Resources: Nature of Awareness
When Siddhartha (the Buddha) looked into his own mind, he realized the beauty, purity and goodness of his essential nature and was free. The most basic qualities of our being—openness/emptiness, wakefulness, and love—are always here. Getting to know these qualities, and learning to trust and live from them, is truly the heart of the path. Gradually we realize that this awake, tender awareness is more who we are than any story we’ve been believing about ourselves. Rather than a human on a spiritual path, we are spirit– formless loving presence– discovering itself through a human incarnation. As we come to understand and trust this, our life fills with increasing grace.
For more on the Nature of Awareness, you might explore Radical Acceptance – Chapter 12, and True Refuge – Chapters 14 and 15.
Talks on the Nature of Awareness
Realizing True Nature: A conversation with A.H. Almaas and Tara Brach
A.H. Almaas is an author, spiritual teacher and founder of the Diamond Approach to Self-Realization. In this interview we explore ways of approaching awakening to who we are, and...
Emptiness Dancing: Inquiring into the Nature of Awareness (retreat talk)
Our True Nature - Emptiness Dancing (retreat talk) The most profound question in spiritual life is “who (or what) am I?” This talk explores ways of inquiring into the nature of...
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror - This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the...
Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening Beyond the Separate, Fearful Self
Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening beyond the separate, fearful self. Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. This talk shines a light...
After the RAIN: The Flowering of Awake Awareness – Part 2
The blessing of the spiritual path is a homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of...
After the RAIN: The Flowering of Awake Awareness – Part I
The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of...
Namaste: Honoring the Light in All Beings
The ritual of Namaste - bowing to the sacred in ourselves and others - helps us live from the loving awareness that is our true nature. This talk looks at how we suffer because...
The Power of Awake Awareness (retreat talk)
We all encounter “demons” of fear, anger, hurt, craving and shame. This talk explores our key ways of resisting difficult emotions, and how “when the resistance is gone, the...
Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk)
When we are suffering, we are believing something untrue - usually a limiting story about who we are. This talk explores the roots of our self-doubts, and the teachings and...
Wise Investigation: Dissolving the Trance
If we are suffering, it is because we are believing something that is not true and caught in emotional reactivity. A key tool in meditation is investigation – actively inquiring...
Three Domains of Formless Presence – Landlocked in Fur (retreat talk)
While we have evolved to experience a defining sense of separate self, our potential is to awaken to the formless dimension – the pure awareness is our shared source. This talk...
Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk)
The sign of spiritual freedom is a deep trust in our essential nature, and in the light of awareness that lives through all beings. This talk explores the conditioning that...
Am I Dreaming? (retreat talk)
As we cultivate mindfulness we become increasingly aware of how we move through huge swaths of our life in trance. This talk reflects on three key domains of trance, and undoing...
Awakening from Virtual Reality (Retreat Talk)
This talk examines how we get stuck in identifying as a separate, deficient self, and the way that a deep attention frees us from trance.
Be Who You Are (retreat talk)
By bringing a surrendering presence to mental, emotional and physical domains, we undo the trance of separation and discover our true nature. This talk explores the practices...
Meditations on the Nature of Awareness
Meditation: Opening to the River of Aliveness (17:53 min.)
This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience....
Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (retreat) (26:55 min.)
We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then...
Meditation: Being a Kind Witness (18:47 min.)
Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and...
Meditation: Continuous Space Suffused with Awareness (18:39 min.)
By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with...
Instruction and Meditation: Pathway to Non-Doing Presence (41:30 min.)
While meditation begins with purposeful collecting of attention, it leads to non-doing presence, to Being. In this guided practice, we arrive in presence through a body scan and...
Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (21:28 min.)
When we are in our daily trance, we are often leaning forward, on our way somewhere else. In this meditation we are guided to relax back into the awareness that is always,...
Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness (18:22 min.)
This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We...
Meditation: The Silence That’s Listening (morning on retreat) (27:15 min.)
Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. In this guided meditation, we begin by opening to sound and...
Meditation: Lighting Up Your Energy Body (19 min.)
Our being has many frequencies of aliveness and as we attend to the more subtle, we discover a portal to the radiant awareness that is always here. This meditation guides us in...
Meditation: Opening to the River of Aliveness (17:22 min)
This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience....
Retreat Meditation: A Liberating Awareness – Embodying Full Presence (30 min)
This vipassana meditation establishes fertile grounds for presence by gladdening the mind, a mindful body scan, collecting the attention and including all that arises in a kind,...
Meditation: Basic Body Scan and Breath Awareness (12:18 min)
Meditation: Basic Body and Breath Scan - (2016-05-07) - from the first morning of the IMCW 2016 Spring weeklong retreat, Tara offers a short introductory meditation with a body...
Reflection: RAIN – Entering the Wilderness (10:10 min)
This short reflection, guided by the acronym RAIN, engages mindfulness and compassion as we open to life that we’ve been pushing away. By including unlived life, we reconnect...
New to Meditation?
