Tara Brach

2015-04-15 - True Happiness - Realizing Well Being - Well being is the deep contentment that arises from a relaxed, wakeful presence. This talk explores the beliefs and habits that contract us away form presence, and several key ways we can nourish our natural capacity for happiness.

Your support will enable us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time. Visit: www.tarabrach.com. With thanks and love, Tara

2015-04-15 - Meditation: Relaxing, Smiling, Being Here

2015-04-08 - Three Liberating Gifts: Part 3 - Looking in the Mirror - This 3 part series is based on a teaching story from the Upanishads that shows our potential to awaken from an ego-based trance and discover the full luminosity and freedom of our natural awareness. In each class we'll explore one of the three gifts considered as essential on the spiritual path. The first is the capacity to forgive, to let go of the blame and resentment that prevents our hearts from being open and free. The second gift is "inner fire," the capacity to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to what we most cherish. The third gift is a "mirror" or the capacity to look deeply into our own hearts and minds and realize the truth of who we are. Each class includes guided meditations that explore how these gifts can be nourished right here and now in our lives.

Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

2015-04-08 - Meditation: Coming Home to the Senses

2015-04-01 - Three Liberating Gifts: Part 2 - Inner Fire - This 3 part series is based on a teaching story from the Upanishads that shows our potential to awaken from an ego-based trance and discover the full luminosity and freedom of our natural awareness. In each class we'll explore one of the three gifts considered as essential on the spiritual path. The first is the capacity to forgive, to let go of the blame and resentment that prevents our hearts from being open and free. The second gift is "inner fire," the capacity to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to what we most cherish. The third gift is a "mirror" or the capacity to look deeply into our own hearts and minds and realize the truth of who we are. Each class includes guided meditations that explore how these gifts can be nourished right here and now in our lives.

2015-04-01 - Meditation: Listening to and Feeling Life

2015-03-25 - Three Liberating Gifts: Part 1 - Forgiveness - This 3 part series is based on a teaching story from the Upanishads that shows our potential to awaken from an ego-based trance and discover the full luminosity and freedom of our natural awareness. In each class we'll explore one of the three gifts considered as essential on the spiritual path. The first is the capacity to forgive, to let go of the blame and resentment that prevents our hearts from being open and free. The second gift is "inner fire," the capacity to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to what we most cherish. The third gift is a "mirror" or the capacity to look deeply into our own hearts and minds and realize the truth of who we are. Each class includes guided meditations that explore how these gifts can be nourished right here and now in our lives.

2015-03-25 - Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence

2015-03-18 - Freedom from Fear-Based Beliefs - This talk looks at how we get imprisoned in fear based, limiting beliefs. We then explore key meditative steps that help release these veils and reveal the fullness and goodness of our essential being.

2015-03-18 - Meditation: Awakening from the Dream

2009-08-26 - Genuine Acceptance - Our capacity to accept this life is key to our freedom, yet there are many misconceptions about acceptance: People wonder, if acceptance makes us a doormat in relationships? Isn't acceptance akin to resignation? Doesn't it make us passive when what is needed is action? This talk explores some of the misunderstandings about acceptance and offers teachings on the nature of genuine and liberating acceptance.

2011-11-09 - Meditation - Discovering Inner Space - By imagining the space inside the body, we discover the continuous space of awareness that is the source and essence of all aliveness.

2015-03-04 - Sure Heart's Release - The pathway to our awaken heart includes deep recognition of our barriers to love, and as we open, the courage to express our love. This talk includes a reflection and practice that can support us in inhabiting our full capacity for loving presence.

2015-03-04 - Meditation: Open Wakeful Presence

2015-02-25 - From Dragons to Schmoos - Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence - The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons - the difficult emotions and related behaviors that are a deeply conditioned part of the human experience. In this talk we explore the awakening that is possible as we recognize our reactive patterns and instead of judgment, offer a loving and healing presence.

2015-02-25 - Meditation: Resting in Wakeful Presence - This meditation begins with a body scan, then guides us to a feeling of open presence.

2015-02-18 - Part 2: Basic Elements of Meditation Practice - This two-part series offers a clear and fresh understanding of practices that cultivate mindful awareness. The first class examines our attitude towards practice and gives guidance on posture, establishing an anchor for attention, and learning to concentrate and collect the mind - “coming back.” The second class focuses on the practice of mindfulness - “being here,” and the component qualities of clear recognition and an allowing non-judgmental presence.

2015-02-18 - Meditation: Body Scan - Living Presence

2015-02-18 - Meditation: Body Scan - Living Presence - 11 minutes

2015-02-11 - Part 1: Basic Elements of Meditation Practice - This two-part series offers a clear and fresh understanding of practices that cultivate mindful awareness. The first class examines our attitude towards practice and gives guidance on posture, establishing an anchor for attention, and learning to concentrate and collect the mind - “coming back.” The second class focuses on the practice of mindfulness - “being here,” and the component qualities of clear recognition and an allowing non-judgmental presence.

2015-02-11 - Meditation - Coming Back to the Breath

2014-12-31-Retreat Meditation - Forgiving Ourselves and Others - Instruction and guided heart forgiveness practice from the 2014 IMCW New Year's Retreat.

2015-01-28 - Inhabiting Our Bodies with Presence - Our conditioning is to pull away from our physical experience when it is difficult. When we regularly dissociate, we are removed from the source of our power, intuition and capacity to love in a full way. This talk looks at the ways we leave our body and the path of homecoming to living loving presence.

2015-01-28 - Meditation: Living Presence

2015-01-21 - Listening to the Calling of Our Hearts - In any moment, our intention - what we are energetically wanting - shapes our life experience. While our deepest intention may be to realize and live from loving awareness, we are often driven by egoic fear and grasping. This talk explores how mindfulness can recognize our prevailing intention, and by staying present, kind and accepting, we can reconnect with the deeper longings that carry us to awakening and freedom.

