With this in mind, Michael points out the ways in which we cling to the very things that prevent enlightenment. Past and future orientation, for example, in addition to preferences, will always point us in the direction of our attachments. These attachments end up defining the boundaries of our delusion. But the gift of these limitations are that each of them shows us what we need to get past in order to awaken to the Truth that lies beyond name and form.

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“When awakening happens,” he says, “there is the realization that all form is experienced within the emptiness of the True Self… this is Buddha.”

To what extent are we committed to uncovering this realization? Do we hedge our bets as we approach our spiritual path by clinging to whatever doubts or excuses we may have no matter how subtle they may be? These and other questions provide the structure and inspire the content of this Dharma talk.

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He also addresses an article that was shared with him in which Joseph Goldstein offers a way for busy people to “turbocharge” their practice in nine minutes a day. While this isn’t enough time to get at the roots of our delusion, both Michael and Joseph Goldstein agree that the exercises application can do wonders to deepen wherever we might be on the path.

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With this in mind, we seem to be trained in this culture to always want more, or less, of things and experiences. We seemingly spend very little time appreciating what we have in the here and now. What’s more, the nondual teachings of “Emptiness” and how it appears to be an utter void to the mind, can be experienced as total fulfillment to our deepest sense of being. Michael approaches this evening’s talk with this paradox and offers up pointers on how to bring about the fullness of Emptiness in the midst of every single experience we might have.

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Regardless of our tradition, we can reduce our spiritual practice to its component pieces and find that Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths offers us a path toward freedom.

We first recognize our anguish, we then see it’s cause as our clinging, we then realize a freedom from our clinging is possible and finally we see that there is a teaching that helps support a stabilization of this realization of freedom.

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For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.

This sets up his talk by making the point that it’s in our desire to categorize and compartmentalize experience that we defile what’s being offered. He goes on to say that “if we don’t mess with suffering we free ourselves from suffering’s mess.” While this may sound counterintuitive, it is the path offered to each of us as our meditation practice deepens.

Gaining a sense of safety is usually what attracts us to practice. We seek an escape from what our reality is offering and initially meditative work can offer us refuge. But at some point, what initially appeared to us as a refuge begins to reveal itself as something entirely different. As our practice deepens and our individual consciousness is loosened on universal awareness, we begin to see that all manner of negativity and resistance begins to arise the more exposed we feel. This is precisely what meditation is designed to do: force a deepening realization that we can not get any closer to Spirit than we already are. Facing this beauty and then accepting all of its implications allows for Rilke’s point to settle within our hearts, thereby offering us up as continual expressions of love.

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As the talk progresses, Michael elaborates on Zen’s Grave Precepts: Not killing, not lying, not misusing sexuality, not lying, not abusing intoxicants, not criticizing others, not being arrogant, not being greedy, not harboring anger and not diminishing the Triple Treasure (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha). By doing so, he points out how we can examine our own tendencies toward harming ourselves and others in very subtle ways. Making amends if we have gotten off track, it is suggested, can be a powerful antidote to suffering as long as we don’t attach to an outcome.

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This felt sense of the Absolute leads us onto the path of an expanding consciousness that can be mapped. Michael starts the discussion by pointing out gross level awareness, then moves on to the subtle level, the causal level and then into what can be referred to as nondual Suchness. As a side, he also notes that the causal Witness is also referred to turiya while nondual Suchness is termed turiyatita in Hinduism. From here Michael suggests that our practice can become unbalanced when we become more interested in “becoming” than simply “being.” When we stabilize ourselves in simply Being, he suggests, the Becoming takes care of itself, with a little help. But the opposite is not necessarily true. This aspect of Michael’s teaching flies in the face of some other contemporary teachers’ work.

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How can we ever become truly intimate with our emotional and physical pain? Or, in Buddhist terms, how can we welcome Mara?

In tonight’s talk Michael suggests that our pain is often a better guide along the Path than pleasure. Countless sages have spoken to this but Michael uses the words of Thomas Merton and Rumi to point out this aspect of our work where “all the buddhas are practicing.” Questions and comments deal with the issue of constant physical pain; facing our emotional pain with the same intense awareness as we might with our physical pain; and recognizing that when we come close to actual death we are offered a teaching.

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This takes practice and discipline. It takes a fearlessness that allows for us to study our own suffering. This study shows us that whatever we cling to, we end up diminishing. Loosening our grip on things through our stillness practice, on the other hand, ends up enhancing not only our experience but also the lives of all those we come into contact with. Our lives can be led not from a place of vanity where we seek a continual aggrandizement of separate selfhood, but rather we can live from a deeply connected place where abundance flows to, through and from our being. Here is where all war ends and peace becomes expressed continually.

