40 Years of Meditation

I have meditated every day, twice a day, for forty years, and what do I have to show for it? Absolutely no thing! That's why I continue on the pathless path.

Again and again, I arrive at the goal shouting inane aphorisms like, "I got here first but I am lost. My entire religion disappears the moment I stop thinking. Sakyamuni won't sign my baseball. The sky doesn't need wings. Why seek improvement when everything is already just exactly what it is? Liberation is not comparing. The opposite of light isn't darkness but whining."

Then I mainline some pure air into my veins with a breath of compassion. My mind settles down and I bow. My head hits the earth like an egg dropped into unfathomable emptiness, making a sound that gongs each seed and bursts April plum blossoms.

Prayer of Opposites

When the garden needs sunshine, give thanks for the rain.
When the parched soil needs water, praise the sun.
Wanting strength, honor the wisdom of your weakness.
Wanting abundance, embrace the void.
Pray for the light by becoming the darkness.
Find healing by opening your wound.
Yearning for love, rejoice in boundless solitude.
Seeking oneness beyond God's name and face,
bow to the Master and shatter your mind at his feet.
A drumbeat weaves through silence: the shaman's secret.
A sigh of longing breaks the heart in two:

one chamber for the Lord, one chamber for you.
Lover and beloved both dance in your body,
galaxies whirl in a photon, eternity a sparkle
on the ocean of forgetfulness.

Pour out half of your glass in libation
so that you may drink, yet forever be thirsty.

Equinox

It's 4 AM on the Spring Equinox. I am peeing in my garden with Willy, the golden poodle. It is so quiet I hear seeds arguing in the chilly loam. The rose says to the dahlia, "Be a rose!" The dahlia says to the chrysanthemum, "Only dahlias here!" Camellia buds jostle each other, whispering, "I'm the blossom on this bush!" A newborn crocus bursts from the frosty soil, its purple lips sucking at darkness. Even the flowers are frail trembling bodies with enormous egos, yearning for a star.

Don't worry. The sun is inside. Every seed contains the Light that feeds us all.

Wings of the Ordinary

The miracles we do not notice fly back to the Creator on disappointed wings. But the ones we notice fold their wings and settle into the ordinary.

Each moment Creator says, "Let there be light." The act of creation cannot be fulfilled without the light of our awareness.

We seldom hear the most important commandment, because it is so quiet: "Thou shalt notice the mushroom and the web of dew, the pebble and the bud."

We are here on earth to pay attention, to perceive the miraculous wings of the ordinary. Our wonder completes the design.

Watch and Pray

Jesus said, "Watch and pray." (Mat. 26:41) Simply to watch is perfect stillness. Just to listen is marvelous silence.

Without effort or concentration, let this restless mind rove wildly through the universe. Give it infinite space to roam. Just watch.

Awareness is the only discipline. No resistance, no control. When the mind has its fill of wandering, it returns like a swan, folds its wings, and settles on the still waters of the heart. Meditation happens naturally.

All Winter long, the plum branch reaches through the broken fence, toward the white blossom it always held.

Painting by Toinette

Jupiter and Venus

Venus and Jupiter, never so near, so intimate, yet hundreds of millions of miles apart. 'Distance' and 'nearness' have no meaning in the seamless clarity of consciousness. No one is 'far' from you; yet you cannot be 'near' your Self. Rest tonight in the radiant space of who you Are, bursting with stars.

Honest Pain

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." Is this not a constant choice we make every day?

When I choose suffering, I identify with the labels and beliefs that I superimpose on my pain. Then I need to talk about it, even if there is no actual pain at this moment.

But when I carry pain gracefully, I do not make a concept or belief about it. I don't identify my pain as "me" or "mine." There is no compulsion to tell a story about my pain. Therefor, no suffering. For suffering is not pain: suffering is a story we make up about pain, creating the past and future.

I am not liberated from pain. I am liberated from my story about it. I am liberated from identifying pain as who I am.

Then I can embrace pain as part of the seamless whole of energy, the energy-field of  body, earth, and stars. This brief pain, just as it is in this moment, mingles with the pain of other creatures, just as this joy mingles with the joy of other creatures. "No man is an island," no particle is separate from the field.

Do feelings have boundaries? Do bodies have edges? Pain and pleasure are waves of one ocean, made of one water. By grace, we allow both pain and pleasure to dissolve into particles of bliss, waves of bliss. Into ananda, the labels "pain" and "pleasure" disappear.

This only happens when I am fully Present, with the melting away of past and future, the dissolution of beliefs about "me." No, it is not a philosophy for intellectuals, but a survival technique for those who choose life instead of suffering.

Holy Mater

Through the entire universe runs a ceaseless chant, the blissful tremolo of matter. Every sub-nuclear particle in mineral, vegetable or animal kingdom resonates with the same voice as the stars. The song of each atom echos through the galaxies. 

A molecule of dung sings with Andromeda's voice. The holly berry ripens by humming with the moon. A wood thrush, hidden in dark branches, feels sunlight in her throat. These creatures neither worry nor doubt: they are immersed in the oceanic sensuality of the Holy Spirit, beyond any need for thought. Dust, berry and bird are infused with choiceless delight, unweighted by any concept of 'I.'

*A stream of photons bursts the bud: I say that stream is consciously blissful. Green seedlings break ground, aching like nipples for the kiss of the sun: I say they are aware. Thrush-throated joy arises at first light, witnessing its own feathered song. The boundless subjectivity of God quivers in each molecule of a leaping salmon. Not terror but bliss explodes through the muscle fibers of a doe, even as the cougar sinks her teeth into the fibrillating artery. Blood-mist sprays in noble delight through the nostrils of that deer, as Spirit surfeits form in mid-leap, and body falls, re-cycling the fuel of the living planet. All organic matter is suffused with awareness, an awareness essentially joyful. Even we humans know that ground-state of joyful awareness in morning stillness as we awaken, just before our first thought.

*But as soon as the mind kicks in, we remember what it was we were supposed to be worrying about, and drag yesterday into this moment of creation. We begin another drab loop of mind work, dwelling in our concepts about life instead of living it. Insofar as we live in concepts rather than life itself, we forfeit our birthright - primordial joy. Humans are the only sentient beings to have lost the song of animal ecstasy, the bliss that pulses in each particle of matter. Might it sing again?

