Mindsprings Podcast With Alistair Appleton

From a recorded lesson: Alistair discusses thoughts and thinking with students. It is not thoughts that make us unhappy. Thoughts come and go but it is unconscious thinking, ego thoughts that cause suffering to arise. Soothing our minds soothes our thoughts. If the body is unified our thoughts ride the Windhorse of the bodys energy.

In answer to a students question, Alistair discusses thoughts and feelings. Instead of being bulldozed by our thoughts, we can learn to dance with them. Gentle familiarisation of the inner landscape increases our wisdom and reduces suffering.

Alistair discusses suffering in a teaching session. We are conditioned to believe that we should be suffering but when you remove 'me' you end the struggle.

In this lively recorded teaching Alistair discusses how we can stay in love with our mind and be happy in the here and now.

In this Podcast, Alistair discusses Jaak Panksepp's Wheel of emotions. Emotions, which pre-date thoughts aren't bad or wrong but all animals share them. Panksepp identified seven primal emotional patterns, as well as negative emotions such as fear, sadness and anger there is also caring, lust, seeking and play.

In this podcast Alistair discusses Selfing V Being. It's a bit like salt, a little bit for flavour but too much is bad and it spoils everything. Too much self gets in the way. When we limit ourselves to our idea of ourselves, we run into problems.

Alistair discusses the Lojong slogans - Don't talk about injured limbs, translates as don't focus on other peoples wounds and defects. Don't be judgemental.

Yoga V Buddhism: In this recorded teaching, Alistair speculates that the emphasis in Yoga is on improving oneself, but Buddha would call this poisoned food

Was Freud right - is it all about sex? From the Live Sessions in February 2021. Tamsyn mentioned her dislike of reading Freud during her therapy training, and Alistair jumped to his defence.

Recorded teaching from the Mindsprings mediation school: Thoughts, feelings and unexamined beliefs become visible, during the practice of the Four Fields. We become aware of all the clutter we have in our experience and the tragedy of spending years disassociating from life. Alistair explains to a student, having preferences is part of being human. It's ok to feel bad and ok to prefer not to feel bad.

Having an ego is part of being human. Our sense of ourselves, our reality, rests on activity in certain parts of the brain. But identifying as only an ego can be problematic. When the ego believes it is the only thing, we can become fixated, leading to self-absorption and paranoia.

It's not the experience that's the problem, we can't control that. It's the stance we have towards the experience that generates the suffering and negativity in our lives. In order to reach an openhearted space of awareness without preference, we need to be compassionate to ourselves first.

Recorded teaching from Alistair: Many of us live our lives inside a well-oiled cocoon and run on autopilot like zombies. Others find the cocoon creepy and diseased and experience a calling to find out what is outside of it. Outside the cocoon, we can find a sense of aliveness and the fullness of life.

In this podcast, Alistair considers religion. Different faith traditions have different names for awakened energy but everyone plugs into the same supercharged higher power regardless of the name it is given and all races and religions concur that this power is love.

Shame is the fear of ostracization and it is one of the key practises to work with in Therapy. In this Podcast, Alistair concludes that shame is the glue that holds much of our pain-creating unconscious patterns together. These damage us and those around us. By sitting with 'what is' we can feel pain but ultimately it is a healing pain.

Life hurts! A recorded teaching from Alistair on the inescapable suffering of being alive. The first hurt being getting sick, particularly relevant in this time of Covid. And the second is the hurt we cause ourselves which, when we are trapped in the dark prison of ignorance, is more difficult to love.

In this teaching, Alistair shows students an exercise to demonstrate there is no fixed self. We are not just our skin, hair or bones. By putting awareness into our hand and knowing it from the inside, we become more plugged in and get a more accurate overall reference point.

Our sacredness is occluded from us because of the world we live in. Cultural forces conspire to make us needy and greedy. Bigger than our rational thinking minds, the full potential of being human is magical.

We think our bodies are one fixed thing and should be perfectly balanced. Still, when we start to live in our energy body we see that we are actually wildly asymmetric and different sides are dominant at different times during the day.

The way we look after ourselves is important but it is easy to get into a state of poverty mentality when we are ill. By embracing a time for convalescence and plugging into a care network, we build support with others in the same situation. These types of resources help us expand our empathy as we realise that our suffering is a part of much wider suffering at this time.