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Authentic spiritual work helps us shift our perspective in radical ways, especially when it comes to seeking. Rather than our meditation helping us to develop the strength necessary to hang to our rope, so to speak, with greater efficiency, we find that our sitting practice helps us let go of the rope entirely. This isn’t comfortable. But all awakened beings have developed a quiet peace around this letting go as they’ve dealt with their tendency to cling. Awakened beings see that seeking itself presupposes a loss of something. Awakened beings know that nothing has ever been missing.

As this process unfolds we begin to see that certain guideposts show up. First, we see that our practice unfolds as an expression of our identity. We look to become “good Buddhists” or “good Christians,” rather than being Buddhas or Christs. This orientation is about safety and understanding and manifests as the surface of our personal consciousness. Second, we uncover varying degrees of resistance. It’s here that we can begin to actually feel our preferences and attachments. This level of our awareness shows us the interior of our personal consciousness. Third, we begin to lose our need to understand, to gain anything, or avoid anything. There is a peace and an openness that arises out of a felt sense of being rather than a conceptual framework for uncovering some kind of gain.

Integrating all of this allows us to begin to reorient ourselves, and our living, from a place of release rather than from a place of certitude. Seeking ends here allowing us to rest as finders.
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Kanshi Sosan’s work, The Mind of Absolute Trust, offers us some great guidance in relation to meeting our lives fully. Michael leads the sangha in a reading and brief interactive analysis of the text, pointing out how we might best integrate the meaning of the text within our day-to-day lives. “Learning to trust the Universe,” Michael says, “means we can trust ourselves. In trusting ourselves, we can begin to trust others more fully.”

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With enough practice, this shift allows for us to stare at the Infinite with eyes that are infinitely informed.

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Having said this, exposing ourselves to this fire is neither easy nor comfortable. Often we find that it’s increasingly difficult to participate with people that we’ve come to notice as impediments to our journey. While “moving on” is a natural part of the work, it should also be noted that this doesn’t necessarily mean that we must “move away.” Sometimes we can coexist with others that aren’t on the path, other times we can’t. In either circumstance we continually get to choose whether or not we want to move forward or not. The choice is always ours to make, but at some point we see that we truly can’t return to our old ways of being. Here is where we are reborn into a place of fearlessness. Here is where we evolve into something more conscious, more awake.

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The Buddhist tradition offers a system to be used as a path toward liberation from suffering. Of course it takes work and isn’t necessarily easy. But in this talk, Michael McAlister discusses how we can use the Eightfold Path, and even some derivations, to get us more deeply into the work. He uses a traditional Tibetan thanka, featured on the left, as a descriptor and also offers up pointers as any committed practitioner begins to work with each of the components of the path. He goes on to suggest that diligently working with the guidance offered by the Eightfold Path offers us a way to step off of samsara’s wheel, thus entering the open field of awakening.

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What about love? In this talk Michael suggests that Big Love has nothing to do with our understanding and craving of that rush that small love brings. In fact, he uses the words of Rumi to point out how what is really necessary for Big Love to inform all of our circumstances. The unfolding of Big Love and the ultimate surrender to it allows us to live from the roots of Being. Furthermore, the Four Horsemen of Relationship, as articulated by John Gottman, begin to lose traction upon the path of fear since Big Love is fearless. Questions and comments deal with the experience of Emptiness; the recognition of No Self as love; running away from Big Love; forgiveness and the power of sangha.

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Topics in this evening’s talk include finding what is holy in our everyday experiences; learning to live in the gap that lies between the recognition of the One as well as the Many; and, how progress along the path can show up in unexpected ways.

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So how might we straighten out the tangles offered by a lifetime of egoic activity? This is the very question that Michael begins to address in this talk.
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Once we see that we are infinite at our core, we can begin to see that this self we’ve always believed in is a partial reflection of what’s real; that we’re more that what we think we are; that we’re more than anything we might identify with. From this perspective we can see that we can’t take anything with us. Once we can open around this truth, we can stop resisting life and begin to live more fully as a conscious expression of freedom.
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Gina’s beautiful talk is then followed up by one of Michael’s talks as well as Q & A.

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Michael addresses the enlightened message of several traditions and suggests that they begin to intertwine at some key places. Among these points is the notion of being good to each other and recognizing the power of surrendering to what is actually happening.

Issues like attachment, identification and vanity and the distortions are addressed. Instead of resisting our lives, meditation helps us take the “backward step” that helps us fall into awakening. Crushing heartbreak as well as bliss offer us a direct path into the heart of awakening. This is our path.

