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Michael W. Taft


Dedicated to liberation in all its forms, Deconstructing Yourself is passionate about fearlessly investigating, attempting, and questioning all things to do with awakening, meditation, mindfulness, brain hacking, consciousness, neurofeedback, and more.

Your host Michael W. Taft interviews some of the most interesting thinkers, authors, and teachers around, as well as other offerings. In this hard-hitting, radical, and fun podcast we look at secular post-, non-, un- Buddhism, Vajrayana, nondual Hindu Tantra, philosophy, the neuroscience of the sense of self, neurofeedback and the consciousness hacking movement, aspects of artificial intelligence, entheogens, and much more.

If you’re looking for fresh directions, free from dogma and conformism, think of the Deconstructing Yourself podcast as the radical cafe where you can hear from the most interesting luminaries either from the outside edges of dharma, or a fresh take from more traditional teachers. If you’re interested in more, check out the Deconstructing Yourself website at https://deconstructingyourself.com.


Deconstructing Yourself

Host Michael Taft talks with Vajrayana teacher and author Charlie Awbery about the meaning of their practice name Rin'dzin Pamo, Tantra, curiosity, new developments in the Evolving Ground community, the role of play and spontaneity in Vajrayana, a special invocation written by them and David Chapman, when the teacher/student relationship breaks down, transformation, and how to liberate the shadow.

Rin'dzin Pamo, also known as Charlie Awbery, author of Opening Awareness; a Guide to Finding Vividness in Spacious Clarity, is a meditation and leadership coach. They are also the co-founder of Evolving Ground a community of contemporary Vajrayana practice. Rin'dzin practiced and studied Vajrayana for thirty years alongside working in international development and human rights. They write at vajrayananow.com

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Invocation and Shadow with Charlie Awbery

Pragmatic dharma teacher Kenneth Folk and host Michael W. Taft discuss what it means to be mindful, various definitions of being mindful in the moment, the trouble with remaining mindful during an entire sit, and more.

Kenneth Folk is an instructor of meditation who has received worldwide acknowledgement for his innovative approach to secular Buddhist meditation. Learn more about him and his work at Kenneth Folk Dharma.

Show Notes

0:48 Introduction and overview

4:00 Deconstructing “mindfulness”

11:47 Kenneth’s new mindfulness practice

15:02 Mindfulness vs. checking the box; auditor vs. meditator

23:58 Is mindfulness enlightening?

30:03 Defining engagement and the problem with prescriptions

31:52 Sense doors and applying mindfulness to thoughts

36:06 Alternatives to meditation for experiencing mindfulness and awakening

42:37 Is there a “right” way to experience awakening?

47:25 Getting to a 100 percent attention

52:45 Liberating working memory from the feeling of being the observer

55:06 Concentration hacking: making experiences sufficiently interesting

59:27 Flow and how it relates to mindfulness

1:06:23 How important is the ability to concentrate?

1:12:04 Do you need clarity, concentration, or both?

You can help to create future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Am I Mindful Right Now? with Kenneth Folk

Pragmatic dharma teacher Kenneth Folk and host Michael W. Taft discuss what it means to be mindful, various definitions of being mindful in the moment, the trouble with remaining mindful during an entire sit, and more.

Kenneth Folk is an instructor of meditation who has received worldwide acknowledgement for his innovative approach to secular Buddhist meditation. Learn more about him and his work at Kenneth Folk Dharma.

Show Notes

0:48 Introduction and overview

 4:00 Deconstructing “mindfulness”

 11:47 Kenneth’s new mindfulness practice

 15:02 Mindfulness vs. checking the box; auditor vs. meditator

 23:58 Is mindfulness enlightening?

 30:03 Defining engagement and the problem with prescriptions

 31:52 Sense doors and applying mindfulness to thoughts

 36:06 Alternatives to meditation for experiencing mindfulness and awakening

 42:37 Is there a “right” way to experience awakening?

 47:25 Getting to a 100 percent attention

 52:45 Liberating working memory from the feeling of being the observer

 55:06 Concentration hacking: making experiences sufficiently interesting

 59:27 Flow and how it relates to mindfulness

 1:06:23 How important is the ability to concentrate?

 1:12:04 Do you need clarity, concentration, or both?

You can help to create future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Cosmic Joke, with Kenneth Folk

Pragmatic dharma teacher and host Michael W. Taft feel the power of the dark side, talk about nirvana, deconstruct the concept of nirvana, dive deep into the reality of death, look at the denial of death, and probably scare away all listeners.

Kenneth Folk is an instructor of meditation who has received worldwide acknowledgement for his innovative approach to secular Buddhist meditation. Learn more about him and his work at Kenneth Folk Dharma.

