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

I'm a stay and welcome.

In Asian art, when you enter a temple and often you'll see this in the mandalas as the kind

of entry to sacred space at the center, there are these depictions of what are described

as animal-headed goddesses or deities and their fierce, ferocious, angry, jealous, passionate

and they represent the shadow side.

And the deep understanding is that to arrive at home, to arrive in sacred space, to come

into love, we need to be able to engage with the shadow deities, with those elements of

our being that we may be pushed away because it felt like too much.

It felt scary.

It felt threatening.

And each of the shadow deities, as they're displayed in Asian art, whether it's fear

or anger, whatever, is infused with an enlightened quality.

Again, the understanding being if you engage with these deities, there's a transformation

and the enlightened quality of wisdom, our love, our creativity is, it's transmuted

into that.

That's what you emerge with.

So the simple way of saying this, which I like the best is, no mud, no lotus, that we

have to go through the muck in a way, what has been unexamined, untouched, unfelt, to

flower, to fully open.

Now if you look at what's most difficult, if you take where your life gets most squeezed

or trapped, whether it expresses as depression, or it expresses this shame, or in some way you

...