Embracing the Full Spectrum of Emotions: A Guide to Mindfulness and Self-Discovery with Tara Brach

Tara Brach 00:00:00  How do we become present enough and open enough and courageous enough to really be with the life that’s here?

Chris Forbes 00:00:14  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:00:58  For years I tried to meditate by following my breath and honestly, it never seemed to work. It just seemed like my mind raced and raced. I used to joke it was like the dark circus coming to town.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:11  If that’s you. When it comes to following your breath and meditation, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. You may just not have found the way that works best for you. Tara Brock, who’s a psychologist, a world class meditation teacher, author of wonderful books like Radical Acceptance and True Refuge, helps us experiment with a variety of approaches that are guided by a simple compass intention. We talk about stepping out of trance, the tight story of what’s wrong with me or what’s wrong here, and in the direct experience where kindness and awareness can grow. At the same time, I share how shifting my own practice from the breath to listening to sounds uncovered more aliveness and peace for me. If you’re ready for practical ways to be here. Not perfectly, but more fully. Stay with us. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Tara. Welcome to the show.

Tara Brach 00:02:08  It’s lovely to be with you, Eric.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:10  I am very excited to have you on. I think I’ve been trying to arrange this for a while.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:15  When I started the show, you were one of the guests right away that I was like, I definitely want to get her on the show. Your your writing and your teachings have been a big influence on me and on several people that I am close with, so I’m really happy to have you.

Tara Brach 00:02:28  Thank you. Thank you.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:30  So let’s start, like we always do with the parable. There’s a grandfather who’s talking with his grandson, and he says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? and the grandfather says the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:08  And I know you know it because it was in one of your books.

Tara Brach 00:03:11  Yeah, it’s a familiar one. And I remember it was coming out right after, you know, the the bombing of the World Trade Center and so on. And that was kind of one of the ones that was circulating. And I think what it means is that every one of us has the conditioning towards, greed and aversion and aggression. You know, we all have that in our nervous system, our kind of primitive limbic conditioning. And we also, each one of us has this, evolving brain and evolving consciousness that’s capable of, unfathomable amounts of loving and of creativity and of presence. And so the question is, do we get hijacked? And is our life run by the fear part, or do we have more increasing access to our our highest potential? And so the the parable says it’s whichever one you feed. And I would say that’s partly accurate. And by that I mean it’s really important to pay attention to and nourish our hearts and to bring to mind the goodness and other people and be very compassionate towards where they’re suffering.

Tara Brach 00:04:27  And when the more primitive conditioning arises, which it does. I think for every one of us, every day.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:36  Yep. At least.

Tara Brach 00:04:36  Me. Every single day. Yeah. When you have a judgment, that’s a more primitive part of our conditioning. When that arises, it’s not about starving that wolf. It’s more about bringing that into our awareness with interest and with care. So when the fearful wolf appears not to make it bad. It’s. It’s just fright, a frightened part of ourselves. But to not be not buy into the narrative, not buy into the narrative. That the only way that people will do what I want is if I threaten them, or if I judge them or, you know, not buy into the narrative. Watch that part of ourselves with interest and with care so that we’re not. Our identity doesn’t get captured by it.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:24  Yeah, exactly. And I’d like to talk about clarifying that idea just a little bit, because in your work, you talk a lot about being present with the emotions.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:33  You know, here is this situation, here is this emotion being present with it and opening to it. at the same time, also in, in the Buddhist tradition and a lot of your work, we talk about the direction that we point. Our mind is going to be more of what we get. If we think more about hostility, we get more and more hostility. And I’m always interested in. Where’s the balance between those things? What’s the right way to tell? I’m genuinely feeling and emotion. I’m going through what I what I need to go through versus I’m telling myself a story or I’m taking a point of view that is is painful and should be dropped.

Tara Brach 00:06:12  I think the way you ask that question, Eric, actually points to a response, which is that if you’re paying attention to the storyline of, you know, the repeating stories of somebody else is wrong and bad, or I’m wrong and bad, then you’re just going to be perpetuating the cycle. In other words, whatever, where thoughts are going through, have a certain biochemistry and we get stuck in that state.

