Uradiance

  Today is Guru Purnima, full moon of the Guru. Seems like yesterday. It was 1970. With my beloved teacher, and my best friend Eric, both resting in peace now. My teacher never called himself "guru," never said, "follow me." He simply said, "I will show you how to awaken the Guru within your own heart. That is the radiance of the real Guru." After many lives of seeking, you find the one whose breath, whose whisper, whose mere glance, frees you from any further need for a Guru. Then you bow down, not because you are seeking anything from him, but because you let go of the search, and now you live in the ocean of free energy whose very nature is gratitude. Jai Guru Dev. I don't want to be invincible. I want to be astonished by loss. I want to be stunned and defeated by wonder, shocked into a new creation where only dancing is allowed. I want to fall down again and again. How close can my head come to your toes before it shatters into spirals of go...

Everyone looks for a door. A door like Jesus, who is an opening in the shape of man. A lacuna between the worlds, like Mary, who is a wound in the shape of woman. Everyone looks for an empty  portal leading to an empty  chamber full of secret palaces. We meet here while our bodies  are dreaming. We forget how much we need a gateway shaped like someone we can trust. Come, take the Lord's hand. Step through the black hollow center of your shadow where the last breath has already gone. Meet Mira here, the poetess. Meet Rumi, meet the Magdalene. Meet Mohammad and the Baal Shem Tov. Encounter the ancient Deer Priest Shaman who shook your bones, changing them into serpents. What century you came from doesn't matter. What religion your fathers gave you is the warm old Winter coat you put away in Spring. Come, meet Ishtar weeping as she looses and lets fall her seven garments of silence and self-abandonment,...

Serpent Jesus guided me gently by the elbow until we reached the Garden. I was old and blind, and he was such a fine young boy! He showed me an enormous vine clustered with luscious grapes. "The tree of life?" I asked. "This vine grew here before that tree," he said. Plucking a single grape, he commanded, "Eat!” I knew that when I crushed it on my tongue, its sweetness would transport me to another realm! But I was wrong. I tasted, I marveled, I awakened to this world, just as it is. At last I understood: there is nowhere else to go. Then I noticed the Serpent wound at the root of the vine, lounging in the warm sun, scratching its belly with its tail. "Where do you go when you die?" the serpent asked me.   I looked to Jesus for the answer, but Jesus commanded me, saying: "Tell him! You know."   "Well I suppose," said I, "You don't go anywhere."   Hearing this, the serpent hissed...