Show Notes

0:25 – Introduction and overview

 2:20 – Preferring to be conscious or not conscious

 5:28 – Avoiding eternalism and entertaining the possibility of death…or immortality

 11:33 – The enjoyability of oblivion/nirvana (and establishing a definition of both)

 19:15 – The Buddha presents a life extinction program, not a life improvement program

 25:28 – Fear and denial of death, and rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

 33:15 – The relief of accepting the reality of death

 34:48 – Enlightenment as a real-time report about what’s arising in experience

 37:52 – The limitations of coming to meditation as a life improvement program

 41:10 – Kenneth’s current practice assessing mindfulness, checking for tightness and temporarily suspending the self model

 48:45 – The preposterousness of eradicating the self

 53:41 – The Dharma Overground forums and posters having bad days after attaining some level of enlightenment

 58:31 – How do know anything? Does Kenneth feel like he has any special or ultimate knowledge?

 1:03:53 – Certitude is just another feeling on a level playing field with all others

 1:12:10 – Awakening experiences invalidating each other: the second awakening erodes some of the truth of the first

 1:14:10 – The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you

You can help to create future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Masters of Oblivion, with Kenneth Folk

Meditation teacher Shinzen Young and host Michael W. Taft talk about the relationship between mindfulness practice (as it is usually defined) and nondual-type practices (or non-practices, if you like), the way that focusing on the details of experience relates to focusing on awareness itself, micro-sessions & nano-nirvanas, the thinness and lightness of the screen of awareness and much more. Learn more about Shinzen Young at Shinzen.org.

Show Notes

0:25 – Intro

 4:12 – How does Advaita/Nonduality relate to Mindfulness?

 7:45 – Shinzen defines modern mindfulness and the component parts of contemplative practice (concentration, clarity and equanimity)

 9:51 – Michael’s simplified working definitions of mindfulness and advaita

 10:37 – Shinzen asserts that mindfulness and advaita converge towards the same thing, under his own understanding of mindfulness

 16:08 – How to investigate one’s own awareness through mindfulness; Shinzen’s quadrants of practice 20:50 – Appreciation practice (“note everything”) or “regular mindfulness”

 22:54 – The arrow of attention

 26:31 – Classical mindfulness in the Burmese tradition: penetrative awareness and working with the arrow of attention

 31:48 – Outside time and space: what the arrow of attention reveals

 34:06 – Shinzen defines primordial awareness in materialist, reductivist terms: the sound that’s not sound 39:15 – Are nondual experiences externally real, or do they reflect only subjective experience?

 45:05 – Shinzen’s conjecture: connectivity vs thingness; cones of association

 51:38 – By what criterion is connectivity assumed to be fundamental to reality, not only subjectively experienced?

 56:55 – How appreciation and self-inquiry practices converge

 1:01:01 – Reconciling the fruits of mindfulness and nonduality: differences in perception and language vs. differences in experience

 1:06:25 – Deconstructing the arrow of attention in a nondual setting

 1:07:50 – Micro-cessations vs lights-out cessations; the lightness and thinness of the ordinary

 1:11:55 – Shinzen’s many-layered experience of cessations; the sphere of experience and the void

 1:18:08 – Bigger cessations

 1:19:38 – Disambiguations: what does it mean to be feather light and paper thin, and what are the characteristics of micro-cessations?

 1:23:56 – The lightness of immediate experience

 1:29:30 – Outro

You can help to create future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Feather Light & Paper Thin, with Shinzen Young

In this episode I talk with mindfulness teacher and co-founder of the Buddhist Geeks project, Vincent Horn. Vince is part of new generation of teachers translating age-old wisdom into 21st century code. In this session, Vince and I discuss the radical sense of experimentation, the Great Unbundling of the Dharma, ways the mindfulness and awareness practices complement each other—which is turning out to be something of a theme on the show lately—, the perhaps greatly exaggerated reports of the death of Buddhism, what Buddhism and meditation can offer the Silicon Valley worldview. as well as a scintillating juvenile foray into enlightened scatology.

Learn more about Vince at Buddhist Geeks.

Show Notes

0:25 Introduction and overview

1:52 – Vince talks about Buddhist Geeks, his interest in mindfulness and his teaching project at meditate.io

3:45 – Vince's meditation and teaching background, working with somatic practices and vipassanā, and his time at Naropa University

8:16 – What's exciting and interesting in mindfulness now, radical experimentation in the new generation, the unbundling of the Dharma

11:38 – Playing with the core meditative elements (concentration, inquiry, etc.) of different traditions

14:45 – Defining mindfulness and awareness, and how they work together

24:45 – Has Buddhism weeded out all meditative dead-ends or is experimentation and knowing for oneself useful? Can we discover things that haven't been done before?

