Spiritual Reparenting

Tara Brach - Tara Brach

Tara Brach explores spiritual reparenting as a path to healing inner wounds through self-compassion, presence, and unconditional love, drawing from stories, psychology, and mindfulness practices.

Key takeaways

• Spiritual reparenting heals childhood wounds with self-compassion and presence.
• Unconditional love and deep seeing are essential for emotional well-being.
• Disconnection stems from severed belonging; connection restores vitality.

Transcript preview

Welcome friends to the Tara Brock 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 tarabrock.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. Namstay. Welcome, friends. There's a story I've always liked. A curious little girls watching her mother brush her hair and notices her mom has a few strands of white hair. So she says, mama, why is some of your hair turning white white? And the mother decides this is a teaching moment. She says, mama, why is some of your hair turning white? And the mother decides this is a teaching moment. at her daughter and says, well, every time you do something bad, you disobey me or make me cry, one of my hairs turns white. And a little girl reflected on this for a moment and then she looked at her mom and said innocently, wow, mom, so what did you do to grandma to make all of her hair turn white? Most of us are familiar with the idea of reparenting. It means giving the self-care, the boundaries, the self-talk that a healthy parent would have provided during childhood, like maybe not telling your inner child, hey you're aging me prematurely, you know. So decades ago I started using the term spiritual reparenting to describe a really profound dimension of meditation. sense, what is it a young child most deeply needs? There's two things, and one is to be seen that their inherent goodness, their value, be recognized, mirrored, seeing the gold, and the other is that they're loved, that they're cherished, that they're embraced for who they are. Given the disease, few parents can offer that kind of deep seeing and loving in an unconditional way. So many end up growing up feeling to different degrees unworthy or unlovable, socially anxious, uncapable of true intimacy. So to whatever the degree, there's a core feeling often of not okay that something's wrong with me. from living and loving fully and in the most fundamental way from realizing and trusting who we are. So as we'll explore in this talk on spiritual reparenting and it's one I've chosen from the archives, as we cultivate mindfulness and compassion, we learn to offer the wounded places within us a very deep, a very healing attention, one that can reopen us to our natural aliveness and creativity and open-heartedness. So I hope you find this of value. I'd like to begin with a brief little story I heard on the press that a man tried to sneak his pet turtle onto a flight and he tried to pass it off as if it was fast food and the way he did it was he placed it between these two binds. and wrapped it in paper for Kentucky Fried Chicken. But he got caught and when he was discovered he told the airport officials that he just really couldn't leave his beloved pet at home. And I thought it was a kind of an interesting little story because I have had times that I've nearly canceled a teaching trip because I just didn't want to leave my dog. And the feeling is kind of this wrenching feeling. And it speaks to how how profound the sense of wanting connection and not wanting to be separated is. It's so deep in us. There's so much research now that having pets and that sense of warmth and connection and the oxytocin and tenderness, it increases longevity and happiness, the happiness quality of life and that the other side of the equation is when there's a deficit of connection is when there's a deficit of connection. when there is depression and when we don't have adequate bonding early on death at least on it can be physical and on other levels too. In the theme of tonight which has very much to do with connection and separation there is a myth that I love to share now and then and it's one of the legends from the Holy Grail and it has to do with connection and separation. There is a myth that I love to share now and then and it's one of the legends from the Holy Grail and it has to do with Percival, this young night on a quest, and he wanders into this very parched and devastated kingdom where nothing grows, it's a real wasteland. And when he arrives at the Capitol, he finds that the townspeople are behaving as if everything's normal. They're in this total trance of, they're on automatic and they're just acting and doing their daily duties, but with no effect really. They're completely in another realm. And so they're not like wondering, well, what horror has befallen us, whereas nothing's growing, the whole place is devastated. So they're dull and mechanical, and then he goes into the castle where he finds the king who's in his bed and he's pale and he's dying, and like the land around him, the monarch's life is waning. So Percival's full of questions, but he's kind of been taught by an older night