Commit Revolutionary Acts

What is revolutionary action today?

To chain oneself to the White House fence and get arrested? To shout angry protests in the street? To join a Tea Party? To hold sit-ins and sing peace songs in front of banks, shutting down commerce? To overthrow the government and spill the blood of the rich? These are hardly acts of revolution, for they have all been done before.

What is radical action now?

To slow down (this is advancement). To subtract (this is abundance). To say thank you without words to a hummingbird or flower (this is healing the earth). To savor one breath (not the last one or the next one, but this one). To welcome a distraction (this may be the gateway to a new world). And just for a moment, to be rather than to do (this drops a seed of Eternity into the earth).

True acts of revolution are radical acts of prayer. 

Painting by Floy Zittin (www.floyzittin.com)

Give Yourself 10,000 Breaks

Awakening is momentous because it is momentary. True constancy is letting this moment die. The Way is pathless.

Momentary awakenings infuse Eternal Life into the energy-field of each bodily cell. An instant of non-clinging awareness accomplishes this infusion more effectively than any sustained effort to hold onto God or maintain mindfulness for hours on end. Grace is never enforced as a regimen of remembrance.

Do we not burden ourselves with a false hope in continuity? Just observe: is there continuity? Or is continuity a fabrication of thought?

In the name of spiritual practice, we may attempt to super-impose a continuous mental watcher. But this is an artifice. Such discipline will only distance us from life: it will not transform the 'I'. The disciplined 'I' is just the same as the undisciplined 'I,' but heavier, because it carries the weight of discipline. A mental watcher is just the old egoic do-er wearing a blank mask.

True Self-Awareness is spontaneous, marvelous and, like space, impossible to hold. Liberation happens not in hours of continuous practice, but at points of discontinuity and instantaneous surrender. Don't give yourself a break today: give yourself ten thousand breaks! One infinitesimal moment of grace is worth more than five hours of concentration. It is the precious seed of wu wei, of sunya, the grain of mustard seed that Jesus spoke of.

Stop, look, listen, and let go. The very letting go of the seed plants it deeper, shedding the husk of I. From this momentous momentary awakening springs the eternal Am.

"I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces abundant fruit." (John 12:24)

Jai Guru Dev.

Relax Into Your Work

Some are called to be peace makers, some are called to be warriors. Some are called to be saviors of the poor, and some are called to be investors who promote the growth of commerce. Some are called to be artists or poets, some are called to be scientists or scholars. Some are called to be mothers, and some are simply called to Be.

Abandoning all comparison, relax into your own work. Your calling is neither inferior nor superior to the work of another. This universe would never be the same without you and your infinitesimal stitch of thread, whose effect on the eternal beauty of the whole cannot be gauged by anyone living today.

"Greater to do thine own work, however humble, than to attempt the work of another, however noble." - Bhagavad Gita 18:47 

What Is 'Bliss'?

"The lover wields the sword of Nothingness in order to dispatch all but God: notice what remains after Nothing." ~ Rumi

"One infinite No creates a universe of finite yeses."  ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

I. BLISS IS NOTHING 

Bliss is not an energy, a divine light, a life-force, or an outcome of spiritual practice. Bliss is absolutely nothing. 

Bliss cannot be quantified, given or received. It cannot be communicated to you by a guru or a lover. Bliss is neither a transaction nor the result of purification. Neither vegan diet, nor yoga, nor celibacy, nor years of meditation lead to bliss. Bliss is giving up on all this.

Many wisdom teachers, from Gautama Buddha to Saint Francis, from Quaker founder George Fox to Eckhart Tolle, tell of breakthroughs that were not results of successful spiritual practice, but awakenings in the heart of depression or illness. Liberation simply happened in a moment of blessed hopelessness.

Blessed are the hopeless, who give up the bondage of believing in anything whatsoever that might save them. Only then is bliss possible, because the mind is freed from the boundaries of the quest for anything other than what is.

Bliss is not something. Something has boundaries. But bliss is the marvelous explosion that occurs when mind becomes no-thing and its boundaries dissolve. This includes even the most positive thinking, or belief in the most benevolent God. Hence the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart prayed, "O God, quit me of God!"

