I Am the One Inside

I am the one inside
who knows all your disguises,
even the disguise you were already wearing
when you put on your face.
Do you remember my name?
The name of the sky,
the name of the dust,
the name of the smallest thing,
the name of wind in tall cedars,
the name of starless night:
these are just echoes of my name.
I am the space in their letters,
the emptiness in "O"
your final prayer,
the silence before birth,
the silence between
this breath and the next.
I am naked.
I have no disguise.

Too Busy to Notice

Could it be I was

just too busy to notice

I am already happy

kneeling to nothing

but the place itself

in a small garden

with a little dog

my black wet fingers

down in dahlia bulbs

ooze of new loam

from dead petals

here at the center

of the sky, one

of an infinite number of centers

surrounded by

the perfect radiance

of ordinary things?

A Call To Radical Presence

"One who expects nothing enjoys everything." (Francis of Assisi)

What is Salvation if I cannot save my own awareness? What is Prayer if I cannot meet the Spirit in this breath? Where is Heaven if I cannot feel it in the soles of my feet?

The present moment is not a vanishing point between the past and the future. The present moment is a vast and radiant kingdom, where the boundaries of past and future dissolve like shadows at dawn. Can you rest in the bounty of not-seeking? This wealth is always available. Let your breathing be the gesture of Grace. Let your mind be the flowering of Now. This is the new way to solve every problem...

We have come to the end of a phase in human evolution. This phase brought us the scientific method, deductive reasoning, the teleological theology of Christianity: all attempts to impose an ideal future on the present moment, to change the world according to a plan. We need not abandon these tools when they are useful for specific immediate problems, but we desperately need to transcend the world-view which gave rise to these modes of problem-solving. It is time to step into the new way.

At first, this way seems irresponsible. But if we have the faith to try it, we discover that Radical Presence is the ultimate response-ability. In Presence, we can respond to what is, not reacting from thought-patterns of our past conditioning, but acting from our core-silence. We no longer need to impose pre-conceived ideals about how things should be. We no longer argue from an entrenched position, inattentive to the needs of others. We see clearly that any "ideal" is an attack on the real, and "improving" the world is an attack against Being.

Honestly examine your plans and see which ones were successful and which ones were not. In every case, you will see that the plan failed unless it changed. Your creativity, responsibility and life-energy were in the moments of change, not in the plan. The moments when you responded to the Now and modified your plan were moments when you were truly living. For life is all in the present moment. Creativity never arises from the past. The only plans that work are the plans that change.

Before we devastate our economy, our environment, and our spirit with one more plan for the future, let us live! Give up hope. Give up idealism. Give up the future. This is real responsibility, and real courage. "Courage" derives from the Latin word for "heart." Courage means living from the heart, which is only possible when we are present.

The truth is, all our plans have been based on an illusion: the future does not exist. That is why Jesus said: "Take no thought for tomorrow." And Buddha taught: "The past no longer is. The future is ever unborn. But deeply observe the present moment, just as it is, and you shall attain the peace and unity of the ancient masters."

In the heart of the present moment, there is a timeless core of silence. That is the ultimate power in creation. It cannot be attained by thought: only by resting in the source of attention, before any seeking arises. In practical terms, this means declining the temptation to conceptualize anything. The real Sabbath is this resting of the will. The literal meaning of the Hebrew word Sabbath is "stop."

All contemplative techniques are simply tricks to short-circuit thinking and stop the mind. Do we have the courage to stop? Can we listen deeply together, dwelling in the hermitage at the center of the soul, deep in the wilderness prior to any concept? Only then and there does the graceful energy of the cosmos create through us. This is our new way to transform the world. In the past, it was a way for the forest monk, the contemplative. But we shall do it in the market place, in community, opening to Presence in one another.

Whether your community is a church, a faculty, a health care institution, or a business: practice this. There is no need to compete, no need to argue over conflicting plans for the future. Together, follow the flowering of Now. The next step will be clear to your community because it will be an unfolding of Presences, not a conflict of egos.

Now is the time to shift our attention from the old way of solving problems to the way of radical Presence. Do we have the courage to "dwell in possibility"?

I Think, Therefor I Was

Descartes was a moment behind himself.

"I think, therefor I am," is a non sequitur, a self- contradiction. Being and thought are absolutely separate. Being is not a thought, and thought cannot grasp Being.

We can only form a thought of what has already past. We cannot form a concept of what is.

As soon as I think, I make a graven image of what I just experienced: a snap-shot from history. And I am as far removed from one moment ago as I am from the age of the dinosaurs.

Thought has no Being whatsoever: the past has no presence. Every thought, even the most cherished religious, philosophical, or historical concept, is etched in the brain by a finger of fire that has already burned the past to ashes and moved on. The light of consciousness is alive but the ashes of thought are dead.

Then what is imagination, one may ask? A useful tool, but only a synthesis of memories. When I imagine, I fabricate an amalgam of past impressions. The mythic centaur is just a dead horse and a long-vanished bird I once saw, now combined into a fantasy.

Likewise, any I which Descartes discovers by thinking is only a bundle of past impressions, imagined as a living entity. Yet this ego has no more Being, no more presence, than the recollection of a dream.

"Am" is always present, with no compulsion to form a concept of presence. The naked clarity of "Am" cannot be contained or defined by a memory. I can Be, but I cannot think, "I Am."

God Is Simple Minded

The more we think, the less we are aware. The more we are aware, the less we need to think.

A mind perpetually thinking is dull, yet we define it as brilliant. A mind purely aware, empty of thoughts, is brilliant. But we define it as simple.

God is quite simple-minded.

In the original state of human freedom, thinking was not necessary: only the radiance of awareness. Man related to God directly through breath. "And God breathed into Adam and he became a living soul." Then, greedy for the "knowledge of good and evil," humans began to think. Our experience fragmented into abstract pairs of opposites: better, worse; earthly, heavenly; love, hate. The Fall of Man was our descent from radiant awareness into ideology.

All religions that depend on beliefs and doctrines grow from the Tree of Knowledge. That religion which requires no belief at all, only conscious breathing in the present moment, grows from the Tree of Life.