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Guided Meditation: Meditating with Trust

Warm greetings, and a warm welcome to Insight Meditation Center.

For the meditation today, I would like to evoke the quality of trust. Sometimes in Buddhism, we talk about trusting the Dharma^[1], going for refuge to the Dharma. But I think that when things come down to really practicing the Dharma, what we learn is that we're trusting our hearts. In some ways, the Dharma and our hearts are the same. Our hearts understand much more than our minds do, or much more than we do consciously. To trust something that is wiser or deeper is more able to protect us, care for us, and guide us than sometimes our conscious mind can do.

That is not an easy thing to find or come to. But when we sit and do this practice—when we do a practice of the heart, the practice that connects us deeply to that which is within us that's more than conscious—then we discover that there's a place of trust. Something we can trust: the Dharma in us, the heart in us.

So, to sit with trust.

To begin with a posture that you can trust. Maybe there is no perfect posture for any of us. But maybe there's a posture that you can trust enough for these minutes of meditation. A posture that allows you to relax and to let go.

And to gently close your eyes, and to feel this body.

In a sense, we learn to trust the body too. Not the body that decays or becomes sick, exactly, but something deeper about being here in this lived body is a place that we relax.

Relaxing the body into the pull of gravity, wherever you're sitting or touching, whatever surface is holding up your weight. Your weight being the interface of the direction of your body and gravity. And to let yourself trust the support your body is given by the surface that holds your body up.

Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Relaxing, trusting on the exhale.

Letting your breathing return to normal.

And to progressively relax your body. Maybe think of it as a progressive trusting. Each movement of relaxation means to trust enough to do so.

On the exhale, relaxing the belly. Trusting enough to let the belly relax and soften.

On the exhale, relaxing the chest and the heart. Trusting enough to relax in the chest.

Relaxing the shoulders. Relaxing the shoulders, softening the shoulders—there's a release of some fear or mistrust, and a movement towards trusting enough to relax.

And to relax the face. The face is more engaged in our lived life than most people realize. To let there be trust in the face, so the eyes can relax. Cheeks and jaws. The forehead.

And then relaxing the thinking mind. Maybe softening a mistrust or fear that's in the mind. For these minutes, trusting there's nothing you have to fix, or save, or protect.

These minutes now, you're safe and protected. And so you can relax the mind from its concerns. Trust. A trusting.

And then becoming attuned to your body breathing.

Noticing if, in the breathing, there is any anxiety or fear. It's okay if there is.

Let the rhythm of breathing massage whatever fear or anxiety there might be.

Noticing if the fear changes throughout the cycle of breathing in and breathing out. Becoming aware of that rhythm of change.

Letting the breathing relax. Soften.

Softening, relaxing as you exhale. And allowing as you inhale.

And here, now, in this lived experience of breathing. Being in a body for these minutes that you're here. Trusting being alive. Trusting breathing. Being mindful, being present.

For these minutes, perhaps that trust can be entrusting. Just being here, present, breathing, is enough.

So as we come to the end of the sitting, as we come to greater freedom in this practice, one way of expressing that freedom is that just to be alive is enough. Sitting here meditating, breathing, being mindful. That there's nothing to attain, nothing to be, or nothing to prove ourselves. Just being here, breathing, being alive is enough, or is glorious.

To trust that this is enough for these few minutes.

And if you appreciate the well-being that comes with just being here breathing, with trusting this moment, this experience—if you appreciate the well-being, the ease, the freedom, the absence of stress that it produces—imagine what it'd be like for others to have the same. For others to be free of the stress of needing to attain and to prove themselves. The stress of being afraid and anxious, needing to protect themselves.

How wonderful it would be if others could have this sense of ease, well-being, and have the ability to trust that just being alive is enough.

May it be that as we do this practice and we taste the benefits of it, that we share those benefits with the world around us. May we dedicate the benefits of this practice for the welfare and happiness of everyone. Wishing happiness on others, wishing safety for others, wishing peace and freedom for others.

And wishing that we find and notice the small things, big things we can do today to contribute to that possibility—to the welfare and happiness of others.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Fear (3 of 5) Investigating Fear

So here we have the beginning of our third talk on fear.

Yesterday I talked about holding the fear carefully so that the fear feels safe. Another way of maybe talking about that is to have the ability to be present for fear and offer attention to fear without reacting to it, without being for it or against it, without being impacted and influenced by it, or being pushed around by the fear. To just learn the ability to be present, the capacity to be present, and be in a certain way comfortable, in a certain way at peace with being afraid. Being comfortable or being at peace with fear is possible.

What that does is it begins to change our relationship to fear and gives us a chance to look at it more deeply. It also allows the chance for the fear to do its own process. The Dharma in us, the heart in us, has a way of healing, has a way of moving towards health if we can get out of the way enough while at the same time being attentive, being present. That's the wonderful ingredient of this practice—to have the capacity to be present, to be attentive to something without interfering with it, without fixing it, changing it, or judging it. Making almost like the attention gives room for something to unfold, to unwind, to evolve the way it needs to evolve. Some of that happens with fear.

But fear is also a great subject for study, to look at and respect. It's helpful to think of fear as a message, and the question is: what is it a message of? To ask that question—"What is this message? What is this fear trying to tell me? What's it about?"—is a very profound question that is supported by this capacity to be present. Because if we don't know how to be present, kind of in a relaxed, open, accepting way, then the chances are that when we're attending to fear, we're bringing with us our fear of fear, our aversion of fear, our stories about fear, rather than just seeing it in a very much simpler, more direct way.