In a private meeting with my Guruji, I asked him, "Who are you, really? Are you the world teacher? The Avatar? Are you like Krishna, or Buddha, or Jesus come again?" He looked at me with eyes containing the uncontainable emptiness where galaxies arise and dissolve. Then he gently said, "No, no. I am nobody." He was absolutely serious. That's when I knew he was my guru, though it took me years to realize what he meant.

When we desire to repeat a blissful experience, that desire is very limiting: a subtle form of pain. In the moment of bliss, there is relief from the pain of seeking it. Relaxing for an instant, the mind is free to expand into its own essence, which is the blissful subject we mistake for an object. After that instant of Self-referral, ignorance returns and we create a concept of "bliss" as an object out there, something to be sought.

Bliss is never the repetition of experience.

There is no causal relationship whatsoever between any object and the joy we seemingly derive from it. All joy comes from within, from the Self. Yet we seek to repeat the moment of bliss by seeking it in another object. The Yogis have a shockingly effective image for this delusion. It is like a mongrel chewing on a brittle bone, desperately seeking the taste of fresh blood, which of course is produced in its own mouth as it gnaws on the sharp bone...

Bliss relinquishes the glamor of objects. However beautiful the object of perception, it is like a dry bone. Glamor is, in fact, the cause of our suffering: not because it is there, but because I gnaw on it and claim it as mine.

Bliss has no substance and no flavor, not even sweetness. Perhaps I lick an ice cream cone to taste my favorite flavor, which I've been craving all afternoon. I close my eyes and say, Mmmmm, returning to the original sound of creation, the great Pranava mantra. Yet it is not the ice cream that gives this moment of bliss: it is the simple fact that I got what I was seeking and stopped seeking it! Bliss arises in the cessation of craving.

The same irony occurs in spiritual techniques. They do not result in bliss: they simply focus the mind in a limitation that is more sattvic, more purifying than other attachments. But when my mind becomes fatigued with even the most subtle sattvic focus, I give up the practice for a moment and just let go. That is when my mind transcends. From the subtlest bridge to the infinite, I leap into no-thing.

There I delight in an explosion of bliss, brought on by no practice but the exhaustion of practice. This bliss is always already there as the prior nature of non-seeking awareness. I simply dipped into it when I gave up every effort to seek it.

Hearing this, one now wants to make letting go one's next technique: a technique of surrender. But this is just another trap. Surrender is not a technique. Surrender cannot be practiced. The very attempt to practice surrender creates more boundaries.

The great Nisargadatta Maharaj said, "There can be no causal connection between practice and wisdom. But the obstacles to wisdom are deeply affected by practice." 

So let's stick with the practice we already have, but take it more lightly! Know that our spiritual practice is a kind of good-natured joke. The more lightly we take it, the more frequently moments of bliss can explode out of non-doing and non-seeking. If we keep our practice soft, and remember it is just a trick to short-circuit the mind, there will come an end to this game. There will come a falling away of the do-er. Limits will dissolve forever in the silent ocean of the void, which is pure Grace.

 II. THE VOID

At the heart of every spiritual tradition, bliss is associated with the void. In Buddhism, it is called sunya, emptiness; in Yoga, nirbija samadhi, awareness without content; in Christian mysticism, the cloud of unknowing; in Jewish mysticism, ain soph aur, the light of infinite nothing; and among the Sufis of Islam, fannah, annihilation of the self.

What do mystics mean by the void? And why would it be blissful?

The void is pure awareness, self-knowing without content. When awareness is empty of all conceptual form, it tastes the ever-expanding thrill of its own infinity. Pure awareness is infinite because it contains no-thing to prevent the natural explosion of boundless space in its own stillness. I not only enjoy but  indeed I am the void's ever-expanding thrill when I courageously want not, do not, and be not.

Warning! The void is not an idea. An idea of the void is not blissful. Many seekers waste a life-time trying to think the void. Those who cling to the conceptual idea of the void become very dull people. Their contemplation is not the void, but a lifeless idea about the void.