Tara Brach 00:06:40  But if instead you actually come into the body and in a very unconditional and kind way, open to the feelings and the energy and the body, then there’s actual transformation. Then what happens is that there’s a shift in awareness, where you open into a larger sense of being, and the emotions are current in your ocean, but you’re not identified with them. So I would say whenever there’s a strong, sticky, charged emotion, that’s the time it’s asking for attention. What a great sage once said that if you if there’s one question you ask yourself, it’s what am I unwilling to feel? And it’s the raw, sticky, vulnerable stuff we’re unwilling to feel. And it’s in the moment that we become willing that it no longer has so much control. It’s like the shamans say that when you begin to name a fear and then touch into it, it’s no longer controlling you. So I would say that that’s a key element in healing and spiritual awakening. And sometimes it’s described as, you know, in the Tibetan art.

Tara Brach 00:07:54  You see these animal headed goddesses that represent delusion and fear and hatred and so on, and you see them really at the gateway to the temple, that you have to go through them to enter sacred space, and you see them around the circle of the mandala that you have to go through them to get really to the place of stillness and peace. So that’s one key domain in spiritual life. But then there’s another one which is to be able to remember and visualize and pray for and turn towards the light. In other words, it’s already there in us. This our awakened potential is already there. But there’s a real value to remembering the goodness to on purpose, remembering what we love, remembering what we’re grateful for because we can get a habit we can get in this habit of being addicted to the suffering. So I think that’s kind of what you’re pointing to. And that balancing of yes, be with the difficult emotions. Feel. Feel them in your body and take time each day to remember what you’re grateful for.

Tara Brach 00:09:02  Or when you see something beautiful, pause and savor it. Because we don’t take in really, sometimes the goodness and the beauty. We tend to kind of skim over it. We’re so busily on our way somewhere else.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:16  Yeah, I love that whole whole description of it’s kind of not one or the other. It’s it’s it’s both.

Tara Brach 00:09:23  Right, exactly.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:24  And yeah, we had, Rick Hanson on who I, I know that you also know and he, you know, he talked a lot about that idea of taking in the good positive thinking sometimes is is presented as a panacea for a lot of things. And that’s not what this is. This is just choosing there is good there at any time. You don’t have to make it up. It’s that which gets the most of our attention, if we can, to place it there.

Tara Brach 00:09:47  And so I love what you’re saying because. And Rick talks about this a lot too. We do have our survival conditioning, that negativity bias that gives us the habit of looking for what’s wrong.

Tara Brach 00:10:01  And one of the things I’ve become aware of in the last decade or so is how often we’re in a mindset where we think we have a problem, that there there’s something we need to solve or figure out, or there’s something that’s wrong about what’s happening right now, and we need to change it. And I have become very aware that in the moment that we stop thinking of it as a problem and just say, oh, so this is what’s happening. It’s asking for my attention. We actually have a lot more access to creativity, to empathy, to a real vitality. So it’s an interesting inquiry. And I invite your listeners to consider this of, you know, if right now There’s not a problem. Really? What’s the moment like? I mean, if there’s really no problem, if there’s nothing wrong and we can get without a taste of freedom to not add the negativity bias in.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:04  Yeah, that’s such a powerful idea. I was asked that question once by a by a meditation teacher. Like what is here? You know, just pretend for a minute that nothing is wrong.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:13  You know, you may you may not believe it, but just pretend that everything is perfect. Right in this moment, you know there’s nothing you have to do or solve. What is it like? And there is a you know, I had a pretty profound experience in that moment when I kind of went, whoa. And I think that second thing is a guest recently referred to our brains as a problem factory. Like, if, you know, once one is gone, it just creates another. And I’ve noticed that for myself, if I’m not, if I’m not consciously working on being more present and more aware, it’s just I just go from one to the next and I’ll probably find one because that’s what my brain is used to doing is working on problems.