*We rejected the Tree of Life, preferring the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Knowledge is the thinking tree, the realm of opposites created by mind. The seed of this tree is dualism, the division of subject and object. It is our original sin: to abstract ourselves from creations pulsating joy! Through abstract thinking, we become exiles from the Earth before us and the Now around us. We invent the future and the past, which after all, only exist as thoughts, detached from the atomic substance of our bodily presence. We dwell in mind: a ghostly pale parallel world, the asymptote of anxiety, which approaches but cannot touch the sensible world. "In nature there's no blemish but the mind." (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III.4)
 
The invention of the abstract mind allowed us to develop science and technology. No doubt science had a purpose in human evolution. The laboratory method of science only succeeds because thought kills matter, and lays it on a dissecting table, embalming the world in "objectivity." Thought triumphantly imagines its superiority over the inanimate earth, and takes dominion over her. Yet science, by this very method, kills the soul of the planet. The science-lab is by definition an artificial world. It is bleached white, sterilized, and haunted by a sense of exile. 

To save the planet, we must now learn to subsume and sublimate science under the deeper matrix of intuition, where subject and object re-unite in the primal unity of organic self-awareness.

*Therefor the next step in our spiritual practice is not detachment from the material world, but consecration of the material world through enlightened sensuality. This means, quite simply, that our senses innocently embrace the object of perception without losing awareness of the subject.  

In this way, we transmute matter into consciousness.

*The function of awareness is to bless the object of perception, whether it is a flower, the face of a homeless child, or a loaf of bread. The material form is the host, transubstantiated by the act of perception into the body of the Goddess. Before the object is consecrated by our attention, it is merely matter. But when infused with awareness, the object becomes Mater, holy Mother. Our consciousness is an energy that irradiates the earth. In the coming age, Spirit will not flow down from above, but outward through our senses, until we see divinity glow from ordinary things. Christ will be born in the core of every neutrino and quark. This will be the Second Coming.

*This sacrament is foreshadowed in the 3rd Century Gnostic scroll, the Gospel of Phillip, where the priestly prayer of consecration identifies the Holy Spirit with the Mother: "Come O Holy Mother and fill this bread, transforming it into the body of Christ."

*Every physical particle has a spiritual core. It is time for humanity to locate the seat of divinity in the heart of matter. This new mode of sacramental sensation reveals the divinity in our bodies. We now transcend the age-old dualism of soul and flesh. Our goal is not to be liberated from the body, but to glorify it. For this body is no more mor less than an ever-dissolving stream of photons which are virtual particles of bliss bubbling up and vanishing in the boundless ocean of awareness.

*The only difference between a human and a Christ is that the Christ is fully aware of what the human is. In the 2nd century, St. Athanasius declared: "God is humanity wholly alive." We are not designed for out-of-body experience. Nor are we designed for blind absorption in sensuality. Let us no longer be stuck in neurotic mood-swings between these extremes. Rather, let us unite heaven and earth in divine sensuality.

Jesus prayed, "Thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven." This is an earth prayer, a body prayer, a prayer for the glorification of matter through sacraments that delight the eye, ear, nose, tongue, flesh.
 
Practices for the Consecration of Matter

1. Intentionally defer the power of forming images and words in your mind. Rest as awareness unformed into thoughts. Do this not by suppressing thought, but observing the thought-stream without resistance or concentration. Simply refrain from grasping any particular concept. 

The instant a mental image begins to form, let it dissolve back into the electricity of the brain, from which it arose. This does not require effort, only attention. And no energy is expended. In fact, energy is gained; for instead of capturing energy in mental movie-making, the energy of thought becomes available to the brain as pure bliss.

2. Experience this living electricity in your nerves as a continuum of bodily sensation: a scintillating field of energy that envelopes and pervades your form, extending beyond your edges. Do this by letting go of mental pictures and words.
 
3. We need not give this practice any Sanskrit name, or even label it meditation. Simply call it: letting thought dissolve into sensation. After a few minutes of this practice, your attention sinks into the finest particles of this sensation-field. Observe the most minute particular impulse -- such as a tingling in the brain. No sensation is insignificant. Let your attention enter one fine particle of sensation.

4. Observe the subtlest thread of this sensation arising and dissolving into silence. Use this very sensation as the mantra which keeps you on the ever-dissolving edge of the present moment. Do not form a mental image or intellectual concept of this experience. Simply return to the finest particle of sensation arising from empty space.

5. As the sensation dissolves back into the empty space, that empty space recognizes itself as pure awareness, the source not only of the physical sensation but of the particle that caused it. Where is there any difference between subject and object, spirit and matter, creator and creation?

6. Now both thought and sensation have dissolved in silent emptiness. Become aware of this silence not only within every atom and cell of your body, but in the space around your body. You have expanded into vast space through the tiniest point in your body! You entered an instantaneous photon of light and merged with the all-pervading eternity. You discovered the womb of the great Mother in the heart of one particle of matter. Give thanks, every breath an offering of gratitude.

*
Jewish mystical tradition calls this experience the Ain Soph Or: "divine no-thing in a point of light." In India, the Upanishads describe the experience as, Ano Raniyan Mahato Mahiyan: "smaller than the smallest, yet greater than the greatest." Jesus called it: "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end."

*
Growing familiar with this practice, you can use it any time to energize and re-create. Be easy and natural with the practice and don't regard it as a formal discipline. You may practice on a bus or in a waiting room. You may make the entire journey - from the busy mind to the energy-field of the body, through the field to an infinitesimal particle, and through the particle to boundless cosmic space - in one minute, or the duration of a breath.

Pure awareness is peace. Pure awareness in the body is bliss. Through the simple practice of returning mind to body, then passing through a particle of the energy field into infinite silence, you will know your own flesh as the kingdom of heaven on earth. 

Your true substance is not dense "matter," separate from "spirit," but a Radiance downy as cotton, glittering with threads that dance from the eternal dawn of creation, out of unfathomable divine silence.

Owl

On a shamanic journey I met my spirit guide, the Owl. 

If you call him a "totem animal," he flies away. He insists on "Spirit Guide, Great Horned Owl." Name him meticulously, he deigns to stay awhile, though he refuses to answer questions or give advice, preferring to hang out in silence. We sit together on an old oak limb, scouting for delicious mice.