that asking questions and improper is, is improper for a night of his rank or whatever. So he keeps quiet and the next morning he leaves the castle to continue on his journey. But the witch Kundry encounters him as he's making his way onward. And when she hears that he had visited the king, but he hadn't even asked the king anything about himself, she goes into a complete rage. And she says, how could he be so callous? You know, he could have saved the king and the kingdom by only extending him. So Percival goes, whoa, okay, so he turns around and he goes back, because he takes, he's really taking her words to heart. So he goes back into the wasteland and he goes right to the castle and without even breaking his stride he walks right up to the king and then comes down onto his knees and with incredible gentleness he says, oh my king, what aileth they? And within moments, color returns to... the king's cheeks and he stands up and he's fully healed and with that throughout the kingdom everything comes to life and the people newly awake and talk with animation they laugh and they sing together and they have a vigorous step the crops begin to grow the grass on the hills glows with the new green of spring and life has been renewed they're back that's the story and what happened awakening possible from the trance into this aliveness and vitality and presence. And it was first of all extending himself with care to reach and touch and connect with another being. That's what awakens us from trance, connection. And sometimes the connection occurs as we learn to come back home into our bodies and start really having the courage and presence to feel the aliveness that's here. And sometimes it comes because we listen to our own hearts in a new way. And sometimes it comes because somebody reaches out to us or we reach out to them, but it's all about relationship coming into our relatedness, realizing we're not separate. But the truth is, this living web, that we are absolutely, in a belonging and interdependence. So the trauma in our life, the wounds are all having to do with severed belonging. They come in our families and in our culture, ways that we in some way get split off from feeling the okayness of this body and heart that we're okay. We get told that something's wrong. We get split off from feeling the okay. We get told that something's wrong. We get split off. because we get hurt and it's too painful to live in our bodies and feel that hurt. We get split off because in some way the other has not been able to stay with us. If we begin to reflect and sense, okay, so what Parsifal did was he brought his presence and his care, that's really what's needed. And I'd like to invite you, we're going to do a few reflections. as we often do. The first, if you just close your eyes for a moment, and we've just heard of Parsifal and just to bring to mind for yourself a time when you might have been in some form of a trance of suffering, some form of a kind of a disconnect, kind of a disconnect, feeling alone or hurt or confused. need and somebody, you connected with somebody that had a healing presence. And it could be in a very subtle way, you felt that connection or could be really one of those powerful moments in your life, but somebody had a healing presence that you could tell was making a difference. into this mutual belonging, this web of life. And as you bring someone to mind in the Buddhist they call it a benefactor, to somebody who showed up, what are the qualities, they call it a benefactor, to somebody who showed up, what are the qualities in that person that made a difference for you? What was it that that that person embodied or offered? When you'd like you can open up and then you'd like you can open your eyes? When you'd like you can open your eyes. I often think if we're in the earliest phase of life, young child what is most needed from our parents. And there are two things. And you might have in some way had some of the language for these two things, and you thought of that person that extended to you. And one of the qualities that we need from a parent is a sense that they understand or get us. Feeling felt that we're known in some way. This being understands, this being is interested, this being is a a tuning, okay? That's one quality. And the other quality is in that feeling felt that we're loved, that there's care. These are often described as the two wings of awareness, really, when they're in full bloom, the understanding and the caring. And we all need to receive it, and then we discover that it's their natural intrinsic nature. It wakes us up. What I'd like to explore for the remainder of our time tonight is what I sometimes think of as spiritual reparenting, that what we're doing on this path of healing and awakening is bringing those two qualities of seeing clearly, oh, what is going on right here? What aileth they, you know? And caring, that gentleness, to our inner life and to each other and to our larger world. And I call it spiritual reparenting because there is a corrective quality that the given is that there was some severed belonging. There is some delusion and