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 identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like...
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 we forget this basic goodness, and explores the pathways of remembering that...
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 demons are gone.” We look at the power of mindfulness and compassion to undo resistance, and...
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 practices that remind us of our basic goodness – the loving awareness that is our...
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 into what is happening inside us. When we investigate with sincere interest and care, the...
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 explores how we can undo the identification with thoughts, emotions and feelings that keeps...
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 entraps us in a trance of separation and believing in a limited self. We then...
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 the habitual reactivity that keeps us from the loving, open awareness that is our...
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.
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 awareness, and the blessings of embodying the realization of our radiant, empty essence. This special talk is just released and is...
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 that cultivate the non-resisting space of presence, and the flavors of our essential being...
Opening the Lotus of Your Heart (retreat talk)
Our reaction to life’s stress is to contract, and we live many moments with a tight body, clenched heart and narrowed mind. This talk explores how deepening attention can reconnect us with our natural openness and radiance (from the 2012 Women’s Retreat on 2/3/2012).
The Backward Step
Our habit is to think we are on our way someplace else, and that our happiness is to be found outside ourselves. Yet realization becomes possible when we take the backward step into the formless dimension of our own being. This talk explores the two pathways that...