“The Exquisite Risk” from Tara Brach
“The big question is, ‘what enables us to keep evolving, to let go?’…What we find is, it hurts more to hang on than to let go. It’s suffering to stay in that small container.” — Tara Brach
Life often forces us to shed our skin, whether we want to or not. And while it can feel vulnerable, confusing, and challenging, the juice is worth the squeeze.
Our beloved teacher Tara Brach underlines here that hanging on often hurts more than letting go. We’re afraid that if we don't play it safe, others will see something about us we don't want them to see. Or, perhaps they won't see something about us we do want them to see.
We need an element of trust in ourselves. Given that most of what we know is learned, and we must interact with the world to learn, growth challenges us to stay rooted in deeper understanding of self while expanding our self-image. It can feel foreign to do, but maybe it's time to put yourself out there. You can trust yourself more than you think.
DESCRIPTION: "This talk explores the challenges and blessings of taking the exquisite risk, both in becoming more intimate with our inner life and in engaging with others from full authenticity."
Tara walks you through a reflection to help you pinpoint the challenges and the blessings of taking the exquisite risk of going to your growing edge… right at this moment. This is one you'll want to re-listen to from time to time.
“Shedding our skin doesn’t mean to be without skin. It means that we’re opening to a level where there’s more transparency, more porousness, and more of a natural exchange—a belonging to our world.” — Tara Brach
(:23) “One of the metaphors for spiritual transformation that we hear a lot is that we’re like a caterpillar in a cocoon and that the awakening comes as we feel the sense of the cocoon and realize that it’s time to go beyond. And then we transform into a butterfly and fly into freedom. It’s a really useful metaphor individually and as a species in the sense that we live in this familiar cocoon of our egoic thoughts and behaviors and so on, and they serve us. The cocoon serves our earlier stages of development, and then the time comes to go beyond. If we don’t, the cocoon creates pressure, and we start getting more and more squeezed—‘cause we’re living in too small a space for our growing spirit. So that pressure is a reminder to take the chance and break open, and it’s damaging if we don’t. It’s arrested development.”
(1:31) “It’s even more useful if you think of it, in terms of, for these humans that we are, it’s not a one-shot. That we’re continually waking up out of a cocoon of illusion. A cocoon of limiting beliefs, a cocoon of in some way behaviors that are keeping us small. Or that it’s a continually ongoing process of coming into contact with a wider reality. So, it’s like shedding a skin, and each round that we shed a skin, we feel that vulnerability—you know the new skin is more porous than the old skin. So, there’s more contact, more flow through, and there’s more of a sense of vulnerability.”
(4:28) “This path of the exquisite risk, it arises in the moments that we’re willing to be fully present. It’s full presence. Full, unconditional presence. Meaning, the moment wide-open.”
(6:33) “Shedding our skin doesn’t mean to be without skin. It means that we’re opening to a level where there’s more transparency, more porousness, and more of a natural exchange—a belonging to our world.”
(7:37) “The challenge for all of us is that we’re very habituated and attached to and identified with our particular familiar skin, our cocoon. Every one of us. That’s part of the way evolution is, that we develop our cocoon and we’re attached to it, and we have to deal with that. And you can think of it that the ego-self is just organized around controlling life. We’re trying to get what we want and avoid what we don’t want happening most of the time. Most of the time, we’re trying to hold on to security and comfort and push away fear or pain.”
(12:20) “The big question is, ‘what enables us to keep evolving, to let go eventually?’ What we find is, it hurts more to hang on than to let go. It’s suffering to stay in that small container.”
(13:07) “Where in our lives are we sensing that prod? Where is the cocoon squeezing? Where are we suffering? That’s basically our growing edge.”
LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST, HERE. (50 min)
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