So, what is the message of fear? Now, sometimes fear is a very good message that something is dangerous. When the fear has to do with something in the moment, like we have a really clear sense right now, "There's something not right here, something is off," that maybe should really get us to stop and pause and take a look at the situation. Our minds, our hearts know more than what we consciously know. Our mental processing is quite complex and involved; it involves much more than what we see on the surface of the mind, the conscious mind. So we're taking in a lot of information from the environment that we don't really consciously process. And so if there is a fear that something is off, it might be something to pay attention to.

I've done that in situations in cities, in San Francisco, where there was a clear, "Suddenly, this situation is not safe. This person who is following me is not safe." And I would then change what I was doing. I remember once I thought, "This is not good," and I didn't know what it was, but something about that told me this is not safe. And so I walked into a grocery store, and I think it was a really wise choice.

So there are all kinds of things that come up, and this idea that sometimes fear is a good message that there's danger is important. Sometimes fear has no immediate danger. Sometimes we call that kind of fear "anxiety." But there's fear about something that we're imagining might be coming in the future. And there also might be some deep understanding that maybe there really is something to be afraid of in where we're going or what we're doing.

To stop and feel the fear, take it as a message, and try to study it. What's this about? Can you in fact understand more about it if there's an opportunity to reflect on it and think about it?

There are two very useful directions for investigation around fear. One is: What are we threatened by? And then, more profoundly—maybe something that meditators could really ask in a deep way: What is threatened in this with this fear? What inside of me, what about me is being threatened by the danger? What is the threat? What's really the thing that seems dangerous here?

Is it in fact a mountain lion about to pounce, or is it fear of rejection? That if I go into that social situation, certainly I'll be rejected, and those people are not going to like me for whatever reason. That might be—I mean, it happens sometimes—but if every social situation we go into there's a fear of rejection, and that's the threat (that people will reject me), then maybe what's interesting is to look at what is being threatened here. What is the common denominator that I bring with me to all these different social situations? What is it that is in danger in me?

Sometimes we can find very interesting things there. I had a fear of rejection when I was young. As I looked at it more and more deeply—what is being threatened here?—because I started being a meditator, it wasn't so much that I saw what was being threatened initially. I saw a lot of my ideas, my imaginations of what would happen and what the consequences of that would be. If I was rejected, then something else would happen. There'd be a cascade or domino effect in my imagination of things.

But when I looked at what is really being threatened here, inside of me, in this present moment, I found that there was nothing. There was a place inside of well-being that was untouchable by whether or not people rejected me. And that made a huge difference. It started to shift something in me about this fear that I had. It no longer carried much force on me, or I didn't invest a lot of importance in it. It was still there, but it was like I could just shrug it off. "Okay, there it is again, my old friend." Because I knew a kind of confidence and a sense of well-being that I could stay close to. And I knew that that doesn't have to be threatened by what other people do.

In fact, I learned that the real threat—and this is the first question: where is the threat, where is the danger?—is that in many situations, the real danger is not what happens in the world, but my own mind and what I do about it. With this fear of rejection, I could see that the real danger was the fear itself. The real danger was the contraction I had, the resistance I had, that freezing, sometimes the collapse that I had in myself. The attachment that I had around something. And that was the real danger.

To come to that place, to see that the real danger was in my own mind, not out there around this fear of rejection—that was powerful for me. Because then I could practice with myself. I wouldn't have to try to get everyone to like me or stop rejecting me; I could practice with my own mind. It came to a point where, if they reject me, it was okay; if they don't reject me, that's okay. Because I had worked through my own reactivity around this whole issue and had found this place inside of peace, of well-being, that I didn't want to sully. I felt that this is important to protect from myself.

So the whole Buddhist practice was then learning how to work with this mind. Letting go of the attachments, letting go of what I was holding onto there in my mind. Letting go of the reactivity that I had there. So to ask the question: "What is the threat? What is a threat really?" To understand that—and there are many answers to that—but to ask that question, and don't settle for the first answer.

You can ask, "Well, yes, I'm threatened that people reject me, but what's really the threat? What's really the danger if they do that? What am I afraid of?" Maybe there are layers of answers to that question. Sometimes you'll go through the layers and you'll find that the real threat is in your own mind, surprisingly. Sometimes you'll see the real threat is out in the world, and because you really got to see it well and understand that that's where the danger is, maybe you're in a better position to address that danger out there.

But keep asking the other question: "What is being threatened?" That's a profound question. Sometimes, even when there are real threats out there in the world that need to be addressed and taken care of, or that we need to be protected from, at the same time, there might be aspects of what's being threatened inside that is the domain of practice. That might show you something very profound about what you're doing extra, what is not needed in the heart or in the mind.

The very thing that we're holding onto—our attachments, what we are trying to protect, how we're trying to prove ourselves, how we're trying to get other people to see us, or how we're trying to protect a certain kind of inner story about ourselves that we have—we start seeing what is being threatened. My desire for security, my desire to be seen in a particular way.

So, spend time asking: "What is really the threat?" and "What is being threatened?" And to repeat what I said at the beginning: that investigation is a lot easier when we've learned how to hold the fear carefully and mindfully, helping the fear feel safe. Then we're in a better position to ask these questions in a good way.

You might try that today, in the next 24 hours. Look at things that you're anxious about, look at things that you're afraid of, and take some quality time reflecting on: What is really the threat? (Or maybe it should be plural: What are the threats? Where are the threats coming from? What is really the danger for you in this thing?) And then: What is being threatened in you? What is the thing that you feel is afraid will happen to you or to your life? Become clear about that. And maybe there, too, there are layers of understanding what is being threatened.

I'm confident that whatever you discover in that will bring you greater wisdom to understand how to navigate your fear and live with your fear.

I hope you have just the right fear today—just enough to be able to do this exploration. And then we'll continue tomorrow. Thank you.