Infinite Smile

"Intimacy with our pain reveals pain to be little more than intensity to which we've attached thoughts."

"Real freedom is just that: freedom from anxiety, fear and panic as well as freedom from bliss, glory and the sense of fulfillment."

"If you haven't really opened up to the fact that all of this is going to end, you haven't really lived."

"Ask yourself: Is my spiritual practice about making me look better, or is it about transformation."

"Anger always arises in our experience as a reaction to fear."

"After a while a well-intentioned sampling of various teachers and traditions can end up preventing us from committing to diving into Truth."

"The observer of time is never bound by time."

"Letting go of our perceived notions of the mystical side of our practice strengthens our practice."

In this evening's talk, Michael discusses the perils of centering one's practice on faith. While there is mystery in practice, it is critical that we nurture our ability to skillfully question our teachers, our preferred teaching, and our spiritual friends as we progress along the Path.

In this evening's talk, Michael discusses how we can recognize the we are continually called to practice. Stillness, like any exercise, sharpens itself and our being whenever we engage in it consciously. Repeatedly making space for meditation in our daily lives then allows for all things, all relationships, and all activity to inform our walk along the Path.

In this evening's talk, Michael discusses the maturation process of spiritual work. How is it, for example, that we can evolve into deeper expressions of embodied helpfulness; especially in the context of activism in general and the Iranian situation specifically.

Confusing child-like states of innocence with a mature sense of wonder derails spiritual work.

"What's underneath your ghostly sheet doesn't care about the sheet at all."

"There is a space beyond thinking."

"Sitting in a retreat is like getting into a cocoon. Are you ready to be a butterfly?"

"Getting to the roots of pain, be it emotional or physical, we see the birth of what is limited in us."

"Practice occurs when our partial truths crumble under the weight of the Whole 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.

"When you see through the addiction to a separate sense of selfhood you've got an opportunity to move past 'I'ddiction."