Talks: Reflections on the Path

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 from consciously inhabiting longing, can carry us home to loving presence. As John O’Donahue writes, prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging.

Cultivating the capacity for listening is essential to loving well and to realizing the truth of who we are. This talk focuses on three key facets of deep listening–non-distractedness, not-controlling and seeking to understand– that can awaken an intimacy with our inner life and others. Guided meditations on listening precede and are included within the body of the talk.

We all have conditioned patterns of thinking and behaving that keep us identified as a separate, deficient self. This talk investigates the roots of this conditioning and ways that pausing and awakening mindfulness can free us to live from our inherent love and wisdom.

The Path of Peace

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 suffering, nourish loving relatedness and create the conditions for deep spiritual realization.

We are conditioned to live in stories that obscure the vastness, goodness and mystery of what we are. This talk explores the ways we construct a limited self-identity and the pathways to realizing and living from a fullness of our Being.

Cultivating equanimity means awakening our capacity to meet the winds of life with a non-reactive, open, balanced presence. The gift of this presence is that we can see clearly what is happening within and around us, and respond with wisdom, creativity and compassion. This talk looks at our habits of reacting, and the ways we can come home to equinimity in the midst of life’s challenges.

Joy is an innate capacity, one of the primary expressions of an awakened heart and mind. Yet because of our conditioned patterns of thought and emotion, this capacity for openness, happiness and full aliveness can be obscured. This talk guides us in how to nurture joy through a commited presence that unfolds into “loving what is.”

Our capacity to respond to ourselves and our world with compassion is the essence of all healing and spiritual awakening. This talk explores the trance of separation that blocks our natural compassion, and includes guided practices that enable us to directly cultivate a compassionate heart.

This talk explores what gets in the way of loving presence and the training that awakens and frees our hearts.

The roots of peace and war are within these very hearts. In the moments that we release blame, we reconnect with the compassionate presence that heals ourselves and others as well. This talk includes a meditation that guides us in awakening our capacity to forgive.

Holding ourselves with a compassionate, forgiving heart is the gateway to healing, and to intimacy with our world. This talk explores our deep conditioning to be at war with ourselves, and the insights and elements of forgiving that can carry us home to loving presence.

If we investigate, we will find that much suffering arises out of mistrust–of ourselves, others and life. This talk explores the genesis of the great challenges of doubt and mistrust, and the pathway to trusting the goodness that is our essence.

For many of us, the most apparent junctures of spiritual transformation are spurred on by challenging life situations. This talk looks at how our conscious aspiration for awakening, and our practice of mindful presence, can help us find peace, compassion and freedom when difficulties arise.