Eugene Insight Meditation, on Zoom, Eugene, OR (2025)

09/03/2025

Turn your attention around and see what’s driving you.

Only when they realized—paradoxically—that **unconditional patience and kindness were the fastest way to relief**… that relief finally came.

For each of us, we have to look and see what’s driving us.
We must be honest about the ways we *aren’t* actually being kind or giving ourselves grace.
We may no longer be waging war with ourselves—but our judgments might have just become more subtle.

We “tolerate” our pain, but underneath, we’re always wanting it to go. Understandably. But there’s nowhere to go—only opportunities to transform, if we listen to what’s needed.

You probably don’t need another crisis. You might just need a warm and cozy nest to come home to. And that’s a kind of homemaking only *you* can do.

**What’s the crisis inside you asking for?**

For several of my students with a history of intense trauma, the most important medicine was **permission to rest** and be easy with themselves.

Their healing and spiritual path had become *another crisis to manage*—and, naturally, it was being driven by the most desperate and anxious parts of themselves. Those parts were trying to help, but they were locked into a stressful mode of being that made true healing impossible.

08/30/2025

That pattern that bothers you is ancient.
It has traveled countless generations to arrive in your body.
When we lift our fist to flatten it, it just laughs. To transform ourselves, we have to use a softer force.

What within us can flow like water over rock—with endless patience, endless flexibility, endless ease?

When we operate from self-compassion, we don’t amp ourselves up to “face our trauma” or conquer our demons.
In fact, we can actually hurt ourselves by trying to force things.
Paradoxically, **patience is the quickest way to healing.**

We don’t pressure ourselves into anything.
We just stay simple and kind—and our compassionate energy gently invites our wounding to emerge in its own time, when it’s ready.

**What’s ready within you for the healing waters of your heart?**

08/28/2025

One of my students spent over two decades practicing ardently in the Insight tradition before learning this.
She felt stuck and frustrated when no technique she’d learned allowed her to “clear her mind” for any meaningful length of time from worries or fears.

It all changed when she turned toward her thoughts and emotions with compassion.

Now she tells me she has a reliably calm and joyful place within her when she meditates—even if thoughts still naturally take her away at times.

Indeed, the emanation of our own sincere care and connection soothes the *wanting* and the *not wanting* that underlies our thinking, making the present moment feel pleasant and nourishing to be in.
Feeling that support, our thoughts will often be happy to rest, and our heart-minds can finally relax and enjoy the moment.

This joy then further stabilizes the mind and opens us to deeper concentration and insight.

**What brings your mind into quietude?**

08/26/2025

Justin's Unique Approach To Teaching:
- Compassion first
- Relaxed and body-attuned
- Nature as Teacher
- Community-based
- Accessible

Justin takes a unique approach to teaching. In his "Dharma of Healing" retreats, he emphasizes the development of self-compassion first, as a prerequisite for exploring the deeper spiritual insights in the Buddhist path. In his outdoor "Dharma of Nature" retreats, he emphasizes learning from the natural world itself as the primary teacher, encouraging students to explore a natural, relaxed awareness. In group mentorship, he emphasizes community connection and a casual - but sincere - atmosphere.

In each setting, he encourages a relaxed, body-attuned approach to the practice, emphasizing rest and recovery from modern life as an essential act of self-compassion - one that allows us to naturally discover our own liberating inner wisdom. Moreover, as a communitarian himself, he values the spirit of community and works to cultivate a sense of safety and connection between participants.

Alongside all this, he remains devoted to the tradition of accessibility in the Theravada lineage, never turning someone away for lack of funds in his online or in-person programs. In his retreats, he still relies on the traditional practice of donations (“dana”) to support his livelihood.

08/24/2025

At a recent self-compassion retreat, a student shared that sincerely saying *thank you* to his decades-long anger problem was finally the simple medicine it needed to soften and become workable.

It had tried to protect his precious heart for decades—it just needed acknowledgment. He was so relieved.

Sometimes, simply changing our view of what disturbs us inside becomes the catalyst for true healing and transformation.

08/22/2025

The more compassion we shower ourselves with, the softer and lighter our being becomes. And the softer and lighter we become, the more translucent and porous we are.

We discover we don't have to destroy or manipulate our sense of self to achieve spiritual freedom—we can love ourselves into dissolution.
**The self naturally relaxes and opens when we provide safety and connection.**

As a student once put it to me:
*"When I was always trying to protect myself, I didn't understand and couldn't imagine letting go of the self. But with self-compassion, I no longer needed the protection, so I could finally find moments of relaxing any sense of separation back into life."*

In this way, applying self-compassion helps us avoid the common unintended consequences of the non-self teaching in Buddhism:
• It prevents the harmful misunderstanding that there is something spiritually wrong with the self.
• It initiates a healthy, gentle dissolving of internal boundaries—while preserving external ones.
• It protects us from clinging to the idea of non-self as a new spiritual identity—just another subtle form of self-protection that softens in the presence of care.