Real meditation is awakening as the void itself. The void is already there before any idea of it arises. The void is sparkling emptiness prior to thought. The void is the source of creation, the ground of being, the ocean of communion with God. It is pure bliss.

So don't think about it. Dive into it. Drown in the void by relaxing all efforts to attain anything. Then bliss takes over. Bliss becomes the do-er. Bliss performs all good for the world. Bliss flowers into such selfless motivation, such energy, such luminosity, because absolutely no one is there, no one at all: no one is doing anything!

 III. SHENPA

In Tibetan Buddhism, the glamorous energy-field around the object of attachment is called shenpa. We have no suitable translation in English, though I think the closest concept would be temptation, or what I call glamor. I will use the term, shenpa, because it is neutral to most of us and therefor will not have any shenpa of its own!

The energy-field of shenpa can be positive or negative, pleasing or displeasing: it may even re-polarize and fluctuate from one to the other. This is why the intense affection through which some couples fall in love soon turns to bitter distrust, sadness, or even hatred. We have all known couples who have such toxic attachment to each other that they continuously fall in love, then fight, then fall in love all over again.

It is important to see that shenpa, the glamor that draws us to an object, is not part of the object itself, but an accompanying energy-field that arises from our past karma. We carry the shenpa for that object: This is the real secret of attachment!

Why do I fall in love with one particular person and not everyone? Why do other people not fall in love with my beloved? Why do I crave butterscotch and hate vanilla, while you crave vanilla and hate butterscotch? If the exciting energy were really in the objects and not in us, we would all love the same objects. But the truth is, we already carry our attachments or aversions to particular objects. In the case of  intense attachments, the relationship may go back through many lifetimes.

Shenpa feels like it comes from the object, but it really comes from the excitation of my own energy-field upon contact with a particular perception. This glamor is not who I am, however. It is not my consciousness, though it feeds off the energy of my consciousness and binds it. The shenpa for an object is a karmic reaction I have carried with me. I may mistake it for myself, and imagine that I cannot live without it. But the desire I feel for that object or that person is not me.

When the shenpa is very strong, I may feel love at first sight: a deep and ancient shenpa, aroused by someone with whom I have plenty of karma to work out! Soul mates? If soul mates truly exist, they do not meet through shenpa. They are friends who are free from shenpa when they meet. They live in intimate freedom from each other with each other. True friends never cling.

Should I give in to shenpa or resist it? This is the dilemma of attachment. If I give in to shenpa, the object draws me into an unconscious and addictive relationship where I soon discover that the object, as raw matter, does not excite me after all. This leaves me confused and betrayed by my own feelings.

"Why did I eat that? It really didn't taste very good and only upset my stomach. The funny thing is, I knew it would upset my stomach, and I ate in anyway. Just like last time..."

"Maybe I'm not so in love with that person, because last night left me feeling bleak. But I know we'll do it again over and over, though it never seems to work out."

These reactions are signs of shenpa. I keep washing up on the stone-cold shores of the material world - my love, passion or excitement strangely exhausted. Shenpa leads to disillusion. Yet it returns, and I keep coming back for more. Thus the cycle of bondage, karma, and addiction...

Now, what if I try to deny the shenpa: in Western terms, resist the temptation? That which I resist grows stronger. Trying to deny the shenpa is like trying not to think of a purple monkey. Try not to think of a purple monkey right now. What happens? Purple monkeys jumping everywhere! Resisting the object's glamor only increases the power of its temptation.

So we seem to be stuck in a catch 22. What to do?

Watch the shenpa rise and fall without acting on it. See it, Be it, and Free it.

This means, (1) observe the energy of attachment without pushing it out or inviting it in. Then, (2) While witnessing the energy, merge with it: become the energy without losing awareness as the observer. It is as though the energy was a subtle limb of one's own body, yet it is not the self who watches. Notice what has happened here! This is step (3). The shenpa is no longer part of the object, yet it is not the self either. The shenpa is experienced as something foreign, floating between me and the object. I do not claim that energy, and neither does the object. There is now clear seeing of the object without shenpa, without attachment. Spiritual practice, at the deepest level, results in pure objectivity.

