Awakening from Virtual Reality (retreat talk)

Tara Brach

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4.8 • 10.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2014

⏱️ 60 minutes

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Summary

2009-05-02 - Awakening from Virtual Reality - This talk examines how we get stuck in identifying as a separate, deficient self, and the way that a deep attention frees us from trance.

"The invitation of the Path is that we can wake up out of our stories of limitation and blame. We can listen to and touch the longing in us that really wants to love without holding back and live from freedom. And we can then look at what's true within us so deeply that we discover the very awake, empty presence that is our essence. And we can live from that so that our lives become an expression of that realization. An expression of loving presence."

Transcript

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0:00.0	We've many times today said namaste and some of the folks in my, one of my groups said,
0:22.4	so what is this bowing?
0:24.7	The word namaste means I see the divine in you and the bow is just this honoring of the sacred
0:31.6	that really lives through all of us. In the west we go high, how are you? In Asia they go namaste
0:39.6	and it's just kind of a nice, nice and powerful way to really honor and I'm feeling that right now.
0:47.2	That's why I brought it up. I'm feeling an honoring of you. I'm very aware of what the first day of
0:53.2	a retreat is like. All the different weather systems can and do go through. I mean,
0:58.8	maybe not all at once, but sometimes we have what's called multiple hindrance attacks, you know,
1:04.0	or it's like it's all happening and sometimes it's peaceful and beautiful and what we get is that
1:09.8	there is a real power to the formula of retreat and that is there's an intensified intention.
1:19.8	We are conscious of wanting to be awake and that really does draw us towards more wakefulness
1:28.0	and there's also a lot of our habitual escape strategies have been removed. We don't have access to
1:35.0	them, but one thing we find is we still do have access to thinking, thinking, thinking, so we can
1:41.6	do it a lot, right? You notice that. Rumi has a poem where there's a mouse and a frog in conversation.
1:54.3	We meet at this appointed time, but the text says, lovers pray constantly. Once a day, once a week,
2:02.8	five times an hour, it's not enough. Fish like we are need the ocean around us.
2:07.6	Do the camel say, let's meet back here on Thursday night ridiculous. They jingle together
2:14.1	continuously talking while the camel walks. Do you pay regular visits to yourself? Do you pay regular
2:23.2	visits to yourself? Don't argue or answer rationally. Let us die and dying reply. Do you pay regular
2:35.4	visits to yourself? What a wonderful inquiry. I think sometimes part of what we experience when we
2:45.8	come here and it starts getting quiet is realizing how we haven't been paying regular visits,
2:53.0	we haven't been listening, we haven't been intimate with our inner life, and there's a natural
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