Tara Brach

This two-talk series explore s how spiritual imagination can awaken us to our deepest potential for healing and transformation. In times of fear and division, our imagination often contracts, fueling separation and suffering, yet through mindful presence we can reconnect with our basic goodness and the goodness in others. Through inquiry and story, w e can imagine what’s possible—personally and collectively—when we trust in our shared capacity for change, belonging, and wise hope.

This meditation scans through the body – arriving in the foreground with sounds, feelings and sensations, like the surface waves of the sea coming and going. And in the background, experiencing an alert inner stillness – a vast presence from which all activity pours forth.

The ritual of Namaste – bowing to the sacred in ourselves and others – helps us live from the loving awareness that is our true nature. This talk looks at how we suffer because we forget this basic goodness, and explores the pathways of remembering that carry us home.   In this talk, Tara explores  * the sacred meaning of “Namaste” as a living practice—an invitation to see past the masks we wear and honor the light and goodness in all beings. * how our “spacesuit self”—a conditioned identity shaped by fear and separation—can obscure our true nature, and how mindfulness can awaken us to our shared spirit. * the pain of forgetting our basic goodness, and how suffering itself can be a portal—a chrysalis—guiding us back to presence, compassion, and spiritual belonging. * powerful stories of transformation, revealing how turning toward love and seeing the sacred in one another—even amidst deep harm—can open the way for healing and connection. * intentional practices to cultivate reverence, including mindful reflection, appreciation, and the embodied offering of Namaste as a path to awakening and collective healing.

When we are lost inside thoughts we lose connection with our heart, aliveness and spirit. This meditation guides us to a wakeful presence and invites us to return over and over from virtual reality into the mysterious, tender vastness that is our true being.

Our suffering arises from fear-based stories that are often outside our awareness. These include stories of our deficiency or importance, of being a victim, of being unseen or unloved, of facing failure or rejection. This is true collectively too. We have shared stories of bad “others” that fuel wars, shared stories of the value of continued growth in consumption and production that destroy our earth, shared stories of our human right to enslave and violate other animals. We have the capacity to bring the stories that separate and imprison us into the light of awareness, and with great compassion, loosen their grip. These two talks look at the ways fear-based stories create suffering, and how awakening from them reveals the freedom of our true, and universal, belonging.