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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

In this episode, host Michael Taft speaks with meditation teacher Loch Kelly about what comes after the first glimpse. They distinguish "waking up"—recognizing openness, stillness, the absence of a separate self—from "waking with," in which appearances are seen as inseparable from awake awareness, or what is called "one taste." The conversation covers flow states as a natural portal to awake awareness in action, why direct pointing is safer than deconstructive mindfulness retreats that leave people flooded, the traditional reasons awareness gets missed (too close, too simple, too good to be true), the difference between awakening and liberation, and how Internal Family Systems pairs surprisingly well with pointing-out instructions. Loch also leads a guided practice, the Problem-Solver Glimpse.

Loch Kelly is an author, licensed psychotherapist, and recognized leader in the field of meditation and awakening. He is the founder of the nonprofit Effortless Mindfulness Institute and has worked in community mental health, established homeless shelters and counseled family members of 9/11 victims.

Loch graduated from Columbia University and received a fellowship to study in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU in the study of how awareness training can enhance compassion and wellbeing. His teachings are informed by Buddhist nondual meditation, psychology, and neuroscience.

Loch Kelly’s website

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Awakening and Flow States, with Loch Kelly

Days after narrowly surviving a catastrophic flood, meditation teacher Delson Armstrong joins Michael Taft to consider what remains when spiritual ideas fall away. Their conversation explores primal awareness, the spiritual ego, and Delson’s forthcoming collection of Sanskrit aphorisms—a “love letter to the exhausted seeker” synthesizing Buddhism, Vedānta, Yoga, Sāṃkhya, and Tantra. They also discuss paraconsciousness, karma and divine play, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Śrī Vidyā and Lalitā, and the challenge of teaching with authority without taking the role of guru too seriously.

Delson Armstrong is a meditation teacher whose work brings together Buddhist, yogic, and tantric traditions. A teacher of Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation, he is known especially for his expertise in the jhānas and other deep meditative states. He is also authorized to teach all seven stages of Lahiri Mahasaya’s Kriya Yoga and practices in the Śrī Vidyā and Trika lineages. Delson teaches internationally, offering retreats, workshops, and individual guidance focused on awakening, freedom from suffering, and translating ancient contemplative methods for modern practitioners.

Learn more about Delson Armstrong here.

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A Conversation with Delson Armstrong

Host Michael Taft talks with neuroscientist Ruben Laukkonen about what extreme physical suffering can reveal about meditation, and why awakening may be less a grand attainment than “the grand disappointment.” They explore disenchantment, grace, synchronicity, and the possibility that faith arises naturally from our embeddedness in realities too large for us to comprehend. Ruben describes the strange authority of insight—how ideas can seem to arrive from elsewhere, why their felt intensity sometimes tracks their accuracy, and how the same process can produce compelling false revelations. They also discuss psychedelics, embodied creativity, the “mastery of mania,” and Ruben’s research suggesting that meditation increases the brain’s signal-to-noise ratio, with posture functioning as a kind of built-in neurofeedback system. The conversation concludes by asking whether AI has Buddha nature, whether a machine must be conscious to express wisdom and compassion, and whether artificial intelligence might become a means of scaling wisdom—or its opposite—throughout human culture.

Ruben Laukkonen is a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, where he is a senior researcher in the Department of Psychiatry, a fellow at Linacre College, director of the Flourishing Intelligence Program, and co-director of the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing. His research seeks an empirically grounded and experientially authentic understanding of meditation, insight, consciousness, and nonduality. His current work also explores how brain dynamics and contemplative wisdom might contribute to safer and more efficient artificial intelligence. Ruben has an eclectic contemplative background, including Zen, Advaita, and Theravāda, and was authorized to teach Vipassanā in 2024.