28:22 – Technology and making sense of what practice is while rapid change is occurring

30:34 – Scatology: literal and figurative shit

33:50 – Human relationships: self, other, and “individuality first” in practice

37:00 – The co-construction of reality, and social noting

42:15 – Meditation's reinvention in the 1800s and 1900s, and the arising of noting in response to colonialism

44:54 – Is Buddhism dying?

49:33 – Silicon Valley, immortality, and Ray Kurzweil

57:36 – The juice of the unknown and a shift in the way we know things

1:04:40 – As many types of nonduality as dualities

1:07:16 – Vince and Emily's teaching synergy, one-on-one teacher meetings

You can help to create future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Great Unbundling, with Vincent Horn

Scientist, programmer, and author David Chapman talks with Michael W. Taft about metarationality, emptiness and form, nihilism, tantrism, dzogchen, Kegan’s stages of development applied to meditation, vampire romance novels, and the importance of being able to switch reality tunnels.

David Chapman is a writer, computer scientist, engineer, and Buddhist practitioner. He’s been practicing Vajrayana Buddhism in the Aro Ter tradition for 20 years. David is a leading proponent of metarationality—a subject we’ll go into in some depth in this episode—and writes about it on his website Meaningness.com.

 

Show notes

1:43 – What is metarationality?

 2:45 – What happens when you run off the edge of the map?

 4:44 – Pattern and nebulosity, emptiness and form

 6:45 – Story of scientist Barbara McClintock, and epicycles

 13:30 – Donald Schön & design creativity

 14:37 – Ways to deal with system failure, Nihilism

 17:28 – Timothy Leary & Robert Anton Wilson, switching between reality tunnels

 20:22 – Is metarationality just a larger rationality?

 22:15 – David’s vampire romance novel, Ken Wilber’s novel Boomeritis

 23:38 – What does metarationality have to do with meditation and Buddhism?

 24:27 – Seeing the relationship between thought and reality

 27:57 – Metarationality as a signpost of deep awakening

 30:31 – Dzogchen and Advaita – are practices of view simply indoctrination?

 32:17 – Metarationality as a path beyond postmodernism

 33:09 – Fundamentalism as a huge LARP, Eternalism vs. Nihilism

 36:06 – Spiral dynamics & Robert Kegan’s stages of adult development Link to Wilber/Kegan dialog (Warning: behind a paywall)

 41:20 – What a Kegan Stage 3 group looks like in American Buddhist sanghas

 43:23 – Transitioning to Stage 4, examples in relation to Buddhist practice and sanghas

 44:22 – The edge of the map and the lack of support for Stage 5 in Buddhist communities

 46:22 – Kegan Stage 4.5, rejecting systems for their limitations, and how to get to Stage 5

 47:25 – The importance of intersubjectivity

 49:20 – Future echoes of David’s teaching of metarationality

 50:21 – Engaging metarationality in ways that don’t involve meditation, Bongard problems, and the word “intuition”

 54:33 – Vipassana techniques for generating intuition

 57:43 – Do we need gurus/lamas to transmit deep understanding?

 1:04:20 – Students covering up their teacher’s crimes

 1:05:33 – The desire to be metarational and the dangers of self-diagnosing your Kegan stage

 1:07:54 – David’s background in artificial intelligence and philosophy

 1:10:19 – Is AI dangerous?

You can help to create future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pattern and Nebulosity, with David Chapman

Meditation teacher and neuroscience consultant Shinzen Young and host Michael W. Taft talk about what mindfulness teachers are getting wrong, Shinzen’s Periodic Table of Happiness Elements, informed consent for awakening, effective strategies for dealing with the Dark Night of the Soul, and the phenomenon that Shinzen calls “Enlightenment’s Evil Twin.”

Learn more about Shinzen Young at Shinzen.org.

Also here is a pdf of Shinzen’s Periodic Table of Happiness Elements.

Show Notes

0:25 – Introduction and overview

2:38 – Defining mindfulness, and what mindfulness teachers can improve on

15:20 – Fulfilling the ethical duty to inform students about the possibilities and challenges of deeper meditation work

20:05 – The Dark Night and DP/DR, and the amount of guidance students need to integrate emptiness

25:24 – Addressing student concerns about becoming derailed or idle if they make spiritual progress

28:24 – Clarifying what the Dark Night is, what it might look like, and how to address it prophylactically and remedially

51:31 – More about what mindfulness teachers can improve on

1:19:28 – Frosting Shinzen’s buns by shutting down a meditator’s no-self experience

1:26:06 – Being careful not to set up barriers that keep people away from practice

You can help to create future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Enlightenment’s Evil Twin, with Shinzen Young

In this session, host Michael W. Taft and radical dharma author and practitioner Daniel Ingram discuss the Fire Kasina practice, meditation and magick, working with archetypal forces and entities, Daniel’s description of a fruition experience, siddhis and visionary experiences, Daniel’s wizarding worldview, and much more. We also discuss the second edition of his classic work Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, as well as his new book on the Fire Kasina.

