Talks: Reflections on the Path
“The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.”
Awakening through Difficult Emotions: “The Poison is the Medicine”
Most of us know the pain of getting stuck in fear, anxiety, anger or shame. This exploration looks at how the emotion that takes over, when we attend with mindfulness and care, can become a place of deep transformation and freedom. Included in the talk is a guided RAIN...
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror - This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power...
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 2: Inner Fire
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 2: Inner Fire - This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power...
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Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 1: Forgiveness
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life - Part 1: Forgiveness - This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power...
Awakening from the Landlocked Self
The Buddha taught that our suffering arises from forgetting who we are. This talk explores the trance of identifying as Somebody, and the compassionate witnessing that allows us to discover the freedom of our natural being. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just...
Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening Beyond the Separate, Fearful Self
Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening beyond the separate, fearful self. Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. This talk shines a light on this conditioning and explores the ways that mindfulness, compassion and self-inquiry reveal the...
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Remembering What Matters: Aspiration and Intention
Remembering What Matters - Aspiration and Intention (from 2013-01-30) ~ Our conscious aspiration toward awakening is what energizes the spiritual path. This talk reviews the main characteristic of a vital aspiration, the conditioning that obscures our deepest intentions and...
Three Gestures of Love
If we inquire “what is between me and presence” we usually find we’ve been caught inside a limiting story of self, contracted by wants and fears. This talk explores a simple yet powerful way of arousing loving presence and dissolving the narrow identification that keeps us from...
Real But Not True: Freeing Ourselves from Harmful Beliefs
Thoughts and beliefs are navigational maps that are not inherently true. Rather, some serve us and others cause feelings of separation, self-aversion and/or blame of others. We can free ourselves from harmful beliefs by investigating them with a dedicated, mindful and...
Happy for No Reason – Part 2: Opening to Happiness
These two talks explore the two different kinds of happiness, the blocks to happiness, and the ways that mindful presence and intentional gladdening the heart (positive neuroplasticity) can open us to our full potential for true happiness. photo: Jonathan Foust ~ "Happy for No...
Happy for No Reason – Part 1 : Opening to Happiness
These two talks explore the two different kinds of happiness, the blocks to happiness, and the ways that mindful presence and intentional gladdening the heart (positive neuroplasticity) can open us to our full potential for true happiness.
Morning Question and Response on Retreat (16:46 min)
Morning Question and Response from Retreat - Tara responds to questions on deepening our meditation practice, working with desire, and the RAIN practice (from the 2016 IMCW spring residential retreat). Free download of Tara’s 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm...
Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness
Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging. (given at the 2016 IMCW Spring Retreat) photo:...
Question and Response from Retreat (12:10 min)
Question and Response from Retreat ~ After morning meditation, Tara responds to questions on deepening our meditation practice, working with unpleasant and pleasant thoughts, and forgiveness from the IMCW 2016 Spring Residential Retreat. photo: Susan Whitcomb - pink lady...
The RAIN of Forgiveness
The capacity to release the armoring of hatred and blame is intrinsic to our evolving consciousness. This talk explores the process of authentic forgiveness, and how we can use the mindfulness-based tool of RAIN to heal and free our hearts. • More Resources on RAIN:...
Listening with an Awake Heart
True listening both nurtures and expresses evolving consciousness. This talk explores our ego-based conditioning to have an agenda or defendedness that prevents deep listening, and the strategies that evolve our capacity to listen fully to ourselves and others. When our...
Love is Always Loving You
This talk draws on Christian mystic Henri Nouwen’s book Return of the Prodigal Son. We explore the primary ways we leave home - leave presence, connection, beingness - and the pathways of deep attention and love that enable our return. The emphasis is on “letting in love” as a...
Releasing Self-Blame – Pathways to a Forgiving Heart
When we are stuck in blaming, disliking or hating ourselves, we are unable to love our world. This talk explores what underlies our addiction to self-blame and the teachings and practices that loosen aversive self-judgment and help us cultivate a forgiving heart.
Healing Self-Doubt
Healing Self-Doubt - Siddhartha Gautama’s last challenge before enlightenment was doubt, and to some degree, most of us live with limiting beliefs about our own worthiness and goodness. This talk looks at the tenacity of self-doubt and the power of mindfulness, investigation...
Embodied Awareness – Pain and Living Fully – Part 3
The experiences we most value - feeling creative, loving, vital - require being awake in our bodies. Yet when faced with physical pain, our conditioning is to pull away from our bodies, and get lost in thoughts. This talk offers guidance in working mindfully with different...