The following talk is given by Tara Brock, Meditation Teacher, Psychologist and Author.

I'd like to start this talk with a poem by M. Truman Cooper.

Suppose what you fear could be trapped and held in Paris.

Then you would have the courage to go everywhere in the world.

All the directions of the compass opened to you

except the degrees east or west of to north that lead to Paris.

And still, you wouldn't dare to put your toes smack dab on the city limit line.

And you're not really willing to stand on a mountainside miles away and watch the Paris lights

come up at night.

And just to be on the safe side, you decide to stay completely out of France.

But then danger seems too close even to those boundaries.

And you feel the timid part of you covering the whole globe again.

You need the kind of friend who learns your secret and says, see Paris first.

So I like that poem a lot because I feel like it points to a critical inquiry that I

feel that many of us are on on a path of waking up, which is what is our way of relating

to difficulty or fear.

What's our pattern?

When we encounter stressors, when we feel a sense of agitation, what happens next?

Do we try to kind of package it up and put it away somewhere or fix it or get rid of it?

Or do we have some wise part of us and inner friends saying, see Paris first?

So this class I'd like to explore the role of stress in the evolution of consciousness

and really how relating to stress can directly serve our spiritual awakening.

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