transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brach Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrach.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Namaste, welcome friends. So I begin with a brief story about a woman who is in a job interview and the interviewer is saying, Well, tell me, what do you think your biggest character defect would be? And her response was honesty. And he said to her, Honesty? I wouldn't consider honesty a defect. And her reply, I don't care what the hell you think. So I am opening with this because I am going to be sharing with you one of my favorite talks from the archives and it's on honesty and what it really means and what it really takes to be honest with ourselves and each other. And for many like this woman it doesn't necessarily mean saying what's on the top of our mind especially if we haven't investigated and gotten real with what's underneath. So as most are aware on a societal level we are desensitizing to the scale and degree of deception. We've gotten used to it. I mean even when the lies translate into massive destruction and suffering we are used to it. It's now an assumption that and especially those in power but more broadly the people will say or hide whatever they feel is necessary to most promote or protect their interests. It's contagious. It fills the atmosphere of the society as we know in government but not just that. We've seen it through the Epstein files and any hierarchical organization, religious, spiritual communities. If others are being quiet about a lack of ethical behavior then we'll be quiet too. It's very corrosive to the spirit. And I would even go so far as saying that dishonesty is right at the core of the disease of our world, not seeing and acknowledging what's true inside us and the reality around us. It's why we go around with such different and conflicting realities. And it leads to mistrust, dividing from each other, from our inner life. So I'm saying all this because it really calls us to deepen attention in our own lives, you know, really asking, Am I being honest, real, true? You know, my love for mindfulness practice is that it strengthens our capacity for honesty, for seeing clearly, for not believing our own thoughts and beliefs, for instead of believing our thoughts and beliefs, actually getting curious, What is true here? So friends, I chose this talk from the archives. It's called The Honesty Challenge because it really does invite us into a deeper level of honesty with ourselves and our world. And it's so needed if we're to find our own spiritual strength and really be part of a collective movement toward healing. So may it serve you well. For several decades of my life, I had a poodle, two different poodles, love very much. And so I'd like to start with a favorite story that stars a poodle. And this woman goes to a safari in Africa and she takes her poodle along for company. And one day the poodle runs off after some butterflies or something. Before long he discovers he's lost. And so he's wandering around and he notices a leopard that's heading rapidly in his direction and the intention of having lunch. So the old poodle thinks, Oh, no, I'm in trouble now. And notices some bones on the ground close by. So he settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. And just as the leopard is about to leap, the old poodle exclaims loudly, Boy, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here. So hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack and mid-strike look of terror over space, flinks away and says, whew, that, the leopard says, that was close, that old poodle nearly had me. Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole thing from a tree, figures he can put knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, the old poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed and figures out that something must be up. The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spells the beans, strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. Okay, so the young leopard is furious. He's made a fool of himself and he says, Here monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine. So now the old poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, What am I going to do now? But instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretends he hasn't seen them. And just when they get close enough to hear it, the old poodle says, Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard. So a long example of how deception actually really works. And it's a tried and true strategy for surviving and thriving throughout the animal kingdom, including humans, of course. Viruses use camouflage to avoid detection. And of course, we hide by conforming or becoming invisible. And cats bristle, you know, they look larger than they are to intimidate. And we dress in posture and ways to make impressions, to look strong or imposing or militant or powerful. And fish and butterflies, you know, some of them have those set of fake eyes that are on parts of the body that are not so vulnerable to distract attention from vulnerable areas. And we do the same, hiding what we don't want others to see. And I'll share my favorite example with you is garter snakes. The males emerge from their winter dens and they are cold and they need warmth. And so they emit these pheromones to suggest that they are female. Now, garter snakes form these mating balls of a hundred males around a real female. And so the pretender gets this major worming hug from a hundred garter snakes. And then it turns off the pheromone. And you can imagine the disappointment of all those affectionate males. Anyway, we too, all