Tara Brach 00:11:50  Yeah, it’s almost like if we’re not being vigilant and, you know, tossing around a problem, we feel like there’s something that’s going to blindside us. So we’re always, you know, in that kind of defensive mode. That sense that around the corner, something’s going to be too much to handle.

Tara Brach 00:12:08  So it becomes very powerful when we challenge that, because in a way, if we’re living all the time, like around the corner, something’s too much, we’re not really bringing our whole heartedness and our tenderness and our clarity to what’s right here.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:23  And so this idea of coming back to the present moment, you know, that that being the one of the solutions to, to a lot of what troubles us is one of those things that is easy to say but is hard to do. At least I found certainly earlier and still sometimes, like I would come back to the present moment, but there wouldn’t. I wouldn’t know what was here. And then my brain would be back in two seconds and there I would be again. And I would come back to the present moment and again, same thing. It’s like I’m here. But wait, there’s nothing compelling enough in this moment. Is your perspective that that’s really just a thing of training, that the formal meditation process and the formal process of awareness allows us to come back to see the the deeper nuances in the present moment so that we’re able to stay there longer.

Tara Brach 00:13:11  Yeah. I think you’re saying it in a really, powerful way. I mean, one one teacher said, you know, when asked to describe the world, his response was lost in thought. And we spent so many moments in a virtual reality where we’re in some trance of thinking we don’t actually have that much experience staying in our senses. And if you ask, if you ask yourself right this moment, how aware am I right this moment of the energy inside my hands are. My feet are the feeling in my heart. It’s like for most of us, we’re mostly in the head and in our ideas of the world. So the training really of coming into the moment is coming into our senses. So if we can pause and start practicing bringing the attention down into the body and feel the throat and the chest and the belly and get the knack of staying a bit more, then all the nuances of what we call present start coming alive. Because in the space where we’re not lost in thought, really, the light of awareness begins to shine through.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:52  Eight years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. My life was full with good things, a challenging career, two teenage boys, a growing podcast, and a mother who needed care. But I had a persistent feeling of I can’t keep doing this, but I valued everything I was doing and I wasn’t willing to let any of them go. And the advice to do less only made me more overwhelmed. That’s when I stumbled into something I now call this still point method, a way of using small moments throughout my day to change not how much I had to do, but how I felt while I was doing it. And so I wanted to build something I wish I’d had eight years ago. So you don’t have to stumble towards an answer that something is now here and it’s called overwhelm is optional tools for when you can’t do less. It’s an email course that fits into moments you already have. Taking less than ten minutes total a day. It isn’t about doing less, it’s about relating differently to what you do.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:53  I think it’s the most useful tool we’ve ever built. The launch price is $29. If life is too full, but you still need relief from overwhelm, check out overwhelm is optional. Go to one you feed. Them. That’s one you feed them. I think that’s one of the things that can be discouraging for people is you do it, and then it’s kind of done, and then you feel like you have to keep doing it. And you have a line that I love in which you say that, meditation is a setup for feeling deficient. Unless we respectfully acknowledge the strength of our conditioning to race away from presence.

Tara Brach 00:16:33  It’s the truth. And one thing I’ve noticed is that the more we have either trauma or major wounding early on the moor. The strategy of dissociating and leaving our body is pronounced. So for those that have had that kind of really difficult early childhood or whatever, it’s even harder. It’s even harder because the rawness feels in the body feels intolerable. So it takes a tremendous self-compassion.

Tara Brach 00:17:05  I probably rate self-compassion as the single quality that most can serve us in meditating in, in getting more intimate with each other and whatever matters to us in our lives.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:22  Yeah, that is such an important piece. And I think that recognition that this is a really challenging endeavor and it doesn’t happen quickly and unfortunately. Right. I think we all wish we had some silver bullet to give. That would be like, okay, now everything’s better. But this constant coming back to awareness into the moment, into our body can can take a great deal of time to, to get better at. And I think it’s so important because I hear people say all the time, well, I can’t meditate. I’m not any good at meditating. And I’m sure you hear that, that also it’s that recognizing that like a there isn’t any goal and B, that’s the human condition and it’s okay.

