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Tara Brach's Dharma Talks
Tara Brach
A pervasive but often invisible source of suffering in our culture is self-aversion. We are a busy culture, and we move through our life feeling anxious and dissatisfied, but not fully conscious of how we neglect or judge our inner experience. We suffer from a lack of belonging: to our own bodies, to each other and to the earth. When we practice Buddhist meditation, we learn how to listen deeply and hold our life tenderly.
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2019-10-23 Belonging to Each Other – Part 3 of 3 50:20
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Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-10-23 Meditation: Awake and Alive 18:30
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This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-10-16 Meditation: Vast and Timeless Presence 21:16
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The pathway to inhabiting our full presence is including, with mindfulness all parts of experience. This guided meditation explores how we can open, without resistance to the changing flow of sensations, feelings, thoughts and sounds, and discover the boundless awareness that is our true home.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-10-16 Belonging to Each Other – Part 2 of 3 53:42
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Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-10-16 RAIN on Blame: A Guided Meditation 14:38
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When we are stuck in blame or resentment we are in a trance – the other person becomes an unreal bad other, and our own sense of being contracts into a victimized self, an angry self, a righteous self. Using the acronym RAIN, this practice guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to our inner experience, and then to viewing the other with a more open and clear heart. By awakening from the trance of blame, we are able to respond with intelligence and care to the unmet needs that underlie all conflict.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-10-09 Meditation: Relaxed and Alert 21:16
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This meditation begins with a period of relaxing and collecting our attention with intentional long deep breathing. We then deepen embodied presence, and widen to the awareness that includes sounds, sensations, feelings, breath, and all experience. When the mind drifts from this open, awake awareness, we gently return, re-relaxing and resting in an easeful, alert presence. Recorded at Tara’s Wednesday night class, the meditation includes chanting of OM’s and ends with a sense of melting into community.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-10-09 Belonging to Each Other – Part 1 51:08
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Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These two talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-10-02 Meditation: Relaxing into Awake Awareness 19:15
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We realize our true nature by relaxing back into what is always, already here. Starting by scanning and opening through the body, we explore resting in the awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all of life. The guidance is, when we recognize thoughts, to simply relax back, and allow life to be just as it is.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-10-02 Spiritual Hope: Trusting Your Awakening Heart 47:55
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Our beliefs and understandings about reality directly impact our moment to moment experience of living. If we believe we will never change, that blocks the transformation that brings happiness and freedom. If we trust our spiritual unfolding and are open to possibility, that guides our attention and behaviors in ways that evolve us. This talk explores how to nurture mature, spiritual hope—hope that is sourced in trusting our intrinsic goodness, and our capacity for deepening love and wisdom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-09-04 Befriending Irene 58:29
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While Tara is away, this talk is from 2011 after Hurricane Irene hit us with fury. Dorian is now leaving its destruction behind, just as we work with our stormy weather within. Whether you face chronic anxiety or more violent storms of fear and anger, you can cultivate the wings of freedom–the mindfulness and compassion–that free you. This talk explores how the habit of being reactive causes us suffering and the ways these tools of meditation can be applied to the inner weather systems that most challenge us.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-09-04 Meditation: The Blessings of Love 11:17
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A blessing is whatever reminds us of the sacred loving presence that shines through all of us. This meditation is a transformational practice in receiving and offering blessings. First we connect with the vulnerable tender place within us that longs to feel loved, and call on loving presence to bless us. By imagining and allowing ourselves to receive love, our hearts become open and filled with light. We then bring that inner loving presence fully alive as we offer blessings to other beings. The image of receiving a kiss on the brow, and offering one, is suggested as a powerful channel for the blessings that awaken our heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-08-28 Meditation: Discovering Inner Space 28:01
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By imagining the space inside the body, we discover the continuous space of awareness that is the source and essence of all aliveness. This meditation is adapted from Open Focus Meditations led by Les Fehmi, Ph.D. in The Open Focus Brain.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-08-28 Earth’s Crisis: On the Edge of the Roof 52:31
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This talk was given in 2015, yet it is as timely as ever. It views the ecological dis-ease of our planet through the lens of our evolutionary unfolding. We explore the egoic trance that has precipitated the destruction of our environment, and the inner practices of presence that enable us to respond from love and wisdom (from the archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-08-21 “Good Othering” – Helping Each Other Trust the Gold 52:40
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One of the great gifts we can offer is being a mirror of goodness, reminding one another that we can trust our essential awareness, light and love. Because our conditioning is to fixate on flaws, “good othering” takes intention and practice. This talk explores how we can develop the habit of seeing goodness, and importantly, learn to communicate our appreciation and love to others.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-08-21 Meditation: The Sea of Awareness 18:08