Through non-resistance, the energy's hold on me has loosened. The shenpa energy now dissolves, for it has neither an object nor a Self to cling to. All that is left is the no-thing of sparkling consciousness, witnessing the world. In Rumi's words, Notice what remains after Nothing...

I discover that I can be energized by shenpa instead of attached to it! Instead of resisting the glamor of an object, or letting it blind me into action, I can accept the shenpa as free energy and convert it into consciousness. That in fact is what the glamor really was: some portion of my own consciousness bound up and projected outside, desperately attached to an object. Now that the shenpa is no longer attached to the object, it is free to dissolve back into its source: pure awareness.

Imagine how energized we would be if all the shenpa, all the glamor we projected on the material world, dissolved back into our own subjectivity. With no binding attachment to objects, we could overflow with an inward light, the nectar of awareness. Not that we couldn't enjoy the perception of objects, but we could enjoy them without clinging. In the words of the 19th century British poet, William Blake: 

He who binds to himself a joy
doth the winged life destroy. 
He who kisses the joy as it flies 
lives in eternity's sunrise!


Just let the glamor be there, vibrating around objects, whether sensual or celestial. If you think a beautiful human body or blossoming rose has glamor, consider the inebriating sweetness that surrounds an angel, or a celestial rose! Yes, the devas in higher worlds are quite bound by shenpa, for the golden chains of a shenpa ever so sweet are still chains that bind. That is why even the gods must be born on earth to gain liberation. Only on an earthly planet, where consciousness can experience the contrast of pain and pleasure in combined opposites, can one gain liberation from the glamor of things.

When we walk through a garden, do we deny ourselves the pleasure of seeing and smelling the flowers? Of course not. Neither do we feel that we must pick every blossom and take it home. We simply enjoy the color and fragrance, gliding through the garden without grasping. Grasping no flowers, we grasp no thorns.

If I leave no footprints in this garden, its flowers will leave no footprints in me.

Whom Shall I Blame?

 Let's see, whom shall I blame for my world's misery today? Capitalists? Socialists? The Military? The Muslims? And whom shall I thank for my world's beauty today? Jesus? Krishna? The Goddess? The Brain of Science? Can I not see that every wave of blame or love arises from the Self and returns to the Self? No one has created these conditions but I.

No, I do not create the world, but I create the way I see the world. And that is the world I act on.

Worry About Everthing or Nothing

"Don't worry." (Lord Jesus, Matthew 6)
"Don't worry." (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita 18)

We either have nothing to worry about, or everything to worry about. Worry is not selective. Once we become a worrier, we worry about everything, from the collapse of civilization to a smudge on our collar. Worry becomes our way of life, our identity. If we can't find a problem to worry about, we invent one.

So much of our mental energy invested in worry! But we can choose to put this energy into observing the worry rather than feeding it. Thus we create a space that is far more vast than anything we could worry about, and this vasteness is the awareness of the Witness. 

Shifting energy from the content of worry to its observation, awareness grows clear and sharp, and the worry becomes a mere sensation in the body. Try it and see. 

It is impossible to simply stop worrying or suppress it: that leads to inner warfare and stress. But if we become aware of our worry and watch it, as a mother watches over her crying children, then the energy of the mind resolves into clarity, a clarity overflowing with compassion. Compassion cannot worry.

At the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, Don't worry (18:66). And in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, Jesus says it over and over again: don't worry. Don't worry about what you will eat... Don't worry about what you will wear... Don't worry about tomorrow. Instead, he tells us, we  might live as flowers in the field and birds in the air, utterly natural in the present moment, free of worry. That is real faith.

To worry is to be unnatural, tangled in the past and future. The past and future do not exist in nature. The past and future only exist in the mind. The mind is unnatural.

Don't take it from me: take it from Jesus and Krishna! There is no need to worry about anything, not even death. Once we go down the path of worry, fastening the mind onto one tiny problem, we worry about everything! We search for problems and catastrophize every situation. Worry becomes our food.

