Talks: Reflections on the Path
Presence and Empowerment
In the moments we feel threatened, hurt or dissatisfied, we often flip into controlling mode–our body, heart and mind become contracted and we disconnect from presence. This talk explores how we can shift from controlling, to an empowering presence. When we do, our deepest wisdom and compassion begin to shape and guide our life.
Soul Recognition: Seeing Past the Mask
We each long to be true to ourselves–to live from the love, creativity and wisdom that is our essence. This talk explores how, by attending to three key domains, we train ourselves to see beyond ego conditioning. By deepening our attention, we can free ourselves and others to be who we truly are.
The Art of Listening–Nourishing Loving Relationships
Deep listening is an essential ingredient in intimate, caring relationships. This talk reflects on the intentionality, presence and quest for understanding that create the grounds for a healing and loving listening attention.
Part 2: Stress and Meditation
When we are suffering from stress, we are paying attention to our world in a narrow and rigid way. Through meditations that cultivate a wakeful and open attention, we can dramatically transform the feelings of anxiety and aloneness that underlie all stress.
Part 1: Stress and Meditation
When we are suffering from stress, we are paying attention to our world in a narrow and rigid way. Through meditations that cultivate a wakeful and open attention, we can dramatically transform the feelings of anxiety and aloneness that underlie all stress.
Stepping Out of Time
We spend much of our life on our way somewhere else, driven by the sense that something is missing or wrong. This talk explores the suffering that arises from our addiction to busyness and “doing,” and the healing, loving and wisdom that arise when we take refuge in presence.
The Buddha’s Spiritual Awakening: A Myth For Us All!
In this telling of the Buddha's story, we find archetypes that reveal a universal path of awakening and freedom. We explore how each of us has the potential to realize the loving and radiant awareness that is our source.
Remembering Love (retreat talk)
Tara taught at the IMCW spring retreat in Reisterstown, MD this week - below is her Monday evening talk. Apologies for the static in the background - it is constant from an air handler in the meditation hall.
The Blessings of Embodied Awareness
One expression of our suffering is homelessness–feeling cut off from the presence and aliveness that is our source. This talk explores the existential and cultural forces that foster disconnection from our physical and energetic being, the practices that enable us to embrace our unlived life and the gifts of homecoming.
Part 2: Realizing True Well-Being
Buddhist psychology and the Western oriented field of positive psychology agree: How we pay attention determines whether we live primarily in fear and judgment, or happiness and peace. This two part series explores the teachings, practices and attitudes that enable us to live a meaningful life with a heart that is “happy for no reason.”
Part 1: Realizing True Well-Being
Buddhist psychology and the Western oriented field of positive psychology agree: How we pay attention determines whether we live primarily in fear and judgment, or happiness and peace. This two part series explores the teachings, practices and attitudes that enable us to live a...
Realizing Truth – The Power of Wise Inquiry
The Buddha considered investigation to be a crucial capacity on the spiritual path. This talk explores how interest and wise inquiry serve emotional healing, intimacy with others and revealing the truth that sets us free.
Part 2: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion
Learning to hold our own lives with a gentle compassion is a key element in all emotional healing and spiritual awakening. This two part series explores the suffering of being at war with ourselves and the pathway to freeing our hearts. Music at end is Libby Roderick, "How...
Part 2: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion
Learning to hold our own lives with a gentle compassion is a key element in all emotional healing and spiritual awakening. This two part series explores the suffering of being at war with ourselves and the pathway to freeing our hearts. Music at end is Libby Roderick, “How Could Anyone?”
Part 1: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion
Learning to hold our own lives with a gentle compassion is a key element in all emotional healing and spiritual awakening. This two part series explores the suffering of being at war with ourselves and the pathway to freeing our hearts. Music at end is Libby Roderick, “How Could Anyone?”
Impermanence: the Gifts of Facing Reality
Only by opening our hearts to change and loss can we live and love fully. Yet much of our life is organized around finding ground-- avoiding the insecurity of change, loss and death. This talk explores how our ways of grasping and resisting remove us from the spontaneity and...
Trusting Our Secret Beauty
When caught in emotional suffering, we sense that we are living from a reactive, contracted place, and don't trust or like ourselves. This talk explores the severed belonging that is the genesis of that doubt, and the two wings of mindful presence and love that carry us home to...
Healing into Life and Death
Given the universal truth that these bodies get sick and they die, what allows us to find freedom, happiness and peace in the midst? This talk explores how, when we get caught in the suffering that arises from physical sickness, we can take refuge in presence and love.
When We Are Lost
It's part of our make up to get lost in the trance of thinking-- to believe our thoughts to be real and to live in the story of a separate, endangered self. It is also our capacity to recognize our trance and choose presence. This talk explores how the practice of pausing and...
Part 2 – The Sure Heart’s Release
Our longing is to realize and embody loving presence, yet we each have deeply conditioned habits that bind our hearts. This talk reflects on these habits, and explores how we can free ourselves by bringing a mindful, compassionate attention to places where we are most trapped in feeling separate, fearful and unworthy.
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