Tara Brach 00:18:00  Exactly right. It really helps to know that we’re not alone in it. That coming into the present moment is hard for everyone, but it’s also important to know that it’s really possible.

Tara Brach 00:18:11  One of the challenges is if we’ve just been introduced to one kind of meditation or another, that isn’t a match for what really is a good gateway for us, then we can get discouraged. So when I teach, I and I offer, you know, I have like hundreds and hundreds of guided meditations. I offer a lot of different gateways in because for some people, it’s going to be through a very gentle, repeated scanning of the body. And for another person, it might be through a heart meditation that helps us remember and trust our own goodness. And yet for another person listening to sounds, just just listening to sounds helps to quiet the mind. And then for another person, there’s a certain kind of breathing that actually calms the nervous system and makes it easier to quiet and collect and arrive. So part of what I really invite is experiment, experiment and trust that there’s something in us that wants to settle. And we will if we find kind of the pathway that’s most of a match for us.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:15  Will you lead me perfectly into the next question? because I’m one of those people that the breath doesn’t work, and that’s what I tried. Year after year after year. And, you know, never really became a consistent meditator. And then when I heard about sound and the body, all of a sudden kind of everything changed. But my my question is, I agree, I think experimentation is great, but what I don’t have a good handle on and that I find myself wrestling with is, okay, I’m going to meditate today. What am I going to do, you know? Should we pick the one that that we like and just sort of stay on that path? Or is there some degree of trying different ones or that’s what I’m, you know, kind of kind of going through now is should I just keep doing the same thing or there’s several different approaches that I seem to get results with. and it ends up being, you know, I try and make that decision before I go into meditation, obviously, but sometimes I’m in the middle of meditation.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:11  This isn’t as good. Maybe I should be trying that kind or that kind, which is obviously profoundly against the point.

Speaker 4 00:20:17  yeah. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:18  So what are your thoughts on that?

Tara Brach 00:20:20  That’s a great question. So two levels of response. And one is I’ve now watched people over probably four decades, people, all different kinds of spiritual traditions and meditations and so on. And one thing I’ve noticed the difference between people that really keep on evolving and unfolding in a creative way, and those that either plateau out or quit. It’s not. It doesn’t have anything to do with what particular meditation or practice they’re doing, whether it’s tai Chi, Chi gung, Zog, Chen Zhen, whatever it has to do with, staying connected with a very sincere quality of aspiration, really sincere about waking up. And when somebody that’s the longing, there’s a passion about truth. Well, really, what’s the nature of reality? And there’s a passion about loving without holding back. Like, I just really want this heart to be free.

Tara Brach 00:21:21  That and there’s it coming back again and again to that aspiration. There’s a certain intuition, then, about finding our ways to the practices that serve. There’s less inclination to pull away from our practice just because it’s challenging. There’s less inclination to hop around because we’re restless, but there’s less inclination to stick with something out of duty when we might be experimenting. So it’s really very individual. I mean, if you’re the kind of person that is restless and is going to is kind of always needs to sample something else on the menu, then I’d encourage you to let some roots go down and just gain some real familiarity with some meditation practice that, you know, in some ways helping you become more present. If, on the other hand, you’re a person that that doggedly just always stays with one thing or doesn’t, you know, just somebody tells you something, you just keep doing it. Take a chance and an experiment for you. It sounds like, you know, you might want to have a weave that you do that includes something that’s, you know, is going to keep on, letting go of armoring around the heart, but also bringing clarity and then keep going deeper and deeper with that.

Tara Brach 00:22:43  so it’s it’s always going to be case by case, but there are some guidelines that we can kind of stay alert to. The deepest thing, though, is your intention. And I really encourage us all to at the beginning of every whether it’s an interview like this or a meditation sitting or being with somebody to just remember what about this really matters to me because our heart is a compass. It will show us where to go.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:09  Yeah, that’s great advice. And it’s something I took from reading your book again in preparation for this interview that I don’t think I had landed on before, which is to set an intention. Why am I? I find that helpful in keeping a steady meditation practice for sure. Is remembering why am I doing this? You know, it’s not another chore on the list. It’s there’s a reason that I’m I’m doing this.

