Ep 03 ~ On Enlightenment, Embodied Awakening, and more: with Michael Taft 

"Zen spirituality isn't thinking about God when you're peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is peeling potatoes." Alan Watts One of the best discussions of nonduality and embodiment I've heard! And at an uncannily appropriate time for me to hear...

Wonderful about the near enemy of truth. Spiritual kitsch is shallow and hackneyed like " All is vibration, the universe responds to your vibration". Or " The universe is an illusion, nothing is real. You are oneness " etc. Spiritual kitsch is the main obstacle to higher forms of knowledge and realisation.

So helpful 🙏🏽

🙏 Hareesh, You continue to validate my opinion that the most valuable teachers of the Dharma (in the West?) are those able to verbally articulate and communicate the most subtle and "inner most" concepts regarding our "experiencing." I say this because we are SO VERY "conceptually" based here in the West. Thank you and please continue 🙏

So beautiful. Thank you so much for your holistic & integrative view of awakening and yoga 🙏🏽💜

Hareesh, I am so grateful for these new podcasts! I'm very excited for what is to come! Aum Namah Shivay! 🔱🙏

Thanks a lot for sharing this podcast! ❤ Clarifying ❤

Hareesh millon thanks for your continuous teachings and care, enjoyed the podcast It was so clear and profound explained 🪷 looking forward to learn more OM NAMAH SHIVAYA 🙏🕉️🌸🔥🙏

Loved the last part about purifying and embodied practices. I remember listening to this podcast a few months ago but it was still very interesting the second time around.

😊❤ahhhh ahhhh ahhhh

Awakened to your true Self (Shiva) while being liberated from your small self (association with the body)

Awakening can go on for ever but liberation can reach a point of done....?what do you mean by this...?

The most infuriating cliche for me is " Each one has their own path". Its like saying each person can have their own laws of physics. Cant happen. Its a license to practise whatever one feels like, cherry pick what suits their sensibilities and propensities. Things will change when spirituality is presented like a scientific model with internal coherence and logic, parsimony, application, elegance, reproduciblity. All the hallmarks of good science. Someone needs to do that. A properly defined ontology and epistemology. In words and language that suit the modern man. Maybe we need a new avatar for that to happen!!!

“How else would it work?…How, by what mechanism would that work?” I’m not going to be evasive at all. Forget all the mysticism. Give all those deities their walking papers. Even though Self realization is a profoundly spiritual experience. I want to set that aside in order to lay down the basic foundation and speak purely from a secular point of view. We are born into this world with desires, no one disputes that. It is something totally natural, we can’t escape that fact. Everyone agrees the mind is finicky, unsteady and seemingly impossible to control. The mind’s desire for happiness is also seemingly insatiable. So exactly how do we bring this finicky/chattering mind under our control? There are two aspects to the craving mind that are working in tandem which will bring it under our control. First of all, the craving mind has the ability, on its own, to turn our conscious attention towards those things which it finds pleasurable. For example, try reading a book when your favorite song begins to play on the radio or the smell of something good cooking in the kitchen. It is so natural for the mind to turn its attention towards pleasure, without any effort on our part and without any belief system(mysticism). Tied into this is the fact that the greater the joy/happiness that the mind experiences, the greater its steadfastness on that enjoyment. The more endorphins(joy) that will flood the brain. The craving mind wanders here and there because it is deprived of happiness. That deprivation of happiness can be to such an extend that the craving mind, on its own, will begin to daydreaming. For example, boredom triggers the craving mind to daydream. This is totally independent of your own consciousness will to control. The conscious mind will then be taken into an imaginary reality. For those people, they can not distinguish reality from that which is purely fantasy. This is what Krishna meant when he says the mind can be your best friend or your greatest enemy. The conundrum facing Man is being put into this sensory corporeal world with a mind that craves and desires. In meditation, we are allowing our craving minds to turn its attention inwardly towards the Absolute. This is the royal path. Our own craving minds now acting as our best friend. It is not mantra meditation, nor Tantra, nor mindfulness, nor a breathing exercise, nor focusing your attention on an aspect of the divine. Again speaking from purely a secular perspective. We have conscious thoughts which are arising from within our subconscious. Those thoughts of ours do have an origin, a source. The experience of transcending into the subconscious is a very natural and enjoyable experience therefore attracts the craving mind’s attention to turn inwardly. If our conscious minds goes deeper and deeper into the subconscious, eventually you will arrive at the source of thought. This is union, the goal of Yoga. Just as within the center of a magnet, there is no magnetism or at the center of our earth there is no gravity. At the source of thought there are no thoughts. Without thoughts, only Being remains. Without mentation, your psychophysical identity as Bob, Sue, etc. is totally wiped out as a subjective experiencer. You now become purely an objective observer, the Atman. Technically speaking, it is no longer a subjective experience because Bob and Sue are gone. The individual psychophysical identity of “I” myself becomes the “I” myself as the universal identity of the whole universe. This physical corporeal sensory world completely disappears because without the mechanism of thought(mentation) the sense organs of taste, smell, etc. simply fail to function. This is the pinnacle of human experience, nothing else compares. From that experience of the unattached/unmoved/untouched/unstained nature of Atman, the entire cosmology surrounding the Absolute is derived. Returning back into the corporeal world, mentation returns with your subjective sensory perception functioning as well as your imperfect psychophysical self identity but the mind retains an imprint of the “Absolute Self” experience.

I’m sorry but I feel uncomfortable with spiritual teachers that talk very calmly about spirituality while charging large amounts of money for retreats in fancy locations. It seems less about spiritual development and more about small groups of wealthy people enjoying being able to say they are spiritual. It seems if people are led to god they don’t need much money but they do desire to get money to help support people who are in poverty not have fancy vacations that they call spiritual. That’s one reason I have serious doubts about Eckhart Tolle. He talks about renunciation and detachment while already being very rich and still charging large amounts for his talks and retreats. Keep things simple, turn to God, help others. I just decided to comment after looking at the fancy retreat venues in California and Costa Rica that name up when I did a search on Taft.

What do you mean by you are on the spectrum.... ?