The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.

We've had now 48 hours together and I suspect one of the things you've noticed is that there's been a lot of changing weather inside.

We just go through worlds of experience and not too long a time.

I've been really very touched and moved by the quality of your presence in the hall, these groups, just the naming of what's real, the authenticity and presence with what's there.

What I'm sensing is this recognition that all these different systems can move through and it's really the freedom is in how we're relating to what's going on.

We've been exploring here, Jonathan referred to the two wings of the bird and this is one of the, I think one of the best classic metaphors really for the whole practice, that there's this wing of understanding or recognition.

This is what's going on right this moment, the sadness, this excitement or this fear and then this wing of love which is the heart space that makes room for what's here and that we need both to be able to be free in any moment.

So, Celeste Knight's talk and a lot of the practice has been how do we get into that no matter what place, no matter what it is, this is what's going on.

Can I offer this some kindness and presence?

And so what I'd like to explore tonight is how we bring these same two wings into the relational field.

How do we bring it alive with other people?

And as perhaps just to kind of set the mood, one of my favorite little stories, a woman describes this tired looking dog that wanders into her yard and walks in her door, walks down the hall, gets onto her couch.

And falls asleep. And so she lets it be there because you know it doesn't have, it doesn't have tags but has a collar and looks well fed and well behaved and so on.

Her dogs didn't seem to mind. And so here's what she says. She says, an hour later, you went to the door, let him out. The next day he was back, he resumed his position on the couch and slept for an hour.

This continued for several weeks. Curious, I pinned a note to his collar and I wrote, every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap. I don't mind but I want to make sure it's okay with you.

Next day he arrives back with a different note pinned to his collar. He lives in a home with three children. He's trying to catch up on his sleep.

Can I come with him tomorrow?

So there's a quality of space and kindness that really makes room for our lives. And you know if we do this reflection and say, well at the very end of my life, here I am at the very end of my life and I'm looking back and what really mattered.

If we just slow it down, it's okay. What really mattered? And for most people when we kind of explore that together, what really mattered were the moments of real connection.

Where we in some way felt seen or understood and felt love for another, the moments of tenderness and intimacy. That's kind of what we end up remembering and having mattered.

And we know when we think of, if you think of the biggest challenges you've encountered and for some of us it's divorce and for some of us it's you know around the custody or some of us it's health, our own health.

Some of us it's a big sudden loss of somebody that we love. Others it might be like, you know, a real failure at work or we know that a key element in being able to find any piece of freedom in the midst is a sense of of our relatedness of being in some way held or feeling connected.

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