Tara Brach 00:23:30  We will not stay with meditation unless there’s a certain degree of fun and pleasure in it for us. Yeah, it just won’t work if you’re grim. It just won’t work.

Tara Brach 00:23:38  So I know for myself, part of what’s going on is I really want to follow my interests and interests. Not like conceptual, but I want to stay where it feels alive. And I also there has to be a certain amount of pleasure in it. So weaving in the hard practices, really bringing alive sensation and whatever helps to feel us most vibrant in it, play around because, humans don’t keep doing things unless they feel gratified.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:08  That’s right. It’s that elephant. In the rider analogy, the rider is your conscious brain, and it’s trying to direct things. And the elephant is your emotional side. And you know, the elephant is only going to go where the rider wants it to go so long if it doesn’t want to go. Right, exactly. You got to get the elephant engaged in the game. And that’s the emotional piece of it. The reward and the enjoyment and the the feeling of satisfaction.

Tara Brach 00:24:31  Exactly.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:32  So one of the things that I wanted to explore a little bit more. Is there’s this idea, we talked about it right out of the gate about dropping into the body.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:40  About feeling our emotions, dealing with difficult emotions. But a lot of people that I know and myself firmly included in this camp. Depression is one of the things that we that I tend to wrestle with more. And I get this question from listeners a fair amount, which is I don’t feel much of anything. So what am I dropping into? I don’t have a strong emotion. I’m working with. What I’ve basically got is numbness, and I drop into my body and I pay attention to my hand. And honestly, it doesn’t feel like there’s much going on there. What’s the way that we work with with that, in order to deal with that condition or that situation?

Tara Brach 00:25:18  I’m really glad you brought up depression because I’ve had many people say, you know, I’m either that I try to get in touch with it and it’s numb, or when I get in touch with it, I sink and it’s like, it’s just like an endless, endless sinking downward. It’s like it doesn’t. If there’s no real insight or anything refreshing that comes out of it, I just feel more depressed.

Tara Brach 00:25:38  So there’s a few things you know in for all of us, the deepest place of transformation is when there’s just pure awareness. Awareness is what makes us up. And there are all these different, skillful means that help us to be positioned in a way that we can be more aware. And for depression, the skillful means really often have to do with exercising and engaging our body and mind, with nature, with the elements and with other people. Getting enough sleep and then being physically and emotionally engaged is a skillful means. If there’s depression to activate enough. So then as you bring the attention inward, you actually can connect with the aliveness.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:31  Yep. I think that’s such good advice. And I think for me, it’s that active movement and nature that are the two best anti-depressants I know.

Tara Brach 00:26:41  Me too, me too. Anti-anxiety too.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:43  Yeah. And of course, the challenge that can make depression such a monster is that it’s that the energy to do anything is so lacking. It’s like this sort of catch 22.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:52  Like if I. If you do something, you’ll feel better, but I really can’t. You know, I don’t have the energy. And so for me, I think over the years it’s become a I’ve made it into just sort of a habit that like when I start to feel that way, like I just, I have learned to propel myself into motion. depression hates a moving target. Is the is the saying I love.

Tara Brach 00:27:14  It’s a very good saying and it helps to have other people, you know, on the team with you. Yeah. In other words, sometimes whether it’s having a running partner or a walking partner or whatever. engagement, depression needs engagement, and it needs one other thing, which is it needs to be forgiven because we, whether it’s depression or shame or whatever, we take it personally like it’s my depression or my fear. And then that brings more of a sense of something’s wrong with me, which actually deepens the cycle. So to add to engagement, commit. And this I’m speaking to all of us commit to truly forgiving the presence of the difficult emotion.

