Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Equanimity is the quality of presence that is open, balanced and non-reactive. As this talk explores, when equanimity is lacking, we become easily lost in trance, identified as a defended and controlling egoic self. When present, the solidity and constriction of egoic self dissolves, and our heart is free to respond to life with love, compassion, forgiveness and joy.

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 4: Opening to Joy

Our innate capacity for joy is blocked by our habitual ways of paying attention. This talk explores three key pathways of presence that connect us with our full openness and aliveness.

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 3: A Forgiving Heart

Anger is an intelligent emotion, a natural part of our evolutionary design that lets us know when we are endangered or impeded in our progress. But when it locks into ongoing resentment and blame, our heart becomes armored and we lose access to a wholeness of being. This talk explores forgiving as a process of relaxing our armoring and awakening a healing compassion for ourselves and others.

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 2: Heart of Compassion

Most of us consciously value compassion, but move through much of life without access to the full capacity of our heart. This talk explores the self-compassion that is the very grounds of loving our world.

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 1: Universal Faces of Love

Lovingkindness, or metta, is the first of the four divine abodes in buddhist teachings. This talk explores the habitual patterns of fears and wants that obscure this innate quality of heart and key ways that we awaken ourselves to its luminous presence.

Listening to the Song

Listening to the Song

NOTE: Tara was away this week, so asked that we post a favorite from the archives:
Listening with our full heart and attention is the gateway to understanding and love. This talk explores the challenges to deep listening, and offers ways of paying attention that awaken a healing listening presence.

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Path of True Refuge

This talk explores the three archetypal gateways to liberation – awareness (Buddha), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha). It includes guided reflections and a refuge ceremony that can help us discover the path “inside out” through daily life

NOTE: Stuart Rakoff’s blog is here:
http://stuspeaks.wordpress.com/

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 2: Evolving Toward Unconditional Love

This two part series explores the evolutionary conditioning of fear and judgment that contracts us away from love and acceptance, and the quality of mindful presence – in relating inwardly and in communicating with others – that awakens and frees our...
Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 1: Evolving Toward Unconditional Love

This two part series explores the evolutionary conditioning of fear and judgment that contracts us away from love and acceptance, and the quality of mindful presence – in relating inwardly and in communicating with others – that awakens and frees our hearts.

The Evolving of Generosity

The Evolving of Generosity

This talk explores how we can open out of the habit of grasping and deliberately nourish our natural capacity for generosity, for living love.

Accessing Innate Wisdom

Accessing Innate Wisdom

Wisdom is an innate capacity, but often covered over by trance. This talk explores how we abandon ourselves as we busily seek ways to feel more worthy, loveable and safe. We then look at the pathway home, the radical non-doing and space of silence that allows wisdom and love to flow through.

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 2: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening

We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts.

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 1: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening

We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts.

Healing Self-Doubt

Healing Self-Doubt

Siddhartha Gautama’s last challenge before enlightenment was doubt, and to some degree, most of us live with limiting beliefs about our own worthiness and goodness. This talk looks at the tenacity of self-doubt and the power of mindfulness, investigation and compassion in releasing its grip.

Part 5: Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Part 2: Happiness

This 2-part series explores conditioned and unconditioned happiness: What blocks us from experiencing true well-being, and the skillful means that allow this natural expression of our being to shine through.