of-life insights on how every one of us has something we’re running from. It’s when we start recognizing what we’re resisting that we can re-enter the flow. "When we're on our way to what's next, trying to get the next pleasure or avoid a problem, we're running away. The U-Turn is the willingness to look: What's Here? What am I running away from? What am I unwilling to feel? It directs us back to what Pema Chodron calls the "soft spot" - that vulnerability - that actually, when we bring presence to it, is a portal to open hearted awareness. We feel like we've come home..." “What is it that allows us to open our hearts to every moment of our life? It’s the remembrance that it’s passing and it’s precious.” For Tara's full talk, go to:  https://www.tarabrach.com/reality-change/

A practice of seeing and acknowledging the sacred that lives through ourselves and all beings in every moment. For Tara's full talk, go to:  https://www.tarabrach.com/soul-recognition-namaste/

Our Life Experience is Shaped by Our Beliefs Ghandi describes how our beliefs become our thoughts and emotions which influence our behavior, and how our behavior creates our character and then that determines our destiny. In other words, the familiar pattern of thoughts that continuously cycle through our minds actually ends up shaping our life experience. Beliefs about ourselves and the world that cause suffering arise from our experiences of severed belonging — the wounding that happens early in life when we get the message, from our families and our culture, that there is something about us that is not okay. And we all have a negativity bias, which means that the conditioning is strong to seek evidence and latch on to whatever confirms that  sense that something is wrong with me . The Trance of Limiting Beliefs When we are suffering, we are believing something that is not true. To live inside the belief that we or others are bad and wrong is suffering. Rather than dir...

I recently heard about a man who attempted to sneak his pet turtle onto a flight by placing it between two buns and wrapping it in a KFC wrapper. When he was discovered, he told the officials that he just couldn’t leave his beloved pet at home. I could relate! There have been times that I’ve nearly canceled a teaching trip because I just didn’t want to leave my dog. There’s so much research now that having a pet — experiencing that sense of warmth and connection — increases longevity and happiness. The other side of the equation is that when there is a deficit of connection, there is loneliness and depression. Two Wings of a Bird The wounds in our lives are so often related to severed belonging and the ways that we, in some way, get split off from the feeling that who we are is okay. Through our families and our culture, we get the message that something is wrong with us. We split off because we get hurt or because another has not been able to stay with us. In the earliest p...