of us humans, use pretense to attract others to get attention, to get care. So we are part of the creation. You know, we use deception to avoid threats and to further us, to get what we want. And it's natural, it's not our fault. And this survival strategy, it's often unconscious. And when it takes over, when it becomes habitual and predominant in our lives, deceiving ourselves, deceiving others, it entraps us in suffering. I mean, dishonesty basically prevents us from evolving, from loving fully, from being who we can be. So, friends, this is our theme how to deepen intention around honesty. And, of course, the ground of it all is self-honesty. Carl Jung says it so clearly that our suffering arises from the unseen, unfilled parts of our psyche. And the conditioning that gives rise to dishonesty– trauma, strong cravings, fears, shame– they lead to bearing or covering over what's real. So dishonesty has been through all of human history, of course, and it's proliferating in our contemporary world. And we can see how disastrous the consequences when we collectively deny what's going on. A big example, of course, is climate change. The horror of that, just not facing what's real all these decades and what that's caused. And there are so many other examples. I think of in the United States the concerted effort to not face our legacy of slavery, the horrors of continued systemic racism, the suffering that's coming from spreading lies around elections. Of course, this is not just the United States, but how that breeds distrust and undos democracy, just how lies fuel hatred, separation. And I think what's most chilling right now is how in our contemporary society how much cynicism there is. There is an assumption of lies. And research shows that we are lied to 10 to 200 times a day. Of course, it depends on how plugged in we are to virtual social media and the like. But it's the atmosphere we are living in. And the conditioning is in each one of our brains and nervous systems to deceive, the conditioning to lie as a kind of survival practice. And it comes from– and this is the most core universal conditioning– that we identify as a separate self, that we have this core sense of, Oh, something is missing or something is wrong. And then the more craving or fear or shame, the stronger the impetus to lie, to deceive ourselves or others. And of course, deception then creates more of a sense of separation. So there is more craving, fear and shame. Let me ground this a little in a story. Some years back, I was when I was teaching meditation and I was a clinical psychologist. And I was meeting with one woman who was about a year into Alcoholics Anonymous, AA. And she had almost lost her marriage to young children because of her drinking. She grew up in a very traumatizing household. Sexual abuse, her parents had a very bitter divorce. She started drinking when she was fourteen. And she told me about her first meeting with her very wise AA sponsor. And one of the first things this woman had said to her was, No matter what, tell the truth. No matter what, tell the truth. Let this be your north star. No matter how embarrassing, no matter how ugly, shameful, tell the truth to yourself and to us, all of us. And it saved her life. But not right away. I mean she had two bad relapses where, you know, that very familiar thing if you're in a 12-step program of the rationalizations, the self-deceptions that think we can get away with things. And during her second relapse at one point she was screaming at her husband and he wasn't yelling back and all she could see was his utter hurt that he was in some way devastated. And then that's when she heard those words from her sponsor in her mind, Tell the truth, tell the truth. And right then and there she said to him, I'm hitting bottom again, I hate myself, I need help. And that was the beginning of her slow climb out, Telling the truth. And AA was invaluable in it. It's a culture of truth telling and it reduces shame. But her challenge, and this is with her family and others close in, was she would get reactive and triggered. She had caught in feeling victimized and blaming. And she wasn't present enough to be aware of what was true. She couldn't tell the truth because she wasn't in touch with the truth. So she'd say things like, you know, I'm just speaking my truth. Many of us are familiar with that line. But they're actually just what she was expressing were the top layers of anger and resentment and blame. She wasn't recognizing underneath that the unprocessed fears and the hurts and the traumas. So her proclamations of, I'm speaking my truth actually filled more conflict. Her sponsor suggested to that she come to my meditation class. I was teaching live classes in DC at the time. And her sponsor actually attended those classes along with huge numbers of people from twelve programs. The eleventh step you might know is to do with prayer and meditation as a pathway to presence. So she started coming. And many of you know mindfulness meditation is rooted in the Buddhist practice of Vipassana. That's the Pali word. And the meaning of Vipassana is seeing what's true, seeing the nature of reality. And the Buddha taught that really our suffering arises from delusion, from not seeing reality, not seeing truth. And right at the center of that delusion is not realizing who we are. We suffer because we do not realize who we are. We live in a shrunken identity, identifying with the feelings and beliefs of a separate self, often a bad separate self, who is apart from this living world. And so that self-centeredness– and I don't say it as a pejorative word, it's not our fault, it's part of our primal conditioning– that