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,…
Part 2 – Realizing True Well-being
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 s…
Realizing True Well-being
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 s…
Part 2: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion
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 ours…
Part 1: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion
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 ours…
Impermanence: the Gifts of Facing Reality
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 e…
Trusting Our Secret Beauty
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,…
Healing into Life and Death
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…
When We are Lost
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 pres…
Part 2 – The Sure Heart’s Release
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 mind…
The Sure Heart’s Release
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 mind…
Minting Gold (retreat talk)
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 he…
Inviting Life’s Difficulties to Tea
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 r…
Evolving Consciousness–Beyond limiting Identities
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 mi…
Three Gateways to Freedom
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…
Path of Transformation
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 gi…
The Grounds of Living Compassion
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 at…
The Grounds of Living Compassion
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 at…
Seeing Beyond the Veil
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…
Ask the Friend for Love
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 h…
Loving Life: Gratitude and Generosity
2010-11-24 – Loving Life: Gratitude and Generosity – Love is innate, and blossoms as we intentionally cultivate it. This talk on two natural expressions of loving life–gratitude and generosity–includes several guided reflections that awaken the heart…