Tara Brach

So I think we need to keep the balance.

There's just all this beauty and preciousness to this world.

And...

if we look away in a continuous way from the parts of our larger earth body and being that are in trouble, we're cutting out a part of ourselves.

We are numbing or dimming a part of ourselves.

It's part of our

wholeness to feel our belonging to it all, to life, and to respond.

I mean, I often think of it in the very used metaphor of we're on this boat and the boat's tilting and sinking and some people are experiencing it more intensely than others.

I mean, those of us with more privilege, we're not as proximate to the violence and

and the boat's sinking, and everybody else on the boat is part of us.

And so the trainings I most value are the ones that wake us up to the truth of that belonging, and that everybody matters.

I often think of a conversation I had with Father Gregory Boyle, who I know you know, you've had him on the show, who really embodies the spirit of spiritual audacity and sensing

that we're all in it together.

And for those that aren't familiar, he's the author of Tattoos on the Heart and many other things.

He's known for his work with LA gangs, creating homeboy industries.

This amazing community of loving, trusting, healing beings made of these young people with history of huge violence.

They were rivals killing each other's friends and family.

So my inquiry to him, what made it possible?

You know, how did the people on the boat all get together and together hold hands and start scooping out the water and helping each other?

So he described this.