Tara Brach

But again,

it's avoiding the reality of the suffering.

It's a spiritual bypass.

So I'm bringing this all up because it's very easy to use the path to pull away from suffering when pulling away actually just disconnects us from our heart and from that fierce, fresh intelligence and from really being fully alive.

I think that's really important to bring up because, you know, people either tend towards dissociating and not feeling touched by the world or over-associating, like kind of having that kind of a thin skin where they feel like they're flooded by the world.

And so it feels important that we all find our ways of engaging and being able to modulate how we take in what's here so that we can respond and not be overwhelmed.

And for the person who says, I get overwhelmed,

I sometimes will guide in a practice.

The Tibetan practice is called Tanglan.

It's a way of taking in what's painful but then breathing it out so you sense that it's being held by something larger.

And the key to not feeling overwhelmed is to feel that you can be touched.

Your heart can be kind of a transformer of sorrows.

You can breathe in and be touched, but you can breathe out and let it be

held by the heart of the world.

It's kind of like the ocean holding the waves.

There's something larger that's holding it.

And if we can remember there's something larger that's holding it, then we can let ourselves be touched and actually respond with care but not be overwhelmed.

Huh?

Neighborly to me is one of the highest of arts, so yeah.

I think of bodhisattva as the fullness of our evolutionary potential.