Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering - This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of awareness (Buddha-nature), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha) through stories, illustrations and reflections. We end with a Refuge ceremony that can be done by anyone who feels drawn (to participate you will need a 20" red string.) A verse from Ryokan, an eighteenth-century Zen poet, came to mind: "To find the Buddhist law, drift east and west, come and go, entrusting yourself to the waves."...
Jan 06, 2022•56 min
Meditation: Letting Go… Letting Be (2022-01-05) - This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.
Jan 06, 2022•17 min
Meditation: What Matters to your Heart? - Entering a new year is a wonderful opportunity to clarify our purpose. In this guided visualization, we are invited to attune to the state of our heart and our deepest aspiration.
Jan 02, 2022•9 min
Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part 3 - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
Dec 30, 2021•58 min
Meditation: Awakening an Intimate Presence (2021-12-29) - This guided meditation cultivates a relaxed, gentle presence with whatever expressions of life are arising in the moment. We begin by releasing and opening through the body, and then include all sensations, feelings and sounds in an intimate, allowing presence.
Dec 30, 2021•20 min
Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part II (2021-12-22) - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
Dec 23, 2021•53 min
Meditation: Awakening Loving Presence (2021-12-22) - Loving presence is an innate capacity, and it can be cultivated. This meditation begins with a scan arousing a relaxed tender presence in the body, then brings loving attention to our inner life, and in widening circles, to our world.
Dec 23, 2021•22 min
Loving Ourselves into Healing - Part I (2021-12-15) - We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
Dec 17, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Meditation: Collecting and Quieting the Mind (2021-12-15) - Our conditioned mind is filled with distractions, including worry-thoughts that continually create anxiety in the body. This meditation guides us in relaxing the body, and then establishing the breath as a home base. By gathering and collecting the attention, the mind can settle and allow for a relaxed, wakeful presence.
Dec 16, 2021•17 min
Awakening from the Trance of Unworthiness - Interview with Tara and Dr. Mark Hyman (2021-12-09) - Our healing and freedom unfolds as we bring radical acceptance - a mindful, allowing presence - to our moments. This interview looks at how we wake up out of the stories that keep us in fear and self-doubt, and discover a true intimacy with ourselves and our world.
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Meditation: Refuge in Presence (2021-12-08) - We arrive in presence through the gateway of the body, scanning through with awareness, and then resting with the breath and body sensations. As we include whatever arises with a gentle and kind attention, our inner refuge becomes increasingly stable and openhearted. This meditation ends with a brief loving-kindness prayer.
Dec 09, 2021•18 min
Preparing our Hearts for the Holidays (2021-12-01) - While the holidays can be times of loving celebration, they can also highlight relational conflicts and challenges. This talk explores how, given the stress of the season, we can bring grace and openheartedness to ourselves and others.
Dec 02, 2021•51 min
Heart Meditation: Taking in the Goodness (2021-12-01) - Taking in the Goodness: Rumi said, "Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness." This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.
Dec 02, 2021•25 min
Gratitude: Entering Sacred Relationship - Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group, and a poem of blessing by John O'Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass – Om Namaha Shivaya (from the archives).
Nov 25, 2021•52 min
Meditation: Energy and Source (2021-11-24) - Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever creative living world.
Nov 25, 2021•19 min
Recevoir la bonté présente - Méditation de retraite - Rumi à dit : « À chaque fois que vous recevez une gentillesse, tournez-vous vers sa source, la source de la bienveillance. » Cette méditation nous guide à chercher la Source de l'amour et à nous tourner vers elle. Cette méditation débute avec une pratique de bienveillance qui répand l'image du sourire dans tout notre corps pour continuer avec une pratique de reconnaitre la bonté en nous et chez les autres. Cette méditation est de Tara Brach. ...
Nov 21, 2021•24 min
Facing the Truths That Keep Us from Love: Conversation between Rev Angel Kyodo Williams and Tara Brach - Our happiness and capacity to love fully arise as we face and embrace all domains of our existence. In this conversation we look at the often unexamined societal conditioning that, when unseen, perpetuates caste systems that harm ourselves and all involved. Our inquiry: For the sake of freedom, how do we deepen our attention to see the forces that cut us off from wholeness, from belonging, fr...
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr
Meditation: Filling Our Body with Love (2021-11-17) - When we are fully awake, love shines through our entire body and being. This meditation awakens that embodied love through the image and felt sense of the smile, scanning through the body, resting in loving presence and offering loving prayer.
Nov 18, 2021•16 min
Meditation: RAIN of Compassion (9 min.) - In this short practice we are guided in bringing the mindfulness and self-nurturing of RAIN to a difficult emotion. This helps us shift from feeling stuck and reactive to the tender and spacious presence that is our true home.
Nov 17, 2021•9 min
Fear and Love (2021-11-01) - 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 societal level is the cause of othering and violence. We then explore how arousing mindfulness, compassion and prayer can enlarge our basic sense of Being. As we deepen attention to the nature of awareness, we discover a refuge that is timeless…a refuge that is our true home (given at the IMCW 2021 ...
Nov 11, 2021•1 hr
Meditation: Awakening Self-Compassion (2021-11-10) - This RAIN meditation helps us explore pathways to nurturing ourselves in a way that brings profound transformation and healing.
Nov 11, 2021•27 min
After the RAIN: Part 2 - The Flowering of Awake Awareness - (2021 -11 -03) - The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dim...
Nov 05, 2021•58 min
Meditation: The Return to Presence - Rest Your Mind In What Is (2021-11-03) - It's natural that our attention wanders, and the more we relax back, the more that becomes our habit…returning to presence. This meditation opens with conscious breathing and awakening through the body. We then rest in open awareness, and when the attention drifts, guide ourselves to rest our minds, over and over, in the aliveness and presence that is right here.
Nov 04, 2021•21 min
After the RAIN: Part 1 - The Flowering of Awake Awareness - The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the pa...
Oct 28, 2021•56 min
Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness (2021-10-27) - This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being and can be held with tenderness and love.
Oct 28, 2021•19 min
Wise Investigation: Dissolving the Trance - If we are suffering, it is because we are believing something that is not true and caught in emotional reactivity. A key tool in meditation is investigation–actively inquiring into what is happening inside us. When we investigate with sincere interest and care, the light of our attention untangles difficult emotions and nourishes intimate relationships. As this light is turned toward awareness itself, it reveals the radiance and emptiness of our true n...
Oct 21, 2021•55 min
Meditation: Widening Rings of Being (2021-10-20) - If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom, the awake space of Being, that is beyond the confines of thoughts.
Oct 21, 2021•20 min
Grieving and Timeless Love - How we relate to change and loss is directly connected to how fully we live and love. This talk looks at the classic ways we avoid opening to the realness of loss, and how our sorrows and grief can become a portal to awakening our heart and spirit.
Oct 15, 2021•58 min
Meditation: A Practice of RAIN - The acronym RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture – guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions. With practice, we can find our way home to open-hearted presence in the midst of whatever arises. "Don't turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you." ~ Rumi
Oct 14, 2021•20 min
Realizing Your Deepest Desires - This talk differentiates between egoic intentions (driven by wants and fears), and our true aspiration (deepest desires) to manifest our full potential for awake awareness and love. We explore ways to realize and open to our deepest desires when we are stuck in self-promotion, grasping and conflict, so that our aspiration becomes a compass of the heart that can guide us in living with wisdom and compassion.
Oct 08, 2021•51 min
