Talks: Reflections on the Path
Relaxing the Over Controller – Part 2 (retreat talk)
We all have conditioning to do what we can to protect and promote our wellbeing. Our suffering arises to the degree that our life and identity become organized around controlling our experience. These two talks look at the emergence of the fear based “over-controller,” and...
Relaxing the Over-Controller – Part 1
Link to transcript in PDF here. CC ~ We all have conditioning to do what we can to protect and promote our wellbeing. Our suffering arises to the degree that our life and identity become organized around controlling our experience. These two talks look at the emergence of...
Ask the Friend for Love – exploring living prayer
Prayer, when cultivated consciously, energizes and guides us on the spiritual path. This talk investigates the difference between wanting, with its narrow fixation, and the prayer that arises out of our deep heart’s longing. We explore how living prayer, the prayer that arises...
Sure Heart’s Release
The pathway to our awakened heart includes deep recognition of our barriers to love, and as we open, the courage to express our love. This talk includes a reflection and practice that can support us in inhabiting our full capacity for loving presence (a favorite talk...
Soul Recognition: The Practice of Namaste
In our daily trance we experience ourselves and others through a filter of wants, fears, stories and beliefs. Drawing on an engaging story from the legends of King Arthur, this talk explores how we can see past this conditioning by learning to see - in ourselves and others -...
Healing Addiction: De-conditioning the Hungry Ghosts
CC ~ This talk examines the suffering that arises when due to unmet needs for love and safety, our desire becomes narrowed and fixated on substitute gratifications. We then explore how we can bring mindfulness and self-compassion to the habits of obsessing, over-consuming...
Taking ‘The Exquisite Risk:’ An Undefended Heart
Taking 'The Exquisite Risk:' An Undefended Heart - CC ~ Poet Mark Nepo uses the phrase “exquisite risk” to describe our willingness to be fully alive, open, available, living true to our heart. This talk explores the challenges and blessings of taking the exquisite risk,...
Realizing Your Deepest Desires
This talk differentiates between egoic intentions (driven by wants and fears), and our true aspiration (deepest desires) to manifest our full potential for awake awareness and love. We explore ways to realize and open to our deepest desires when we are stuck in self-promotion,...
Healing Trauma: The Light Shines Through the Broken Places
Transcript available here: Transcript: Healing Trauma – The Light Shines Through the Broken Places Most of us have encountered trauma either in our own direct experience or with someone in our immediate circle. This talk examines the shame and suffering that arise from trauma...
Listening to the Song – Part 2
Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that awakens our awareness. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the life that is here. And as we listen to others, that same intimacy emerges. In this two-part series we examine the...
Listening to the Song – Part 1
Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that awakens our awareness. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the life that is here. And as we listen to others, that same intimacy emerges. In this two-part series we examine the...
Being Truthful
CC ~ The grounds of happiness, loving relationships and a just and flourishing society is honesty. And yet our current times are characterized by a plethora of deception - both societally, and often in more subtle ways, in our personal lives. This talk examines the deep...
Trusting Our Awakening Heart
The more we trust that our awareness and heart are awakening, the more we find ease, grace and true empowerment in our lives. This talk explores two pathways of deepening our sense of belonging and trust: direct presence with the pain of separation, and turning toward the...
Love, and Death (Retreat Talk)
To live our lives fully, we need to embrace the natural unfolding of birthing and dying. Yet we are deeply conditioned to resist loss, to pull away from fear and grief. Through a powerful Inuit story, Skeleton Woman, shared by Clarissa Estes, this talk explores how our...
Darkness of the Womb – Four Key Steps in Transforming Suffering
Darkness of the Womb - Four Key Steps in Transforming Suffering - CC ~ We can either repeat old fear based patterns, or our suffering can awaken us to a deeper wisdom and greater love. This talk explores four principles in relating to difficulty that move us towards healing...
Your Awake Heart Is Calling You
As individuals and societies, we are pulled by both the insecurity of our evolutionary past, and by our awake heart, our capacity for mindfulness and compassion. This talk explores the ways we can listen to and respond to the call of our awake heart, by training ourselves to...
Dissolving Trance with RAIN
One of the pervasive expressions of trance is identifying with a limited and separate sense of self. This talk contrasts the self-trance to our intrinsically open, awake and loving awareness. We then explore how the mindfulness and self-compassion in the RAIN practice can...
Refuge in Truth, Love and Awareness
The three archetypal refuges of truth, love and awareness are interweaving pathways home found in most spiritual traditions. This talk looks at our habitual pursuit of substitutes to feel happy, and reflects on how we awaken through each true refuge. The talk ends with a living...
Don’t Know Mind – Stepping Out of the Trance of Thinking
Don't Know Mind ~ (a talk from June 10, 2009) Thoughts, and more broadly, conceptual knowledge, cannot lead to the direct realization of truth, of reality. While thoughts are an essential part of surviving and thriving, spiritual awakening only becomes possible when we step out...
The Revolution of Tenderness – Part 2
These two talks explore our capacity to be tender - sensitive and responsive to ourselves and others. This capacity marks a radical evolutionary shift from a self-centered existence shaped by fear, to a life lived from the realization of our collective belonging and the...
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