Introduction to Mindfulness: Mindfulness of Thoughts – Part 4

The final session of this series explores the most powerful strategies Tara knows to bring mindfulness alive in all facets of daily living. These informal practices help our entire life to become an expression of our awakening and wise heart. Whether you are new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, the foundational teachings of mindfulness—heart presence—offer a timeless medicine for navigating these challenging times. This fresh introductory series invites you to bring alive ancient practices in ways that are directly relevant to the emotions and reactivity arising in today’s world. You’ll be guided to discover an inner refuge—a way to meet your personal life and our collective world with greater presence and wisdom, courage and love.

Our being has many frequencies of aliveness and as we attend to the more subtle, we discover a portal to the radiant awareness that is always here. This meditation guides us in using the breath and attention as we scan through the body and awaken an inner luminosity. We then open the attention to rest in the whole field of awake awareness.

This talk examines how the trance of thinking imprisons us, veiling our full aliveness, love, and spiritual essence. Through contemplative reflections and short guided practices, we’ll explore pathways to awaken from this trance and open to the light, awareness, and wholeness of who we truly are.

Mindfulness means paying attention on purpose to our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation invites us to collect our attention with the breath and use the breath as a home base for mindful presence. We then include whatever is predominant, recognizing and allowing the changing flow. The blessing of this practice is simple and beautiful: We are learning to be here for our life.

Whether you are new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, the foundational teachings of mindfulness—heart presence—offer a timeless medicine for navigating these challenging times. This fresh introductory series invites you to bring alive ancient practices in ways that are directly relevant to the emotions and reactivity arising in today’s world. You’ll be guided to discover an inner refuge—a way to meet your personal life and our collective world with greater presence and wisdom, courage and love. In this session, we explore how mindfulness and heartfulness can transform our relationship with emotions, revealing them as gateways to the full aliveness, tenderness, and clarity of awake awareness.

This meditation guides us to awaken to our senses through scanning through the body and then listening to sounds. When distracted by thoughts we relax open again and again, learning to rest in the formless awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all passing experience.

NOTE - Tara offers a meditation you can use as a practice during this introduction series: Mindfulness Meditation—Intimacy with our Inner Life. Whether you are new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, the foundational teachings of mindfulness—heart presence—offer a timeless medicine for navigating these challenging times. This fresh introductory series invites you to bring alive ancient practices in ways that are directly relevant to the emotions and reactivity arising in today’s world. You’ll be guided to discover an inner refuge—a way to meet your personal life and our collective world with greater presence and wisdom, courage and love. In this session, we explore how to awaken mindful awareness of sensations—the first foundation of mindfulness and the ground of all experience. Everything we cherish—love, wisdom, wonder, creativity—arises from embodied presence. To truly receive the gifts of the path, we need to be here: awake, present, and intimate with the living currents of sensation.

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.

NOTE - Tara offers a meditation you can use as a practice during this introduction series: Mindfulness Meditation—Intimacy with our Inner Life. Whether you are new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, the foundational teachings of mindfulness—heart presence—offer a timeless medicine for navigating these challenging times. This fresh introductory series invites you to bring alive ancient practices in ways that are directly relevant to the emotions and reactivity arising in today’s world. You’ll be guided to discover an inner refuge—a way to meet your personal life and our collective world with greater presence and wisdom, courage and love. In this first session, we explore what makes mindfulness truly transformational: the flow of effective training, the power of aspiration, how to use the breath as a home base, and the attitudes that support a steady, strong, and liberating practice. As poet W. S. Merwin writes, “Little breath, breathe me gently, row me gently, for I am a river I am learning to cross.” 

NOTE: Tara invites you to use this 15-minute meditation to help nurture a steady and strong practice during her upcoming Introduction to Mindfulness series. Mindfulness Meditation, also known as Vipassana or insight meditation, is a practice of cultivating non-judging attention to our moment-to-moment experience. We begin by gently relaxing through the body and resting attention on the breath—or another sensory anchor—allowing the mind to settle. From this grounded presence, we open to whatever arises: sensations, emotions, sounds, or thoughts, meeting each with clarity and kindness. The intention is to wake up from the trance of thinking and return, again and again, to the aliveness of immediate experience. Over time, this practice helps us develop a steady heart amidst change and brings deep insight into the nature of reality.