The cure for worry is surrender of the mind to God. Until that happens, we can practice self-observation: keep observing the worry and it will diminish. The witness will expand in silence, and the negative thoughts will lose their power, for we see that they are only stresses dissolving in the brain. 

Observation is the bridge between suffering and surrender. When the mind is afflicted with the ten thousand doubts of human life, be a Yogi and observe this mind. Then when you are ready, be a Bhakti and surrender this mind.

Om Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.

The final discipline is to embrace whatever happens with an open heart. This is not passivity: it is response ability.

Sutra

 
"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." (Buddhism, Heart Sutra)

"Ano raniyan, mahato mahiyan. One atom of the smallest is vaster than the greatest." (Upanshads)

I need look no further than physics to confirm the Buddha's words. Vast empty space permeates my body. Compared to the scintillating substance of their atoms, bodies are nearly all void, empty. As the opening verse of the Bible describes it, "In the beginning place, where God is creating the universe, the earth is a formless void."

The so-called "particles" in an atom have no real substance. They are little balls of "matter," for matter does not exist. Each supposed "particle of matter" is an all-pervading field of radiance, at the center of which a fleeting wave of pure mathematical intelligence flares. "Particles" are glittering equations written in the vacuum. Have you ever written your name with your finger in the air? Did it have any substance? Was it really "there"?

Particles of matter appear and dissolve instantaneously as unbalanced mathematical equations, teetering on the graceful edge of chaos. And this imbalance of equations, this loss of mathematical symmetry, is the dance of creation. I cherish the random sub-nuclear frolic of imperfection: for if these wave-equations ever solved themselves, the universe would vanish into the stillness of perfect symmetry.

Blessed be the creativity of chaos.

How spacious is my body? I make room for several galaxies in a molecule of my fingertip. Each nerve is a tunnel of stars. My flesh is filled with clear skies. And in the heart of every atom is a vast luminous trembling silence, an asymmetrical vacuum ever whispering, "Be light, weave yourself from sourceless beams, and dance!"

My Soul Mate Is My Soul

  

Do I know the Light in the mind that the mind cannot know, shining before knowledge? Can I taste the Light that satisfies every kind of hunger - for wine, caresses, or God? Have I met the Light who is the one Companion in every relationship, who waits for me in me, more intimate than

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I?

Have I gazed into the face of Christ, of Krishna, of Buddha, of Mother Divine, and seen that they are rays of my own unborn countenance?

I spend lifetimes searching for a soul mate, moving from lover to lover and guru to guru - which is the same quest - looking for the right person. Yet the right person was dwelling all along in the core of my heart, patiently waiting for my homecoming, longing for my longing to remember its source, and whispering in a thousand hints a day, "Dissolve your search in the unconditional astonished embrace of Me!" My soul mate is my soul.

By being Two, we never become One. By being One, we radiate All.

Most relationships are simply needs. One may feel, I need you. Or, I need to be needed. But needing is not love. Love happens when need drowns in the ocean of the heart, pressed out and overflowing with the nectar of awareness, the radiance of the Self who creates this universe in a burst of splendor, gifting the world from the center of silence.

"For the God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts with the light of the knowledge of divine glory, shining in the face of Christ." (2 Corinthians 4:6)

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

Comfort's in heaven and we are on the earth,
Where nothing lives but crosses, cares and grief. 

(Shakespeare, Richard II, Act 2)

How could there be a God if suffering is permitted? Why would any God allow it? This is the perennial question of seekers.

God allows suffering so that we may see through it.

If God did not permit suffering, then we would be stuck in an incomplete and hungry happiness defined by mere pleasure. So from time to time, the Almighty permits us to take on as much as we can bear. Precisely in that unbearable moment, we see through the pain, and our vision becomes truly vast. When we see through pain, we see That which is ever the same in both suffering and joy. That is Samadhi, which in Sanskrit means sameness of vision.

In the realm of the gods, where all is pleasure, Samadhi cannot become permanent. Gods must be reborn as human beings on earth to gain liberation. You may be one of them.

