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Retreat Dharma Talks
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2019-03-20
Meditation: Being Here (with community OM’s)
20:42
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Tara Brach
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We miss many moments of this precious life drifting in a virtual thought world. This meditation helps us collect and calm ourselves with the breath; relax through our bodies; and then include the changing dance of sounds, sensations and feeling in open awareness. Our practice is to recognize the quality of Hereness, and when we drift, return again to this open presence, relaxing with the changing flow of life.
“…learning to relax with the flow of life… to be fully here.”
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2019-03-20
Embodied Presence: Portal to the Sacred – Part 2
50:54
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Tara Brach
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This two part series explores how we regularly leave our body and skim life’s surface in a mental trance, and the ways we can train our attention to come home again. We look at working with physical and emotional pain, and the gifts of love, wisdom, creativity and aliveness that arise as we learn to fully inhabit these living forms and all our senses with awareness.
Includes a meditation to guide us in working with pain.
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2019-03-27
Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Reality
17:37
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Tara Brach
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Our suffering comes from tensing and resisting the life that’s here. This meditation guides us to relax and awaken our body and senses, and resting in presence, allow life to be as it is. As our “Yes” to the changing flow becomes full, we discover the freedom of awake awareness itself.
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2019-03-27
The Four Remembrances
50:43
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Tara Brach
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When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry. This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices – Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness – that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.
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2019-04-03
Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence
18:14
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Tara Brach
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This guided meditation starts with a scan that invites relaxing and awakening through the body. We then allow life – sounds, sensations, aliveness – to live through us, resting in open presence. When there is tightening, holding or confinement in thoughts, we recognize and re-open, letting go into the presence that is always here.
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2019-04-03
Beyond the Controlling Self – Part 1
50:29
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Tara Brach
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It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
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2019-04-10
Beyond the Controlling Self – Part 2
49:22
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Tara Brach
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It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
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2019-04-10
Meditation: Letting Life Be
22:55
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Tara Brach
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This meditation establishes an atmosphere of loving kindness with the “smile”; relaxes and awakens through the body; and guides us into a spacious presence. We then rest in that presence, letting go of any controlling, and simply allow life to be as it is. It’s in “letting be” that we come home to the luminosity and tenderness of natural awareness. We close with a verse from Mary Oliver…
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2019-04-17
Meditation: Sea of Loving Presence
22:14
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Tara Brach
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In this meditation we begin with the image and felt sense of a smile to arouse an atmosphere of care, and allow that caring presence to fill our body and the entire field of awareness. We then open to the changing experience of breath, sensations, feelings, sound and thoughts. By resting in a wakeful and open heartspace, we can include all the passing waves with ease and tenderness.
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2019-04-17
Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame – Part 1
51:52
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Tara Brach
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Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part II on the places of deep self-condemnation, and Part III on where we have locked into anger, blame or hatred of others. Each includes guided reflections that can support us in directly awakening beyond the confining thoughts and feelings of blame.
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