Find out more at https://rubenlaukkonen.com/

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Meditation, False Insights, and Artificial Wisdom with Ruben Laukkonen

Host Michael Taft talks with bestselling author Michael Pollan about his new book, A World Appears, and the enduring mystery of consciousness. They explore the hidden biases of consciousness researchers, the limits of scientific materialism, the embodied nature of feeling, and what literature, meditation, psychedelics, and the arts can reveal that laboratory science cannot. The conversation turns to artificial intelligence and the unsettling possibility that machines may possess ego-like structures without any genuine inner awareness, raising urgent questions about emotional attachment to algorithms and the need for “consciousness hygiene.” They also discuss ego dissolution, the microbiome’s surprising influence on mind and behavior, the increasingly blurry boundary between self and world, and practical ways of becoming more fully conscious through meditation, nature, travel, art, gardening, animals, and time away from technology.

Michael Pollan is one of America’s most influential writers on the intersection of human life and the natural world—especially food, agriculture, consciousness, and the mind. He is the author of numerous bestselling books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Cooked, How to Change Your Mind, and This Is Your Mind on Plants. He has taught at both UC Berkeley and Harvard and is a co-founder of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. His work has earned many major literary and scientific honors, and Time named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Find out more at michaelpollan.com

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The Mystery of Consciousness with Michael Pollan

Host Michael Taft and guest Joe Hudson explore the crucial difference between awakening and liberation: why insight on the cushion does not automatically free us in relationship, shame, self-talk, or emotional reactivity. Joe reframes emotional practice as a path of awakening, inviting us not merely to accept difficult emotions, but to love them, feel them somatically, and discover the intelligence hidden inside. Together they unpack the “golden algorithm”—the emotions we most avoid are the ones we unconsciously keep recreating—and show how negative self-talk often masks unfelt fear, anger, or shame. Practical conversation about what happens after awakening, when the old wound is triggered and freedom has to show up exactly where we are least willing to feel.

Joe Hudson is an executive coach whose teachings draw from ancient contemplative traditions, modern neuroscience, and psychology. He is a teacher for leaders at such companies as OpenAI, Alphabet, Apple, and more. He is also the founder of Art of Accomplishment, which facilitates experiential courses designed to cultivate ease, joy, and fulfillment in life. 

Find out more at https://www.artofaccomplishment.com/

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A Conversation with Joe Hudson

Host Michael Taft interviews meditation teacher Wystan about teaching awakening outside a strict lineage framework, cultural translation of Buddhist practice, why awakening does not “come with a Buddhist label,” the tension between preserving traditional forms and adapting them for modern students, devotion as a powerful but often avoided dimension of practice, the heartbreak of compassion as barriers of separateness break down, the importance of turning toward suffering rather than distracting from it, gratitude and forgiveness as possible “neo-Brahmaviharas,” why shamatha and vipashyana training can prepare students for more direct nondual practices, and Wystan’s encouragement that awakening is real, possible, and worth pursuing.

Wystan is a meditation teacher threading together influences from training in Theravada, Zen, Vajrayana, Dzogchen, and Shinzen Young's systematic secular approach in service of awakening.

Learn more at https://www.wystantbs.com/

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A Conversation with Wystan

Host Michael Taft is interviewed by Pranab Sachithanandan about Michael's Stack Model for deconstructing sensory experience, his "adapter kit" for accessing nondual Vajrayana methods without years of preliminaries, why mantra and visualization are legitimate samadhi tools, how depth of practice maps across the sense gates, a chronic pain patient on a morphine pump who found relief through meditation, the humanities as qualia training, why the "Buddha industrial complex" leaves out people who don't fit a single tradition, and the power of building sangha outside it.

Pranab Sachitananadan is the founder of Attention Copilot (attncopilot.com), a service that brings meditative presence into the act of work itself, helping people go from stuckness to flow in real time. Pranab is a longtime student of Michael Taft, a facilitator at Jhourney, and an early hire at several technology startups. Learn more at x.com/nopranablem.

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Michael Taft Interviewed by Pranab

Host Michael Taft speaks with Stephen Snyder Sensei about the two “missing” brahmaviharas, Innate Goodness practice, heart wisdom vs. mind wisdom, the magic of the “group heart”, the paradox of the Heart Sutra, learning to become receptive, God and the nondual, entities, bodhisattvas, deities, the three types of forgiveness, and the “terrible importance” of heart-based practice.