Gods must be crucified. Samadhi becomes permanent only in a world where suffering is possible, demanding a vision that grows so laser-like it makes our pain transparent. In the concentrated Now of suffering, see through your pain into the vastness of Being.

Have you not noticed? Those who have suffered carry a depth, an expansion in their eyes. When they look at you, you fall into it.

Good Morning Every Body

This Sunday morning I am fully alive in my body.

I have no wish to be elsewhere, for my flesh is radiant with Presence. Like a flame around a wick, the glow of Presence infuses each ligament of me, awakens each sleepy fiber, oils every aching joint, expands the atom with miraculous breath, and juices my thirsting cells with delight. Every single electron of my body is a portal to one infinite Sun. This is God's body, a gift.

I relinquish every teaching that says, "You are not this body." Such teachings do not help me, for I dwell on earth. I Am this body. I embrace this body as the matrix of a boundless Self, condensed into particles of bliss.

Our American culture has become a mass out-of-body experience, millions of us hypnotized by ideas, marching down city streets to get somewhere ideal, somewhere else. But where is else? Has anyone ever been there? Were we there when we arrived?

The root of every political and economic problem is that we are not present to our own eyes, our skin, our breath, our souls touching the ground. This mind is displaced from its beating heart. This spirit is in exile from its land of living flesh.

Why do we so unflinchingly support governments that exploit the poor and make war on human bodies? Because too many teachers have convinced us that, in the service of Prophets or Profits, bodies are expendable.

Bodies matter. Matter matters. Jesus, Buddha and all avatars demonstrate that God takes human incarnation: not just in their bodies but in your body, my body, and the body of each newborn child. Bodies are sacred.

There's no getting around, above, or out of the body. We must go through it, every vibration of it's pleasure and pain. The word vibration has the same linguistic root as the word fiber.

Matter is not an obstacle to Consciousness. Matter is the doorway to Consciousness. Matter matters.

To transcend the body, embrace it. To embrace is to glorify. To glorify is to expand. To expand is to dissolve. Honor God in your body. This is the bread of life.

Instructions for Stepping Through the Portal

First, agree to be here, weighted
and wedded to this place.
Breathe out, sinking from head
to heart space. Rooted
by your body's warmth, surrender
what was and will be:
excess electricity in your brain.
Now rest at the radiant Door
between heartbeats. No need
to knock. It was never closed.
Inhale. Step through, Breather of Light.
Hear the un-struck gong of the Source,
harmony's new Heaven, new Earth,
drenched with longing and suffused
with luminous blossoms that once
were your prayers. Practice this
as a mother-to-be rehearses
breathing before birth pangs.
When the moment comes,
will you stand with me here,
in the heart?
__________________________

There is nothing to fear for those who rest in the heart...

I did not write this as a poem. I wrote it as a practical instruction, which I share because it may be useful in the moment of global energy transition.

Our survival value no longer lies in monetary wealth, weapons of war, technology or science, but in the practice of the presence of God. Truth is not about economics or political change any more: it's about Dimensional Shift.

Of course, we are in the midst of that shift now. The vibrational frequency of this so-called "physical" world accelerates daily, at an increasing rate. To those whose minds resist transformation, clinging to old patterns of understanding, looking to old institutions for knowledge, this incremental vibration-shift causes anxiety, depression, disorientation, and mysterious bodily illnesses with no cure. On the other hand, those who prepare their vehicles for dimensional shift through regular meditation, a pure natural diet, cleansing breath, and physical exercise such as yoga and tai chi, now feel more freedom and lightness within, even as the world around them seems to fall apart.

Incremental though this change appears to us now, there will come a final crescendo, a Moment of Transition. The materialist will experience this moment as panic and collapse. The intuitive will experience this moment as confirmation: longed-for enlightenment in a flood of Radiance.

The Radiance begins in the depths of the heart, on the abstract level of feeling. But very quickly, in a matter of seconds, it explodes to engulph the external world, infusing every perception with that which was, in the previous age, a "Light Within." We used to see creatures as separate physical objects. Now we see the Radiance as foreground and objects as background, suspended, dissolved in an ocean of all-pervading Spirit. For the light we behold in the new vibration is the very light of our own consciousness, animating the world around us - each leaf, each berry, each clod of earth, sparkling with the awareness that perceives it! Scripture calls this the "New Creation," a "new Heaven and a new Earth."

