Indian teacher Sri Nisargadatta writes, “The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it.” Sometimes the abyss of fear and isolation is so wide that we hold back, unable…
Blog: “Please Love Me”
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Results for "fear"
Blog: Defending Against Loss
…do whatever’s possible to subdue the primal fear that comes with feeling out of control. Much of our daily activity is a vigilant effort to stay on top of things—to…
Blog: Happy For No Reason
…to feeling betrayed by my body, a defense against more loss. But in my fear of being attached to health, I’d not allowed myself to feel the truth—I love life….
Blog: The Sacred Art of Listening – Nourishing Loving Relationships
…listen. The more we understand, the less we fear; the less we fear, the more we trust and the more we trust, the more love can flow. Isn’t it true…
“I realized I don’t have to believe my thoughts.”
…time our thoughts are not really serving us. Many thoughts are driven by fear and lock us into insecurity. During our residential meditation retreats, one of the biggest breakthroughs people…
The Space Between the Logs
…to pause! We each have an existential hum of fear that is in the background of our daily life. We have a perception of our temporariness, that around the corner…
Part 1 – The Sure Heart’s Release
…reflects on these habits, and explores how we can free ourselves by bringing a mindful, compassionate attention to places where we are most trapped in feeling separate, fearful and unworthy….
Blog: The Transforming Power of Mindful Prayer
…to our prayer. When we are willing to touch the pain of separation—the loneliness, the fear, the hurt–, our longing carries us to the tender and compassionate presence that is…
Blog: From Self-judgment to Compassion
…to many of us. We often distance ourselves from emotional pain—our vulnerability, anger, jealousy, fear—by covering it over with self-judgment. Yet, when we push away parts of ourselves, we only…
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…
Listening To Our Life
Listening in a full and open way allows us to come home to our natural state–awake, vast awareness. In an immediate way, a listening attention dissolves the tangles of fear…
Let Everything Happen to You
The ways we try to control our life imprisons us in a contracted, fearful sense of self. Yet when we contemplate letting go of control, there is a sense that…
Inviting Life’s Difficulties to Tea
One of the most illuminating themes in the Buddha’s life story was the regular appearance of Mara–god of selfishness and greed, anger and fear, doubt and shame. Each time Mara…
Wise Effort and Spiritual Freedom
In the Buddhist tradition, wise effort, or the purposeful dedication of our energy, is an essential part of the spiritual path. While the attitudes of grasping or fear can contract…
Embodying Loving Presence (Retreat Talk)
This talk looks at the evolutionary fear-patterning that creates separation in our relationships, and at the practices that open us to giving and receiving love. (from the IMCW long weekend…
Lovingkindness: Living with a Wise Heart
The Buddha taught that our fear is great, but greater yet is the truth of our connectedness. These two talks examine the often unconscious habits that generate the pain of…
Befriending the Deities
The fruit of practice is releasing our identification with core beliefs and fear-based emotions, and realizing and inhabiting our Natural awareness. This is described as the N in RAIN –…
The Unreal Other – Awakening empathy and wisdom
When we experience others through a conditioned lens of wants and fears, and of unexamined beliefs, we react in ways that cause distance and sometimes obvious injury. This talk explores…
Living Aligned with the Heart
We suffer when our words or actions arise from unconscious wants and fears. This talk explores how we can awaken from the habitual ways we cause harm to ourselves and…
Three Attitudes that Awaken and Free Our Spirit
Our predicament is intuiting our true nature–love, awareness–and yet regularly contracting into the self-identity conditioned by wants and fears. This talk explores three essential and liberating ways of relating to…
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