Ultimately, it reveals the non-self teaching as one of **interconnection**, where we find ourselves not lost, but *intimately joined* with the flow of everything.

**What's your relationship to your self?**

08/20/2025

It’s true that clinging to what was or could be causes suffering. But the only reason we’re stuck in the past or future is because the *present moment isn’t nourishing us.*

Trying to be non-attached often just creates more distance from life. But basking in your own warm-hearted glow—filling yourself up from the inside out—isn’t just cozy and warm… it’s deeply fulfilling.

We *want* to be here. We *want* to show up.

Through the self-fulfillment of our own embrace, we naturally loosen our grip on the more transient and limited forms of happiness offered by time. This kind of renunciation happens naturally—*without* the haughty distance or forced transcendence that often comes with trying to be “unattached.”

Instead, we become increasingly drawn to prioritizing the deepest nourishment within us—which, in turn, allows the rest of our lives to unfold with an uncanny grace.

How are you nourishing yourself today?

08/18/2025

They may seem like the same old thoughts we’ve seen a thousand times, but we may have missed what they’re *really* saying.

They don’t feel safe and connected.
They don’t feel cared for.

When we apply compassion to our mind, we begin to *alchemize* the pain as the thoughts pass through. When the thought returns again, it’s often softer, lighter, and less sticky.

Over time, the patterns settle. They reveal their deeper layers. And if their core needs are met, they may not feel the need to return at all.

Your thoughts are wise and precious visitors—we just have to listen, to understand what they’re really trying to tell us.

Just like a child who’s acting out, they don’t know any other way to say *“help me.”* Even the ones that seem like they’re yelling or criticizing you are actually revealing their deeper need for love underneath.

Are you listening?

08/16/2025

Claim your dates! Retreats are just around the corner. Just a few days set aside for practice can make the rest of your year richer. Get the details at justinmichelsondharma.com/retreats

08/13/2025

This way, we can never be disappointed!
And we can never be off track.

We don’t need an ending to chase, or a finish line to cross. We humbly devote ourselves to what *is*—even if that’s anger, or fear, or something not spiritual at all.

If in the process we experience relaxation, that’s just a welcome side effect. If someday we happen to get “there” (i.e., enlightenment), that’s just gravy on top.

Along the way, we’re likely to discover that our own inner warmth is far more fulfilling—and far more *reliable*—than any fleeting moment of attainment could ever be. Our devotion to what’s real is richer than any passing bliss.

In fact, we might even see that true contentment isn’t the absence of pain at all—it’s something that blooms *right within it.*

Have you ever felt deeply peaceful, even though the circumstances were painful?

08/11/2025

Most of our pain is actually our aversion to it.

If we can turn our attention around and notice our *longing* for suffering to end, we can begin to apply self-compassion—and a healing process can begin.

For example, we might first notice an anxious energy that is always monitoring, evaluating, and correcting our spiritual course—or perhaps a self-imposed pressure to perform or achieve.

Whatever it is for you, when we offer compassion to these various forms of stress, we often begin to feel the *exhaustion* underneath. We feel how much effort it has taken to embark on this endless pursuit of ending suffering. We also feel the aching pain of *lack* embedded within the longing itself.

When we hold the aching, exhaustion, and lack with compassion, we might notice shame arise in its wake. Having not arrived at the end, part of us may feel we have failed. *If we couldn’t complete the task, it must have been our shortcoming,* we think.

Caring for this shame, a deeper layer of grief, hopelessness, or defeat might reveal itself. We are now face to face with the hard truth that life is, inevitably, tragic sometimes.

Consoling ourselves again, our essential vulnerability and tenderness might reveal itself. As we relax and open with these feelings, we sense their *universality*—and our connection to the real and raw truth of all sentient beings.

Breathing gently here, we might find ourselves softening into a clear and expansive space within—a space of *equanimity.*

*“This is just the way it is, right now. This is just the nature of things. And it can be OK, for now.”*

In this way, our longing itself is the wound that we must heal.

Where is that longing in you?

08/08/2025

But who likes to stand in front of a mirror when they look like a mess? No one. So we often just step out of the reflection—or pretty ourselves up in our own imagination. But neither brings us the freedom we long for.

It’s the sitting with the reflection of our own messy heart-minds that starts to bear the fruit. We then have to grow the inner capacities to stay there and find our way through—not around.

In its deepest clarity, mindfulness can show us the radiant nature of consciousness itself. But more often, it reflects back exactly what we bring to it: the conditioned habits we constantly employ that try to help, but only make our lives harder and heavier.

We already have chaos inside, do we now add more? Or do we add kindness? Or do we add nothing at all?

What we decide affects everything, including what we see (or don't see) in the mirror.

Eugene Insight Meditation

09/03/2025

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