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What should we do about seduction as we walk the spiritual Path? Not just physical seduction, but intellectual, emotional, and even spiritual seduction. In tonight’s talk, Michael suggests that seduction is the natural magnetism that shows us our attachments. Questions and comments deal with what to do after ego is exposed yet still is able to pull life’s levers; the difference and sameness of “surrender” and “acceptance”; getting seduced by negativity as well as getting seduced by activity.

Buddhist teaching suggests a different route that leads us not away from our pain and suffering but rather directs us through it. Meeting our dissatisfaction fully offers us an alternative view of whatever ailes us. This different view has the potential to shift our perspective in powerful ways.

Stepping into this new perspective is like stepping onto a surfboard for the first time. As many know, being able to surf well takes practice. But knowing that the waves of pain will always be there can motivate us to learn this time-honored spiritual skill. Once learned, practitioners find that while pain may arise in life, it no longer sticks as it once may have. Deep longings supported by certitude and psychological story-telling begin to lose their grip on us as we grow past them. Our relationships change because we change internally; no longer running away from any wave but rather learning how to become better at negotiating our acceptance of every wave’s offering.

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With this in mind we can begin to meet each and every experience that arises as an opportunity to awaken. Even in the midst of great emotional or physical pain, we see that we are being invited to go deeper. We see that at the center of all darkness an eternal light burns for us, calling us back to our original home. This light is expressed eternally through us, but it’s not usually noticed let alone consciously integrated in our experience.

Meditation, good teaching and good teachers support this profound gift and help it to be realized. Our stillness supports a recognition that we are constantly being asked to return homeward to a heart and mind that are infinite in dimension and scope. Following this path with full commitment helps us and those around us to see that this invitation home is an invitation for each of us to step consciously into an eternal grace.

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Sitting still regularly supports this realization. As it’s incorporated, it naturally, and spontaneously, begins to loosen whatever it is that might be binding us. This opening allows for us to hold both the manifest with the Unmanifest all at once as we live in the world. From here we can then, all at once, begin to support a conscious coexistence of separation and unity; conventional reality and Ultimate reality; the ego and what’s forever beyond the ego; what’s playing on the stage of mind with what’s in the audience; the many and the one.

Michael describes how this process takes on certain characteristics over time, offering us a simple map of experience and development. We begin with a sense of pleasure, which offers us refuge from what threatens our egos. Over time, this gives way to an eventual resistance to what is going on. The ego sees that meditation actually prevents us from hiding and therefore, at the most primal level, we see that there’s no hiding. If we can stick with our practice at this point, we have the opportunity to open to what is without flinching. This stage of openness supports realization and a deep peace. Finally, integrating this peace, this Big Self awareness, into the habitual moves of our small self allows for us to become an embodied blessing that can truly serve all things.

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Looking closely at the Eight Awakenings, we see how this process shows us how our desires don’t need to overtake us. We also start to see that we can recognize how much is enough in any situation. We also begin to recognize and appreciate serenity and solitude. Seeing the importance of diligence as we cultivate depth also works in our favor. Mindfulness becomes a key in process as does the practice of meditation. The nourishment of wisdom as we live and refraining from engaging in hollow discussions round out Dogen’s recommendations for how to live the very Freedom we most seek.

Living as a conscious integration of these steps allows for us to embody peace and an awakened perspective.

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As we make friends with the shadow elements of our internal landscape, we have the opportunity to integrate them into a more whole, a more complete self. Here we begin to consciously meet up with our source, which allows for us to not only begin to sense what is sacred within us but also what is sacred in others. We also begin to see that instead of acting to fill what we perceive as a hole in our hearts by looking outward, we begin to fearlessly look more deeply inward and recognize that we are actually whole. From here we practice looking at all parts of our being, especially the stuff we hate about ourselves, without judgement. The same thing can happen with the parts of ourselves that we wish we had at our disposal. For instance, we project both ugliness and greatness on others when in fact we couldn’t do this unless we can see these projections unconsciously coming from the deep wells within our own beings. When we stop pushing aside the shadow and the light we are afforded an amazing opportunity to bloom, like a lotus, continually.
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How’s it done? The minute our lives are no longer bound by grasping, we can consciously and spontaneously become radiant expressions of the Infinite. In our bodies this feels like peace and ease. Integrating this peace into this moment in time helps us rewrite the stories of our past and also sets us up for glorious future opportunities. Seeing through the distortions that come from our clinging to our past take us from blame into forgiveness. Seeing through the distortions that come from our clinging to future goals takes us from closure into openness. Merging both forgiveness and openness allows for us to live in awakened ways, thus supporting a conscious and continuous apprehension of the very mystery we’ve always avoided.

