Talks: Reflections on the Path

Meditation Instructions with Question/Response (14 min)(retreat)

Meditation Instructions with Question/Response (14 min)(retreat)

"...discover what’s happening here, beyond the veil of thinking.” Tara gives additional instructions and responds to questions after the morning meditation at the 2015 IMCW New Year retreat. photo: JonathanFoust.com - Tara at Pearlstone Retreat Center on way to give her final...

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The Power of Mindful Investigation

The Power of Mindful Investigation

We each have a deep interest in reality–in understanding what is true and who we are. In Buddhist teachings, our interest, and its expression in wise investigation, energize the path of awakening. This talk explores how mindful investigation can free us from emotional...

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Secret Beauty – Seeing the Goodness – Solstice Talk

Secret Beauty – Seeing the Goodness – Solstice Talk

This solstice talk explores two pathways to realizing the Secret Beauty that is our essence.  One is through the compassion that arises when we stay with vulnerability and suffering, and the other is through love that arises as we learn to see the goodness that shines...

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The RAIN of Self-Compassion

The RAIN of Self-Compassion

This talk explores three key features of the trance of unworthiness and introduces a guided meditation based on the acronym RAIN that awakens self-compassion and de-conditions the suffering of being at war with ourselves. Listen to Meditation: The RAIN of Self-Compassion...

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Desire: A Current of Homecoming

Desire: A Current of Homecoming

Desire is intrinsic to our aliveness, yet when we have unmet needs, it can possess us. This talk explores how to relax open the grip of wanting and heal the suffering of addiction. You will learn how to bring mindfulness and compassion to the roots of desire, and be carried...

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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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