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
Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk)
The sign of spiritual freedom is a deep trust in our essential nature, and in the light of awareness that lives through all beings. This talk explores the conditioning that...
Remembering and Choosing Loving Presence (retreat talk)
We are conditioned to go into a limbic trance—an emotional reactivity to life within and around us—that keeps us identified with a limited, separate sense of self. This talk...
Radical Compassion – Part 1 (retreat talk)
Radical Compassion - Part 1 - CC ~ Compassion is the medicine we most need as individuals and a species to heal suffering and free our spirits. The essence of compassion for...
Relaxing the Over Controller – Part 2 (retreat talk)
We all have conditioning to do what we can to protect and promote our wellbeing. Our suffering arises to the degree that our life and identity become organized around controlling...
Love, and Death (Retreat Talk)
To live our lives fully, we need to embrace the natural unfolding of birthing and dying. Yet we are deeply conditioned to resist loss, to pull away from fear and grief. Through a...
Trusting the Gold (retreat talk)
When we are unaware of the emotions and beliefs that shape our experience, we are in a trance characterized by an identity as a separate, incomplete self. Trance obscures the...
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...
Realizing Our Undefended and Awakened Heart (retreat talk)
It is our evolutionary and spiritual potential to release unnecessary habits of violating other tribes, individuals and unwanted parts of our own being. This talk explores three...
Loving the Life Within Us (Retreat Talk)
If we don’t love the life we consider “self,” we will not realize or live from the loving awareness that is our essence. This talk guides us in bringing a kind, accepting...
Fear as a Pathway to Loving Presence – Night Travelers (retreat talk)
Transcript available here: Fear as a Pathway to Loving Presence - Night Travelers Shifting our relationship with fear is central to the evolution of consciousness. Our suffering...
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...
Widening the Circles of Compassion (retreat talk)
The archetypal figure of the Bodhisattva (“awakening being”) reflects our potential to realize our connectedness with all beings, and care for this living world with an open...
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...
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...
Unfolding of the Sacred Feminine (retreat talk)
The sacred feminine expresses the qualities of heart that emerge as we open beyond identifying with the egoic, separate self. In this talk, Tara tracks a series of challenging...
Meditations from Retreats
Meditation: The Silence That’s Listening (morning on retreat) (27:15 min.)
Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. In this guided meditation, we begin by opening to sound and...
Meditation: Spacious, Loving Awareness (from retreat) (30:03 min.)
~ 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...
Short Talk & Meditation: Forgiving and Freeing Our Hearts (36:53 min)
Forgiveness for others becomes possible when we’ve held our own being with great compassion. This short talk and guided meditation brings forth our most awake and tender presence...
Short Talk & Meditation: Tonglen – Radical Compassion (32:43 min)
We are conditioned to avoid suffering - our own and others. By pulling away, we also contract our heart and disconnect from our innate capacity for compassion. This short talk...
Meditation: Spring Morning on Retreat (33:47 min.)
In this guided meditation, we include an overview of different components of mindfulness practice. The reflection includes a body scan, establishing a home base for attention,...
Meditation: Know That You’re Here, Right Here (10:00 min) (no closing bells)
Given the first morning of the 2017 IMCW Spring Retreat, this meditation guides you through a body scan, opens to sounds, then expands to the body as a field of sensation. With...
Guided Heart Meditation: Loving Presence (from retreat) (34 min)
This meditation introduces the loving-kindness (metta) heart practice. After brief instruction, it begins with scanning the body, filling it gradually with the image of a smile....
Retreat Meditation: A Liberating Awareness – Embodying Full Presence (30 min)
This vipassana meditation establishes fertile grounds for presence by gladdening the mind, a mindful body scan, collecting the attention and including all that arises in a kind,...
Brief Guided Meditation – with no bell at end (9 min.)
Given in the early morning on the first day of retreat, this recording can settle you into a meditation of any length. There is no bell at the end, so you can make your session...
Meditation Instructions – RAIN and Question-Response (14:23 min)
Tara gives morning instruction on retreat including RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nourish), then responds to questions from retreatants. Includes a question on resourcing...
Short Talks, Instructions and QA’s from Retreats
Working with Trauma – Q and A from Retreat (13:14 min.)
A short segment that includes a message on working with trauma as part of a morning question-response session at the IMCW 2015 Spring Retreat.
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