2015-01-21 - Meditation: Awake Space - Relaxing Back Into Awareness

2015-01-14 Refuge in Loving Relationship - Bringing presence to our relationships reveals our connectedness and essential Oneness. This talk explores two domains of this awakening with others: Realizing our shared vulnerability - that we’re in it together - and recognizing the inherent goodness or sacredness that lives through everyone.

2015-01-14 - Meditation: Relaxing Back and Letting Life Be As It Is

2015-01-07 - Taking Refuge in Your Own True Nature - The three classic refuges of Buddha (awareness), Dharma (truth) and Sangha (loving relatedness) are each expressions of our deepest essence. This talk reflects on the refuges and includes guided meditations and a closing ritual that helps us remember the pathway home in our daily life. (note: to participate in the ritual you will need a piece of red string about 28 inches long)

2015-01-07 - Meditation: Living Open Presence

2014-12-30 - Retreat Talk - Landlocked in Fur - Three Domains of Formless Presence - While we have evolved to experience a defining sense of separate self, our potential is to awaken to the formless dimension - the pure awareness is our shared source. This talk explores how we can undo the identification with thoughts, emotions and feelings that keeps us landlocked and unable to trust and live from our naturally loving and radiant essence. (given at the 2014 IMCW New Year's Retreat in Reisterstown, MD)

Poem at start of talk: "Landlocked in Fur" - by Tukaram. From: “Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West” (Ladinksy, 2002)

2014-12-30 Meditation - The Luminous Space of Awareness (given at the 2014 IMCW New Year's retreat in Reisterstown, MD) - This meditation shifts attention from form to the formless source of all Being. Discover and rest in continuous space, filled with the light of awareness.

2014-08-02 - (retreat talk) Embodying Loving Presence - This talk looks at the evolutionary fear-patterning that creates separation in our relationships, and at the practices that open us to giving and receiving love.

2014-12-17 - Part 2: Intimacy with Life - This season is one of celebrating the light and love that is our unifying source. And yet at these times our society is being forced to face its deep patterning of racial oppression, amongst other expressions of violence. These two talks investigate the process of turning against ourselves and others, and how intentional and deep presence can heal the suffering of separation.

2014-12-17 - Meditation: Light of Awareness

2014-12-10 - Part 1: Intimacy with Life - This season is one of celebrating the light and love that is our unifying source. And yet at these times our society is being forced to face its deep patterning of racial oppression, amongst other expressions of violence. These two talks investigate the process of turning against ourselves and others, and how intentional and deep presence can heal the suffering of separation.

2014-12-10 - Meditation: Intimacy with the Flow of Life

2014-10-30 - Removing the Barriers to Love - In our daily trance of feeling separate, we spend many moments wanting others to be different so we can feel better. This talk explores the heart awakening that unfolds when we deepen our commitment to seeing what is happening inside us. Only then can we see another with clear eyes, and realize the love that arises from our inherent Oneness.

2014-11-26 - A Generous Heart - Our deep potential is to live from an awake, loving heart. This talk looks at how, with a kind and mindful attention, we can decondition habitual tendencies toward grasping and self-centeredness, and nourish the sense of connectedness and care that gives rise to generosity. As we bring these heart practices alive in our most immediate relationships, they have the power to evolve consciousness in widening circles across the world.

2014-11-26 - Guided Meditation - The Space of Awareness

2014-11-19 - Awakening Through Change and Loss - Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely related to how we open to the truth of impermanence. This talk examines how our ways of trying to control life solidify our perception of being separate and threatened. We then look at the wings of mindful presence and compassion that open us to loss and grief, and reveal the loving awareness that is beyond birth and death.

2014-11-19 - Meditation - Opening to Life's Flow

2014-11-12 The Sacred Art of Listening - Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely related to how we open to the truth of impermanence. This talk examines how our ways of trying to control life solidify our perception of being separate and threatened. We then look at the wings of mindful presence and compassion that open us to loss and grief, and reveal the loving awareness that is beyond birth and death.

2014-11-12 Meditation - Listening to Life

2014-11-05 Radical Self-Honesty - The Joy of Getting Real - Our suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of our psyche. This talk explores ways we can deepen self-honesty and reconnect to a wholeness of being that enables us to live with spontaneity, confidence, wisdom and love. Quote from Elizabeth Lesser: "My prayer to god every day: Remove the veils so I might see what is really happening here and not be intoxicated by my stories and my fears."

Meditation - Relaxing into Living Presence (2014-11-05) - This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.

2014-10-26 - Retreat Talk - Sacred fertilizer - The Portal of Fear - Bringing presence to the contraction of fear is a universal part of spiritual awakening. This talk explores two interrelated pathways of opening to and transforming fear.

2014-10-22-Part 2 - Happiness - The Buddha said that he would not teach about happiness if it were not possible to realize this experience of peace and deep well-being. In this three part series, we explore two kinds of happiness - that which arises out of particular causes and the experience of “happy for no reason.” The talks examine the attachments that block happiness, ways to “gladden the mind,” and the liberating presence that naturally expresses as pure happiness.

2014-10-22-Meditation - Opening to Full Aliveness

2014-10-15 - Part 1 - Happiness - The Buddha said that he would not teach about happiness if it were not possible to realize this experience of peace and deep well-being. In this three part series, we explore two kinds of happiness - that which arises out of particular causes and the experience of “happy for no reason.” The talks examine the attachments that block happiness, ways to “gladden the mind,” and the liberating presence that naturally expresses as pure happiness.