Owl is the sign of infinite aloneness, the harbinger of boundless solitude. This is what he teaches, if I am permitted to put it into words:

"To be one is your birthright. But you are so afraid of unity, you create conflict, then complain about it, just to pretend there are two.

"The world may look chaotic, conflicted, divided and broken, but nothing you perceive could possibly appear outside the silent wholeness and seamless unity of your own awareness. If you would heal the world, become aware of your awareness. Whoooo.... Shhhhh."

Contradict Thyself

     God has engraved the first commandment on my heart: "contradict thyself."
     I am created to be foolish and wise, empty and full, pure and sensual, blissful and sad, to be a radiant darkness, to rebel and surrender, to have faith and believe in nothing, to remember that the opposite is also true, to become still in the fury of the dance, most powerful when helpless, gentle as a warrior, wrathful as a mother dove. My only hope is to gaze into a violet and find the sky.

     Contradiction is the engine of creativity. Without paradox, would the world ever burst from the thermodynamic equilibrium of the vacuum?
     Thank God the symmetry was broken by the Word of creation, which was a cry of bewilderment. Rejoice that nothing quite makes sense. In fractal chaos, cosmos tumbles from the void. There is something because there is nothing. It is not through philosophy, but through laughter, that the truth is know.

Paradox & Reason

What the intellect rejects as a contradiction, the soul embraces as a paradox.

One who remains on the level of the intellect, insisting on logically consistent arguments, cannot enter the heart of reality, for the deeper we plunge into the heart, the closer we come to the realm where every truth may be equally expressed by its opposite.

This is why the way to truth is opened, not by the logical arguments of European philosophy, but the sutras of India. Sutra is the Indo-European root of the English suture: a thread. A sutra is not a link in a logical argument, but a self-contained paradox through which awareness transcends the boundaries of intellect and passes through the portal of the heart into the fire of God, where thought is consumed by love.
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The Golden Rose

When I taste longing for God, I enter the path of devotion. But when I taste God's longing for me,  I wander into the garden of astonishment.

Every weed is a kingdom, every fragrance a rendezvous. Here I am lost. I don't  know whether to cry, O Christ! O Krishna! or O Raheem!

The Beloved walks beside me in the wilderness of self-abandonment. We have both strayed far from the path. God is lost too. The silence is alive, the sound of a boundless bell, struck ten billion years ago, still ringing in each atom.

Placing two fingers to my lips, the Beloved whispers, "Shhh! Don't pray like that. No need to cry, O Christ! O Krishna! O Raheem! Just O! is enough. That is my eternal name, the sound of your dissolving."  

Now the Beloved's lips touch my brow. A golden rose blossoms there, made of starlight. But this is the starlight that is already inside us, before the making of stars. 

O Rose of countless petals, shimmering doorways that lead to mansions of amethyst and ruby, where numberless souls return at the end of every exhalation, and go forth with each new breath!

O golden thousand-tiered Radiance that toys with the eye of my heart! I am troubled and dizzy with the fragrance of your light. In you I behold the lineaments of a Face gazing back, or is it the intricate design of a heavenly City, our true home, where all humanity, atoned by harmonious living, dwells in a shimmer, blurring I and We, Self and Other, into one, yet resolving them into distinction?

O personal Gaze of the All, you are the mathematical symmetry of the Logos, transcending reason and order, containing perfect knowledge in a fractal chaos of tangled asymptotes that draw the eye beyond silence, into the vanishing point of bliss, the emptiness of this very O!

Perhaps you are only a mirage, gleaming out of the infinite yet nearer than my next breath. Perhaps your golden glance at me is the image of my yearning for you, reflected by the eternal solitude of consciousness itself. Perhaps the holy city shimmering in your depth is the likeness of the space within my many-mansioned heart. Perhaps this whole creation finally dissolves into Presence, without form or content, and I am simply in the moment between one breath and another.

O sacred confusion! I cannot tell if I rest in God, or God rests in me!

Love Your Enemy

Jesus did not say, "Love your enemies" for their sake, but for our sake, to prevent us from becoming the very people we hate.

Because we did not listen to him, we have become the terrorists. That's what hate does: it turns us into our enemies. But when we love, it turns our enemies into us.

I grieve not only for the Afghan people, but for the broken families of the U.S. military community who live all around me. When I look out my back window, there is a house with a little boy who never knew his father, killed in Afghanistan seven years ago. When I look out my front window I see the home of a Congressional Medal of Honor winner with his hands blown off. He has an American flag over his door and never comes out. When I walk down the street, just past his house, I meet another little boy, from another home, who is huddled in the rain, trembling and crying. He wants to borrow my cell phone to call 911. I ask him why. He says, "Because my step dad kicked me in the jaw and threw me against the wall of the garage." His step dad just came back from his fourth tour of combat.
Now 16 civilians have been murdered by a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, a soldier from this military base, one mile away. 

We have lost all credibility to condemn the atrocities of dictators and terrorists, because our own soldiers commit acts of terrorism. We destroy the souls of our men and women in uniform with a foreign policy whose mission drifts further and further away from national defense, into arrogant imperialism, claiming the right to occupy and bully other countries into serving our will.

This is not the fault of the soldiers, but the fault of a civilian population too long myopic and disengaged from its duty. Our Constitution makes it clear that the military is governed by the civilian authorities, and the civilian authorities are elected by the people. 

We the people must now rise up, not only in defense of Afghan families, but in defense of our own abused military families, and demand an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East.

Self-Control is a Hoax

"Control is an illusion, a temporary exertion of energy in the mind. Shiva is the opposite. Shiva is the permanent source of Energy. Shiva is harmonious innocence which knows no control." ~Sri Sri Gurudev

If I am controlled by my 'self,' then who controls the 'self' who controls me? 'I' cannot control or eliminate 'I.' The religious and moral 'self-control' industry that has existed for thousands of years is a hoax. It never worked and it never will. What the mind needs is not self-control, but surrender to the divine innocence.

I keep seeing silly ads that say, 'Meditate Like a Monk.' Where did we get the notion that monks are the real meditators?

I don't want to meditate like a monk. I want to meditate like a wild shamanic poet with toes planted in loam, brain blossoming streaked lightning to the stars, voluptuous Shakti serpent-Goddess entwined around the tree of life, my spine. Won't you meet me in this dance?

