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Posts Tagged ‘Spiritual Practice’
A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series (Dialogue 6, Part 2) – Awakening to Our True Nature: Releasing Limiting Ego Structures and Freeing the Soul
Ep. 163 (Part 2 of 2) | In the sixth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali tells us that whereas pure consciousness is already perfect and does not change or grow, individual consciousness is an impressionable organism—alive, changing, moving, developing. Hameed explains that because the soul is impressionable, the impacts of experience are imprinted upon it, shaping our very consciousness. Ego structures form from repeated impressions, and although they are necessary for survival and to function in a relational world, these structures make it difficult to experience the living presence of our true nature. We experience the ego self instead, mistaking our self-image for what we truly are. When we loosen our conditioning, with help from practices like inquiry and bodywork, our soul becomes free of its imprint and our true potential arises naturally, along with greater compassion and other qualities of the soul.
Simply and clearly, Hameed brings us to a deeper understanding of our soul, elucidating what holds us to our limited self-identity and describing what we have to look forward to as the myriad imprints hammered into us by experience become diaphanous, and new impressions no longer make indelible imprints. Hameed also delves into the different ways various traditions talk about the soul, the difference between ordinary knowledge and “knowing,” or gnosis, and tells us that sudden enlightenment and gradual enlightenment are an artificial dichotomy, sharing a story of a sudden enlightenment experience of his own. Once again, Hameed transmits an extraordinary amount of wisdom in a relatively short time, and we emerge brighter, hopeful, and inspired as to our boundless spiritual potential. Recorded November 14, 2024.
Read MoreA. H. Almaas Wisdom Series (Dialogue 6, Part 1) – Awakening to Our True Nature: Releasing Limiting Ego Structures and Freeing the Soul
Ep. 162 (Part 1 of 2) | In the sixth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali tells us that whereas pure consciousness is already perfect and does not change or grow, individual consciousness is an impressionable organism—alive, changing, moving, developing, growing. This is why “it’s easier to experience pure consciousness than it is to experience individual consciousness,” Hameed says. He explains that because the soul is impressionable, the impacts of experience are imprinted upon it, shaping our very consciousness. Ego structures form from repeated impressions, and although they are necessary for survival and to function in a relational world, these structures make it difficult to experience the living presence of our true nature. We experience the ego self instead, mistaking our self-image for what we truly are. When we loosen our conditioning, with help from practices like inquiry and bodywork, our soul becomes free of its imprint and our true potential arises naturally, along with greater compassion and other qualities of the soul.
Simply and clearly, Hameed brings us to a deep understanding of our soul, elucidating what holds us to our limited self-identity and describing what we have to look forward to as the effects of the myriad imprints hammered into us by experience become diaphanous and let us go. Hameed also delves into the different ways various traditions talk about the soul, the difference between ordinary knowledge and “knowing,” or gnosis, and tells us that sudden enlightenment and gradual enlightenment are an artificial dichotomy, sharing a story of a sudden enlightenment experience of his own. Once again, Hameed transmits an extraordinary amount of wisdom in a relatively short time, and we emerge brighter, hopeful, and inspired as to our wondrous spiritual potential. Recorded November 14, 2024.
Read MoreJoseph Goldstein (Part 3) – Living on the Spiritual Edge: The Ever-Deepening Healing & Transformative Gifts of Opening to Experience and Life
Ep. 123 (Part 3 of 3) | Joseph Goldstein, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, brilliant spiritual teacher, and prolific author, whose books have been foundational to many people’s understanding of Buddhism, mindfulness, and insight meditation, shares rich nuggets of wisdom stemming from a lifetime of ever-deepening practice. The focus of this conversation remains very much in the present, as Joseph describes how the leading edge of his practice never stops moving forward and how his understanding of the most basic ideas becomes ever more refined and liberating. In sharing his insights, he sheds light on and smooths the path for the rest of us: about the mysterious arising of compassion, made easier the more open we are and the less self-referential, about reframing our experience in a way that frees us, about spontaneous responsiveness, and about awakening being a gradual process—until it’s sudden.
Joseph’s new favorite definition of enlightenment is “lightening up” for the way it conveys a sense of making progress along a journey. And with his humor, humility, and easy, lighthearted manner, Joseph exemplifies and transmits a lighter way of being in the world. He makes it ever so clear that spiritual practice and meditation, examining and investigating our experience moment to moment, naturally leads us to compassionate responsiveness and out of the shackles of what binds us to a self that is ultimately just a construct. Recorded November 2, 2023.
Read MoreJoseph Goldstein (Part 2) – Living on the Spiritual Edge: The Ever-Deepening Healing & Transformative Gifts of Opening to Experience and Life
Ep. 122 (Part 2 of 3) | Joseph Goldstein, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, brilliant spiritual teacher, and prolific author, whose books have been foundational to many people’s understanding of Buddhism, mindfulness, and insight meditation, shares rich nuggets of wisdom stemming from a lifetime of ever-deepening practice. The focus of this conversation remains very much in the present, as Joseph describes how the leading edge of his practice never stops moving forward and how his understanding of the most basic ideas becomes ever more refined and liberating. In sharing his insights, he sheds light on and smooths the path for the rest of us: about the mysterious arising of compassion, made easier the more open we are and the less self-referential, about reframing our experience in a way that frees us, about spontaneous responsiveness, and about awakening being a gradual process—until it’s sudden.
