Talks: Reflections on the Path

Loving Life, Loving Earth

Loving Life, Loving Earth

With prayers for Paris: What will it take to have us collectively awaken to the suffering of our earth and respond? This talk looks at how we are destroying our larger body, the earth; what stops us from recognizing and opening to the suffering of loss, and ways we can evolve...

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Feeling Gratitude, Giving Love

Feeling Gratitude, Giving Love

Like breathing in and breathing out, gratitude and generosity allow us to live fully. This talks explores what blocks these natural capacities, and three pathways of nourishing a grateful and giving heart. Includes the "What Do You Love" meditation....

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Part 2: Awakening through Anger – The U-Turn to Freedom

Part 2: Awakening through Anger – The U-Turn to Freedom

While we have strong conditioning to react to aggression with more aggression, we have the capacity to pause, and instead deepen attention and connect to our natural wisdom and empathy.  This talk looks at how we can directly engage in this evolutionary adaptation when we...

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Part 1: Awakening through Anger – The U-Turn to Freedom

Part 1: Awakening through Anger – The U-Turn to Freedom

Anger is naturally triggered when we feel an obstacle to meeting our needs. How do we honor the intelligence within anger, but not get hijacked into emotional reactivity that creates suffering in our individual and collective lives? This talk explores the U-turn that enables us...

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Compass of Our Heart

Compass of Our Heart

All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention.  While it’s natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and...

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Relating Wisely with Imperfection

Relating Wisely with Imperfection

Our survival brain reacts to perceived imperfection with aversion and anxiety, and if we are habituated to this reaction, we become imprisoned in the identity of a flawed separate self. This talk explores the healing and transformation that is possible as we learn to regard...

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Awakening Beyond Self

Awakening Beyond Self

Suffering is our call to deepen attention and discover the truth of who we are beyond the identity of a separate, deficient self. This talk examines how thoughts, beliefs and emotions keep us trapped in a confining identity, and two pathways of practice that serve awakening and...

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Freeing Ourselves by Loving Ourselves (retreat talk)

Freeing Ourselves by Loving Ourselves (retreat talk)

In this human realm, healing and spiritual realization are rooted in awakening a love for the life that is here. This talk looks at our habit of feeling we should be different than we are, and the ways that mindfulness and self-compassion help enable us to not only embrace our...

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Trusting Ourselves, Trusting Life

Trusting Ourselves, Trusting Life

How can we trust in basic goodness when we encounter so much greed and violence within and around us? This talk explores three pathways of practice that enable us to bring a healing attention to our primitive survival conditioning, and cultivate the heart and awareness that...

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The Sacred Pause

The Sacred Pause

Transcript now available: The Sacred Pause   CC   ~ When we are lost in the trance of doing, our lives are on automatic, and contracted by sense that something’s wrong or missing. This talk explores the challenges of learning to pause, and the blessings that arise when step out...

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Genuine Acceptance

Genuine Acceptance

Our capacity to accept this life is key to our freedom, yet there are many misconceptions about acceptance: People wonder, if acceptance makes us a doormat in relationships? Isn't acceptance akin to resignation? Doesn't it make us passive when what is needed is action? This...

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Releasing Limiting Beliefs

Releasing Limiting Beliefs

If we investigate patterns of emotional suffering or “stuckness,” we’ll discover that under our pain is a fear based belief. Until these beliefs are brought into the light of compassionate awareness, they control and confine our lives. This talk reviews key steps of inquiry and...

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Letting Go of Judgment (retreat talk)

Letting Go of Judgment (retreat talk)

(from 2015 IMCW Labor Day retreat)The scales of judgment confine us in a limited sense of self, they restrict the depth and fullness of our loving. This talk explores the genesis of projecting badness on to parts of ourselves and others, and how we can use mindfulness and...

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Learning to Respond Not React

Learning to Respond Not React

CC ~ When stressed, we often react with looping fear-thoughts, feelings and behaviors that cause harm to ourselves and/or others. This talk offers three interrelated strategies that can serve us when we’re triggered by stress, and help us find our way back to our natural...

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Awakening from Trance – Embracing Unlived Life

Awakening from Trance – Embracing Unlived Life

When physical or emotional pain is too much, our conditioning is to pull away and avoid direct contact with raw feelings. The result is a trance - we are split off from the wholeness of our aliveness, intelligence and capacity to love. This talk explores how this dissociation...

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Transforming Two Fears: FOF and FOMO

Transforming Two Fears: FOF and FOMO

There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential - fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness....

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Radical Acceptance Revisited

Radical Acceptance Revisited

  CC   ~ One of the truths we most regularly forget is that if we are at war with ourselves, we can’t feel love and connection with our world. This talk looks at the genesis of the “Trance of Unworthiness” and how the wings of mindfulness and heartfulness can dissolve the...

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The Sacred Art of Listening

The Sacred Art of Listening

Deep listening - the kind of listening that brings intimacy and understanding - takes intentional practice. This talk looks at the societal and inner obstacles to an undistracted presence, and the mindfulness strategies that nourish our capacity to listen in a way that heals...

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That Bird Got My Wings

That Bird Got My Wings

This talk looks at how we are imprisoned by a limited sense of who we are, and how the wings of mindfulness and heartfulness enable us to realize the spirit that is our essence. We then look at how we can bring the wings of freedom to our engagement with others. The talk’s...

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