self-centeredness keeps us from really seeing the truth of our belonging. You know, if we are honest and we scan the day, we can see that self-centeredness so clearly. And how most moments of the day we are in this narrative about ourselves, like what I want or what I am anxious about or how I don't have energy to do such and such or how I need more time to get such and such done. Most have to some degree a self-centeredness that obscures our larger belonging, it obscures the awareness that's here, the love, the mystery. So self-centeredness is suffering. And with it there comes a sense something is missing, something is wrong. And all of our craving and addiction and fear and aggression comes out of that basic sense of I am a separate self and something is missing or wrong. So meditation is a practice of radical self-honesty. Its impact is it actually releases that self-centeredness. It dissolves the illusion of a separate self. And it was a huge, powerful practice and support for this woman where over and over again she'd be stuck and she'd say, Okay, right here. Just stay, be present. What's happening? What's happening? And she'd look and she'd see these changing ways of wanting something in particular, wanting a drink, wanting people to pay attention to her. She'd see the ways of aversion, of being angry about the way things were going or angry at a person. She'd see her beliefs and how unlovable or unworthy she thought she was. And in the seeing, there was some freeing. The shaman put it really wonderfully. They say that when you name a fear, when you see it, when you see it clearly, see the truth, okay, fear is here, it loses its power. And she found this. She would be meditating. Sometimes we do it together and sometimes she would do it alone. And she would just start naming what was there. And the more stuck she was, the more she would slow down and just say, afraid, okay, ashamed, believing I really screwed up again, whatever it is. And as she could name things, see the truth in the moment, those passing ways weren't ruling her as much. They didn't block that she also loved her partner and her children, that her life was bigger. So this is the gift of meditation, this radical self-honesty. Because in presence, in that clear seeing, this life isn't so personal. There's no one it's happening to. There's no one who's causing what's going on. Just life unfolding. So in moments of full presence, we're free from the story of the self. We're living in a larger truth. And she was able to actually name that. She was able to talk about the prison of self-centeredness and what was shifting. And I remember when she said, When I'm being really honest, I become more like an undefended open space. An undefended open space. So this is a story of self-honesty. Somebody's experience recovering from substance addiction. And many of you listening who know about recovery know honesty is key. And self-honesty is key for all of us. We all have the same core of suffering. This conditioning to live in a shrunken reality of a separate self. You know, we all have emotional reactivity and a tendency to cover over what's painful. We all have that conditioning to not be truthful with ourself and others. So it takes practice, it takes commitment. One man at the end of a month-long Ropassana retreat we met and he was describing all of his ups and downs and practicing presence, that radical self-honesty, seeing his tendency to compare to others and his jealousy and his self-consciousness and insecurity, seeing his loneliness and also seeing the peace that could come and the compassion and the lucidity in his mind and the clarity. So as he was leaving he said, The joy is in getting real. Never forget that. The joy is in getting real. It's in seeing the truth of the moment, being honest with ourselves, with others. So here's the thing in getting real. And it's not about particularly about what the content is. It could be pleasant or unpleasant. It's the capacity to be the awareness that we are and see and allow and include this ever-changing life. And when that happens, the more we're resting as that awareness, the more the habitual self-centeredness gets replaced by a real sense of freedom, undefended heart. Most of us consciously value honesty, you know, in some way. I'm preaching to the converted, you know. We think it's good and healthy to be honest with ourselves. We think it's important to face truths about our own experience and our behavior and our impact on others. And we think it's good and healthy to be honest with others. I think of Adrienne Rich who writes, An honorable human relationship that is one in which two people have the right to use the word love is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other. It's important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. Telling the truth breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. So you might reflect and even sense the relationships where you feel the most closeness. And just notice how much in those relationships the closeness comes from being real, from being honest. They are inseparable really. The undefended heart. Of course, I like the way Mark Twain put it. He says, Always tell the truth. That way you don't have to remember what you said. But it is freeing to just tell the truth. And, you know, if we Google, statistics vary some, but they say we lie on an average of one to four times a day and sixty percent of adults can't have a conversation without one lie every ten minutes. And psychological research shows that we regularly deceive ourselves to maintain our narrative about ourselves and our view of the world. We lie to ourselves when we can't