Living in a Post-Intelligent World

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake

The world is whole beyond human knowing. - Wendell Berry


1. Animals Are More Conscious Than Men
Animals experience the flow of immediate alertness without thought. They are highly conscious, but unaware of consciousness. Animals are radiant, but not self-radiant.

Humans are the most beautiful and most dangerous animals. We have intelligence. But because we are intelligent, we have forgotten the graceful alertness of our animal nature. We live by thinking. We are guided, not by spontaneous alertness, but by predetermination, which is belief. This is why we are unhappy and insensate much of the time, and we kill each other with a cruelty animals cannot fathom.


2. Ideas Are Not Conscious
An idea is not conscious. An idea is a frozen point of view in the vast ocean of consciousness. The idea itself is not aware. Ideas are nouns. Consciousness is a verb.

When awareness implodes into a point of view, belief replaces sentience, the ideal replaces the real, and the thinker is born as a disembodied being. As thinkers, we lose the capacity to participate in animal alertness. Our point of view - whether Christian or Muslim, Republican or Democrat, Western or Eastern - is true only in relation to another point of view, which is equally true relative to ours. All points of view are equal and, in relation to the actual momentous world of Now, equally meaningless.

To defend our point of view, we must be in conflict with another. Intelligent human beings live in perpetual conflict with one other. Only conflict can define and sustain their relative viewpoints. This is why peace is never achieved through ideas or beliefs.

Our belief is an abstract image of the world, not the world itself. As soon as we form this image, the world has already passed by, transformed into something new, something we will never know by thinking about it. By thinking, we are always a gray disembodied step behind the radiant and sensuous flow of the world. A thought is the snapshot of what has already vanished. Our beliefs abstract us into a ghostly parallel universe that never quite touches the animal energy of the earth.

Humanity now wanders in an evolutionary cul de sac, exiled from the electrical animal Now. Is it any wonder that we are destroying the earth, since we no longer touch it, see it, taste its inconceivable sensuality?

If we would survive, we must leap out of this cul de sac. Thinking will not lead us out. We must transcend thinking, spreading wings of intuition. Waking to the wind's touch, we must learn to fly. A new stage of evolution dawns. If we don't leap, we destroy our planet.


3. Leap Into Animal Self-Radiance
What are the options?

(A) We can sink back into animal awareness. We do this when we have a few glasses of wine in the evening. We do it when we seek sexual release. We do it when we drown our days in rituals of work. War also provides the comfort of animal awareness, a horrible kind of comfort. We know it so well. Through war, we return to familiar reptilian sensations of rage and fear.

(B) We can continue to be intelligent. That is, we can continue to live as ghosts worshiping idols of thought. But this, as we have seen, is not life on earth.

(C) Leap. Leap into awareness without thought. Leap into animal self-radiance.

Animal self-radiance is the spontaneous flow of awakening, unobstructed by points of view. I live in the wave, not the particle. But I am not just an animal. I am an animal aware of its awareness. Nostrils twitching like a deer in the forest, muscles quivering like a salmon in a waterfall, eyes fiercely bright as an eagle's on the hare, feet alive to the ground like the silent paws of a stalking tiger, awareness ripples through the body of the animal. But self-awareness ripples through the body of the most beautiful animal.


4. Post-Intelligent Awareness in the Wisdom Traditions
Has post-intelligent awareness been recorded before? Of course it has.

The ancient Hebrew psalmist wrote: "Taste and see that YHWH is good." At the source of Japanese Zen, Dogen taught: "Those who gained enlightenment by seeing blossoms or hearing sounds, achieved it through the body." In the Sufi tradition, Rumi sang, "Forget every touch and every sound that did not teach you how to dance!"

The Medieval Christian mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux, taught his monks: "You will find something greater laboring in the woods than in any book. Trees and stones will teach you what you can never learn from schoolmasters." The 20th Century Catholic philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin, wrote: "All around us, to right and left, above and below, we have only to go a little beyond the frontier of sensible appearances to see the divine welling up and showing through.... Matter is Spirit moving slowly enough to be seen." After Charles Darwin walked through a tropical rain forest, he wrote: "Twiners entwining twiners, beautiful Lepidoptera, silence, hosannah!"

Who in today's world knows this heightened consciousness of the body? Do not consult theologians or philosophers, scholars and PHD's. Learn it from hyper-vigilant Army Rangers and Navy Seals gathering intelligence behind the lines in enemy territory. They know beyond knowing.

We need the wisdom of the warrior. But we will use it to make peace.


5. The Most Beautiful Animal
Once we were animals eating in the forest, living through instinct. But instinct is no longer the way.

Once we were animals lost in thought, abstracted in libraries and computers. But intelligence is no longer the way.

Now we are the most beautiful animals, endowed with something like instinct but augmented, infinitized by self-reference, free to choose and to proclaim: I Am.

Call it intuition. Like instinct, intuition operates in a field beyond thought. But instinct is pre-intelligent, while intuition is post-intelligent. Instinct is radiance, while intuition is self-radiance.

I am the most beautiful animal. I live in a post-intelligent world. Earth, not heaven, is my sacred destination. No longer do I waste my world as an expendable resource in a desperate quest for the abstract ghost of what I believe. No longer do I believe in anything. I am free of ideas. I have no point of view, because no point can contain the boundless self-effulgent space of awareness. Thoughts may arise, presenting me with information I need in a particular moment, but I am independent of my thoughts.

I flow in a graceful tide of sensation with no need for the dikes and levies of ideology. No past or future, doctrine or conclusion locate who I Am. My habitat: the ever-widening wildness of Now. The tiger licks its jaws. But this tiger licks its jaws and gives thanks.

May you live again and taste it. May the taste break over your senses in un-abstracted waves of delight. Strangely, you remember the taste from long ago, by forest pools or soaring on hawk feathers. You often taste it in dreams, but awaking, it seems forever lost. Your myths and religions are all about returning to it. Now, that future has dawned. You return to yourself. You taste your own terrible lips. You are the tiger. Yet the one who watches the tiger is also awake.

