Part 2: Healing Depression with Meditation
Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness. These two talks...
Part 1: Healing Depression with Meditation
Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness. These two talks...
Saying “Yes” – Meeting Your Edge and Softening
Our habitual ways of avoiding unpleasant experience keep us from intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This talk helps us recognize these often unconscious patterns that keep us identified with a separate, threatened self, and offers guidance in saying...
What Is It Like Being You?
Compassion is hard wired in our organism, and can be cultivated. This talk helps us identify the blocks to compassion—our outmoded survival equipment—and using RAIN, offers practical guidance in mindfully attuning to others’ emotional experience and awakening...
From Human Doing to Human Being – Part 2
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...
Evolving Beyond “Unreal Othering”
What motivates us – as individuals and as a society – to build walls and knowingly hurt others? This talk explores the evolutionary roots of “unreal othering” and how when we are hijacked by fear, it can take over and disconnect us from the very real...
Short Talk & Meditation: Tonglen – Radical Compassion (32:43 min)
We are conditioned to avoid suffering – our own and others. By pulling away, we also contract our heart and disconnect from our innate capacity for compassion. This short talk and meditation is a training in touching vulnerability, and discovering the boundless...
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...
Seeing Basic Goodness – Part 2
Most of us long to trust our goodness, but get caught in stories of deficiency and striving to affirm we’re ok. These talks look at the block to realizing the loving awareness that is our essence, and the practices that help us see this essential goodness – in...
TaraTalks: Meditating with RAIN – Working with Difficult Emotions (11:43 min.)
This guided practice applies mindfulness and self-compassion to challenging emotions. It is based on the acronym RAIN, and provides a four step practice that is accessible and effective, even at those times when mindfulness is most difficult to remember. The acronym...
Seeing Basic Goodness – Part 1
Most of us long to trust our goodness, but get caught in stories of deficiency and striving to affirm we’re ok. These talks look at the block to realizing the loving awareness that is our essence, and the practices that help us see this essential goodness – in...
Responding to Change with a Wise Heart
An intrinsic part of spiritual life is facing the truth of impermanence. When we open to the changing flow without resistance, we naturally cherish this passing life, and realize the timeless, changeless awareness that is our true home. Yet we are conditioned to grasp...
Listening with an Awake Heart – Part 2
“Listening and feeling heard are absolutely intrinsic to awakening our hearts and cultivating an open awareness in ourselves and in our world. …The only answer to polarization, the only way we can interrupt the cycles of violence, is to listen deeply and, out of...