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I love the way this blog is scientifically written.
Red it all in a single morning.
Thank you very much.
Greetings from Brasil.
Been hoping to find someone to help me with the deconstruction process.
Any pointers would be greatfully received
Great blog. Plenty of amazing information. Definitely very unique.
I’m wondering if Michael would welcome feedback about his SAND talk last weekend. I participated. I have both appreciative and critical comments.
Thank you for your work! A show with guest #28 and guest #29 together could be interesting.
Hi! I just discovered your podcast and it’s great. The download links for episodes 4 and 9 are broken however. Trying to download episode 4 only downloads a very small file which can’t be played and the download for episode 9 always dies about half way through.
Thanks for the great stuff!
Fantastic content! Thank you for all the work that has gone into this 🙂
Thanks, Jake!
Your teaching is just awesome, Michael. After so much over-striving for so many years, this receptive and open approach is exactly what I’ve needed to recontact. Thanks so much for posting these SFDC vids!
Thanks, Tashi!
Michael, I just started reading this book after watching one of your Jhana classes on Youtube. Your ability to elucidate these concepts in such a radically different forms is incredible. I also listened to the Deconstructing yourself podcast. I’m starting to realize just how far you came from the Maha-satipatthana sutta to get to this . Thank you for showing Right understanding, Right thought, Right speech, Right action, and Right livelihood. I can’t speak to the others, obviously, but I’m willing to guess you’ve got them covered too. You’ve given humanity this wonderful practice in a form that we can understand. Freely accessible. This human, at least, is most appreciative of this very kind gift. Buddha would likely approve.
For anyone who reads this book and wants ab it more, I suggest following some of Michael’s meditations on Youtube. It’s not the greatest looking cinematography (visual quality okay, audio needs to be clearer), but he’s great at leading you to where it says on the cover of the youtube. There will probably come a time in your solo practice when you start contemplating finding a personal teacher but can’t afford it. His material is a good substitute to deepen your practice.
If anyone is wondering whether to read this book, I recommend it as sincerely as I would Michael’s other efforts. I just hope this helps get people’s head out of their asses enough to do something about fucking over the planet. If people just sat down and did this freakin’ practice, we wouldn’t be where we are today…
Hi Michael. I’d love to hear you dialogue with Tantrik scholar and yogi Christopher Wallis- aka Hareesh. I think the two of you would have much to say to each other. Ideally, it would be a direct and simple encounter that is not afraid to explore difference as well as accordance.
Thanks, Damon. I’m looking into it.
I love the blog and the podcast. Just listened to the “reversing the stack” episode and it was filled with great candid insights into how the practice actually shakes out. The discussion of different failure modes between traditional vipassana vs non-dual awareness practices was spot on.
I’m just here to point out a typo on the site. Under resources -> what is nonduality? -> nonduality in religion, a paragraph gets cut off. It says, “All human cultures everywhere have experienced and described nonduality and nondual experience, but ancient India became particularly focu”.
Thanks, Matt!
Thanks Michael for putting out your ‘reversed stack’ model, really incredibly useful for where I am at right now. I’d been forging ahead with this route, exploring phenomena but starting from a non-dual place, but had no idea there were established paths that do this! Very good to know!
Thank you Michael for podcasting! I’m listening backwards and just finished the episode you did with Tucker Peck. I’m super new to meditation and intimidated by all I don’t know, but also humbly excited!
I wanted to praise you for your reticence to speak about controversies within your wide community, at least within the DY podcast. I’m happy not to know which teachers have been involved in what kinds of scandals until I know enough about meditation itself to feel like I’m a part of the community, you know? The drama is not for me now.
That’s all I wanted to say 😀
Thank you, Alex!
It’s interesting that on the sign-up page where you’re your featuring your tagline of “Deconstructing Yourself” your simultaneously asking for evidence that I’m human. So I acquiesced and suggested I am. :o)
Self-deconstruction does not imply non-humanity!
I have found your podcast interesting and illuminating for some time but have only just, after a widening / opening up of perspective in practice, started to avail myself of the the series of guided meditations on non-dual awareness / emptiness. One point: within the historical context it often seems like this dimension of practice only exists within Mahayana and Vajrayana. I think though it is present right from the start! Buddhadasa emphasises the primacy of Sunnata in the early texts of the pali cannon in his book Heart Wood of the Bodhi tree and in practice with his formulation of void mind. I also see it alot in the Northern Thai tradition of Achan Cha. Achan Sumedho talks about ‘awareness aware of itself’ as the route towards Nibanna (at least in my understanding of his talks). As you point out in Directly Investigating Awareness(if I remember correctly) these ways of seeing are also there in the arupa jhanas. Anyway, Im about half way through your series of meditations and am finding them to be of enormous benifit, interest and generally expansive and delicious. Extremely appreciative and wishing you a long life. Matt
Thanks, Matt!
At this page https://deconstructingyourself.com/deconstructing-yourself-podcast scrolling down to All Podcast Episodes it says “A Conversation with Sparing Washam” I liked that episode and hope the typo gets fixed!
Fixed. Thanks!
In “What is Duality?” https://deconstructingyourself.com/nonduality
I think it’d be great to delete the word “even” below, so that there’s not a potential connotation that indigenous cultures are somehow “other than” the first set of cultures.
> There are some religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism that have concepts of
> nonduality at the core of their belief systems. Other religions and
> philosophies include at least a branch that is concerned with a nondual view.
> Even indigenous cultures and shamanism talk about such a view of the world.
Good point. Change made.
Nondual talking/writing/seeing/hearing/feeling etc.,= x, now watching x, now watching (x/watching x), ,,,
The One/Many dance to infinity out of emptiness.
LOF, laws of form by g spencer brown.
Nondual/dual mathematician experience/non experience
Much appreciation for your excellent podcast interview and i also connect with the way in which you teach integrating vipassana with non-duality. It’s a pity though that the meditations are only on YouTube and not available to download to iTunes or listen as audio on ipod or other device
This isn’t hard. Here are some examples: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/convert-youtube-videos-to-mp3-files
hi Michael,
great website. i’m going through many of the videos presently. in particular i am working on the page “Latest Nondual Guided Meditations by Michael Taft”. i have been working backward through the videos as suggested and this morning a glitch in the page suddenly appeared. the videos no longer show on this page and all there is in their place is this string “[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/embed?listType=playlist&list=PL590ElXNAb03dIJTz7ADfleUrZWn8RcsS&layout=gallery%5B/embedyt%5D“. i see that the playlist appears on the youtube page so no biggie i guess. just though i’d let you know about the issue. it seems to appear in several browsers also. i am finally getting to your book too. being retired is nice, lots of time to practice. i’l get back to you at some point. take care. rus
Thanks. Fixed.
thanks for the quick turnaround. however, the videos that now appear are not the same as what was there before. maybe that is intentional as you may be updating the section. the ones that were showing before was the list of 107 guided meditations. all is ok unless we think it’s not. but if we think it’s ok, that’s still a thought…
I intentionally put the new ones up. The older ones are of course available on Youtube.
Hello Michael! I used to frequently visit a METTA meditation that you had uploaded to your YouTube. Last time I went there it was deleted or made private. I was hoping you could post a link or email me the video that would be great. Loving kindness where you really talked about softening/opening up the heart.
Hi, Adam ~
I don’t know which particular metta meditation you did, but I haven’t deleted any. Suggest you use the search function. Thanks. M
Hi Michael,
thank you for this wonderful website. I really enjoy your guided meditations on nondual awareness and already listened to most of them. I would like to deepen my knowledge on this topic. Are there any books that you can recommend (unfortunately your books are currently not available).
Thanks
Paul