Never Leave Your Comfort Zone

Why all this need to "get out of your comfort zone"? It's impossible. The whole cosmos is a comfort zone. Stars and planets never veer from their changeless orbits and spheres. The daffodil returns to seed, only to flower again. Humans are the only creatures who complain about "routine." To the other creatures, its all a perfect ceremony.

Galaxies and flowers are always in the zone, and so are you. Don't expand your comfort zone: expand your awareness. Your comfort zone is already amazing - full of miracles.

Be comfortable in the grace of your life, just as it is. Let the Comforter enfold you.

Love Is Listening Without A Point

 

Love is not a point of view. Love is pointless.

When I react to another person's point of view, my reaction creates an equally narrow point. Both points sustain each other through polarization, fed by anger and fear of losing. Equally valid as  reactions to one other, these viewpoints are equally meaningless in relation to the Great Space of Awareness, where all possible points of view arise and dissolve.

Is it possible to remain spacious, listening without contracting the other, without forming another point of view? This is precisely what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your adversary... resist not the negative one." 

Remaining spacious while gazing into the face of hostility requires great courage. This space is redemptive: it saves me from confining myself to the hell of a narrow viewpoint. At the same time, my pointless listening invites the "enemy" to relax into that same space.

Nothing is gained by arguing with an angry person. Real transformation flowers, not by arguing with my neighbor, but enfolding her in the unified field of pure listening.

Listening without a point is a heavenly place to hang out, for it redeems us from the little hell of having to be "right." In that pointless place, I can "love my neighbor as my self," because we are both breaths and waves of the same spaciousness.

When we see that love is listening to one another without making a point, we can be one, yet not the same.

Out of Control

The devil is in control. God is out of control. That's why good always triumphs over evil.

I can't control my world. I can't control my body. I can't control health, wealth, or the process of aging. I can't even control my own mind, not a single thought that pops into my head.

But we Americans are addicted to control. We think we can control history. We think that by bombing villages and overthrowing dictators we can control the Middle East. We think that by passing legislation we can control our health. We think that we can control who slips across the border or who makes an amateur bomb in his kitchen sink. But we can't even control this fear in our own hearts!

And the more we attempt to control our world, the more tense and dysfunctional it becomes. Most wars arise because of one nation, political party, or religion trying to assert control. We make ourselves sick and crazy with our efforts, both personal and political, to be in control.

I had a dear friend who was so in control of himself, he ate only the purest food, thought only the purest thoughts, never touched alcohol or cigarettes, practiced meditation and yoga and pranayama and was totally devoted to the Guru, and died of lung cancer at an early age.

Quite tragic, and yet in a way, quite comical this predicament of ours, a real tragicomedy. Sit back and watch humans trying to control themselves: it's the essence of humor. Then ask the essential question: if we have no control over anything in the world, do we have any freedom at all?

I suggest that the answer is Yes. There is a freedom. It is the only freedom. But it is not anything we can do. In fact, true freedom is the opposite of doing. We can let the world do itself, let the body do itself, let the mind do itself: its all out of our control. The way to freedom is utterly wayless.

What is this one freedom we possess in a world controlled by time, by conditioning, by past karma; a world pre-destined right down to the chemistry of how what we had for dinner last night determines what thought pops into our head today?

We have the freedom to be aware. Awareness is the only freedom.

The wayless Way is to simply rest awareness in awareness, without clinging to any thought that might arise in that spacious sparkling transparency. Awareness is eternally free, lucidly silent, crystal clear. Awareness is always the immediate prior condition, before we form a single thought about it. Therefor, no mental technique is required to be free: just this effortless sinking, returning, resting of awareness in awareness, with no other ground to stand on.

Allowing this rest to happen, we immediately perceive that whatever phenomenon arises in clear space - whether a concept, a memory, a mood, a desire or a fear - is insubstantial and instantaneous. We immediately abandon every argument, every effort to be right, because we perceive that all points of view are simply points, dimensionless points in an infinitely pointless space. In the space of pure awareness, no point of view has any more inherent value than another. We ask the obvious question: what could I gain by shrining this vastness into a point when, as simple awareness, I embrace all possible points without being confined by any?

We perceive that whatever arises in the mind - a powerful memory, a belief, a conviction that we are right - is just a wisp of awareness tangled in itself. It untangles and dissolves the moment we refrain from giving it any energy or attention. Refraining from grasping at such a thought requires no energy at all. Refraining is not an effort. Actually, to refrain recollects and restores energy, because we don't have to spend energy thinking.

A thought, feeling or desire comes from the conditioning of the past and has absolutely no power to overshadow or contract the vast luminosity of awareness, any more than a bubble of foam contains the ocean on which it appears. The ocean of awareness has no need to cling to bubbles of thought that appear or disappear on its surface.

Let the world go. Let the mind that produces the world go. Try it and see. You will be very energetic and happy. But we should not say, "try it." We should say, "stop trying."

Now you may protest, "If I follow this Way, I will become passive and dull. I won't DO anything!" No, dear friend, you will not be passive. You will not be a bump on a long. Passivity comes from too much effort. Our depression and lack of energy is the paralysis that results from trying to be in control.

Surrendering control engenders creativity. For creativity arises, not from out thoughts, but from the infinite space between them, which is the free space of awareness itself.

Out of that intuitive silent, our actions are guided and inspired. This is guided action, not controlled action. Controlled action is ruined by anxiety over the outcome, but guided action arises through motiveless Grace.

Let your action arise from the ocean of Grace, which is the natural function of awareness unlimited by any effort.

Graceful action is spontaneous and joyful. It acts for the sake of the dance itself, not for the sake of the result. Through graceful action, the stars dance in the sky.But the sky doesn't control them. Let your awareness be as empty and motiveless as the sky. The stars will dance inside you. And the whole cosmos, which is the reflection of your awareness in a mirror, will imitate their dance.

This is what the Christ-Consciousness meant when he said, "Behold the lilies of the field. They neither toil nor spin. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these!" (Matthew 6:28)

"Take no thought for tomorrow. Let tomorrow take thought for itself!" (Matthew 6:34)

"The wind blows where it pleases. You hear the sound of it but don't know where it comes from or where it it going. So are all those who are born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)

It's OK to be out of control. Awareness is enough.

