Letting go of Controlling: The Path of Freedom, Part 2

Tara Brach

Buddhism, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.8 • 11.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

While it's natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence. This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart.

We look at how egoic controlling manifests individually and as a society; the process of awakening from exclusive identification with a separate ego/self; what it means to die into a larger reality and the similarities of psychedelics and meditation in the process of letting go.

The gift of releasing the grip of controlling is true freedom; inhabiting the intrinsic beauty of our beings, and having our lives be an expression of creativity, wisdom and love.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
0:11.3	Each week, I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing
0:17.8	to our world.
0:24.4	You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrock.com,
0:27.1	where you can also join our email list.
0:32.5	Now, let's explore together
0:34.7	the many ways we can live
0:36.7	from the love and presence that's our deepest
0:40.1	essence.
0:47.6	Namaste, welcome friends.
1:11.6	I've been choosing themes as we enter this new year that I hope feel very alive for you as you move through your personal experience and also the sense of the collective. So last week and
1:29.6	this week has been on letting go of control, understanding that controlling is a survival brain
1:37.7	strategy and the more threatened we feel, the more vigorously we try to control our lives.
1:43.8	And it can be like struggling in quicksand, you know, that we... we feel the more vigorously we try to control our lives.
1:44.3	And it can be like struggling in quicksand, you know, that we sink.
1:49.3	The more we struggle, the more we sink into suffering really.
1:53.5	So globally, insecurity and fear is really spiking.
2:00.0	And societies around the globe are trending towards more controlling,
2:04.3	more authoritarianism. It's kind of a violent controlling that perceives inner enemies like immigrants
2:13.2	or people of color and outer enemies. And we're witnessing the horror of this currently,
2:19.5	really cruelty towards those most vulnerable. Individually, when we're threatened, we also try to
2:27.7	control inner parts of ourselves that we mistrust, and we do it by shaming and blaming,
	...

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