The breath can be a powerful portal to presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing with the breath, including the breath in a body scan, and then allowing the breath to serve as an anchor when the mind gets lost in thoughts. As we settle with the breath as a home...
Much of our suffering comes from reacting to stressful situations with fear or aggression, rather than responding with wisdom and care. This talk explores the pathway of shifting from reacting to responding: this includes learning to pause, awakening the wings of...
This guided meditation includes a mindful body scan, and awakening all our senses to our moment to moment experience. We relax open to the presence that is unobscured by thoughts, letting life be just as it is.
Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part 2 on...
One of the greatest roots of suffering is being at war with ourselves. This meditation, based on the acronym RAIN (recognize-allow-investigate-nurture), guides us in releasing the armoring of blame, and relating to our inner life with greater understanding and...
This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self. We then explore the practices of presence and self-inquiry that turn us toward the openness, tenderness and wakefulness of our Being....
A meditation on being present with our living, breathing life (includes body scan and chanting the Om’s in community – a favorite from Tara’s Wednesday night archives). Sense the quality of presence with the breath – allowing… intimate… awake… Letting this...
For most of human history it’s been “normal” to eat non-human animals. This is now changing. We are awakening to the massive suffering of the billions of animals killed each day for food, the horrors of the animal-food industry, and the impact it has on climate change...
Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging (from the 2016 IMCW Spring Retreat). How I...
This meditation turns us toward naturally arising happiness with the image of a smile, welcoming the aliveness and presence of each moment with the spirit of “yes” and then closes with a brief lovingkindness practice. NOTE: a favorite retreat meditation from the...
This practice sets the atmosphere of loving presence with a smile-down and waking up all the senses. We relax into open awareness, receptive to the breath or whatever waves of experience are calling for attention. The invitation is to rest in Hereness, fully awake in...
Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part 2 on...
This meditation scans the body and directly invites the awakening of key energy centers (chakras) in our body. We then rest in the openhearted awareness that includes this ever changing creative flow of aliveness. We close with a prayer of loving kindness (a special...
Equanimity is the quality of presence that is open, balanced and non-reactive. As this talk explores, when equanimity is lacking, we become easily lost in trance, identified as a defended and controlling egoic self. When present, the solidity and constriction of egoic...
In this meditation we begin with the image and felt sense of a smile to arouse an atmosphere of care, and allow that caring presence to fill our body and the entire field of awareness. We then open to the changing experience of breath, sensations, feelings, sound and...