The whole purpose for stepping into this next phase of human evolution is to merge the subject and object, fusing but not confusing our consciousness with the Earth. As the light of consciousness explodes from within to without, scriptural language describes it radiating from "East" to "West." This is symbology. Our inward subjective nature is the "East." The external realm of our sensory perception is the "West."  The light from the East will fill the West.

Thus Jesus describes our transformation as a blinding flare of light, moving from East to West. He tells us not to panic, but to stand in the heart, "the Holy Place."

"When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place: whoever reads this, let him understand... For as the lightning comes out of the East, and shines even unto the West, so shall be the coming of the Son of man." (Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 24)

In that moment of transfiguration, you are the new and cosmic child of God: you are the "Son of Man." The "Holy Place" is not the sanctuary in a temple or on a mountain top, but your deepest meditative silence, centered in the heart-space. Jesus makes it clear that "the kingdom of heaven is within you." (Luke, chapter 17) "The time is coming and now is here when the true worshipers will worship the father in Spirit and in Truth." (John, chapter 4)

Today, many of us worry about the coming change. We fear for our property and the safety of our flesh. We burden ourselves with anxious preparation for an apocalypse. Even those who claim not to believe in such things, and will not talk about them, feel the tension of dread in the air.

But there is nothing to fear for those who rest in the heart. When that moment comes, our salvation won't be found in wearing survivalist gear, or hoarding fuel and water. Our salvation won't be found in the backyard garden we've so carefully cultivated, our solar-heated off-grid home, or our bomb shelter. 

If we have cultivated our inner garden, through the habit of resting the mind in the heart, we will find salvation in a simple effortless shift of attention. Through the heart, we will gracefully surrender I  to Am. We will step through the portal to a realm of more luminous vibration. We will step into Paradise. And our bodies will come too.


Kiesha in Zurich from kedarvideo on Vimeo.

My Yoga

My favorite asana is not the continuous motion
of clouds on a summer evening,
not the sky in its Posture of Perfect Emptiness,
nor the motion of the Cobra, the Locust, the Lion.
To each a yoga, ancient as its innocence.
Mine the Fallen Angel Pose: whatever
my body is doing just now, like November leaves
finally touching the Earth, mere matter
rooted by the rolling world in the mystery
of weight, inevitably sacred.

Photo: 'The Palouse, Eastern Washington,' by Kevin McNeal

Phoenix

When an empire falls, it doesn't happen gradually. Everything collapses at once. The web of politics, economics, technology, education and spiritual life cannot suffer incremental or partial decline: it all comes apart with astonishing rapidity. From these ashes, already scattered around us, what terrible phoenix of beauty will arise? Creatives don't wait for others to tell them. The end-time begins now. There's no script. Your breath is the only prophecy. You are the phoenix.

Willy's Sight

 "My work is love. My discipline is love. Love is my pathless way. I also like to chew on underpants." -Willy

"Not to realize anything is sleep.
To realize something is a dream.
To realize that there is nothing to realize is awakening.
I just realized that my new dog food sucks."   - Willy

"I became Dog-Realized when I gave up worrying about food, drink, shelter, and what tomorrow would bring, and just surrendered my heart to the master." - Willy

Bija

Breathe out. Let your attention sink all the way down into the abdomen. The space behind the navel is the dark soil from which enlightenment flowers. We who live in a head-and-brain culture usually forget the profound importance of this space deep in the body. Plant your attention there like a Seed in the belly of infinite possibility.

With each breath, sink more deeply into the Seed, buried in this rich dark soil.

From the Seed a stem will ascend, flowering in the region of the solar plexus. An unspeakably beautiful rose will open its petals, outward and upward, to contain the whole universe. In truth, the cosmic creation is nothing but the fragrance, the effusion, of this rose in your heart. Shiva Sutras declare, Hridaya chitta-sanghattat, drishya-svapada darshanam: "When the mind is united with the heart, one perceives the objective world as a dream-like projection of consciousness."