face reality. And often it's quite toxic and pervasive. So I am titling this talk The Honesty Challenge, Telling the Truth to Ourselves and Our World. And I'm calling it a challenge. But I'm hoping you'll join me just to let it be an opportunity to see what happens when we consciously dedicate to being more honest. See what happens. It's also a challenge because it's an incredibly humbling domain to explore. And as I mentioned, we value honesty. In fact, it's part of our self-narrative that we're honest. And yet, when we start looking closely, we see how much of the day can be littered with… It's not the big lives, it's the small ones. And, you know, as I over these last few weeks have been reflecting on this more directly and writing notes to myself to share with you now, of course I was monitoring myself and made it very purposeful. And it was so revealing. I mean, it's a little bit of a confessional but so revealing to see all the small ways that I started noticing I was not being real. You know, in e-mails, I catch myself all the phrases and expressions. I just didn't feel genuine. Sometimes flattery or saying I was looking forward to meetings that are going to be actually difficult or obligatory and I'm not looking forward to them. Or I noticed in several casual social interactions embellishing stories to be more interesting. Or conversation with Jonathan just to impress me. I remember one morning he asked me how long I swam. I swam most mornings. And I started rounding up the minutes and then I had to say, No, actually it was 27 because I'm trying now, to be honest. But just to watch myself with that impulse to round it up, are noticing talking to people and saying I'm feeling, you know, asking how I'm doing and feeling from me but not naming it. Our family member texted last week, you know, it was a last-minute text saying, Hey, can you talk this morning? You know, I have some stuff I really want to go over with you. And I had put aside that time to be writing. But I watched my mind come up with all these other responses. It sounded much more compelling. Of course, you know, because I caught myself, I didn't do it. I'm sharing it with you because it's just so pervasive, the tendency to in some way hide something or present something different than what's real. And you might just check yourself, just reflect today, yesterday, how honest have I been? Just scan, scan the conversations, the emails, texts. And just you might consider, was there any hiding what you felt when it would have been more appropriate to name it? How you're doing with your health or if you felt hurt by something or misunderstood? Or how much exaggerating? Maybe sometimes we exaggerate what we know about things, about the news or a book being discussed or just general knowledge areas. We kind of have a thinner layer than what's real in terms of what we project. Or maybe making excuses to get out of things we don't want to do, hiding our difficulties or inflating them, dropping names or connections to impress. It's valuable to scan and it's valuable to intend to be alert to this. The point is to bring it into awareness, not to judge it because it's universal, we're social creatures and it's very much a part of the survival brain's function to gain status, to try to get what we want, to protect from being judged, being rejected. You know, the Christian Desert Fathers had a view of Eden, the Garden of Eden, the metaphor as being that we were originally innocent and at home in our being and the fall was not disobedience to God, it was that they hid, that they pretended that they believed in being… that they were bad and covered up and forgot their divine essence. And I think that's a really valuable kind of interpretation of that metaphor that we are originally and essentially pure and good and that our suffering comes from the misperception of badness and that we need to cover ourselves. And then moving on from the Christian Desert Fathers, there is a story of a rabbi and a priest having a picnic on a really hot summer day and they wanted to dip in the water and cool off. They hadn't brought bathing suits, so they decided to skinny dip. And the river was flowing rapidly and the clergy were washed a short distance downstream before getting out. And after climbing out of the river, they just started to make a run for it to get their clothes when some of the members of their congregation came into view, who had been some women having a picnic. So the priest covered his privates with his hands and put on a burst of speed, but the rabbi covered his face instead. And the priest said, What are you doing? And the rabbi said, I don't know about you, but my carvans recognize me by my face. So the tendency to deceive, it starts pre-verbally, soon after birth. And it's often reflexive and unconscious. I mean, children live from a really young age. They'll start fake crying and fake laughter. Act innocent when they are caught doing something forbidden and then by 2.5 years they are indulging and face-saving lives, you know, blaming siblings, etc. So it starts pre-verbally and as we grow it can get baked into our personality. And you might know the word persona. It comes from ancient Greece and it really had to do with the mask that actors would wear. That was their persona. And then when they were done acting they'd take it off and then re-inhabit their real self. Well, the challenge with our personas, our personalities, and the challenge with deception is when it's unconscious and regular we forget we're wearing a mask, we get identified with that threatened separate self that needs to deceive and we forget the deeper dimensions of who we are, of the creativity and