Points of View

"How does one obtain true peace? By letting go of the need to defend one's point of view." (Deepak Chopra) 

A friend was a little troubled by this statement and asked a very wise question: "Isn't promoting our point of view what civic discourse and democracy are all about? "

What do you think, reader? Here's my response....

Points of view are like dust particles in the sky. Ultimately, you and I are the sky. We are the sky of pure awareness. We are not the talking-points our minds love to cling to. When mind is still and clear, we are simply present. Is Presence a point of view, or a pointless view?

As long as we are in a body, of course, we have points of view to share and give up, share and give up, share and give up. This is the playfulness of living dialogue. It is wonderful as long as one is ceaseless willing to give up points of view.

But if you want to hold a view, and turn it into a belief, then try it and see how that works out for you. I know how it works out for me. When I am committed to an ideology, I suffer, and I bring suffering to others.


An ideology is a momentary point of view that has outlived its moment.

When I dance with other points of view, I can listen to multiplicity. The delicious thing is to be aware of many points dancing in one space. When space becomes wide enough, all points of view become one chord, one harmony. The fun is to see that even though my conditioning and my bundle of memories has its viewpoint, others have theirs as well, and I don't need to feel threatened by them. Every point of view is equally valid from its own perspective.
 
There is a big difference between sharing our views and arguing them. Argument becomes an endless loop leading back into one's own head. To argue that your view is right and anothers is wrong does not promote dialogue: it promotes rigidity and self-isolation. The need to negate the other instead of simply sharing our view is the source of conflict, and eventually war.

Buddhism is the only religion I know that elevates the wisdom of not clinging to points of view to the level of doctrine: the doctrine of no permanent doctrine, which is one of the most useful and beautiful contradictions in the history of religion! Buddhism doesn't teach us to reject the doctrines of our religion. It teaches us to stop arguing for their absolute universality, to stop imposing them on others, and to gracefully abandon a particular doctrine when no longer useful for our growth.

A similar view is found in modern science, where a theory is good only as long as it works. Good scientists know that theories are only relative points of view; they can abandon a theory when a more workable theory develops.
 
Mystics in all religions have discovered the space beyond points of view: that's why they usually usually got in trouble with the priests! Rumi shares his well-known verse, "Out beyond ideas of right and wrong, there's a field: will you meet me there?" Meister Eckhart cries: "O God, quit me of God!" And Laotzu has an entire chapter in the Tao Te Ching on giving up opinions for or against.

We must never forget how much courage it takes to dwell in the free space beyond viewpoints. Some of us imagine that the mystics led gentle idyllic lives in gardens of bliss. But their lives were actually fraught with peril. Mystics have always been persecuted by the Orthodox. Courtly Confucians rejected Laotzu: he ended his life in self-imposed exile. Imams of the Mosque drove Rumi away from his home. His master, Shamz, was murdered. Mirabai, Laladev and other poet saints of India were tormented and mocked. The inquisition condemned Meister Eckhart and nearly burned him at the stake. 

It is both exhilarating and dangerous to live in Presence, without clinging to points of view, beliefs or dogmas. If you have the courage to be empty, prepare to be rejected. Nothing threatens intellectuals more than a wise fool who is free from ideology.

Rest as Pure Awakened Space

Churches, temples & mosques exist for one purpose: to awaken Space in our cluttered lives...

Religions have conditioned us to believe that the path is long, the goal far distant, the Holy in a higher place. But the truth is, we live in a cosmic trick, a vast joke whose punchline is all around us.

What we've been looking for is right here, wherever here may be. This is why Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is in the midst of you;" and in the Gospel of Thomas, "The kingdom is poured out over the whole earth, but men do not see it."

The Divine Presence is space itself! There is a notable dictum from the great mystics of the Western tradition, attributed variously to St. Augustine, Giordano Bruno, Voltaire and Pascal, but originally found in the Hermetic sayings of 3rd Century Egypt: God is a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

Is this not a thought-experiment for contemplating the divinity of space? Yes, empty space is awake, and filled with Divine Presence.

This revelation is so a priori and self-evident, yet so stunning, that it strikes our awareness like the trumpet of the Last Judgment, calling us to the only temple that remains: the temple of Now. We enter this temple the moment we give up the search.

Space is awake, even when nobody's here. Space was awake before we were born into it. We generally use space as a means to an end, to be filled with something. But what if space is the ultimate end in itself?

Space, in truth, is the end and the beginning. Space seems nothing at all, yet is the source of all. The first verses of Genesis tell us that, "in the beginning, the earth was a formless void." But the text makes it clear that this void is not nothing: it is oceanic intelligence, rippling with breathings of the Spirit. It is the living womb from which the light of creation shines.

Space is boundless, ever-expanding, self-luminous, and spontaneously creative. Photons, electrons, worlds and galaxies arise and dissolve in the pure awareness of space. Yet bursting with worlds, this cauldron of creation remains ever-virgin, resting in its silent self-nature of fertile emptiness.

Space is awake. And when we too are awake, mere empty space satisfies us with its fullness. That is why every great mystic loves the desert. Space-awareness wakes us from the torpor of materialism. In space-awareness, we no longer delude ourselves with the notion that our mind is an effect of brain chemicals. Reality becomes self-evident: the brain and all its chemicals are made out of conscious space. Space-awareness bathes the brain like an embryo swimming in amniotic fluid. Waking space saturates each atom. In fact, the fundamental particles of matter are no-thing, but slightly imbalanced mathematical equations suspended in the conscious space of an infinite zero.

In the words of Sir James Jeans, one of the founders of quantum physics, this world is made from pure intelligence. Max Planck, another founder of modern physics, said that mind is the matrix of matter. Likewise their colleague, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote: All through the material world runs the stuff of our own consciousness.

Where is this cosmic stuff? Far above? Deep within? In another dimension? Does it take us several lifetimes to reach? Why don't we simply accept the unconditional grace of reality, just as it is? The stuff of consciousness is space, and the stuff of space is consciousness.

We swim in the ocean of a universal Witness who broods over us always. We are dissolved in divine Presence. In the words of the 12th Century mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, God hugs you; you are enfolded in the arms of the Mystery. We are like fish searching for water, surrounded by a miracle so self-evident we just don't notice.

Therefor, the deepest form of worship is simply to be where you are. The beginning and end of spiritual practice is to rest as pure awakened space.

