Tara Brach

2011-05-01 - Remembering Love (from IMCW Spring Retreat) - The habit of self-judgment not only causes emotional pain, it creates a trance that obscures the purity and vastness of our Being. This talk explores how a wakeful and forgiving heart can heal and free us. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

2011-04-27 - 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. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

2011-04-20 - 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." Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

2011-04-13 - 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 meaningful life with a heart that is "happy for no reason." Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

2011-03-30 - 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. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

2011-03-23 - 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. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

2011-03-16 - 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 aliveness, the love and wisdom, that is our human potential. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2011-03-09 - 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 our natural wholeness and goodness of Being. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2011-03-02 - 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. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2011-02-23 - 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 arriving in the aliveness of our senses opens us to our natural compassion and wisdom, and enables us to experience the great mystery we are part of. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2011-02-16 - 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. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2011-02-09 - 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. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2010-12-31 - Minting Gold - Embodying the Awakened Heart - Our core conditioning expresses as both a longing for love and the pain of not trusting we are loveable. This talk explores how we create the experience of separation, and the key meditative heart- trainings that lead us to realizing and living from the truth of our connectedness. This talk was given at the IMCW New Year's Retreat. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2011-01-19 - Inviting Life's Difficulties to Tea - One of the most illuminating themes in the Buddha's life story was the regular appearance of Mara--god of selfishness and greed, anger and fear, doubt and shame. Each time Mara surfaced, the Buddha's response was to say "I see you Mara," and invite him to tea. This talk explores how such unconditional friendliness and wisdom can bring healing and freedom to our lives. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2011-01-12 - The flag of trance is identifying as a separate, deficient self. This talk explores how developmentally we can get fixated on fears and unmet needs and cut off from the wholeness of Being that is our true nature. We explore the power of mindfulness --seeking not to change but to understand--and the expression of that understanding as love. The talk includes guided reflections that can help us recognize and awaken from the confines of trance. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2011-01-05 - This talk invites a contemplation of three archetypal domains of spiritual awakening: Buddha-awareness, Dharma- truth (the way things are), and Sangha-loving relatedness. We explore our habit of turning toward false refuges, and the way we can find refuge in that which truely heals our hearts and frees our mind. The evening ends with a living ritual of dedicating ourselves to each of these three gateways to awakening. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2010-12-29 - Awakening arises out of presence with the changing ground of our lives. This talk explores three key gateways to liberating presence: Forgiveness, inner fire (aspiration) and a deep inquiry into the nature of our own mind. This talk was given at the IMCW New Year's Retreat. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2009-09-02 - A critical question on the spiritual path is how we can bring the loving presence awakened by meditation into every facet of daily life. This talk explores the conditioning that keeps us in reactive trance and the ways we can deepen our attention and align our lives with our hearts. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2010-12-15 - The source of our suffering is that we become identified with egoic roles and defenses that separate us from the truth of what we are. This talk explores some of the constricting identities that we take on, and the process of compassionate presence that reconnects us with our natural vitality, openheartedness and wisdom. We then enlarge our focus to seeing past the veil that obscures the sacred presence that shines through all beings. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

2010-12-08 - Prayer, when cultivated consciously, energizes and guides us on the spiritual path. This talk investigates the difference between wanting, with it's narrow fixation, and the prayer that arises out of our deep heart's longing. We explore how living prayer, the prayer that arises from consciously inhabiting longing, can carry us home to loving presence. As John O'Donahue writes, prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!