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We begin this meditation with awakening to the aliveness in our body, using the imagery of a smile, and a body scan. Then we are guided to sense the vastness of awareness and to rest in that open wakefulness, allowing the changing thoughts, sounds, sensations and feelings to come and go. When we let life be just as it is, we become a sea of awareness that includes all the waves.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-08-14 Part 2 – The Answer is Love: Evolving out of “Bad Other” 45:37
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These two talks address the inquiry: How do we awaken from the contempt and hatred that causes so much suffering in our world? The first talk looks at how we can use the practices of mindfulness and compassion to decondition our habits of self-blame and self-hatred, as well as the importance of helping each other defuse the trance of unworthiness. The second talk extends the use of these practices to situations where we’ve locked into external “bad othering.” These times need our deepened dedication to love: By intentionally arousing compassion for ourselves and others, we directly contribute to the evolution of consciousness in our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-08-14 Meditation: Everything Belongs 20:34
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This guided meditation awakens an embodied presence through a body scan, and invites us to rest in the breath, while allowing the different waves of sensations, feelings and sounds to come and go. When difficult experiences arise, we breathe with them, feeling them fully and mentally whispering, “this belongs,” or “this too.” By not resisting, we discover the sea of awareness that has room for all the waves.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-08-07 Part 1 – The Answer is Love: Evolving out of “Bad Other” 51:08
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These two talks address the inquiry: How do we awaken from the contempt and hatred that causes so much suffering in our world? The first talk looks at how we can use the practices of mindfulness and compassion to decondition our habits of self-blame and self-hatred, as well as the importance of helping each other defuse the trance of unworthiness. The second talk extends the use of these practices to situations where we’ve locked into external “bad othering.” These times need our deepened dedication to love: By intentionally arousing compassion for ourselves and others, we directly contribute to the evolution of consciousness in our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-08-07 Meditation: Cultivating a Kind Attention 18:48
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Using the image and felt sense of a smile, we scan through the body, and awaken a sense of aliveness, presence and tenderness. The practice then extends to mindfully include all sounds, sensations, and feelings; and when difficult experience arises, to intentionally offer care. We close with an offering of loving kindness to our own being, to others who are suffering and to all life everywhere.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-07-24 The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 2 48:32
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Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-07-24 Meditation: Letting Go 20:22
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One way of understanding meditation is a letting go of the habitual clenching of thoughts, the clenching that resists emotions and pulls away from aliveness itself. This meditation guides us in letting go, first through the body, and then practicing letting go of thoughts and relaxing and resting in the changing flow of experience. The blessing of letting go is a homecoming into the truth and wholeness of what we are, a realization of reality, and freedom. NOTE: Listen to the rain, too…
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-07-10 The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 54:48
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Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-07-10 Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life 16:10
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This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We then settle with the breath, and practice relaxing with whatever arises, letting life be just as it is. The underlying intention is to regard all experience with a clear, interested and friendly attention. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-07-03 Meditation: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness 19:44
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This meditation awakens a receptive attention to the senses, starting with physical sensations and opening to sound. Then we sense how open awake awareness is receiving the moment to moment arising and passing life. In the final part of the practice, we explore how awake awareness is receiving the experience of our heart and offer blessings to our inner life and all living beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-07-03 How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 2 53:04
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The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-06-26 How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 1 44:47
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The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world (a special favorite from the archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-06-26 Meditation: Awakening Our Full Aliveness 20:23
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We cut off from our aliveness when we are lost in thoughts and on auto pilot. This meditation arouses a receptivity to sensation from “the inside out,” opens the awareness to sound, and then invites a full resting in receptive, dynamic presence (from the archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-06-19 The Courage to Love – Part 2 51:40
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The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-06-19 Meditation: Wakeful, Open Awareness 19:38
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When we awaken our senses, we can sense in the background a wakeful openness that is our true home. This meditation guides us by first attending to the space, aliveness and awareness that fills the body, and then by sensing how interior and exterior space is continuous, and suffused with the light of awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-06-12 The Courage to Love – Part 1 53:36
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The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-06-12 Meditation: Effortless and Wakeful Presence 16:57
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Striving in meditation only creates more tension in our psyche and a solidified sense of self. This meditation invites us to awaken our senses and relax back into the presence that is always and already here. From presence we spontaneously notice and allow the changing flow of experience, and sense the openness and wakefulness of our natural awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-06-05 Meditation: Breath by Breath – Relaxing with Our Life 18:10