full intelligence and awareness that's our beingness. So I'd like to reflect again with you and invite you to be a little more focused and take a moment to pause here, might take a few full breaths, and then bring to mind a person who you respect, who you want to think well of you, and who you have some anxiety around, maybe you fear their judgment or some discomfort, self-consciousness. So take a moment to bring to mind somebody that fits that profile. You respect, you want them to think well of you, and maybe you're concerned they'll judge you in some way. Just think, what is it you want them to see about you? And how do you present yourself so they'll see that? And what is it you don't want them to see? What are you afraid they'll see? And the sentence of the ways you might cover over what you don't want them to see, perhaps in what you say or don't say. And as you reflect on this, sense yourself in that persona who is wanting to be seen a certain way and not wanting to be seen in certain ways and just sense into the stress of that, how it confines. You might even ask, do I like myself when presenting a mask? How am I experiencing myself? What's the sense of myself? Is there more of a self-centeredness? And how does the mask, which is a type of dissension, impact the sense of closeness with this person who I'm trying to impress or get respect from or avoid judgment with? And you might shift your attention now. Take a few full breaths. And bring to mind someone who is easy to be with, who you feel very accepted by and comfortable with, intimate with, perhaps. Just somebody who you feel more fully at home in yourself with. Just remind yourself of who you are when you are at home in an authentic sense of your being. Just the more space, the more freedom. So that as you move forward in the days and weeks to come you can sense just the signals of how the mask can keep you from your authenticity and also what's possible. So this is an intentional inquiry. And we start inward with, you know, really being honest with ourselves. That's the beginning and the grounds of the honesty challenge. And the inquiry is, What's true? What is true in this moment? And, you know, just to name the challenge, it's not so easy. I remember one of my first retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, somebody had posted a quote by Lily Tomlin. It was, Self-knowledge is not good news. And we know it because as we begin to ask what's true, what's going on, there are layers often of unpaced fear and shame and hurt and vulnerability. Yet the path, the freedom is to include the ways. They become less personal as we do, as we say, Okay, it's true, there's fear here. We actually open into a place where it has less power, more into the sea of beingness. So the pathway to self-honesty is that inquiry about what is really happening in this moment. And one of my friends– and many of you know of her, the poet Dana Faulds– has a book called What's True Here. It's a book of her poetry. And I'd like to read you a part of the preface which I think is a powerful invitation into the inquiry What's True Here. And she writes, What's true here is an inquiry I often use in meditation. When introduced gently, the question stops the hypnotizing train of thoughts and brings me present. Paying attention to my direct experience of now, I don't so much try to answer the question as be the answer, experience reality firsthand and know it from inside. Let me describe what it's like when the inquiry arrives in my busy mind. First, there is a pause in the thought stream, an interval of weightless silence. Next, it's as if the skylight in my awareness suddenly opens. Feral Williams captures this perfectly in his song Happy when he sings, Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof. I can't say how asking myself what's true here takes the lid off my usually limited frame of reference, but it does. And when the skylight opens, I join with the vastness of which we are all part. So this is her introduction to the inquiry, What's true here? And you might try just for a few moments. We'll practice together. You might close your eyes or lower your gaze. Again, take a moment to collect perhaps by relaxing with the inflow and the outflow of the breath. And then gently offer the question, What's true here? From the awareness that you are, the question, What's true here? Listening, feeling, opening, contacting the life that's here. You might sense if, as Dana puts it, that skylight opens. Taking again some breaths. So I want to name the most common block or cloud to clear seeing. What blocks the light of awareness. And that's judgment. And let's say in that brief reflection we just did, what's true here, you were judging yourself for not being here, for not being present, for not seeing anything. And just to notice how that judgment may have blocked the truth of seeing judging– okay, a judging thought– of seeing, okay, mind distracted, there's buzziness, there's tiredness, confusion, other thoughts– judgment blocks honesty. It blocks seeing what's true. And in any moment that we're judging what's happening in ourselves or another, we cannot see clearly what's here and we can't communicate honestly. So that's why radical acceptance actually goes hand in hand with radical honesty. And to share a story where this just for me was so clear. One man I was working with some years ago was increasingly alienated from his wife and his fourteen-year-old stepson. It was a newish marriage. They had been together for three years. And he felt all the problems that they were facing were really his fault. And what was going on was the teen was rude to them both. He would ignore requests