Space can nourish, heal, and re-create you. All you need do is become aware of it. Could any practice be simpler than becoming aware of space? Open your attention to the Great Space around you, to the left and right, above, below, and within the cells of your body. Awareness of space and awareness as space are one. In Great Space, subject and object are the same, for the same space pervades both. Space renews and re-creates you because space is the source whence every particle of your body is born. Bathe in the ocean of Great Space, where creation began. That ocean is not behind you in time. It is all around you as the fabric of Now.

The ego-mind rebels against this revelation. The ego wants to attain something, to climb a ladder. Delighting as empty space is too graceful for the ego: not enough drama, not enough journey and quest. But the only obstacle to enlightenment is the thought: This is too easy to be real.

No circumstance or activity can limit our practice of spaciousness, since space is not affected by anything that occurs within it. We enjoy this Sabbath rest wherever we are. Remember, we do not find Sabbath rest in the content of space, but in the space that contains all that happens, no matter what the content may be. The riot on an urban sidewalk and the green glen by a forest pond are both but momentary configurations of the same fundamental particles, appearing and dissolving in precisely the same space. Every battle is surrounded by a stillness. 

We can at any moment find instant liberation from suffering by shifting our attention from the content of what is happening to the space around it. This actually occurs, by grace, in the midst of a terrible accident or sudden chaos, which is why so many survivors recall a deep peace, a time-stopping stillness, surrounding the traumatic event.

Spaciousness need only be tasted for an instant: a one-moment meditation. And it is not an escape. As spaciousness, we remain thoroughly in the world, though not of the world. And the space that becomes conscious through this practice also becomes available for others, as a blessing of peace. This practice can become our deeper work, no matter what other work we are doing. By merely being awakened space, we are healing presences in the world.

Great Space in Hinduism
The ancient rishis of India called this Great Space, Sat-Chit-Ananda: Truth-Consciousness-Bliss. Later Hindu priests populated Great Space with gods and goddesses. But gods and goddesses are just relative points of view within the Great Space of awareness. They are no different than you and me. A god or a me arises like a ripple in the ocean of space. This me only exists in relation to a you. Each of these waves is made out of the same space. And each wave, while individualized at its peak, is the whole ocean at its base. Hence all of us are but one Great Space arising in itself as a play of relative views. Indian philosophy starkly states that this Atman, the individual soul, is nothing but Brahman, the eternal space of God. We are each other.

Great Space in Buddhism
Gautama the Buddha taught this same truth in a different way. He wiped away all gods, goddesses and separate souls, reminding us that we are just empty space: sunya. Western scholars misinterpret Buddha's teaching as nihilism, regarding emptiness as a negation. But sunya purifies and re-creates us. Emptiness is a positive experience.

Great Space in Judaism
Jewish mystics call the emptiness of Great Space, Ayin, which in Hebrew means nothing. It is the equivalent of Mu in Zen Buddhism: the cosmic no. The mystical Jewish vision of God is Ayin Soph Aur. Soph means point, Aur means light. Ayin Soph Aur literally means pointless light. It is self-luminous space without any point of view. The light of creation (Aur ha'Olam) emanates from the darkness of Ayin. Thus, as we have seen, the Hebrew creation story in Genesis 1 describes the foundations of quantum physics: the material particle vibrating in waves from the cosmic ocean of the vacuum.

Great Space in Christianity
Christian mystics personified the emptiness of Great Space as a Virgin Mother engendering the Word or Logos, who is the seed of the material universe existing as pure thought before manifesting as matter. Christian theology insisted that creation is born out of nothing: ex nihilo. In Christian contemplative prayer, we return to the silence that was there before God said, Let there be light. Medieval mystics named this state of interior prayer, the Cloud of Unknowing. They called their practice the negative way: Via Negativa. The deepest form of Christian contemplation was apophatic rather than cataphatic prayer. In Greek, this means without any form as opposed to with form. These mystics realized God as Great Space in its radiant emptiness. Their method of Christian contemplative prayer is being revived today as Centering Prayer.

In meditation, I rest in a stillness where no images arise. This seems like nothing, because it is so empty and dark. But in my Sabbath rest from the work of thought, I discover that the Mother of God is within me as the Great Space of awareness. All creation is born from her silent womb. 

Great Space Now
Today, churches, temples and mosques exist for one purpose: to awaken space in our cluttered lives. A New Age teacher may call it cosmic consciousness. A Yogi may use the Sanskrit term, samadhi. Buddhists may call it this Great Space, bodhichitta. A Christian might say, the Christ within. The name we use makes no difference at all. Indeed, some of us discover that when we try to name Great Space, we aren't in it any more!


Great Space is a practice, not a philosophical concept. Thinking about it has no value, since pure awakened space is freedom from thought. Whatever name we may call the Great Space, we need to rest there, beyond thoughts and names. Thoughts and names kill our silence. Don't measure the ocean in a little cup. Throw the cup into the sea. Then dive in after it with your whole body.

Does this mean we must suppress thoughts or attempt to push them out of the mind? Not at all. Such misguided practice only gives us a headache! Simply realize that Great Space is always there, even when the mind is cluttered with thoughts. Just as the sky is there even when there are clouds, so Great Space is beneath thoughts, between thoughts, and pervading thoughts. Great Space is already there before a single thought can appear.

Great Space has no opposite. She embraces every belief, religion and creed. Ever boundless, taintless and clear, Great Space is within you, and you are within her. Your deepest fear and bitterest pain, your birth and death, are enfolded by the vastness of Great Space, whose nature is compassion. Stillness surrounds the battle. The solution is always already here. Become aware of Great Space. You don't even have to believe in it. Just rest.

Jai Guru Dev

The Great Space of Am

Just for this moment, don't be for or against anything. Don't say, I am a Christian, I am a Muslim, I am an Atheist, I am an American, I am an Indian, I am a Liberal, I am a Conservative, I am the 99%. Just say, I Am. Put no noun after the verb to be.

Giving up the compulsion to be somebody is so joyful. It makes us vast!

I cannot be contained by any predicate-noun that could possibly be placed after Am. What Am I? Self-luminous, all-embracing, thought-free space. A bubble floats on the sea, yet is nothing but seawater: so I float on the ocean of Am. Meet me here.

