In this talk, Michael addresses several issues; among them, how we often lose the view we’ve been offered by insight. He’s written about this and calls it “The Rubber Band Effect,” and suggests that we take pains to examine its source. Doing so helps us see not only how practice helps us develop a greater steadiness as we meet the world, but also our meditation helps to cultivate deepen our acceptance of what is actually happening in each moment.

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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ISmile319 - Rubber Bands and Shortcuts [ 39:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1343)

To begin with, all of us at Infinite Smile offer each of you well wishes as we begin the holiday season. We also are so thankful for all of your support and participation in this project of awakening. Recognizing our gratitude elevates our experience as human beings, so taking this time to appreciate all of the blessings each of us has seem appropriate. The fact that you listen and support us as a community makes a difference to many people.

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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ISmile318 - Thanksgiving and Emptiness [ 38:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1372)

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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ISmile317 - Stepping Beyond Heart and Mind [ 42:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1420)

Michael begins this talk with the following quotation from Rilke’s Duino Elegies:

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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ISmile316 - Meditating Through Life's Mess [ 45:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1542)

In this talk, Michael speaks about how the One Precept of “Doing No Harm” can actualize the potential of awakening in any situation. Along these lines, Michael openly shares how he and his wife have separated so that their marriage might be exposed to a more powerful expanse of clarity. He relates this shared decision to the One Precept and how both he and his wife wanted to make sure that the resistance patterns that arose out of their ten-year relationship didn’t adversely affect their kids. The process of difficulty and illumination continues, as he says.

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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ISmile315 - The One Precept: Do No Harm [ 46:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1656)

Actively meeting inspiration through poetry can make a huge difference as we move through the world. The same applies to uncovering the things that crack us up. Laughter matters since it is a celebration of the unexpected and defines an unattached space that we can enjoy if we’re available to it. Similarly, being available to love changes us in that it allows for a felt sense of the Absolute.

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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ISmile314 - Poetry, Laughter, Love and Levels of Consciousness [ 48:55 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1468)

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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.

Encore: ISmile100 - Working With Pain [ 30:46 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (958)

There comes a point in our practice where we consciously let go of everything that has supported our work. It’s not that we reject or avoid anything but rather that we stop holding on to all that’s familiar. This is especially true when we let go of our personal stories of right and wrong; of who we are and who we aren’t; of who is with us and who is against us. Getting past all of this mind activity tends to open us in interesting ways. We begin to see that there is nothing to hold on to, but that there is also nothing holding us back from our personal and collective evolution. Our hearts and minds open, as do our bodies. Enlightenment, at this point, isn’t something we experience, but rather it experiences itself through us.

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Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.

ISmile313 - Losing Spirituality's Training Wheels [ 44:55 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1848)