Tara Brach InsightLA: Radical Compassion: Pathway to Healing and Freedom

I experienced the wounds of the psyche as a woman, much like Tutu. I severely broke my wrist and when I found out my surgeon WAS a woman, that wound reared its ugly head. Of course, it was fleeting but it was there. I laughed at the doubts I had but realized that the patriarchal control had put that there and it wasn't my true beliefs. The beauty of our current politics is that it is women who are balancing the scales of justice.

Mindfulness without ethics and wisdom, just makes one a more disciplined ass.

I want to die. I pray to die. I'm in hell with no escape.
my soul is raped.

I AM DYING OF EMOTIONAL PAIN.

THE GRIEF AND TERROR ARE ALL-CONSUMING.

the darkness. the despair. the rage. THE PANIC.
OH. MY. GOD. THE. PANIC!!!

the person whom I thought was my best friend
discarded me like garbage.
replaced me with another.

I desperately want to escape the pain that I'm in:
debilitating paralyzing all-consuming hyperventilating
panic and grief...

the guy I called my best friend,
ended up raping me.

he violently brutally viciously maliciously raped my soul.
abandoned and betrayed me.
and now I don't breathe. CAN'T BREATHE. I'M IN HELL.

last year (2022) he ruined christmas-time for me,
and now he's ruined my winter and spring,
and now we're headed into summer...
and I'm dying inside.

I'm desperately trying to remember this:
✨💖✨ I was created from all light, for I am light,
I fear no darkness. for being light, I can see beyond darkness 💫

my heart aches so deeply and so profoundly:
my best friend betrayed and abandoned me.
I pray my heart is healed and strengthened and mended.
I pray our friendship is healed and renewed and restored.

Sitting in front of the Buddha with a bouquet of flowers and making pronouncements of how people should feel and behave is easy! I spent most of my life working
with the mentally ill who couldn't afford $5 for therapy! How about it, Tara?

Dafuq is wrong with a dense forest 🌳

Tara, Thank ❤️🌀You !

When you realise you need something beyond you to connect to, prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging, we need to reach out to a larger more universal source and find we are connected to that source. Great! Then the disappointment…. Bring to mind a dear friend, a spirit of a dead relative, your dog 😂, a formless universal love. Notice, anything and anyone but no mention of God. If you choose to deny God, it’s your loss. You call on whatever that outside source is and let it in and that allows us to reconnect with the nurturing that is needed to free our hearts.

It is so beautiful to see a group of people celebrating the teachings Tara shares with us freely! I cried with joy… seeing her so celebrated. I have never seen that. Thank you…

Tara Brach ushered in The Age of Narcissism and Privilege!

the story about her mother is interesting .. but its so ironic that she was writing about loving kindness, but in the moment it was needed it wasn't available because she was doing a meditation to make herself feel better about herself .. I love Taras work, but if she wasnt needing to make herself feel better, she might have simply got straight up and given her mum a hug immediately? !!...Wouldnt simple acts of kindness heal our own hearts in the process, acts of TRUE loving kindness.. in the moment it is needed ? What if her mum had dropped dead from heart attack before she got to hug her ? While we are busy working on our theses of 'self'-development, we might miss a vital chance to offer simple, honest love to someone who is feeling the pain of rejection? Are we being taught to 'hold back' from love's urgency ? Perhpas she could have said to her mum 'thankyou, dont go away, sit with me a while while I finish this I won't be long .. and maybe held her hand for a moment?"

Maybe I am being impractical here ... and Taras teachings are very practical .. but even so, when she told that story I wanted to say .. stop trying to make yourself feel better and just get up out of your 'self-seat' and give your mum a hug and reassure her and say sorry for ignoring her .. ?

when she asks ."What is between me and open heartedness?" .. I thought, maybe our own mind stuff about 'how to be a better person' and thinking we need to know just a little bit more, before we can love .... instead of getting up off our butts and just.... LOVING!? Isn't it that simple ? or am I being idealistic ? But thinking about LOVING KINDNESS seems to take up such a lot of time where we could be simply offering it ??

Making a clear space in wchih to recevie our dong is good, but what if that clear space (meditation etc) becomes another ego pursuit, another excuse to be wrapped up in Self, and use it to be detached from life and hide in seclusion from wchi itjst becomes harder to reach out to help others, trying to save ourselves first ?