Tara Brach 00:27:59  It’s not our fault. It’s like depression is not our fault. It whether it’s genetic or epigenetic, having to do with early childhood stuff or the culture, it’s just not like we, you know, got born and pressed the button saying, this is the emotion I want to be living with. You know, we didn’t choose it. And so there’s something about forgiveness that actually creates space. Like, I’ll often I do it with anger, you know, I have anger will come up and I’ll have this idea of, oh, I shouldn’t be angry. I mean, I it’s not a spiritual, you know, feeling. And one of the first things I’ll do is go. Okay. Forgiven. Forgiven. I send that message into the anger like it’s. It’s just another weather system. It’s coming just like the outer weather. And when I forgive the anger, I’m not so identified with it. And I can then just feel it as sensations and not believe the the dialogue that goes with it. And it comes and it goes in a much more wholesome way.

Tara Brach 00:28:58  So forgive the depression.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:00  Yeah, I think that’s such a big one in such an important one. And the parable of the I don’t know if it’s a parable, but the Buddha’s teaching of the second arrow is one that I talk about on the show all the time, because it’s that I’m feeling bad about feeling bad that we can actually work with. Right? Like, it’s very hard to not feel depressed. Right. There’s things we can do, but I do feel like we have more control over what we layer on top of that. You know, the and you talk about this in your book And it kind of leads into that next question, which is your first book was really about accepting ourselves the way we are and the suffering that that happens to ourselves. And your second book is more a little bit about, hey, there’s going to be suffering out in the world. That’s an inevitable fact, you know, or, or pain that comes in from the outside world. But how do we deal with that in the most skillful way? And that’s one of the things I love about the Buddhist teachings, is it really normalizes for me that things are not going to be going well in life, like difficult things happen.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:58  That’s part of being human. And to your point, it’s not our fault and it’s not our, you know, it’s not a failure. But what are some of the more skillful means we can use in, you know, when when life presents us with things that we really wish it wouldn’t?

Tara Brach 00:30:11  Yeah. No, it’s a it’s a powerful question. And that is why I wrote True Refuge. I had in my own life. I got really sick and the spiral of sickness went on and on. So I was going pretty downhill. And that’s an example of okay, stuff happens. And, you know, I went from being very, very athletic to not being able to even walk up a slight incline. I am now much, much better than I was. But for about eight years, I didn’t know what was going to happen. And what that did was it forced me to find a way to get my arms around sickness, death, dying at the same time. I lost both parents and, you know, so all the encounters and the teachings, both in Buddhism and I think it’s really all the perennial teachings, basically point us towards finding the awareness and heart that’s really timeless.

Tara Brach 00:31:05  It’s, it’s it’s accessible to each of us that helps us to rest in something large enough so we have room for the waves, and that can sound abstract. And yet, if you’ve been with somebody that’s dying and you’ve sensed how the only thing that’s big enough for that dying is the loving that’s there. That’s the only thing that allows. It still hurts, but there’s space for it. And that’s the way it is with everything, that there are things that are still going to hurt us tremendously. But if we find access to that, what I sometimes think of as the fearless heart, the heart that is big enough for fear, the big enough for the losses and the grief, then we have a way to take refuge away, to come home to beingness that can move through things with a sense of tenderness and open heartedness and grace, even when it’s really, really difficult. That’s the essential message in True Refuge, my second book, and really, how to then find our way to that timeless heart.

Tara Brach 00:32:09  How do we become present enough and open enough and courageous enough to really be with the life that’s here?

Eric Zimmer 00:32:47  I’m going to ask a question that I don’t think there’s really an answer for, but I’m always I’m fascinated by it, and I find more and more people asking me this question. so which is what is the meaning of life? Or why are we here? Or, and, and I’m just curious to get your, your take on that. I don’t actually believe you have the answer. if you do, though, I’m very excited to hear it.

Tara Brach 00:33:17  you know, that’s not the kind of question I pose in my own inquiries. I don’t pose the why questions so much. Why are we here or whatever, but a similar question is what matters the most to me or to us? And and that that has a similar feeling tone to it. And I could say, I could say, you know, for myself what matters. And sometimes described as the two wings of awareness that we really need both to be free.