Daniel Ingram is an emergency medicine physician and long-time dharma practitioner. He famously exploded the Buddhist world when he declared himself to be an arhat and published the seminal text Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: an Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book in 2008. He is also the main force behind the radical Dharma Overground website, which he founded together with Vince Horn, that specializes in a brand of unusually-frank discussion of meditation practice.

You can learn more about Daniel at his website, www.integrateddaniel.info.

You can download a free PDF of The Fire Kasina book here.

Show Notes

00:25 – Introduction and overview

 2:10 – Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha 2, its purpose and release

 4:55 – The fire kasina: what it is, what happens as concentration increases, and how it provides immediate feedback on the strength of concentration

 8:01 – Fire kasina’s benefits beyond concentration: insight, crafting your reality, fusion of śamatha and vipassanā

 12:57 – The awakening components of fire kasina practice, fruitions

 17:28 – The ontological status of deities seen during fire kasina practice and the meaning of joint powers experiences

 22:50 – Daniel’s fire kasina experiences and teaching the practice to others

 29:42 – The line between madness and meditation

 35:30 – Siddhis, synchronicities, and the collective unconscious

 40:22 – Daniel’s cutting edge in practice and use of magick

 51:24 – Dzogchen and the post-magickal

 59:19 – Deconstructing sensory experience into fruition

 1:10:44 – What meditation teachers get wrong: lack of warning about potential dangers

 1:21:49 – The cross-pollination and experimentation the internet affords the meditation scene

 1:24:51 – The Fire Kasina, a book with Shannon Stein

You can support the creation of future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

Listen to more with Daniel Ingram.

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Meditation, Magick, and the Fire Kasina, with Daniel Ingram

What do the neurocorrelates of enlightenment, the activation of the posterior cingulate cortex, and the extinction of craving all have in common? They relate to the work of Judson Brewer. Jud talks with Michael W. Taft about his brain biofeedback machine, the neurophenomonolgy of effort vs. non-effort, the feedback loop of reward-based learning, working with the black hole of anxiety, self-referential thinking as a kind of addiction, and much more.

Judson Brewer is an MD-PhD and a thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery”, having combined nearly 20 years of experience with mindfulness training with his scientific research.

A psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for addictions, Brewer has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments. He has also studied the underlying neural mechanisms of mindfulness using standard and real-time fMRI. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, Fetzer Trust among others.

Check out Jud’s recent book, entitled, The Craving Mind.

In this TED talk, Jud describes how to “get out of your own way.”

Show Notes

3:37 – Has Jud found the neurocorrelates of enlightenment?

 4:40 – The Default Mode Network and science, the PCC – Craving and tanha – Details of fMRI experiments

 5:57 – Trying, Flow and PCC activity, contraction vs. expansion

 9:36 – Jud’s own practice in the scanner, metta, calibrating the scale of exp/con

 20:45 – High concentration vs. effortlessness – no force necessary – 7 factors of awakening

 28:54 – What has Jud found? Excitement vs. happiness – a learning tool

 30:30 – What we see with experienced meditators / Best use of his neurofeedback technology

 36:09 – Michael’s experience in the device

 38:30 – Neurophenomolgy effort vs. non-effort, and the feedback loop of reward-based learning – the perpetual Skinner box of relative rewards – anger vs. kindness

 42:30 – Addiction – allcohol, cocaine, smoking – smoking tastes bad when you pay attention

 45:50 – Paying attention to eating – Joie de vivre – PCC and digital therapeutics – apps

 53:24 – The trickiness of the black hole of anxiety – Unwinding Anxiety app

 56:20 – Do we have to practice abstinence or not? – Is addiction a disease?

 1:00:27 – Jud’s new book, The Craving Mind

 1:01:37 – Self-referential thinking as a kind of addiction – Instagram addiction

 1:04:05 – Meditation from the Lab – Dependant Origination (PDF Download) – Siddhis

 

You can support the creation of future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Craving Mind, with Judson Brewer

Nondual teacher and psychotherapist John Prendergast speaks with host Michael Taft about the heart area as an opening to infinite space, contacting the “dark matrix” of the ground, the body as a vibrant expression of emptiness, moving out of the cycle of reactivity into the creative life, working with energy in meditation, and much more. 

John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., is the author of the books The Deep Heart and In Touch. He is a spiritual teacher, psychotherapist, and retired adjunct professor of psychology who offers retreats in the U.S. and Europe. 

John Prendergast's website: www.listeningfromsilence.com

Please support this podcast by contributing on Patreon

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Nondual Heart, with John Prendergast

The Nondual Heart, with John Prendergast

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