Bringing this kind of presence into our love lives shows us how to be in relationship without grasping which invariably yields an awakening to a deeper kind of love.
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Depending on your preferred translation, the Buddha says, “In this fathom-long body and mind you’ll find the entirety of the Dharma.” Assuming that the Buddha was on to something, this is great news. We have all we need, right here, right now, in this body and mind, for awakening. But in order to uncover this gift, very often we need to give a little extra attention to what’s going on within our bodies as opposed to getting habitually lost within our minds. Meditators often fall into this trap of studying their minds without dropping more deeply into their bodies. But by practicing a simple “checking in” with our feelings and evaluating their various textures, their density and their heat, among other qualities, helps us refine our sense of our internal landscape. Doing this helps not only familiarize us with our inherent majesty, but it helps us reclaim our bodies in powerful, and often beautiful ways, that we then get to share with the world.

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Our invitation is to explore our seeking and, in the process, begin finding peace. Uncovering the peace we all have at our core releases us from our craving, our addictions, and our compulsions, by helping us to see through them. “It’s not,” as Michael says, “that the craving no longer exists, but our relationship to it changes so radically through committed practice that it’s no longer an affliction. Rather it’s seen as something that arises and ceases, like everything else.” This realization offers a place of love and light where we come home to Oneness and we set ourselves up for the Divine Disaster of awakening.

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This evening’s Dharma talk takes this subject on in a couple of capacities. First, it approaches the ways that the ego can attempt to control the process of awakening. Second, it refers to a recent blog posting where Michael explores the types of relationships we cultivate both within ourselves and with other people. From these two perspectives we learn how to get out of the way of the inherently natural process of an evolutionary awakening.

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Please come join us some time.

The answers to these and other questions often arise out of the heroic exploration of what makes each of us tick. Uncovering what, for example we most identify with offers keys to what is sacred within each of us.

For example, if we assume that the sum of our past experiences creates our identity, we are bound by our own sense of deficiency? Or what happens when the dreams and future goals we’ve set for ourselves and those around us fail to meet our expectations? Here, again, we pin ourselves to a deeply held internal sense that we are inadequate. Depression can ensue and the choices we make based on our darkness usually only serve to deepen our pain.

But according to the teaching there is way to uncover our light within the experience of darkness. Once we become intimate with our deepest longings, we see that there is a miraculous freedom that arises as the bonds of desperation start to break apart. Meditative work done consistently and intentionally shows each of us that our desires no longer have to govern our behaviors, our anger no longer has to weaken us, our avoidance patterns no longer need to rule us, nor does our tendency to doubt have to govern our choices, we can live in more expansive ways. This is the work. This is our path to peace.

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Michael goes on to discuss the natural expression of letting go as activity that does no harm. Ahimsa, as Buddhists call it, begins to guide the ways we meet our experience, he says, as we begin to evolve into deeper expressions of awakening. He also goes on to explain how the egoic clinging to thoughts, feelings and time can prevent this evolution. Additionally, he maps out the way the mind moves from its primary 5 senses into the 6th sense of mind; following this up with the 7th sense of time, the 8th sense of the hidden observer, then bridging into the 9th sense of the hidden observer’s source.

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The one thing, as Michael says, that the ego truly can’t handle is complete and utter peace. Uncovering a peace that is total would mean that the ego would be out of a job. So in order to maintain its job security, it creates war in various forms. Once we see through this, we recognize that there is an infinite opportunity to take advantage of an infinite array of choices. Choosing well by choosing consciously builds a sense in each of us that there is wholeness present in each of the situations that we face. Not only is peace at hand as this occurs, but peace is revealed to be the source of everything as well as the endpoint of everything.

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This podcast was originally offered in February of 2006.

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In tonight’s talk, Michael discusses how our practice can be light, medium or deep. Deep practice takes us to the ragged edge of our personal limitations and in the process show us the view of the Impersonal. Questions and comments deal with consciously letting the Dharma get us wet; dealing with this practice as well as a partner who doesn’t practice; and patience that comes with deep practice.

Perhaps the greatest desire for any of us, he suggests, is to be free of pain. But what happens in relationship to practice when we feel heavy with pain. It may be physical or emotional. And yet whatever disaster we might be experiencing helps to sharpen the very sword that cuts through our delusion. Engaging our lives at this level allows for us to deeply integrate our minds, our bodies, and our hearts. There is wholeness and freedom in this divine integration, and this helps inspire an authentic power in each of us where we no longer feel divided or separate. This non-division, then, supports a fullness of experience, where each of us can meet our lives with the perfect combination of fearlessness and compassion for all beings.

