Play a Greater Part (great for this post election grimness)

As always, listening to Tara Brach's podcast and just learning so much. I get excited to listen. I always know I can learn something about myself and that I am not alone. 

The one I took notes for is called "Play a Greater Part" - Bodhisattva for our Times - Part 1. 

So much of this, as always, reverberated with me. With what I'm experiencing in life, and with this election. It is so incredible. I'm so glad this is here for us to listen to. 

This election (and my other events in life) have me feeling confused and lost. That is ok, life is confusing and ever changing. I want to move away from using the word "confusing" I cannot understand all the realities people are experiencing, I can only understand mine. Even my reality is difficult to understand, learning a lot about myself.

Listen to the podcast, I'm 100% sure you'll walk away with something from listening to it. 

If you'd like you can read my notes below. Like I always say, some are in my words and some are in Tara's (or whomever she is quoting). 

I hope it helps someone as much as it has helped me.

Notes:

• Don't get too far ahead of now. Now, is enough to digest. 

It really really is, we are getting caught up in worries. A colleague told to me that she and her roommate are joking about "the end of the world." I honestly do not think its funny. Maybe they weren't joking. I think the attitude behind that is what I find disturbing. Hope is not lost. We do not know what will happen. 

• Let grief transform you. Then make a conscious choice to be a light. 

• Gandhi said he needs to make sure his actions come from the deepest most the awakened part of his heart and that is why he would take a day to just pray and meditate. 

I think we all need to do something to this degree, I'm realizing I really need some space do that and I've really  neglected myself of it. My reactiveness does not allow me to really respond in a way to things that comes from that deep awakened part of my heart.  That is fear speaking, that isn't who I am. 

• Learning to live with disbelief and uncertainty. 

Something I am embracing as I have and rally up my experiences in life. Things make no sense right now in so many aspects. I ruminate and it is pointless, yet I do it anyway. We must learn, I must learn rather, to live (not just function) with full awareness during the disbelief and uncertainty. 

• Bringing a presence in between the stories. 

Tara called it "the space between stories," this "uncertainty of what is going to happen." Learning to be in that space, feeling and understanding the depths we must go into.

"From bitter searching of the heart quickened with passion and with pain we rise to play a greater part."  

-Leonard Cohen

• In Buddhism, this "greater part" is that whatever happens... may this "serve awakening." May this help me rise in someway to play a greater part. May this in someway bring more compassion and wisdom. 

• Current times is the calling, now is the time to evolve consciousness. Can it allow us to evolve to our full potential? And that means, can we respond and not react? 

• The core suffering is always fear of separation. There is a fear for the earth, there is a fear for those most vulnerable, and there's a feat for the heart of our society. There's a fear for that heart fiber ethical of our society.  That's the primitive response when we get scared is the reptilian brain/the limbic system to get angry greedy and aggressive. The more evolved response is from "group selection" and that's to "attend and befriend." It's from the part of the brain that says "we can do better if we collaborate". Collaboration takes it further than fighting. In these "circles of belonging" we then become all inclusive. And the circles widen feel connected and nothings outside of us.

• What evolves us when we are caught in limbic hijack?

Uh. Nothing. By limbic hijack, we mean, we react out from that reptilian brain we evolved from but still carry. We don't use the frontal cortex of our brain (the most recently evolved part) and we react. "Limbic hijack." It's not our awakened self talking, its the fear. 

• There needs to be a deep commitment to contact what is below the line the unconscious

It takes work, it is uncomfortable - but, it is necessary for our evolution as people. 

• The practice is to "wake up" and be aware of what is below the line.

• The next step once we do that is: How do we respond and act out of caring?

This is hard. We are prideful, we are fearful.. we have to put that aside. Also when we regard ourself. 

• A brave acknowledgment of "oh, this is how it is."  That is real acceptance, not passiveness. And after knowing this we can, we then move towards responding in an intelligent way.

An intelligent way, to me, feels like the sitting with someone for a long time and really understanding what needs to be done from the deepest depths of your heart. It won't always be obvious, sometimes you really have to dig. 

• In that process we can get stuck, Tara calls it "developmental arrest." That's the anger, the self blame, the separateness. It's the other divided place. 

I know I experience this and get stuck maybe for a few minutes, maybe for a few hours, days, weeks, here's years. We need to look and investigate why we are feeling a certain way, its a "calling."

• Anger is our most primal response, it's basically saying to pay attention that something is going on here. So anger in also in some way, intelligence. There's knowledge to be found out through anger. It's a calling to energize. Something needs to be attended to. If we get stuck in it, we create enemies, and then we don't evolve from it. When we don't investigate the anger, we can't evolve to awake awareness. We never get to the consciousness in order for things to actually change. 

• We are stuck in a place where we are just going to recreate and recycle the pattern.

We ALL have patterns. How do we change the pattern? How do we search for where it comes from? Takes work. Learning the hard way over here. Late bloomer!

• To keep evolving, we have to remember that anger is intelligent. We need to keep tuning into why we are angry, what is it covering?

• Vengeance is a lazy form of grief. We have to grieve. 

How true is this. What is there to gain from being rude, or mean? I'm no saint in regards to this. Believe me, there is shame and guilt. Studying these lectures though, I'm finally coming to terms that it is ok that I've made mistakes as long as I can learn from them in a kind and self-compassionate way. Otherwise, I will probably continue my pattern. Growth cannot happen without nurture. I think of planting a seed and then stomping on it. If we want it to grow, replanting it over and over again and treating it poorly doesn't get us anywhere. We must nurture it for it to grow. 

• There is something hurting in there, can you feel it? 

Tune in. Allow, be self-compassionate. 

"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it what it cares about."