Tara Brach 00:33:51  What matters is deeply understanding truth or understanding reality. Not not like in a mental way, but a lived way. And the other side of that is loving fully. And so if I had to say, what’s our purpose or anything? It’s to love fully, to totally inhabit our being in a way that we feel our belonging to all other beings and can express that, really express that authentically in the way we live our lives.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:24  And do you think that you don’t think about and ask those questions because you have an experience of being alive that feels meaningful?

Tara Brach 00:34:32  The word meaning sometimes trips me and others up because it’s a cognitive word. So for me, Matt, what matters is more, mattering. What I long for, what what my heart cares about has a more visceral experience than meaning, which is a little more mental. So it may be just that I’m going at it with a more feminine quality of inquiry. I’m not sure.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:59  Yeah, I like that word matter, because the analogy I’ve been thinking about lately is, you know, intellectually, I’ll never have any idea why this is and what’s happening.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:09  And, and I could never intellectually convince you of, you know, why something was important. But if I walked out my door right now and I saw a dog laying in front of me suffering, I would know to your word that it mattered that dog not suffer. I could never explain it intellectually. There would be no way I could be like, well, you could be like, well, there’s billions of dogs. I mean, we could go through the whole, you know, but you could never talk me out of in that moment that that dog suffering mattered. And for me, that was a big turning point when I went, oh, I’m never going to answer this question intellectually. I’m never going to get there. But I can feel kind of and I think it’s exactly what you just said in a more eloquent way than I had been saying. It is that what matters is what connects us to those bigger things. And it’s a felt sense, not in an intellectual sense. And the reason I asked you if you thought you didn’t ask those questions is that the more I have moved into that part of my life and in that way, the less I’ve had those questions also.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:08  And I’m just kind of curious because I do get them, you know, from people. I’m sure you do too. And it’s it’s a genuine yearning, but it seems to come up less in people who are truly engaged in life in a deeper way.

Tara Brach 00:36:21  Well, that’s why when I get a conceptual question, I reframe it in a way that allows a person to discover what is true for them in a more visceral way. And that’s why I would shift the word meaning to matters.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:35  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You use the word trance a lot. You talk about different types of trances, but let’s talk about what? What you mean in the use of that word? In general.

Tara Brach 00:36:46  When I talk about trance, I’m talking about a kind of narrow, distorted, contorted experience of reality. And it and it narrows because we’re, there’s an overlay of mental, conceptual, you know, words, ideas, interpretations. And so to step out of a trance means to step out of our mental interpretations and into reality, back into our bodies and our hearts and what we’re directly experiencing and the biggest way we have a trance in our lives.

Tara Brach 00:37:19  The most immediate is that we move around with an ongoing storyline about moi, about who I am, what I need to do, what’s wrong with me, what what’s going to make a difference, and so on. We it’s like our world is very narrowed into this self-conscious, self-centered narrative. And it’s not that we’re bad for it, it’s more that it’s just keeping us from a much more mysterious and vibrant experience of beingness. So the way out of trance is just to recognize, oh, okay, I’m living right now in a thought realm, you know, and thoughts are like a map. We need them. In other words, it’s what allows humans to be the most dominant species on planet Earth. It’s our, you know, surviving and thriving and so on. We need them. But if that’s the end of development, then we’re stuck in a conceptual world. There’s a further evolution beyond a self living inside thoughts. And that’s a self that’s actually awake and awareness.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:19  Yeah, I like the way that you have addressed it before, because I hear a lot of Buddhist teachings saying that the sense of a separate self is an illusion, and I like the way that you sort of describe it as well.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:29  It’s not exactly an illusion, but it’s only it’s a very small part of the picture. It’s a very limited way of viewing it, because I think when people hear it’s an illusion, they go, well, it feels so real. And I like that instead of saying what it is, is giving a context of it as as it’s not the only way to view reality.

Tara Brach 00:38:49  One of the phrases that I find most valuable when you think of, let’s say, I have a story about myself and that I’m falling short, and I say to somebody, well, if you’re believing that is real, is that belief really true? And they say, well, it feels really true. It feels like I’m deficient, I’m defective, I’m, I’m a failure. So the phrase I like is real but not true. And the reason I like that phrase is that the belief I’m deficient, I’m defective. It’s a real story in our minds and it feels real in our body. So it’s real in that way.

