Click HERE in order to listen to Michael’s talk.
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“Don’t throw your preferences out the window,” says Michael in tonight’s talk. “Study them in order to see how they lead to attachment.”
Michael further explains how we get in the way of Awakening by creating yet more Karma, or tangle as he often says. The way out of this trap is to become aware of three qualities: all things are temporary, all things depend on our imputation, all things are Spirit in action.

One practice that can help us become more conscious is to look at our typical, circumstantial condition by comparing it to a theatrical experience. Imagine that the stage in a theater is our “mind.” On this stage of mind is a brilliant actor called the “ego.” On this stage, the ego acts out a drama called the “life experience,” or what we’ve referred to as our “circumstance,” and it always does its best never to take a break because the actor can only be in control of circumstances if it is on stage delivering its lines convincingly. What’s more, these lines come from a brilliant filing system that the ego has written and worked tirelessly over its lifetime to organize, so that no matter what circumstance arises, it can quickly access and cross-reference any script it might need in order for the production to stay relevant to whatever situation might arise. The ego is not only in charge of this theater of mind, but is also the protagonist of each tragedy and comedy. Moreover, it is the supporting cast as well as the director, the writer, the lighting and set designer, and the stage manager.

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Many teaching traditions speak of two kinds of truth: Absolute Truth, or what has been called the “Ultimate realm”; and the everyday truth, or what has been called the “circumstantial realm.” Our day-to-day lives are filled with lots of ordinary circumstances. We get up, brush our teeth, change some diapers, get the paper, shower, feed the dog, and kiss those we love good-bye before we set off to work. Yet at the same time, our day-to-day lives are also filled with unquantifiable aspects of what we might call “Being” or “Spirit.” This expansive aspect of our day-to-day living is totally beyond any human trapping of any kind, and yet Spirit is always already everywhere whether our minds recognize it or not.

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When the ego’s activity of identification begins to be exposed to a more expansive awareness within us, it begins to resist what it perceives as a loss of all it has worked so hard to achieve over the years. The more we pay attention to exactly what is going on, the more we begin to see that our identity, or personality, is simply a mask that we have learned to maintain in order to participate safely in the world. The word persona, in fact, is Greek for mask. Once we begin to gain some sense of how exactly we wear this persona, we begin to see that nearly all of our life we have been covering up and protecting ourselves against psychological threats by enhancing our mask’s appearance and fitting it over us ever more securely. But as the altitude of our spiritual climb increases, we will find that we can more carefully study ego’s actions and reactions. Once this shift in perspective occurs and the fire of our Awareness begins to increase in its intensity, the ego starts to sweat; not just because things get hot, but because the mask that it has been working on for so long starts to melt.

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Click HERE in order to listen to Michael’s talk.
Get the new iTunes software and subscribe to this podcast from the Buddhist and/or Philosophy sections of the Religion & Spirituality list.
____

As important as a good teacher is, we also must consider how critical a meditation practice is as we walk the Path. In tonight’s talk, Michael explains how we can help this process along by being careful in how we practice. As we practice with care, we get to come back into the world more deeply integrated with all that is around us. This is exactly what happens when, instead of doing meditation, we let meditation do us.

Once you label me, you negate me.

—Søren Kirkegaard

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

—Albert Einstein

One of the most interesting and powerful ways that attachment shows up in our interior landscape is through the process of identification. As we’ve discussed, the ego stays secure when it latches onto things that it perceives will offer it protection. The ego continually works to incorporate these things into its sense of both what it is and what it is not, and then building an identity out of these perceptions.

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Many seasoned spiritual seekers mistakenly believe that in order to experience living as a Big Self, they need to destroy the ego, or small self. But this idea is one of the greatest misunderstandings that new practitioners make as they ascend the Mountain of Spirit. Getting rid of the ego is a massive impediment to any authentic awakening, since attempting to do so exemplifies the unconsciousness from which practitioners wish to awaken in the first place. When we first become interested in the spiritual quest, we usually think that enlightened sages have no egos and have evolved into Infinitely Big Selves without human impulses. But it’s a naïve mistake for us to think that the enlightened among us have no physical or emotional desires, no wants, no passion, no humor, or any other qualities we might attribute to the small self. This simply isn’t true. Yet our egos would conveniently have us believe this in order to idealize Enlightenment and thus effectively discourage us from trying to awaken from our habitual slumber.

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From the point of view of quantum mechanics, separation doesn’t really exist. At least that’s what scientists keep telling us. I don’t pretend to understand very much when it comes to quantum physics, but its implications point us in an interesting direction when it comes to discussions about the experience of being a “self.” For example, the only real difference between your “self” and the things around you is organization and energy. The last meal that you ate, for instance, is made up of the same, carbon-based physical matter that you will find in your own body. The molecules might be organized differently, and the flow and expression of energy are certainly different. But that’s about it.

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