All points of view are equally valid and equally meaningless in the Great Space that contains them. That Great Space is pure awareness.

Great Space is empty, boundless, and eternally liberated from points of view that continuously arise and dissolve like those bubbles on the sea. Great Space contains all possible viewpoints, but is not one of them. At any instant, I am not my point of view. I am not my thought. I only think I am.

Learning to release my point of view is not an escape from conflict, but the solution to conflict. Any other solution is simply a new viewpoint, polarized as for or against: just another excuse to play small. This viewpoint or belief may be a comfort zone for the mind, but for the soul it is a prison.

The solution to our world crisis is not a new point of view, but the dissolution of all points of view in the Great Space.

I am not attempting to argue a point or get you to believe in anything. I only ask you, for the sake of all the earth, to rest as pure transparent awareness.

Pointless Love

Love is not a point of view. Love is pointless.

When I react to another person's narrow point of view, my reaction creates an equally narrow point of view. Now both points sustain each other through their polarization, fed by anger and fear. Equally valid as reactions to one other, they are equally meaningless in relation to the Great Space of love that contains and dissolves all possible points.

Is it possible simply to remain spacious, and listen to the other without contracting? This is precisely what Jesus meant by "loving your enemy" and "praying for those who persecute you." It takes great courage to remain spacious while gazing into the face of hostile self-righteousness. Yet this spaciousness is the Kingdom of Heaven: it saves me from condemning myself to the hell-world of a narrow point. There is no more bitter hell than the narrow little hell of being "right."

Remaining pointless in the center of conflict redeems my "enemy" as well as me, enveloping both self and other in the vast emptiness of compassion. Ultimately, I can "love my neighbor as my self" because I see that we are both breaths of the same space.

Nothing is gained by arguing with an angry person. But real transformation flowers when I enfold the other in the unified field of pure listening.

God, Body & I

The gates to the stars are the portals of my body. I shall not transcend my flesh. I shall journey through it into deeper holiness. There are worlds of angels in each atom. At the center of a proton, the boundless Christ. I need not be washed in the blood of the Lamb. I was washed in the blood of my mother's womb. That is my salvation.

The sacred practices of all great wisdom traditions are techniques of incarnation. They do not erase the human body, they glorify it: the bread of the Christian Eucharist is the body of Christ; the tribal shaman draws divine energy from plants, animals and stones; Chi flows through the soles of the martial artist's feet; the whirling dance of the Sufi is a body-prayer; Chakras blossom on the tree of the yogini's spine; and the breath of Zen meditation is here, in the Hara, the belly.

A lantern's light spreads beyond the lantern, yet the candle is essential. Without it, there is no center from which radiation can flow. The body is our wick, the mind is the flame around it, the spirit is the luminous aura that expands far beyond this brief candle.

Don't snuff out the wick of your body. Light it! Breathe the aura of your body into the galaxies. Revel in the secret of divine humanity: The journey up is a journey down. The journey out to the heavens is a journey in to the heart, to the groin, to the soles of your feet, to the sacred dust. And the dust is made of stars!

This human form is the axis of creation, connecting earth and sky, water and light, Shiva and Shakti, Mary and Christ, Creator and the smallest pebble. Your body is the nexus of North, South, East, West, the cross on which God centers herself.

Be the temple where angels meet their animal guides, where celestial devas learn plant songs, where the Holy Spirit gleams through wish-granting gems from the heart of matter. Let your body be God.

Your eye is holy. Your nose is holy. Your lips and your tongue are holy. Your skin is holy. Your belly is holy. Your penis is holy. Your clitoris is holy. The sole of your foot is holy. And because your body is holy, the "I" tethered to it as the flame to a wick is holy too. Your "I" is as much a part of your incarnation as a finger or a nose. You no more need to destroy your ego than you need to annihilate your big toe. Don't get rid of your "I". Hug your "I". Hug your "I" with divine love.

"I" is a vehicle for expressing the body's radiance and negotiating its relationship to other forms. "I" directs and coordinates the flow of divine energy through your senses. "I" is your body's antenna. You become truly happy, intimate and selfless not through denial of the "I", but through cherishing the "I." Cherishing the "I" of your body means embracing its limitations. As you embrace and forgive your own "I," you can freely cherish the "I" of your beloved.

Yes, your "I" may be flawed and fallen, but because of this it can feel what others feel, breathe with a sighing stranger, resonate with rhythms of pain and joy. Because your "I" is a little wave in the ocean of awareness, it can dance with men and angels.

Your "I" finally understands that, in this ocean, all waves are the same water. "I" is a ripple in the vastness it cannot name. But this doesn't mean your "I" must disappear! It means that "I" become a translucent cup floating in the sea of consciousness. "I" do not try to contain the sea, but allow myself to be useful, a tool for creative expression.

It is through the "I" that we enjoy the charm of creation, the charm of one becoming many for the sake of play.

Therefor rejoice in your body, delight in your "I," so that you may rejoice in everybody, and delight in the Beloved. Selah.

Be Ordinary

Have the courage to be ordinary.

It's Zen-trendy to embrace the ordinary in objects. But we are desperately afraid to be ordinary in ourselves. We must wear an invisible designer dress to keep up with everybody else on the red carpet of enlightenment. We must be 'amazing,' 'perfect,' in 'higher consciousness.' Higher than who? When you get there, are you higher than you are?

The ordinary sparkles with uniqueness. Why dress it up? Let your naked ordinary ripen from within. Just as you are, be sweet and full of juice.

There is a deeply political point to being ordinary. Some politicians insist on American Exceptionalism. They think Americans are extra-ordinary. We aren't bound by the etiquette of the ordinary. This permits us to abuse the environment, invade the Third World, and engage in corporate pillage. Our exceptionalism destroys the earth.

Let us practice the politics of the ordinary, the etiquette of nature. When we practice environmental etiquette, the earth shares her the ancient solutions of her Grace with us. Grace shines not above nature, but through nature, and to be graceful is to be ordinary. To be ordinary is not to be static, but to grow and transcend oneself greenly. Blossom like a vine, ferment like a grape, swell with green spirit, be naturally super-natural.

Then, when we become ordinary, we can see our environment as a miracle. Not in guilty anxious self-restraint, but in spontaneous gratitude, we will stop ruining our streams, our forests, our coral, soil and sky.