Do not pick this flower, tempting though it may be. Do not grasp for it. Let the rose blossom without directing your effort or attention toward it. Make no concept of this flowering. It effortlessly flourishes in the periphery of your awareness, beyond concern: like a reflection, a mirage, a flame above the candle. It is the universe. But you remain buried, rooted in the formless, planted in the soil of placeless darkness.

Soon, the radiant blossom in your solar plexus attracts a honey bee. The honey bee hovers above the solar flower, buzzing in the region of your heart. The bee is known by its sound: a hum pulsing from silence and subsiding in silence. This hum is the unstruck sound of God's eternal Word, the bija mantra. You may hear it as Ham, Ram, Shyam, Yaum (the Hebrew divine name), Jeshum (the "Jesus Prayer" of Christian mystics), or some other permutation of Om. This sound arises from the infinite depths of the heart, not from the lips. It is the Word that creates the cosmos. The Vedas declare, Adau Bhagavan shabdha rasahi. "In the beginning, the Lord first manifested as sound." Likewise, the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word." Now this divine Word visits your heart, like a honey bee, to drink the nectar of shakti that rises through your spine.

Do not attempt to repeat this sound. It does not belong to your mind, for it is not a thought. Do not try to hold the hum of the bee as it fades back into silence. Let the bija rise or fall by the power of Grace, a gift, the love song of a bee to a flower.

Attention remains sunk in the primal darkness behind the navel. Divine light blossoms in the solar plexus, without any effort to direct attention there. The fragrance of devotion awakens the heart, sending a thrill through all creation. Then the hum of the bee is heard as God descends into your body to drink the honey of devotion from the flower of non-attachment.

Meditation is the marriage of discipline and bliss. And the discipline is simply not to cling. 

The Path to Peace is Not a Straight Line

Tolerance is not enough.

Tolerance implies that my view is central and superior, while yours, though suspect, is permitted at the fringe of reality. We need to go beyond tolerance, to celebration.

Celebrating our differences means rejoicing in a world where people and cultures are delightfully and divinely “we,” instead of the God-forsaken world where everyone mirrors “me.”

Gandhi loved his Hindu heritage. He also devoted his life to enacting the teachings of Jesus, whom he loved as well. When asked if he was Hindu or Christian, Gandhi replied, “I am a Hindu, I am Christian, I am a Muslim, I am a Jew.” Gandhi was not confused: He saw truth shining laser-like through many faces, many traditions. Gandhi was a patriotic citizen of the whole earth.

When we enter the ecstatic heart of our own religion, we transcend our religion, and discover the ecstatic heart of all religions.

The way to peace is not a straight line. It opens in all directions, like a flower.
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This short editorial letter which I published in The Olympian, Olympia WA, on October 3 was chosen by the editorial staff as their 'Letter of the Month.' It was a response to the bigotry faced by Muslim Americans.

Beyond Tolerance

Tolerance is not enough.

Tolerance implies that my view is central and superior, while yours, though suspect, is permitted at the fringe of reality. We need to go beyond tolerance, to celebration.

Celebrating our differences means rejoicing in a world where people and cultures are delightfully and divinely “we,” instead of the God-forsaken world where everyone mirrors “me.”

Gandhi loved his Hindu heritage. He also devoted his life to enacting the teachings of Jesus, whom he loved as well. When asked if he was Hindu or Christian, Gandhi replied, “I am a Hindu, I am Christian, I am a Muslim, I am a Jew.” Gandhi was not confused: He saw truth shining laser-like through many faces, many traditions. Gandhi was a patriotic citizen of the whole earth.

When we enter the ecstatic heart of our own religion, we transcend our religion, and discover the ecstatic heart of all religions.

The way to peace is not a straight line. It opens in all directions, like a flower.
_______________

This short editorial letter which I published in The Olympian, Olympia WA, on October 3 was chosen by the editorial staff as their 'Letter of the Month' for October. It was a response to the bigotry faced by Muslim Americans.