Trusting the Gold: Uncovering Your Natural Goodness

by Tara Brach

Overview

A beautifully illustrated gift book to help us uncover and trust the innate goodness in ourselves and others.

We receive so many messages from our culture meant to divide us from one another or turn us against ourselves. Yet when we stop judging, stop avoiding, stop trying to resist that which makes us afraid or ashamed, we open to our true nature—a boundless field of awareness that is innately fearless and loving.

This recognition of our essential human goodness may be the most radical act of healing we can take. “The gold of our true nature can never be tarnished,” says Tara Brach. “In the moments of remembering and trusting this basic goodness of our Being, we open to happiness, peace, and freedom.”

In Trusting the Gold, Tara draws from more than four decades of experience as a meditation teacher and psychologist to share her most valuable practices for reconnecting with the beauty of our humanity—from timeless Buddhist wisdom to techniques adapted to the specific challenges of our modern age. Here you’ll explore three pathways of remembering and living from your full aliveness:

• Opening to the Truth of the present moment
• Turning toward Love in any situation
• Resting in the Freedom of our natural, radiant awareness

“Even in the midst of our deepest emotional suffering, self-compassion is the pathway that will carry us home,” Dr. Brach writes. “What a joy to pause and behold our basic goodness, and to see how it shines through each of us. Seeing that secret beauty, we fall in love with all of life.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683647133
Publisher:	Sounds True, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/15/2021
Pages:	184
Sales rank:	34,639
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Tara Brach has been practicing and teaching meditation since 1975, as well as leading workshops and meditation retreats at centers throughout North America and Europe. She has a PhD in clinical psychology, is the founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW), and is the author of Radical Acceptance, True Refuge, Radical Compassion, and Trusting the Gold. Tara’s weekly podcasts of talks and meditations are downloaded more than three million times each month. For more, visit tarabrach.com.

Vicky Alvarez is a visual artist and illustrator with a love for the intimate and contemplative experience of art-making and its ability to reveal and heal. She is inspired by her own inner landscape, glimpses of innocence and simplicity, our human vulnerability, and the mystical. Vicky currently lives between her home countries of England and Spain. She also loves to explore her creativity and emotional realm through dance, nature, and clay. For more, visit vickyalvarez.com.

Table of Contents

An Opening invitation 1

Truth

Our Basic Goodness 11

What Is Good Enough? 12

Thank You for Everything 14

The Second Arrow 15

Resisting the Demons 18

This Too 21

Newspaper Meditation 23

Meet Your Edge and Soften 27

The Gift of a Failed Strategy 29

From White Guilt to Heartbreak 32

Speaking and Receiving Difficult Truths Not a Problem 43

Thank You, Siri 45

What You Practice Grows Stronger 49

Real but Not True 51

Sacred Presence 52

Every Day, No Matter What 53

Love

Is Always Loving You 59

Loving Ourselves into Healing 63

The Boundary of Our Freedom 67

Living True to Ourselves 70

Please, May I Be Kind 75

Narayan's Ant Farm 78

We Are Friends 81

Reverence for Life 84

Our Secret Beauty 89

The Bridge Between Longing and Belonging 92

Keeping Company with Grief 95

Our World's Fear 98

Loving Life No Matter What 103

Freedom

Two Wings 109

A Sunlit Sky 111

"This Is It" 114

Remembering the Way Home 115

Surrendering Again and Again 118

Touching Presence 125

Saying Yes 126

The Unreal Other 129

The Vast Sky of Awareness 132

Seeing Behind the Mask 135

"I'm an Undo" 139

Is This Universe a Friendly Place? 140

A Prayer for Mia 144

Happy for No Reason 145

The Lion's Roar 150

These Precious Moments 151

Standing Still 153

Our True Home 155

A Heart Ready for Anything 157

The Fragrance of Awareness 158

Truth or Love? 161

Acknowledgments 165

Notes 167

About the Author 171

About the Illustrator 173