Joseph’s new favorite definition of enlightenment is “lightening up” for the way it conveys a sense of making progress along a journey. And with his humor, humility, and easy, lighthearted manner, Joseph exemplifies and transmits a lighter way of being in the world. He makes it ever so clear that spiritual practice and meditation, examining and investigating our experience moment to moment, naturally leads us to compassionate responsiveness and out of the shackles of what binds us to a self that is ultimately just a construct. Recorded November 2, 2023.
Read MoreJoseph Goldstein (Part 1) – Living on the Spiritual Edge: The Ever-Deepening Healing & Transformative Gifts of Opening to Experience and Life
Ep. 121 (Part 1 of 3) | Joseph Goldstein, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, brilliant spiritual teacher, and prolific author, whose books have been foundational to many people’s understanding of Buddhism, mindfulness, and insight meditation, shares rich nuggets of wisdom stemming from a lifetime of ever-deepening practice. The focus of this conversation remains very much in the present, as Joseph describes how the leading edge of his practice never stops moving forward and how his understanding of the most basic ideas becomes ever more refined and liberating. In sharing his insights, he sheds light on and smooths the path for the rest of us: about the mysterious arising of compassion, made easier the more open we are and the less self-referential, about reframing our experience in a way that frees us, about spontaneous responsiveness, and about awakening being a gradual process—until it’s sudden.
Joseph’s new favorite definition of enlightenment is “lightening up” for the way it conveys a sense of making progress along a journey. And with his humor, humility, and easy, lighthearted manner, Joseph exemplifies and transmits a lighter way of being in the world. He makes it ever so clear that spiritual practice and meditation, examining and investigating our experience moment to moment, naturally leads us to compassionate responsiveness and out of the shackles of what binds us to a self that is ultimately just a construct. Recorded November 2, 2023.
Read MoreJane Hirshfield (Part 2) – Exploring Life Through Poetry & Practice: The Art of Asking and Opening to Life’s Deepest Questions
Ep. 120 (Part 2 of 2) | Many time award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield has spent her life steeped in poetry and spiritual practice. Here, we feel almost as if we’ve been invited into her kitchen to talk about life, love, and especially about poems and how they offer us various answers to the abiding questions: who are we, what are we, what is our relationship to each other, what must we be grateful toward? Jane describes poems as vessels of discovery and poetry as taking your understanding and putting it into a form that is holdable, retrievable, transmissible. Poems can also be keys to unlock our despair, she explains, creating a crack in the darkness, a re-entrance to the possibility of wholeness. Jane’s sublime poetry is many-layered; the same poem might be about human love or peace between nations, about the end of love or the fact that love never dies. Jane shares that her lifetime of questioning (her most recent book of new and selected poetry is titled The Asking) has boiled down to one question: How can I serve?
An awareness of our interconnectedness with all beings, all of life, permeates her work, and Jane is driven to provoke action on contemporary, pressing issues of biosphere, peace, and justice, and help us navigate the tightrope between hope and despair. The conversation also turns to early feminism and the poetry of women mystics that Jane put together in a beautiful anthology called Women in Praise of the Sacred, covering 43 centuries of spiritual poetry by women. When asked about her longtime Zen practice, Jane said, “I needed to become more of a human being, understand a different way of living inside this life I had been given” to become a good poet. She tells us that both poetry and Zen are paths of discovery, exploration, and awareness, and both paths insist that we attend to this world fully. This is a warm, personal, deeply illuminating, and thought provoking conversation, and Jane reads several of her poems, revealing their depth and beauty. Recorded November 30, 2023.
Read MoreJane Hirshfield (Part 1) – Exploring Life Through Poetry & Practice: The Art of Asking and Opening to Life’s Deepest Questions
Ep. 119 (Part 1 of 2) | Many time award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield has spent her life steeped in poetry and spiritual practice. Here, we feel almost as if we’ve been invited into her kitchen to talk about life, love, and especially about poems and how they offer us various answers to the abiding questions: who are we, what are we, what is our relationship to each other, what must we be grateful toward? Jane describes poems as vessels of discovery and poetry as taking your understanding and putting it into a form that is holdable, retrievable, transmissible. Poems can also be keys to unlock our despair, she explains, creating a crack in the darkness, a re-entrance to the possibility of wholeness. Jane’s sublime poetry is many-layered; the same poem might be about human love or peace between nations, about the end of love or the fact that love never dies. Jane shares that her lifetime of questioning (her most recent book of new and selected poetry is titled The Asking) has boiled down to one question: How can I serve?
An awareness of our interconnectedness with all beings, all of life, permeates her work, and Jane is driven to provoke action on contemporary, pressing issues of biosphere, peace, and justice, and help us navigate the tightrope between hope and despair. The conversation also turns to early feminism and the poetry of women mystics that Jane put together in a beautiful anthology called Women in Praise of the Sacred, covering 43 centuries of spiritual poetry by women. When asked about her longtime Zen practice, Jane said, “I needed to become more of a human being, understand a different way of living inside this life I had been given” to become a good poet. She tells us that both poetry and Zen are paths of discovery, exploration, and awareness, and both paths insist that we attend to this world fully. This is a warm, personal, deeply illuminating, and thought provoking conversation, and Jane reads several of her poems, revealing their depth and beauty. Recorded November 30, 2023.
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