Tara Brach

I'm really happy to be with you.

Yeah, well, I'm glad you're starting right there because I can feel the extremes of this time and

Maybe just to say in a very personal way, I can feel my nervous system and my heart very much impacted by both the speed of change, but even more by the destructiveness of the energies playing out.

I think of it like we're in this kind of spiraling vortex into a shadow where we're in this collective regression where, you know, fear and aggression and violence is really there.

And there's such a harshness to it, this violence against our fellow beings.

So I can feel in my own body and heart going into anger and blame and othering

regularly.

And I can also scent under it a grieving and a deep caring.

One of the kind of teachings that I keep hearing in my mind, it's from Thich Nhat Hanh, he wrote this, he said, this, my dear, is the greatest challenge to being alive.

He says, to witness injustice in the world, cruelty, violence, and not allow it to consume our light, our love, our capacity to respond.

So I think of that a lot, about that we all naturally have this reactivity.

And I also think about how, and this is true in our individual lives, and it's also through history what we see, is that times of darkness call out a kind of deepened and more engaged caring and a fresh intelligence.

And I'm sensing this happening now, a kind of emergent movement

that really embodies that.

We can talk more about that.

But the deal is that it needs nurturing.

I mean, so when you say, you know, how am I locating myself?

I'm really aware that these times are calling for us to evolve our consciousness, to intentionally wake up our hearts in a way that we're, what I call, widening the circles of belonging, sensing more and more

that we're part of the world, we belong to the world and to each other.

And I'm finding when I teach, more than ever before, so many people are directly impacted, like very few degrees of separation, directly impacted by what's unfolding.