Even if you’ve been meditating for years, you probably encounter old patterns that seem impervious to your mindful awareness. Maybe at times these patterns are dormant, but during challenging moments they reappear and perhaps feel intractable. In this session we’ll explore inquiry practices that can help interrupt and disentangle the mind from its habitual “stuck” places and open our hearts to the ground of insight.
Discover more from the Dharma Library
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Tonight the Subject is Love
Recorded :
April 28, 2024 Love is the essential quality needed for the journey through life. The heart’s desire for deep connection fuels the journey, inspires and deepens our practice. This is why at some point we stop practicing to get anywhere, or to achieve anything… we just practice because we love it. Link to the YouTube video that we were…
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Soften the hard places: opening our hearts to those we find difficult
Recorded :
May 5, 2019 The teacher Neem Karoli Baba said, “Don’t throw anyone out of your heart.” What about people who have hurt us, or are currently hurting us or others? In this session we explore together practices that help us to transform our resentment, fear and anger toward these difficult people, and learn to open our hearts to…
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of May 27 – 31, 2024
This week’s topic is “Mindfulness of the nervous system: transforming fear, struggle and separation into love and connection”. We humans are social animals and need each other to feel safe and secure, to grow and to nourish ourselves. How can we live with a sense of connection, loving-kindness, and inner family? Our meditation practice allows us to take a break between stimulus and response. When we come into contact with our loved ones, we all too easily lose the inner freedom we think we have achieved and avoid our difficulties, also called spiritual bypassing. This week we explore what supports us to react flexibly to the internal and external world, to relax and to allow closeness and real intimacy. We will look into the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, including harmonizing the body formations and nervous system to meet our difficulties with gentleness.
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What Feeds your Craving?
Recorded :
May 19, 2024 The Buddha discovered that craving is the cause by which stress comes into play. Letting go of this constant pursuing of our desires is possible. Befriending this human and natural craving needs the power of kind awareness and an ongoing reflection: What feeds my craving? And: What feeds letting go?
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of March 28, 2022
This week’s topic is Shelter from the Storm. Whether it is restlessness, worry, anxiety, panic, worry or rumination, all aspects of fear have one thing in common: they rob us of our peace of mind. If fear governs our perspective, we are focused on that which is potentially problematic. Unable to settle down and rest, we often feel exhausted by the relentless activity of our mind. The Buddha invited us to find in our practice ‘a Shelter, a Harbour, a Refuge’. In this week together, we’ll explore the underlying dynamics of fear, learn ways to soothe our minds and gain access to a sense of safety and peacefulness right here and right now.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of Dec 5 – 9, 2022
This week’s theme is “Embodied Meditation Practise & the Transformative Power of the 5 Precepts”.
Many people find themselves from time to time in a spiritual vacuum, trying to fill this emptiness with indulgence through eating, drinking, surfing the internet, shopping, pornography, doing drugs, etc.
This week we will look into the 5 precepts, which the Buddha recommended for anyone who wishes to live a peaceful life. The precepts can act as a training guideline, and can support us to stop, pause and look deeply into ourselves to understand, “What is really going on here?” as a fundamental part on our way to universal love, compassion and liberation.
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Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of September 4, 2023
This week’s theme is “Which comes first, your practice or your life?” Does your life support your practice, or your practice your life? For me, things have been shifting recently, leaving me with lots to contemplate, particularly around the overlap between practice and systemic change. I’ll share some ideas and embodied relational techniques for working at these interesting edges, whilst giving you lots of open quiet meditation time, over our five mornings together.
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The Practice of the Beautiful: Moving Beyond Fragmentation and Stability
Recorded :
June 2, 2024 Allowing the beautiful to guide us in our practice opens up possibilities beyond our conditioned habits. Awakening to beauty involves being with the messiness and the challenges of our lives. Beauty does not belong to anyone. As we orient away from that which is pleasing to that which is beautiful in ourselves and in our communities, we align ourselves with a path that blossoms into liberation for all beings.
