Category Archives: Pandemic

Guided Meditations, Listening, Pandemic

Meditation: Listening to our Heart (22:16 min)

True listening arouses an open receptive presence that can be truly healing. This meditation awakens a listening presence; first bringing that receptive awareness to sensations and sounds, and then offering that presence to the tenderness and vulnerability of our heart.

Because the heart dwells in unattended dark, we often forget its sublime sensitivity to everything that is happening to us. Without our ever noticing, the heart absorbs the joy of things and also their pain and care. Within us, therefore, a burdening can accrue. For this reason, it is wise now and again to tune in to your heart and listen for what it carries. Sometimes the simplest things effect unexpected transformation. The old people here used to say that a burden shared is a burdened halved. Similarly, when you allow your heart to speak, the burdens it carries diminish, a new lightness enters your body and relief floods the heart.

Let Your Heart Speak, John O’Donohue
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Fear, Grief, Pandemic, Talks: Audio & Video, Videos

Change, Loss and Timeless Love (Part 1)

Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely intertwined with how we relate to change and loss. These two talks are an invitation to look honestly, and without judgment, at the ways, we resist facing our fears and grieving our losses. We then explore how to bring mindfulness and compassion to processing what we’ve resisted, and opening to the timeless love that is our true nature.

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Guided Meditations, Pandemic, Videos

Meditation: Pathway to Inner Peace (20:45 min.)

“Peace is this moment without judgment,” writes poet Dorothy Hunt, “this moment in the heart-space where everything that is, is welcome.” This meditation is a guide to opening to the truth of what’s here, and meeting it with a gentle, allowing presence. As we do, we can touch the inner peace of non-judging awareness, and source our actions in that balance and wisdom.

Do you think peace requires an end to war?
Or tigers eating only vegetables?
Does peace require an absence from
your boss, your spouse, yourself?…
Do you think peace will come some other place than here?
Some other time than Now?
In some other heart than yours? 

Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,
that your life should unfold according to your plans. 

​Peace is this moment without judgment,
this moment in the heart-space where
everything that is is welcome.

Dorothy Hunt
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Pandemic, Talks: Audio & Video, Videos

Equanimity: The Gifts of Non-Reactive Mindful Presence

If we want to bring our intelligence, creativity and love into our relationships and world, we need to be able to access an inner refuge of presence. This talk explores how, when we’re reacting from anger, clinging or fear, to pause, reconnect to the immediate experience of “just this” and remember the love and awareness that has room for the changing waves of life. 

There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Be brave and walk through the country of your own wild heart. Be gentle and know that you know nothing. Be still. Listen. Keep walking. No one else controls access to this perfect place. Give yourself your own unconditional permission to go there. Waste no time. Enter the center of your soul.
― St. Teresa of Ávila

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Guided Meditations, Pandemic

Meditation: Refuge in Presence (22:10 min.)

The movement from virtual reality – thoughts – to the awareness of sense-based reality is true homecoming. This meditation guides us in awakening our senses, and returning again and again to the freedom of embodied presence. We close with part of a poem “Come Home” by Jane Hooper.

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Beliefs, Pandemic, Talks: Audio & Video, Videos

Freedom from the Prison of Limiting Beliefs

We suffer when we are caught in beliefs of our own or other’s badness, unworthiness, or lack of value. These beliefs hurt our bodies, lead to violent and/or addictive behaviors, and separate us from our own heart and each other.

This talk explores how we can discover who we are beyond these beliefs by recognizing when we are trapped, and learning how to turn to presence and love (dedicated to Ruth Bader Ginsburg).

A moment of truly feeling loved – of truly feeling love – can start to undo a whole lifetime of feeling flawed. ~ Tara

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Pandemic, Talks: Audio & Video, Videos

The Four Remembrances

When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry.

This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices—Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness—that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.

May death be an advisor.
May the wisdom of impermanence help us to remember to live
this moment, this day, from loving presence.
May we all awaken these hearts and minds.
May all beings everywhere be free.
Namaste

We hope you’ll enjoy this talk from the archives – 2019-03-27.

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Compassion-Self-Others, Guided Meditations, Pandemic, Videos

Meditation: Loving What Is (18:50 min.)

While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and emotions to move through us, just as they are. As this allowing presence deepens, it becomes suffused with the tenderness of love.

In this choiceless, never ending flow of life
There is an infinite array of choices
One alone brings happiness
To love what is..

~ Dorothy Hunt
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Pandemic, Racism, Talks: Audio & Video, Videos

Awakening from the Trance of Bad-Othering

Great spiritual leaders of social movements teach that true transformation arises from realizing our interconnectedness, and the light of the divine in each being. Sadly, through human history, much suffering has come from perceiving others as bad-others, flawed humans who are excluded from our heart.

This talk looks at how our stories and mistrust of others—in personal relationships and in our society—can lead to cycles of violence, harm, and deepening alienation. We then explore the inner process that helps us shift to “bad behavior, not bad human” and allows us to respond to suffering with love-in-action.

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously.  When you realize the depth and fullness of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection. 

I Am That, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.

Dhammapada, a sacred Buddhist scripture

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Guided Meditations, Pandemic

Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart (22:00 min.)

Especially when we’re stressed, we need pathways to an allowing, kind presence. This meditation guides us to relax and open through our bodies, and then meet changing waves of experience with a sea of awareness that is intrinsically allowing and tender.

the ruthless mind may dig to find what is lacking
but we are the love we long for
we are the love we long for
no end and no beginning
bigger than our deepest fear
fresh and clear in every moment
it’s love that makes us whole

Danna Faulds
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