Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference.

To make a donation, please visit Tarabrock.com. Namstay. Welcome, friends. The title of today's reflection is How Do We Bridge Divides?

And I know given the state of the world, this is quite the central inquiry for many of us.

So starting with a story,

a man had been slipping in and out of a coma

for several months and his wife had stayed by his bedside every single

day and one day when he came to he motioned for her to come closer and she sat by and he whispered, you know, eyes full of tears, you know what, you've been with me all through the bad times.

When I got fired, you were there to support me, when I had that terrible car wreck. You were there with me when we lost the house. You stayed right here.

When my health started to fail you were still by my side, you know what?

And she says, what dear?

She's smiling and her heart's beginning to fell with warmth.

He says, I think you bring me bad luck.

So classic silly example of when life does not cooperate, you know, when we're experiencing pain difficulty we blame and we either blame

ourselves or others or something but it's actually a built-in survival orienting reflex that in the moments we feel threatened, you know, fear

arises in our attention shifts and scans define a perceived source of threat.

And this fear and this assigning blame

is the beginning of divides.

So as a temporary reflex to immediate threats,

it's absolutely necessary for survival.

But here's the challenge.

For us humans, due to our thinking mind that tends to fixate and scan for the negative,

we keep recycling, blaming thoughts.

...