In this evening’s talk, Michael talks about how meditation is designed to help us fail. He also speaks to the fact that we are essentially walking around in life as ghosts. Knowing what’s underneath the ghostly sheet is the Path to Awakening.

In this evening’s talk, Michael addresses the divine and eternal source of all things.

This talk is the second of two parts and comes from an intensive at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. The theme for the day was getting beyond pain.

This talk is the first of two parts and comes from an intensive at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. The theme for the day was getting beyond pain.

In this evening’s sitting, Michael reads Old Turtle and the Broken Truth by Douglas Wood. It’s an enjoyable story that, among other things, points out the spiritual hazards of ethnocentrism and how limited truth falls apart under the weight of Absolute Truth.

At a recent sitting, Michael offered up a poem from Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s book, The Invitation. This is the podcast of that evening. Several subjects were broached including how practice can get heavy the further along the Path we get, as well as how we might best deal spiritually with faltering economic situations. Rather than go to war with our situations, Michael suggests we allow life to tenderize us and then to live consciously from that softened space. As odd as this may sound to the ego, it is a shortcut to realization.

Of all the driving forces behind an authentic spiritual practice, none is more important than the willingness to go deeper. Rather than meaning that we need to move anywhere, going deeper means that we must continually surrender to the source of our impulse to move. We must constantly face what is arising, in other words, without flinching, and then from this non-avoidance, we deepen and broaden our expanse. From this expanse we spontaneously get beyond those mind states and behaviors that will always prevent us from realization.

How do we ever move past the addiction to a sense of self? Furthermore, how do we ever get past our clinging to the ideals of the way we think things should be? If we loosen up around our sense of what is black and what is white; what is right and what is wrong; who we are and who we aren’t; then a spacious path into Truth-realization is possible. Opening, therefore, is our work.

The  Invitation

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with JOY, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being a human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from Its presence.

I want to know if you can live failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,”Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

May all beings uncover the truth beyond the matter.

What does it mean to Be? In this podcast, Michael suggests that thinking has nothing to do with Being and that giving, as well as receiving are enhanced by our apprehension of the deep connection we get when we can simply rest… simply be. Ultimately, this process is about “not flinching” in the white hot fire of whatever intensity arises. Whatever our want or desire might be, practicing stillness in the face of this desire speeds up our realization of Awakening.