In this talk, Michael relates Gandhi’s quote, “True beauty is my aim” to Awakening. A mind that doesn’t identify with thought, and a body that isn’t addicted to the senses, meet in the vast spaciousness of an open heart. It is here that compassion flows freely from us, even as we eat breakfast. Questions relate to contracted and expansive versions of love, as well as how we best deal with remaining open to those that are closed to us.
In this talk Michael McAlister addresses some of the basic problems facing us as we begin a stillness practice. Questions relating to being open to people that are closed to us, as well as how enlightenment for ourselves means enlightenment for the Universe are also addressed.
Rabbi Michael Lerner refers to the new Pope as “…a Disaster for the World and for the Jews”. What does his commentary suggest about our individual and collective approach to Spirit? What do Pope Benedict’s comments on other faiths tell us about fundamentalism? In today’s installment of Commuter Zen, Michael McAlister looks at each of these questions from the context of enlightened teachings and addresses an approach that might lead us away from egoic war, and into spiritual peace.
In this dharma talk, Michael McAlister points out how feelings, especially negative ones, can offer us an opening into the enlightened context. There is an articulation of how it is that we create and then expose emotional vulnerabilities, or buttons, that others will invariably push. From here there is an explanation of how we can each lessen the intensity of these trigger points by being more aware of our circumstances and our relationship to our preferences.
In this installment of Commuter Zen, Michael addresses a question about the viability of organized religion in today’s world.
In this dialog, Michael McAlister delves into our simple and always immediate choice: do we stay in our familiar state of habitual contraction, or do we allow for a resonant expanse to lead us directly into the heart of an immediate Awareness. His students then take the dialog into issues involving the difference between “knowing” and “Knowing”, as well as ethics and spiritual integration into our day to day.
In this dialog, Michael addresses the temporary nature of all things. He also touches on how we can live as an expression of both wisdom and compassion once we see beyond the time bound nature of the ego. He applies this then to our Path into the impersonal nature of the Deep Singularity and then back into the personal experiences of the world.
In this installment of Commuter Zen, Michael suggests that both Jean-Paul Sartre and Ludwig von Wittgenstein have pointed in a direction that takes us past the ego and into a radical Freedom. According to Michael, this Freedom shows itself as we watch the ego’s performance on the stage of mind. In the moment to moment observation of this play, we allow for ourselves and others to recontextualize experience from contraction, into expansion.
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