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

12/05/2025

MYSTERY
I went to the forest in search of mystery
I crossed one river, and then the next,
until I found a barren aspen grove
Quiet, stark naked yet without Spring leaves.

My body knew in an instant what looked like many was one.
I could feel the white/black branches of the grove
Send themselves furiously upwards like bolts of lightning
Traveling the open blue/night sky.

And the wind thundered through the valley around me,
Whirling around the bodies of wild things,
Gathering, and then bursting into pieces
On the pine needles and willow twigs.

And the waters in the river kept churning,
Whirling around invisible shapes
Carrying away the edges of the mountain above
Smoothing and smashing the bed rocks of the Earth.

So I laid down within the land, and let it enter me
Let it breathe and build inside me
Until my eyes no longer betrayed me.
Until my heart released its name.
Until my body became the world.
And waited there.

Till we rose to walk a new path home.

- Justin Michelson

12/03/2025

Emotions make such an effective focal point for several reasons. First, they sit at a unique midpoint within our being. They power our thoughts “above,” and they are woven intimately into the physical body “below.” And when engaged skillfully, they open a conduit through the heart to something greater than ourselves. In this way, emotions become the connective tissue between body, mind, and spirit.

Healing our emotional life therefore sends effects throughout our whole being — including the limiting beliefs and narratives we hold. This is why self-compassion can create system-
wide coherence and transformation.

Second, using emotions as the center of practice prevents bypassing. If we focus only on the body, as is common in meditation, we may sink beneath thought and emotion and miss the very patterns that trouble us. If we focus solely on awareness, spaciousness, or
interconnection, the same blind spots can remain.

Centering on thinking is another option, but the speed, stickiness, and complexity of thoughts often outpace us and distract us from the emotional currents fueling them. Attending to emotion as felt in the body, however, creates an inclusive focal point that keeps us grounded, engaged, and present.

Third, practicing with emotion eventually brings us into contact with our deepest
unconscious drives and sources of distress—our existential fear, dread, and terror—which we may never touch in ordinary meditation, or which overwhelm us when they surface. These primal forces, held in ancient regions of the brain, limit our freedom far more than our looping thoughts or physical discomfort ever could.

Finally, skillful meditation with emotion leads to deep healing across body, heart, and mind—restoring fundamental safety and connection throughout our entire being. This inner coherence becomes the fertile soil in which wholesome heart-qualities can take root and liberating spiritual insights can grow and mature.

How have emotions shown up in your meditation practice?

12/02/2025

If you’re anything like I was, you might’ve grown up believing the opposite—that emotions are weak, irrational, or something we should override through willpower. But it’s often this very lack of respect for them that causes our emotional life to become imbalanced and
distorted, and the consequences echo through every part of our world.

In our relationships, this emotional suppression and illiteracy creates distance and a lack of genuine intimacy—with ourselves and others. In our bodies, it becomes the tension we carry or even the illness we develop. In our spiritual lives, it shows up as a loss of embodied connection to the essence of life itself.

Without our emotions on board, we struggle to feel balanced, connected, or truly tuned in. We think we’re the ones steering our experience, but when we look inside, we discover many other hands on the wheel—pressing the gas, the brakes, and sometimes both at once.
These are our unconscious emotional patterns acting on our behalf, often without our awareness.

Until we’re ready to befriend them, they will keep taking us back to the same places again and again.

What emotions are driving you right now?

11/13/2025

Justin is dedicated to sharing the jewels he's found
along his way—inspired by the Dharma and the natural world.

This includes techniques and tools for healing and insight. However, most fundamentally, he hopes to inspire the recognition of the goodness and wisdom that lay at the core of each of us—and life itself. Through this realization and our devotion to it, we can bring a truly revolutionary love into our own beings, and share it with those around us and the world at large.

11/10/2025

When we align with our wholesome qualities and capacities, we stop doing all the heavy lifting. We stop maintaining our separation through our own hidden assumptions and begin
to trust that the interconnection from which we were built is already working to bring us back home.

We realize that we always have the upper hand in healing— because nature itself is on our side. What’s more amazing is this: if the wholesome qualities of our minds are more fundamental to our psyches than their opposites—which I believe they are—then when we choose to put energy behind them, they will inevitably transform the pain within us, and eventually, the world.

When we feel these wholesome qualities as forces of nature, our healing becomes greatly accelerated. And when we recognize them as forces of nature, we also realize they are not
limited to us—they belong to the collective consciousness of all living beings, arising from the organizing truth of interconnection. From this view, we see how close everyone around us is to healing. We sense that the conflict and strife dominating our world cannot last forever—it simply takes too much energy to sustain patterns that are inimical to nature.
Someday, through one series of causes or another, there will no longer be the means to maintain them. Whether we’re here to witness it or not, at some point these forces of healing will return to prominence again — especially if enough of us align with their path.

What would it feel like to trust that nature itself is pulling you home?

11/09/2025

Resilience - https://mailchi.mp/6bacccea523c/view-10985211

11/08/2025

Likewise, no matter where we are in the healing process, we are enough — and we are complete right there. When we look through this lens, we begin to see the judgment, impatience, and pressure we’ve been putting on ourselves. We realize that although our inner process can be messy and troubled at times, it is no less perfect than any other part of nature. It’s the most natural thing there is.

