This is the second week. I'm doing a two-part series as I sometimes do on self-compassion.

And if you didn't hear the first, it's available. You can download it on podcasts. Truly how

to free ourselves from this trance of unworthiness, of not okay, and in a very deep way find healing.

And I wanted to share with you an article I ran into New York Times, Science Times, that

asked the question, what is it that allows, allowed humans to evolve in a way that kind of

separated from apes and chimps to be what we are for better and for worse, but mostly for

better in this particular case. And biologists, you know, they come up with all these different

things that, okay, we make tools, we do this, we do that. But the one element that has

been really standing out to anthropologists and biologists is that our successes due to our

sociality, that our capacity to cooperate is what makes the difference, our capacity to

cooperate. It says in this article, the ability to cooperate to make individuals subordinate

their strong sense of self-interest to the needs of the group lies at the root of human

achievement. And the understanding is that a large social network can generate knowledge and

adopt innovations far more easily than a cluster of small hostile groups constantly at war with

each other. So in evolution, what seemed to have happened for us is that we recognize in-laws,

we recognize wider groups as part of us. And this capacity to widen our sense of belonging and

cooperate makes it possible then to cultivate whether it's agriculture, our art, other parts of

culture, and in spiritual life. I mean, what allows us to keep on waking up is that we gather,

that we care about each other, that we support each other, that we trade in sites. The sense of

belonging is at the root. So in human evolution, we develop this large brain and the biggest part

of the brain that makes a difference is the social brain, which is the part of the brain that has

these mirror neurons and these networks that lets us feel empathy and compassion. That's what makes

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