We all have aspirations and intentions for our best lives. Yet these often go by the wayside as we get lost in unconscious, mental, emotional reactivity, fear, and our own personal woundedness. We get caught up in self judgment, blaming others, living on autopilot, as the saying goes. This makes for a big gap between what’s possible and how we’re actually living our lives. The good news is there is a healing process available to us that opens us to our inner radiance. This process is called the RAIN Process and it reminds us to pause and reconnect with a wise and compassionate presence allowing us to align our lives with our hearts. She describes an analogy in our own lives to the story of the discovery of a golden buddha that, for centuries, was covered by cement, “We cover over our gold and suffering comes when we identify with the coverings. . . . We identify with our defensiveness, our judgments, or the ego that we’re using to promote and defend ourselves. The freedom comes when we start seeing that and holding it with compassion. It’s not our fault that we’re judgmental and it’s not our fault that we get angry or frustrated or defensive. We’re just trying to make it on the planet. When we can see it and hold it with compassion, then that covering starts getting more transparent and we start trusting the gold that’s always been and always will be our deepest nature.” This process is grounded and practical and can be of true service in dealing with frustrations and our habitual habits of reaction. It also can serve our evolutionary growth. Brach says, “We can actually change the structure and function of our brain and wake up our hearts to care more . . . This is possible for people to begin to sense we are friends, we belong to each other and not just humans but non-human species too. We belong to this living web.”