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The breath can be a powerful portal to presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing with the breath, including the breath in a body scan, and then allowing the breath to serve as an anchor when the mind gets lost in thoughts. As we settle with the breath as a home base, we find we can then open to the changing waves of experience with increasing balance, clarity and ease.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-06-05 An Appropriate Response: Living from an Awake Heart 51:00
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Much of our suffering comes from reacting to stressful situations with fear or aggression, rather than responding with wisdom and care. This talk explores the pathway of shifting from reacting to responding: this includes learning to pause, awakening the wings of mindfulness and kindness, and reconnecting with our deepest intention.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-05-29 Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame – Part 3 52:57
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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 2 on the places of deep self-condemnation, and Part 3 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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-05-29 Meditation: Opening to Life 20:46
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This guided meditation includes a mindful body scan, and awakening all our senses to our moment to moment experience. We relax open to the presence that is unobscured by thoughts, letting life be just as it is.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-05-22 Meditation: RAIN on Self-Blame 9:45
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One of the greatest roots of suffering is being at war with ourselves. This meditation, based on the acronym RAIN (recognize-allow-investigate-nurture), guides us in releasing the armoring of blame, and relating to our inner life with greater understanding and compassion.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-05-15 Compassion Towards All: Moving toward a Plant Based Diet 21:34
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For most of human history it’s been “normal” to eat non-human animals. This is now changing. We are awakening to the massive suffering of the billions of animals killed each day for food, the horrors of the animal-food industry, and the impact it has on climate change (second only to fossil fuels.) In this short talk Tara shares her personal story of transitioning to a vegan diet, and invites listeners to investigate, without judgment, their own choices in this domain.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-05-09 Meditation and Morning Instruction - Day 6 33:37
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2019 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2019-05-08 Trusting the Gold (retreat talk) 62:06
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This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self. We then explore the practices of presence and self-inquiry that turn us toward the openness, tenderness and wakefulness of our Being. Our trust grows as we increasingly glimpse, embody and live from our natural Being. NOTE: This talk was given at the Spring 2019 IMCW 7-day Silent Retreat.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2019 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2019-05-07 Meditation: Releasing the Armor of Blame 35:22
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We can’t will forgiveness, but we can be willing to bring presence to our wounds, and gradually let go of the blame that contracts and dulls our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2019 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2019-05-05 Meditation: Retreat Instructions, Day 2 34:56
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2019 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2019-05-04 Meditation - First Morning 16:58
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2019 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2019-05-03 Opening Retreat Talks - 63:19
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Introductions, Orientation, Instructions Tara Brach, Jonathan Foust, La Sarmiento, Kate Johnson
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2019 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2019-05-01 Meditation: Being Here 22:40
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This practice sets the atmosphere of loving presence with a smile-down and waking up all the senses. We relax into open awareness, receptive to the breath or whatever waves of experience are calling for attention. The invitation is to rest in Hereness, fully awake in presence. The meditation ends with a short offering of blessings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-05-01 Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame – Part 2 54:51
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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 2 on the places of deep self-condemnation, and Part 3 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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-04-24 Equanimity: A Heart That is Ready for Anything (Duck Meditation) 50:28
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Equanimity is the quality of presence that is open, balanced and non-reactive. As this talk explores, when equanimity is lacking, we become easily lost in trance, identified as a defended and controlling egoic self. When present, the solidity and constriction of egoic self dissolves, and our heart is free to respond to life with love, compassion, forgiveness and joy. Note: this talk is a favorite from the 2014 archives and includes the “Duck Meditation” and bricklayer stories.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-04-24 Meditation: Awakening Our Energy Body 19:49
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This meditation scans the body and directly invites the awakening of key energy centers (chakras) in our body. We then rest in the openhearted awareness that includes this ever changing creative flow of aliveness. We close with a prayer of loving kindness. "No matter how often the mind drifts, all that really matters is the quality of heart in the way you come back… to come back with interest and friendliness to this moment, then you plant those seeds for whatever else arises."
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-04-17 Meditation: Sea of Loving Presence 22:14
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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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-04-17 Forgiveness: Releasing Ourselves and Others from Aversive Blame – Part 1 51:52
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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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2019-04-10 Meditation: Letting Life Be 22:55
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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…
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

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