The Heart of Light Podcast

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.11.02

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on October 19, 2020, about inner transcendence.  We are familiar with the ways we struggle, and perhaps also the places within that feel beyond hope, but do we know the part of us above the struggle and outside of it?  How do we develop a relationship with that part without disconnecting from a grounded experience of being here fully?  How do we embrace all we are in wholeness?  This dharma talk fell on the Christian feast of All Soul’s Day as well as Dia de Muertos.

This is the quote sheet for the talk.

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.10.26

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on October 19, 2020, about facing the unknown.  How do we become more comfortable with uncertainty?  How do we hold the seemingly fixed certainties of our life lightly, making allowance for the uncontrollable unpredictability of life? How do we enter into an active relationship with mystery?  This talk preceded the Celtic holiday of Samhain.

This is the quote sheet for the talk.  

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.10.19

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on October 19, 2020, about grief.  How do we give ourselves to this difficult emotion?  What are some of the less obvious griefs we may carry?  What does the experience of grief teach us about impermanence? 

This is the poem quoted.        

This is the quote sheet for the talk.  

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.10.12

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on October 12, 2020, about transformative healing.  How does our culture of seeking comfort and easy answers actually mitigate against deep healing?  How do we cultivate the raw courage to transform our longstanding issues?  What tools does Buddhism offer as we navigate the challenges of the healing journey?       

This is the quote sheet for the talk.

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.10.05

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on October 5, 2020, about the chakras as map of our journey to wholeness.  What would it mean to occupy your entire being?  What would it mean to trust and draw on all our different ways of knowing? What would it mean to taste every flavor of what it is to be alive?         

This is the quote sheet for the talk. 

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.09.28

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on September 28, 2020, about inner protection.  What is the innate compass, the deep sense of health and wholeness that lies below the workings of ego? How do we align ourselves more with this fierce protective self-compassion in our depths?  This dharma talk took place one day before Michaelmas, the Christian feast of St. Michael the Archangel.          

This is the quote sheet for the talk.  

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.09.21

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on September 21, 2020, about boundaries.  How do we develop and keep good boundaries, with others and with ourselves? How do we give both ourselves and others a great gift by keeping good boundaries?  How do we authentically embrace stepping into our power?          

This is the quote sheet for the talk.

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.09.14

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on September 14, 2020, about caring and not caring.  In some ways, Buddhism calls us to radically vulnerable forms of caring, yet in other ways, it asks us not to care at all.  Much of human dysfunction stems from caring and not caring about the wrong things.  What are the kinds of caring, and the kinds of not caring, that nourish our growth and lead to true freedom?          

This is the quote sheet for the talk.

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.09.07

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on September 7, 2020, about coming to ground.    What are the ways we try to control our experience, our vulnerability, and the emotions we don’t want to feel?  How do we relax into what we don’t want to feel?  How do we surrender into the deep vulnerability of the present moment?          

This is the quote sheet for the talk

Mike’s Dharma Talk, 2020.08.31

This is my dharma talk from the East Bay Healing Collective on August 31, 2020, about listening.  What are the qualities of an excellent listener?  How do we underestimate our own lack of listening and how much we are not hearing the subtle messages from others, from ourselves, and from the world?  What would it really mean to open up and take in everything deeply?          

This is the quote sheet for the talk.