Pathways to Trusting the Gold
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What does Tara Brach mean by “trusting the gold” and how does she introduce the talk?
Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brach Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrach.com, where you can also join our email list. Now, let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence.
Namaste.
Namaste.
Welcome, friends. One of my favorite metaphors is that we all develop spacesuits. They merge through our development through life. And the spacesuit is what you might call our ego structure, our defenses, our aggressions, our beliefs. It's all the strategies we develop to get love and approval, to feel safe, to protect ourselves, to have some control over what happens. And to some degree, we need these spacesuits to navigate our world. It's not an easy world. The deep suffering is that we come to believe we're the spacesuits and we forget who's looking through. We forget the awareness that's listening right now, the heart that gets touched, that loving awareness that's our essence. There's a beautiful line from Kabir.
Inside this clay jug, there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine mountains, the God whom I love, is inside. I think many of us have a longing to really know this, not just the idea, but to directly experience that this light, this love, this spirit is living through us. It's intrinsic to who we are. So today's talk is one that I chose from the archives that explores this awakening to our deepest, our true nature, and how we come to recognize and trust that it's here. I gave this talk at a meditation retreat, and that setting allowed for a certain depth and spaciousness in the exploration. So friends, I hope you find it valuable. Namaste and good evening. We often begin things and end things with bringing our palms together and saying namaste and yet never even created any context for that or naming of that.
And I just wanted to share what it means to me. That namaste in a literal way means I bow to the spirit or the light or the beauty or the goodness that lives through you and me and this whole living universe. So there's something in a pause and a bow that just is part of that remembrance of what's living through us which is very much the theme for tonight's talk. But to begin with to say, you've been here enough days that I would suspect for many you've pretty much sensed this range of the possibility of a quietness and a, yeah, right here, you know, some sense of that arriving and ease or presence. And then for most also know what it's been like to be in what we've been called the forgetting in that trance of completely that incessant inner dialogue and the star of the show is moi, right?
You might remember this one of the guys in a bar talking to the bartender and he said, you know, I know I'm nobody but I'm all I can talk about or think about, you know? And it is interesting when we start bringing the inner dialogue above the line, just how much our world circles around what I want, what I'm afraid of, how I can be more comfortable. And then of course we add that second arrow of, God, I'm so self-centered, you know. And it's the way we all are. It's the design of the mind. And we have a background story of a self moving through time and wanting to feel like we're making progress. That's one of the backstories of retreat. I bring that up because when I look at that sense, and it came up this morning, one of the questions of moving through time, it's a very, very compelling kind of illusion that we're in this bubble of self navigating through time trying to get somewhere.
And most of the time we feel like we're on our way to something. In fact, you might have noticed that the precious moments here are when that does fall away. Have some of you noticed? So if I look back at my own kind of biography in terms of spiritual practice, I moved into an ashram when I was about 20 and it was one of those very vigorous kind of ashrams.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does Tara Brach mean by “trusting the gold” and how does she introduce the talk?
0:04–9:16
2
How does the “spacesuit” metaphor illustrate our ego structures and the feeling of being separate?
9:16–15:58
3
Why do we get caught in the “trance of unworthiness” and how does forgetting our true awareness happen?
15:58–24:10
4
How do early experiences of nurturing and belonging shape our ability to trust ourselves?
24:10–32:01
5
What is the RAIN practice and how does it serve as a “U‑turn” out of the limbic trance?
32:01–40:04
6
How does the first U‑turn lead to feeling the body’s pain and cultivating self‑compassion?
40:04–47:20
7
What is the second U‑turn and how does it help us rest in the formless presence behind the waves?
47:20–56:35
8
What final invitation does Tara give for recognizing who we are when nothing is wrong?
56:35–1:04:55
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Tara Brach
Meditation: Resting in Reality (24 min)
The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance
Meditation: Aware and Alive (20 min.)
Ask Me Anything, Part 3: Tara Answers Questions on Forgiveness, Injustice & Compassionate Parenting
Meditation: Inner Refuge of Calm (20:25 min.)
Ask Me Anything: Questions & Responses with Tara - Part II