When we view our wounds this way, yet stay present with them, the burden of healing lightens even further. Instead of saying to ourselves, “You’re not finished until you feel or
act in this ideal way,” we might say, “You are absolutely whole and perfect as you are — and there will always be ways we can heal and grow together.”

This helps us learn to hold a paradox — to give ourselves permission to be happy even as healing unfolds and life remains challenging. This, of course, only increases our capacity to heal. In this way, all parts of ourselves retain their dignity throughout the path and practice. They are inherently worthy — not only when they perform according to our ideals. There never was, and never will be, anything wrong with them.
There may still be hurt, but in this wholeness, everything is somehow also okay.

What does it feel like to see yourself in this way?

11/06/2025

A seed is wise not because it has studied or practiced, but because it’s encoded with the connective wisdom of life. Everything in us is this way too — we know how and when to
heal and be free.

Yet it’s all too easy to struggle and strive on the spiritual journey, forgetting what we already know. In pursuit of our goals, we often step over the very parts of ourselves that
know the way. When we finally notice what we’ve missed, we tend to apply top-down techniques that can re-wound us instead of listening to what’s actually needed.

When we begin to see the wisdom within our pain, we can loosen our control over the healing process even further. We give power back to the patterns themselves and imbue
them with our trust. Instead of saying, “This is the wrong thought or emotion to have,” we might say kindly, “You know how to heal — I trust your wisdom.”

Just like a child, when our pain receives our faith in it, it often opens like a flower or flows like a river, following the natural healing process embedded in our bones. This perspective is powerful because it allows us to set down the desperation and anxious concern for ourselves, and instead follow the lead of our wise wounds. Eventually, we release any personal agenda for our pain — and a great weight is lifted.

We stay with our pain, yet trust that our healing and awakening unfold in their perfect timing. And lo and behold, they do.
What in you already knows how to heal, when provided a compassionate container?

11/04/2025

We just don’t always know how to support the healing that’s trying to happen. Instead, we often assume that our thoughts and emotions are stubbornly trying to hurt us—or others.
But to truly heal, we must learn to listen for the longing within our pain.

For example, when we hear a familiar voice in our mind say, “You’re not good enough,” we don’t need to believe it or argue with it. We can recognize it as a distressed call for help.

Then, we can approach it with compassion, discover what it needs, and support its natural longing to be free. When we engage this way, something softens inside us. We realize we don’t have to do all the work. We can stop saying, “Why are you still hurting?” and start saying, “I trust you want to heal—and I’m here to support that when you’re ready.”

If this weren’t true, compassion and kindness would never work. But miraculously—as I and countless others can attest—they do. The longing to be free is not only natural; it’s part
of a much greater longing. It’s the calling of Life itself to return to wholeness—and nothing could be more powerfully supportive than that.

What is calling in you to heal?

11/02/2025

Justin was first introduced to meditation at age 15, when his mother invited him to a class for teens. He practiced wherever he could throughout his twenties. At age 30, Rodney Smith, his primary teacher from the age of 15, asked him to start sharing his practice with others, beginning a profound new journey of growth, as well as a life-long passion. Justin likes to remind students that while he has a certain wisdom to share, he is just another human on the path with his own challenges and growth edges.

What’s most precious is not our personal attainment but our being together in practice with sincerity - that’s where the magic happens.

10/31/2025

When we observe through this lens, we begin to see that all the various parts of us are actually on the same team. Even the thoughts and emotions that seem actively opposed to us—or to our best interests—would rather not struggle and fight. They are, in truth, often exhausted from constant conflict.

Once these parts are truly heard and understood, they can remember their deeper desire to work together as one unit—which is immeasurably easier. Over time, each of our patterns
has developed its own isolated momentum. It forgets not only why it began, but also how its actions affect the whole.

Through mindfulness and compassion, we remind ourselves of our wholeness and our intention for healing. Our steady, compassionate presence acts as a catalyst for renewed
internal coherence. This perspective has the power to effectively resolve the conflicts within us.

We stop saying, “Why are you doing this to me?” and begin to ask, “How are you doing?” We listen, and then gently inquire: “I know you’re hurting—but is there a way I can help you
fulfill your deeper intention to connect?” Eventually, we begin to witness harmony unfolding naturally within us.

What in you is ready to work together instead of maintaining conflict?

10/29/2025

Seeing this reveals what I call the first of the Five Forces of Healing: everything within us is trying to help.
When we look at ourselves through this lens, we begin to notice that our distressed patterns are either trying to protect us somehow or to show us something important—perhaps both. Consequently, we soften and lean in. We become curious, grateful, and kind.

Of course, even though everything is based in care or love, the thoughts and emotions swirling within us may be objectively unhelpful in a given moment—but they’re trying in
the only way they know how to. Even the most maladaptive patterns are born of good intentions; their expressions just become distorted through our insecurity and disconnection.

This perspective is powerful because it has the capacity to uproot and transform all the latent self-aversion within us. When applied to our troubled emotions or thoughts, we start
to say, “Thank you for trying to help,” or “Thank you for caring so much,” instead of “Why are you here?” or “Why are you doing that?”

What in you can you offer this generous perspective to—and how does it respond?

Eugene Insight Meditation

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