Big Sky Mind

Originally uploaded by Michael G. McAlister

Gotta’ love when the earthquake of Awakening rattles and rolls everything we’ve ever known to be true…

Question(s):

As I sit, all that comes within my attention, or where I choose to turn my attention, exists because I’ve turned my attention on it. Then, when I turn my attention on “the one” who is attending to everything else, then that exists because my attention is on it. Is this what we call “the I”?

What about what’s behind where my attention is? How can the one perceiving know it? This perceiver has never experienced what’s at its source, never felt it, seen it, never, until now, been made aware of it? So if I am also that thing behind and outside of everything that has a boundary, then I am also somewhere within that thing, being perceived.

It feels like some thing breaking apart, and it’s kind of scary (that’s an understatement). Though exciting and interesting at the same time. Where am I? Every spiritual tradition says keep asking the question “Who am I?” But should I just stop trying to answer, and rest in the wonder-awe of it, rather than this feeling that I have to grab onto fistfulls of whatever I think will keep me bound and thus connect me
to what I have known as real…at least identifiable and familiar? Explaining here is impossible.

Is this why we seek connection so ardently?  I have held on to things and people (even harmful ones) for this unreal connection to life. The illusion really is that I’m alone in this expanse since I can’t really know it. But as there are no boundaries to it, the “I” must be there, along with every one and every thing. And w/in the boundaryless, the I has no boundaries either. (however, when a cat chews into my toe unexpectedly,
damn cat, as he did just this second, I feel I sharply and definitely here – boundaries defined again? I don’t get that.)

The pain is disconnection and flying apart (non-being) …and deeper … is total connection, past words, thoughts, sensations and opening into infinite inclusion.  When I was meditating earlier, there was only the breathing left. Where did fear go?

I thought if I stepped back enough, and widened my zoom, and kept doing that, I could fit everything.  It’s way too big…so the only choice is to open completely to the seamlessness and let myself be unknown, seeing that there are no edges.

Answer:

Nice bit of expression there. I’m not sure anything needs to be said at all, but I’ll throw this out there for fun:

So yeah… Who is it that is paying the attention? Indeed. Who is it? Does it even have a name? Does it move? Ever? Or is it just the ever-present spaciousness that sources all creativity from its depths? And what’s in it for any of us?

The Surangama Sutra does a great job of telling us that we can’t see our seeing or hear our hearing in the same way that the Seer of experience can never be seen. And yet everything arises within the open space of the Seer. Nothing is outside of the Infinity that we are. And we get most intimate with it when we can simply rest in the middle of our wonder, since the answers can never come close to apprehending all its Grace. Doing so is the same thing as ditching the camera and just being the expanse.

The teachings surrounding wisdom have been popping up around Infinite Smile recently. So here’s a re-posting of part of the chapter on this subject from Awake in This Life:

As the audience, or Witness, of the illusory and repetitious charade of ego on the Stage of Mind, we suddenly have an empowering choice offered to each of us in every single situation that we might encounter. In this choice we always uncover a chance in each moment to surrender any and all forms of attachment. Wisdom comes from our ability to watch without judgment and therefore see through the various levels of our clinging until we are confronted with the profoundly obvious Truth that every thing that can be conceived is merely a ripple in the totally unified, oceanic expression of Emptiness. Truly seeing that all things are an expression of this Oneness is wisdom.

(more…)

Leading retreats for Infinite Smile can be very sweet at times. Of course I miss sitting myself, but it’s amazingly gratifying when I get to participate with practitioners who are working really hard to uncover Truth.

In addition to some locals making the trip down to the Santa Cruz Mountains, people have flown in from Idaho, Montana, and Munich, Germany. Humbling, to say the least. And the Mount Madonna Center is stunning.

I got an email recently that was pretty cool. In it the anonymous writer rather pointedly suggested that I was wrong to suggest that Alan Chapman’s self-professed “full” enlightenment, documented over at his site, Open Enlightenment, was at best an example of a “partial awakening, not fully integrated.”

To be fair, I have no way of judging whether Alan is enlightened or not, nor does it concern me. Nor am I interested in jousting with people, especially anonymous emailers who are interested in defending a person they obviously admire. However, I do think that I should set the record straight as far as my critique of Alan’s position is concerned.

I have repeatedly made a point as a writer and as a teacher that an authentic awakening is radically compromised whenever it is viewed as a personal attainment. Doing so merely confuses the map with the territory, to borrow a phrase. There is nothing personal about enlightenment.  On the other hand, enlightenment happens in whatever body we find ourselves in at any given moment. Still, when we start confusing or conflating a personal experience with an embodied awakening ego is suddenly let in through the back door of the process and does its best to manage enlightenment. Ego (or we could also say ‘the mind’) derails things by mistaking the experience for what the experience points to. When this occurs, we can find ourselves walking around as enlightened egos; entirely limited and yet believing ourselves to be Absolute. I’m not trying to be patronising or smug since I know how much these qualities annoy Alan:

I’ve been on the wrong end of a patronising postmodernist a few times, and I’ve been so enranged [sic] and sickened by his or her unexamined smugness, that I’ve responded by informing them that, actually, I’m at a level of development above and beyond theirs, and so they’re just incapable of understanding me. Ha!

(more…)

Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael’s talk.
Get the most recent iTunes software and subscribe to this podcast from the Buddhist and/or Philosophy sections of the Religion & Spirituality list.
____

In this talk, pulled from a half-day intensive, Michael discusses the gift of curiosity and how it frees us from feeling a sense of lack.

ISmile235 - How to Meet Total Fulfillment [ 43:10 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (791)

I think that this story is an interesting opportunity for us to look at our attachments. While I think it more than a little awkward that for the first time since 1991, our head of state won’t meet with the DL so as not, presumably, to upset the Chinese, I can understand it in terms of the big picture. Plus it puts me in touch with my attachments. Then again the DL has put me in touch with my attachments before.

Tricycle’s Philip Ryan has a good post on this:

This has surprised many, but Clinton never officially received the Dalai Lama in Washington either. His Holiness had to wait until the George W. Bush era to get an official reception. About Dubya, the Dalai Lama famously said just last year, “I love President Bush, because he is very frank, very straightforward. His intentions are good, but some of his policy in spite of his sincere motivation and right goal, and some of his method becomes unrealistic because of lack of understanding about reality.”

Interesting choice of words there, no?
Of course, maybe it’s just that Obama doesn’t want to upset our banker.

Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael’s talk.
Get the most recent iTunes software and subscribe to this podcast from the Buddhist and/or Philosophy sections of the Religion & Spirituality list.
____

In this evening’s talk, Michael discusses the weighty topics of death and dying, and offers suggestions on how to let our inevitable end open us to Truth.

ISmile234 - On Death and Dying [ 42:05 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (797)