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...
From Human Doing to Human Being – Part 1
Like Sisyphus eternally pushing the boulder up the hill, we can spend many moments busily trying to manage our life. This two-part talk explores how we can awaken from our non-stop doing, including the incessant inner narrative, and discover the mystery, love and...
Namaste: Seeing the Truth of Who We Are
A gift of evolving consciousness is the capacity to recognize and honor the sacred awareness that lives through our own and all beings. This capacity is blocked by our identification with our “mask” or ego self, and not seeing past other people’s masks. In 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 entraps us in a trance of separation and believing in a limited self. We then...
Darkness of the Womb: Four Key Steps in Transforming Suffering
Darkness of the Womb: Four Key Steps in Transforming Suffering – CC ~ We can either repeat old fear based patterns, or our suffering can awaken us to a deeper wisdom and greater love. This talk explores four principles in relating to difficulty that move us towards...
Stories That Imprison Our Heart – Part 2
Our suffering arises from fear-based stories that are often outside our awareness. These include stories of our deficiency or importance, of being a victim, of being unseen or unloved, of facing failure or rejection. This is true collectively too. We have shared...
Stories That Imprison Our Heart – Part 1
Our suffering arises from fear-based stories that are often outside our awareness. These include stories of our deficiency or importance, of being a victim, of being unseen or unloved, of facing failure or rejection. This is true collectively too. We have shared...
Trusting Our Hearts – Trust in Our Basic Goodness
Trust in our basic goodness directly effects our capacity for intimacy with others, creativity and living fully. This talk explores the ways that our caregivers and culture undermine that trust, primarily by giving us messages that we are “not enough” or...
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...
Reflection: Waking Up from Limiting Beliefs (8 min.)
A guided reflection meditation that addresses limiting beliefs surrounding interpersonal conflict – from the ending of the “Real but Not True” talk. Listen to the full talk, Real but Not True: Freeing Ourselves from Harmful Beliefs. photo: Sherry...
Real But Not True: Freeing Ourselves from Harmful Beliefs
Thoughts and beliefs are navigational maps that are not inherently true. Rather, some serve us and others cause feelings of separation, self-aversion and/or blame of others. We can free ourselves from harmful beliefs by investigating them with a dedicated, mindful and...
Bodhichitta – The Awakened Heart – Part 1
While the brightness and warmth of our hearts is always here, like the sun when blocked by clouds, our intrinsic love can be obscured. These two talks explore how we become arrested in a confining story of separate self, and how remembering love releases us from this...
Relating Wisely with Imperfection
Our survival brain reacts to perceived imperfection with aversion and anxiety, and if we are habituated to this reaction, we become imprisoned in the identity of a flawed separate self. This talk explores the healing and transformation that is possible as we learn to...