Tara Brach 00:39:22  It’s happening. The thoughts happening, the feelings are happening. It’s real, but it’s not the truth of existence. In other words, it’s not that that’s what’s actually the living reality. In other words, it’s just an idea in our mind and a feeling in our body. And to begin to get that opens up a little space so we can sense there’s something bigger and maybe more a living reality than our belief about ourselves. It helps us to shake some of the most limiting experiences that really bring suffering in our lives.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:58  That’s really powerful. I love that one. I had not heard that before, and I think that is a very useful tool. We’re nearing the end of our time here, but I want to ask you, you say that we all have our own ways of distancing ourselves from reality or going into trance or, you know, call it whichever of these things are or we all have our own ways for doing that, that are, that are kind of individual, but that the process of waking up is universal.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:24  Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And then I’d like to maybe circle it back to some of our earlier conversation around how, for each of us, some of the things on the path are going to be different. You know, some of it’s individualized. So what’s universal and what parts are kind of ours to tailor to what we need?

Tara Brach 00:40:40  We all have strategies of trying to control things. You know, every one of us comes. I sometimes think of it like we come into this world and conditions are not always cooperative. So we have, you know, parents that might not see us for who we are, might not give us unconditional love. We have a culture that’s addictive and violent. So we all put on a spacesuit. We all are trying to navigate best as we can. And the spacesuit is our ego control systems to defend ourselves, to appear good, to try to produce, sometimes to pretend something so others don’t attack us too. We have addictive qualities to numb and soothe, so we all have our strategies, and they’re all ways of trying to control things so we don’t have to feel bad so we can feel more comfortable.

Tara Brach 00:41:27  So it’s universal that we have ways of leaving the present moment. And there’s all sorts of particulars on your strategies versus mine. Some people are more have withdrawing strategies and others are more aggressive. They’re all spacesuit strategies. But the universal is that when we have those strategies, we get identified with the strategies with our ego control system and we forget who’s looking through the mask. We forget the the consciousness right now that’s listening to these words. And we forget the the tenderness and the heart that’s really that really cares about living and loving. So there’s a forgetting and that’s universal. If they’re suffering, it’s because you’ve forgotten really who you are. You’re identified with a more limited version of being with the spacesuit self. And so the way back first is just to begin to notice how that’s happening. Okay. So what happens when I feel threatened just to begin to notice our strategies without judging them, just to notice. And the the very simple, you know, strategy for coming back is just to name what we notice.

Tara Brach 00:42:44  Okay. Defending afraid. You know often obsessions just to name it. And then just very gently kind of invite ourselves back into the moment, into the body, into the heart. That’s kind of a universal of noticing the way we strategically dissociated and gently bringing ourselves back. Another universal is that this is from the Bodhisattva path. You know, the path of the Awakening Being is. It has to be with compassion. So one of the things I teach most regularly is when you’re suffering just to put your hand on your heart and offer some message of kindness inwardly, because in the moment that there’s a gesture of kindness, even if it’s just the intention to be kind. Something in the armoring of the separate self begins to soften, and we begin to get a little more of a taste of who we are. Beyond that, that spacesuit self, we begin to sense the purity of our hearts and trust that a little more. So those are two examples of the ways of coming back that are universal to notice the strategy, come back into the body and feel what’s right here, and to bring a gesture of kindness to that moment.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:00  I think that’s a beautiful place for us to wrap up the interview. Tara, thank you so much. Again, I encourage everybody to check out your talks and your books and everything. You’ve been a genuine inspiration to me, and I’ve really gotten a lot out of this conversation.

Tara Brach 00:44:15  And so have I. Eric, you’re wonderful to talk to. I love your inquiry and thank you for what you’re offering. I feel like you’re offering something that really invites others into this whole stream of waking up. So many blessings.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:29  You also. Okay. Take care.

Speaker 4 00:44:31  All right, all right. You too. Bye bye.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:33  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood ofWhat we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity. But. we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.