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This podcast was originally offered in August of 2007.

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Can we become familiar with what the ego feels like?
In this talk, Michael discusses uncovering the fundamental truth that is beyond name and form. When we feel resistance to this truth, we are feeling the skin of ego. When we get into a sangha, or group, of spiritual friends, the sensitivity of ego’s skin increases. We begin to see ourselves in others; hear our interior dialogs from others’ mouths; feel our own pain mirrored in the suffering of others. We ultimately see that all things are totally related and that nothing is outside of relationship. From here we can let go and thus, awaken to what is past the skin of ego.

As our practice deepens, everything that is timeless and free is revealed through conscious stillness. This means that no matter what our situation might be, no matter how great or how awful, stillness can support a steadiness that allows for us to meet anything that arises from a position of steadiness.

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Once this happens we are afforded an opportunity to come back home with an entirely new set of abilities that help us to relate to the world in entirely new ways. Seeing the mountain, so to speak, as something beyond itself and yet full of its own agency is the very realization that allows for us to let love through our experience. But we have to go through all of the steps in order to get to this point. There are no shortcuts or ways of bypassing the heavy lifting of deep practice. Staying focussed and clear about our intention to awaken is key. Paradoxically, it is here, in the midst of all the work, that love, peace and joy reign.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

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This podcast was originally offered in August of 2005.

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If it’s all only Spirit, why should we meditate? Couldn’t it be that meditation is designed to fail in getting us closer to what’s already totally present? In this talk, Michael discusses these questions and suggests how practice unfolds along three stages. Beginning with Recognition, where we are essentially invited to the party, ego fuels our search. Following this, practitioners can often lose their footing when the “dark night of the soul” arises in the phase known as Resistance. Crossing this arid plane, practitioners learn how to commit to an engaged Renunciation where we, and all that arises in our Awareness, are informed by the stillness that we’ve been practicing. Questions deal with: attempts at kind speech when we feel challenged.

This podcast was originally offered in June of 2005.

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What is the Source of all things? In this talk, Michael pushes the limits of language by discussing the nature of Emptiness as it relates to the human experience. How is it that the experience of Emptiness is paradoxically so full, thus inspiring mystical teachings for millenia. And how does the experience of Emptiness relate to our physical senses as well as our sense of time and mind? What is beyond our sense of time and mind anyway? The great sage Nagarjuna offers some guidance along this path leading toward what Michael calls the Ninth Sense.

This was originally aired in October of 2005.

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What are we doing here? What is this practice and what are we striving for, especially when the teaching tells us not to strive for anything? In this talk Michael points out that we Awaken when we follow these questions to their core. Opening to forgiveness and to the radically simple impulse of the Universe’s evolution, we recognize how living from the delusion of past and future inhibits every chance we might have at opening to Spirit. So we move beyond past and future. In doing this we can see the truth beyond all the mind activity of sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Questions deal with the perception of people taking advantage of us; making decisions without getting caught by the worrisome possibilities in the future; the effects of individual practice on the greater good; the spiritual win-win and how this relates to theorists like Peter Senge and Fred Kofman; and recognizing how much energy it takes to keep delusion going in our lives.

At this point of deep peace, we see that there is the potential to live without fear. Lives lived without fear are lives that can affect enormous change. Michael’s talk offers pointers on how we can approach a life through radically honest means, and then suggests that embodying these qualities that allow for us to uncover meaning as we face our day-to-day. Chaos can, from this perspective, be welcomed, as a friend. We begin to see, from this perspective, that there is never anything lacking. Becoming truly intimate with our experiences with the “small matters” of the ego show us a path to presence that ends war within our own hearts, as well as between and among other beings.

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Along these lines, Michael’s talk revolves around how getting on an authentic spiritual path usually is the result of no longer having answers to the questions that are coming up. For example, something in life seems somehow wrong or off. Or we’ve been dealt a blow by life that we simply can’t find our way through. Using these challenges as a way to help along a deep shift in perspective, from a personal one, into one that is oriented from the Deep Singularity of enlightenment, is waiting for each of us.

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In celebration of Dr. King’s birthday, Michael celebrates his words, pointing out how living from this place allows for us to become, freedom, justice, equality and love. And this is the work for us as we commit to the spiritual path.

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Becoming intimate with the force of the Eight Winds helps us move from a small self perspective into a Big Self orientation.

“In the end, it’s all Buddha,” Michael says. “It’s all Christ. It’s all the Infinite dancing through us.”

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