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To make a donation, please visit Tarabrock.com. Brock. Namaste, thank you for being here, my friends.

So I'll begin with a story that's come to mind a lot recently, and it starts with this committee

of a congregation that is ensnared in a very bitter debate about the way one of the core

religious rituals is to be conducted, you know, who performs it how often. So they're in

they're in a very hostile debate.

People are divided it's tested friendships in the congregation. So one person

suggests they seek the council of one of the oldest living members of the congregation.

And they agree and a couple go to speak with them. And the first one says, well, did they do it this way back then?

No, no, they didn't do it that way.

And then another one says, what about this way? Is that the way they did it? No, they didn't do it that way.

And then they start getting upset, well, what are we supposed to do the entire congregation?

We've forgotten more family. Everybody's arguing no one can listen to each other.

There's ugliness, there's contempt. The old man said, mhm, that's the way we did it.

And I really like that in the sense that it's humbling, that over and over again,

individuals, families, organizations, countries,

there's dividedness and hostility and we keep repeating the same ways that we get ourselves stuck,

you know, not listening to each other thinking we're right.

It's just a natural part of living and it's been

through human history, you know, perceiving others that in some way are different

as threatening and then we get caught in this limbic reactivity where we're caught in anger, in fear, sometimes hatred.

And what happens is at those times we lose access to our capacity for executive functioning,

...