Talks: Reflections on the Path
The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1
Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and...
How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 2
The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side,...
How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 1
The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side,...
The Courage to Love – Part 2
The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence. An honorable human relationship — that...
The Courage to Love – Part 1
The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence. We waste so much energy trying to cover...
An Appropriate Response: Living from an Awake Heart
Much of our suffering comes from reacting to stressful situations with fear or aggression, rather than responding with wisdom and care. This talk explores the pathway of shifting from reacting to responding: this includes learning to pause, awakening the wings of mindfulness...
Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame – Part 3
Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part 2 on the places...
Trusting the Gold (retreat talk)
This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self. We then explore the practices of presence and self-inquiry that turn us toward the openness, tenderness and wakefulness of our Being. Our trust...
Compassion Towards All: Moving toward a Plant Based Diet
For most of human history it’s been “normal” to eat non-human animals. This is now changing. We are awakening to the massive suffering of the billions of animals killed each day for food, the horrors of the animal-food industry, and the impact it has on climate change (second...
Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness (retreat talk)
Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging (from the 2016 IMCW Spring Retreat). How I yearn to...
Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame – Part 2
Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part 2 on the places...
Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything (Duck Meditation)
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...
Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame – Part 1
Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part 1 focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part 2 on the places...
Beyond the Controlling Self – Part 2
It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential...
Beyond the Controlling Self – Part 1
It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies - such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending - have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential...
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...
Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred – Part 2
This two part series explores how we regularly leave our body and skim life’s surface in a mental trance, and the ways we can train our attention to come home again. We look at working with physical and emotional pain, and the gifts of love, wisdom, creativity and aliveness...
Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred – Part 1
This two part series explores how we regularly leave our body and skim life’s surface in a mental trance, and the ways we can train our attention to come home again. We look at working with physical and emotional pain, and the gifts of love, wisdom, creativity and aliveness...
Tara Talks: Compassion toward Non-Human Animals (11:39 min.)
Tara Talks: Compassion for Non-Human Animals For thousands of years humans have become accustomed to de-valuing, exploiting and violating non-human animals. This unseen bias of speciesism continues to create horrific suffering for billions of sentient beings each year, and...
Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2
Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how...
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