Podcasts – Infinite Smile

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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

When we can accept reality as it is, we can no longer find ourselves to be at war with it. There is nothing to resist, in other words, when we are no longer clinging to any expectation that things should turn out a certain way. When we can rest in this space, we open to our True Nature. When we can live from our True Nature, we find that we always have everything that we could possibly need with us all of the time. 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

We often begin our spiritual journey because we’re at the end of our rope. We seek ways to avoid our discomfort. Unfortunately, when our  practice centers itself around seeking we find that our progress along the path is continually blocked. 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

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.” ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

Consciously meeting the grace brought on by deep meditative work allows for us to develop a steadiness in our day-to-day lives. This doesn’t mean that we won’t experience discomfort and pain. In fact, when we let both our physical and emotional discomfort inform our lives, instead of defining them, we can begin to fearlessly welcome the change. Each bit of discomfort, in other words, is an invitation for each of us to shift toward greater depth. With enough practice, this shift allows for us to stare at the Infinite with eyes that are infinitely informed.   ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

What happens when we realize that we can no longer live the way we have always lived? What happens when we stop our attempts at escape and instead face our lives fully, totally and completely? The answers to these questions are the foundations to a path that takes us deeper and deeper into the harder to reach places of the mind. This path of self-study has the potential of putting us into the heart of a divine flame that is at once glorious and painful. We begin to feel more of life as our many protective layers of behaviors and patterns are burned away. The mystery, as it turns out, is that the stuff we lose on the path to awakening is precisely what we no longer need. 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

In this talk, Michael explores the inherent limitations that fear puts on each of us. At the beginning of the talk he asks how we might live if we knew we couldn’t fail. How might this alter our approach to life? Without the constant threat of failure, he argues, we would be able to approach life without fear. Living fearlessly, he continues, means that we are orienting our lives from love. Living in this way allows for us to embody the sacred teachings of many traditions. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

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. ____ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.   Tweet

This talk was originally aired in December of 2005. ___ 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

Do we have the courage to be truly ordinary? It’s a great question that helps us uncover whatever egoic attachments we might have about who we think we are and who we think we should be. Those individuals that can let go of these deep stories have an opportunity to share something deep and worthy: truth. This truth arises whenever we allow for our clinging to release, and this released style of living can’t be anything other than helpful to all those we might meet. 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

We usually think of Karma in terms of “good” and “bad.” And yet these cliches don’t do much to serve up a deeper understanding of Karma’s spiritual implications. In this talk, Michael touches on several topics that center around the human tendency to act and behave from a profound sense of separation. Action from this orientation, in Buddhist terms, generates Karma. With this in mind, Karma that we might consider good, would be activity that is spontaneously and deeply rooted in generosity. On the other hand, Karma that we might consider to be bad would be the kind of activity that springs from the self-serving drives of the ego. 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

The ego maintains a state of inertia that tends to cloud our experience. So often we don’t even recognize that we give ourselves over to an inherently incomplete story rooted in separation and alienation. Michael points out that we are made up of Emptiness and what arises out of it and what dies back into it. 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk. Tweet

This podcast features one of Michael’s students, Gina Rocca, who offers an introductory talk prior to a previous sitting. Gina’s beautiful talk is then followed up by one of Michael’s talks as well as Q & A. ___ 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Click on the player below, in order to listen to Michael McAlister’s talk.   Tweet

This podcast was originally posted  May 16th, 2006. ___ Subscribe to this podcast from the Buddhist and/or Philosophy sections of the Religion & Spirituality list. ____ 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. Tweet

People tend to arrive at spiritual work because of some type of dissatisfaction with their lives. It’s the human tendency to try to distance ourselves from this discomfort and yet running from our pain never seems to alleviate it for very long. 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. ___ Feel free to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.   Tweet