Talks and Meditations from Retreats
There is a deep awareness that emerges in the silence and stillness of retreat. As the mind becomes quiet, we begin to hear the calling of the heart. Below, you will find a selection of talks, guided meditations, and question/answer – Q/A – periods recorded during Tara’s 5- and 7-day residential retreats.
Talks from Retreats
Disarming Our Hearts: Guidance from the Bodhisattva Path – Part 2
If we realized how profoundly our chronic judgment creates separation and blocks the flow of love, we’d dedicate more deeply to disarming our hearts. Drawing on practices from...
Disarming Our Hearts: Guidance from the Bodhisattva Path – Part 1
If we realized how profoundly our chronic judgment creates separation and blocks the flow of love, we’d dedicate more deeply to disarming our hearts. Drawing on practices from...
Homecoming to Loving Awareness (retreat talk)
We have strong conditioning to identify as a separate self, and to feel all the fears and attachments that arise from not realizing our true belonging. This talk includes...
Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness (retreat talk)
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...
The Wings of Awakening – Self-Honesty & Love (retreat talk)
We evolve our consciousness by bringing a clear and kind attention to the tangles of suffering. This talk explores how the "second arrow" of self-judgment imprisons us in...
Emptiness Dancing: Inquiring into the Nature of Awareness (retreat talk)
Our True Nature - Emptiness Dancing (retreat talk) The most profound question in spiritual life is “who (or what) am I?” This talk explores ways of inquiring into the nature of...
Fear and Love
Only when we face our fears can we discover the freedom to love without holding back. This talk looks at how unprocessed fear contracts our body, heart and mind, and on a...
Repairing our Hearts – Healing with the RAIN of Compassion
Living in a fear-based society fuels the trance of separation and unworthiness. This talk explores how we can bring an engaged compassionate presence to the suffering of this...
Change, Loss and Timeless Love – Part 2 (Retreat Talk)
Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely intertwined with how we relate to change and loss. These two talks are an invitation to look honestly, and without judgment, at...
The Power of Awake Awareness (retreat talk)
We all encounter “demons” of fear, anger, hurt, craving and shame. This talk explores our key ways of resisting difficult emotions, and how “when the resistance is gone, the...
Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk)
When we are suffering, we are believing something untrue - usually a limiting story about who we are. This talk explores the roots of our self-doubts, and the teachings and...
Judgment, Acceptance and Freedom (Retreat Talk)
The boundary to what we accept is the boundary to our freedom. This talk explores the often unconscious ways we create separation by judging ourselves and others, and the key...
Trusting the Gold (retreat talk)
This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self. We then explore the practices of presence...
Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness (retreat talk)
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...
From Judgment to Self-Compassion (retreat talk)
When we’ve turned on ourselves with blame and aversion, it’s very difficult to arouse self-compassion. This talk looks at the role of nurturing in freeing our hearts, and offers...
Meditations from Retreats
Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (from retreat) (23:14 min.)
We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then...
Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (retreat) (26:55 min.)
We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then...
Meditation: Spacious, Loving Awareness (from retreat) (30:03 min.) ~ with video
~ an Open Awareness Meditation ~ When our awareness is awake and open, we naturally respond to this changing life with warmth, tenderness and love. This practice helps us...
Guided Heart Meditation: Loving Kindness – Befriending our Lives (27:22 min.)
This heart meditation guides us in how to cultivate a deep quality of friendliness in relating to our inner life and each other. The gift of this practice is a direct sense of...
Short Talk & Guided Heart Meditation: Releasing Blame (retreat) (41:39 min.)
Our self-protective habits of resentment and blame block intimacy and connection with ourself and others. This short talk and meditation are an invitation to deepen our...
Short Talk and Guided Heart Meditation – Releasing Blame (retreat) (37:50 min.)
This meditation explores the meaning of forgiveness and its role in healing and transformation. We then are guided in a forgiveness practice that helps us release the armoring of...
Short Talk and Guided Heart Meditation – Loving Kindness – Befriending our Lives (39:29 min.)
This meditation introduces the domain of “heart practices” and then guides us in how to cultivate a deep quality of friendliness in relating to our inner life and each other. The...
Meditation: Calling on Loving Presence (from retreat) (18:18 min)
Often, when we’re really struggling, the only way to find compassion for ourselves is by reaching out to a larger source of love. We might for instance take refuge by calling on...
Vipassana or Insight Meditation and Instruction: A Path of Practice from Retreat (31:15 min.)
Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then...
Retreat Short Talk & Meditation: Loving Kindness – Awakening and Expressing Our Heart (36:50 min.)
This short talk and guided meditation remind us that we each have the capacity to awaken our hearts. We explore together the lovingkindness (metta) meditation, and emphasize...
Short Talks, Instructions and QA’s from Retreats
Introductory Meditation Instructions – Guided Practice from Retreat (39:02 min.)
This guided session includes an overview of the primary components in meditation practices, and then guidance in awakening the senses, collecting the attention, and opening...
Vipassana or Insight Meditation and Instruction: from Day 4 on Retreat (29:20 min.)
Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then...
Meditation and Short Talk: Basic Elements of a Mindfulness Meditation Sitting (34:30 min.)
This short talk and guided meditation offers an overview of what many people find is a natural unfolding within a meditation sitting. It includes the process of arriving in an...
Instruction & Meditation: A Forgiving Heart (36:04 min) (retreat)
A forgiving heart clears the way for giving and receiving love freely. This talk and meditation explores where we have become habituated in blame towards ourselves and others,...
Instruction and Question-Response during Retreat (9:44 min)
Topics include individualizing your meditation practice, working with the "tangles," forgiveness practice, and using the "N-Nurturing" of RAIN. Given during the 2017 IMCW Spring...
On Deepening Our Meditation and a Guided Meditation from Retreat (24:48 min)
Meditation Instructions and a Guided Meditation from Retreat (2016-08-27) - Tara gives morning instructions about ways to deepen our meditation practice, then leads us in a...
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...
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...
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...
“Coming Back” – Meditation Instructions with Q and A
A special recording from the first morning of the 2015 IMCW Women's Retreat that offers further guidance and addresses some frequently asked questions about meditation.
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