to clean up after himself and he'd leave a room while they were talking to him. He was very dismissive of his mother and at times contemptuous with this man I'm telling you about. And so the man reacted with anger. He was offended, he was disturbed. And a few months in, there were a number of blow ups where he'd lose his temper, let's say, one time after the boy was defiant with his mom and just started blaring music when she was talking. So he and his wife had difficulty talking about it. They were both at a loss and he was increasingly shut down and distanced, kind of pulled away from both of them and just became very dark and withdrawn. So when we met and talked, his real anger was at himself, like, why can't I be a mature adult and find creative ways to work with this boy and be in communication with my wife? So we practiced RAIN which is the mindfulness and compassion practice that weaves with the steps of recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. And he recognized, okay, anger, self-judgment, and the A is allow, he let that be there, just naming it, allowing it to be there. And then as he started investigating he got shooken because he realized he had a tremendous aversion towards the boy and he didn't like him, he didn't like his step-son. And on top of that there was like I just got sunk, he just swamped in shame, like here I am married and I don't like my step-son, you know. And then he got into powerlessness, how can I make it different? And then fear, I am going to lose my marriage. And so he opened into the vulnerability of those feelings, that powerlessness and the fear and the shame. And gradually he was able to, as I often guide and invite to put his hand on his heart and start sensing, This hurts, I am hurting, this is hard. That's truth too. So there was some compassion. And gradually, you know, we did a number of rounds from that space of where he was holding himself more kindly. He could see how his stepson was hurting in a way he reminded of himself as a teen, that he was frustrated, agitated, anxious young person. So there was more compassion. But still, when, you know, the boy would act out, he'd react. And he realized that he had pulled away from his wife because it was so hard to admit the truth that he didn't like his stepson. So he talked to her and he told her the truth, that the dislike was there, also the care and the concern and the fear of loss of the marriage. He just named it. In this very undefended way. And it allowed her to name what was going on for her, which was she was utterly feeling powerless and distraught and like she was going to lose the marriage and her heart was broken because she was feeling so separated from and unable to reach her son. There's a lot of anguish. So they named their truths. And in doing that, they could team up together. The honesty brought them closer and they could create a better field, a better container, more clarity, more boundaries, and more care with her son. And then they also had a therapist come in and gradually the communication built between the three. It took several years. But the point is what brought them out of the swamp of suffering was beginning to face and name truth. That's what set them on the path. We all have what's sometimes called the shadow, which the painful beliefs and emotions that come from feeling like a separate self, that something's missing or wrong. For this man, aversion, anger, powerlessness, shame. So we need to name it, we need to face it. And the power of radical self-honesty is that in the moment that we shine a light on the shadow we are inhabiting a larger space, we are living in a larger space and there is more choice. The path of freedom deepening truthfulness with ourselves, with each other, and the path of freedom is growing truthfulness in our world. You know, I started the conniving poodle outsmarting the leopard because deception is part of survival. And especially when we live with much fear and addictive tendencies the deception becomes habitual and it blocks us from being at home, it blocks us from living and loving fully. Again Carl Jung, that the suffering comes from the unseen, unfazed parts of the psyche and that includes our collector, you know, as the fear levels in our world increase, so do the tendencies towards deception and mistrust. And I'm bringing this again as we close because it makes it ever more crucial that we take on the challenge, you know, if we can in our own lives and with ourselves and each other dedicate ourselves to growing our honesty it ripples out. And it's a courageous thing to do, this willingness to meet life with an undefended heart. It's courageous and it brings more connection and loving to ourselves, to our world. So as we've explored, the grounds are that simple inquiry, you know, What's true here? So we'll close in that spirit and just take a moment because we need to pause. We need to get quiet to reconnect with truth. So let yourself pause right now as we close. Take a few breaths. And you might sense in yourself whatever your heart's intention is towards honesty, however you want to language that. May I be more truthful, may I be more honest, may I be more real with myself, with others. And then in this very moment, in silence, listening, just asking that question, What's true here? Letting the skylight open, including the sensations, emotions, the consciousness, the vastness we belong to. What's true here? It's an inquiry of love for the life that's right here. Sensing the changing waves. The ocean of awareness, of truth. Just inhabiting that truth of who we are. Thank you, friends. Thank you for your presence, your heart, all blessings on the path.