Stephen Mugen Snyder, Sensei began practicing daily meditation in 1976. Since then, he has studied Buddhism extensively—investigating and engaging in Zen, Tibetan, Theravada, and Western non-dual traditions. He was authorized to teach in the Theravada Buddhist tradition in 2007 and the Zen Buddhist schools of Soto and Rinzai in 2022. Stephen is a senior student of Roshi Mark Sando Mininberg and a transmitted teacher in the White Plum Asanga—the body of teachers in the Maezumi-roshi lineage. Stephen is the author of many books, including Trust in Awakening, Demystifying Awakening and Buddha’s Heart. 

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The Power of the Heart with Stephen Snyder

Join host Michael Taft as he talks with Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen about the wild history of Kundalini—from it’s ancient Tantric roots to modern global yoga culture—including subtle-body maps, spontaneous awakenings, and so-called “Kundalini syndromes.” They explore how different traditions define the serpent power, when experiences become breakdowns or breakthroughs, the role of teachers and lineages, and why “energy” can’t be reduced to either neuroscience or fantasy. Along the way they dive into siddhis, the imaginal realm, goddess-centered practice, and what actually changes in your life and psyche when this mysterious force wakes up.

Sravana Borkataky-Varma specializes in Hindu traditions, in particular, she delves into topics such as esoteric rituals and bodily concepts, especially in relation to Hindu śākta tantra traditions, often referred to as goddess tantra. She adopts a research methodology that blends social anthropology—examined from an outside perspective—with elements of reflexive autoethnography that reflect her personal experiences. As an educator, she holds the position of Instructional Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. She has formerly taught at Harvard Divinity School, Rice University, to name a few. Sravana is committed to building communities that bring together individuals from various religious backgrounds who aspire to lead lives marked by kindness and compassion. The Serpent's Tale: Kuṇḍalinī, Yoga, and the History of an Experience, Embodied Pedagogies in the Study of Religion: Transforming the Classroom, are two of her recent books, among many other books and articles. More information about Sravana can be found on her website, https://sravanaspeaks.com/

Anya Foxen is a historian and comparativist scholar of religion. She is currently an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, as well as a Research Associate at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Her scholarly research focuses on the intersection of South Asian yogic and tantric traditions with Western esotericism and metaphysical spiritualities. She is the author of four books, including Inhaling Spirit: Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga, and, most recently, The Serpent’s Tale: Kuṇḍalinī, Yoga, and the History of an Experience. She is also a teacher and long-time practitioner of yoga. Learn more about Anya at https://www.anyafoxen.com/

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Chasing the Serpent’s Tail with Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen

Host Michael Taft talks with Jake Orthwein about the self as a construction, the distinction between no-self and emptiness, the crucial difference between having a functional ego and being identified with it, psychedelics and meditation and ego dissolution, the Buddha-nature vs. the True Self, dereification vs. defabrication, Taft’s distinction of nondual one vs. nondual two, and the importance of a healthy ego.

Jake Orthwein is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY, and a dharma student of Michael Taft’s. His most recent film, “Unraveling the Dream,” was produced in collaboration with the Waking Up app and focuses on the history and neuroscience of psychedelics. 

Jake's website

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Nonduality and the Ego with Jake Orthwein

Shinzen Young talks with host Michael Taft about his new ideas around applying the systematic mindset of mindfulness meditation and the scientific method to the many challenges of human communication and miscommunication. Topics include the coming of Unified Mindfulness to China, the new phenomena of online retreats, training the spirit of science into mindfulness and communication, and much more.

Shinzen Young is an American mindfulness teacher and neuroscience research consultant. His systematic approach to categorizing, adapting and teaching meditation, known as Unified Mindfulness, has resulted in collaborations with Harvard Medical School, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the University of Vermont in the burgeoning field of contemplative neuroscience. Learn more about Shinzen at his website: Shinzen.org

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Meditation and Communication with Shinzen Young

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