Green

There is an unmapped wilderness in your heart that the intellect can never find. The intellect only wants to remain in boundaries, definitions, civilized properties deeded and owned: mine and yours.
But to enter the heart is to get lost in the intimacy of the Unknown. Follow Lao'tzu there, not by looking for the Master's path, but by plunging into your own green undergrowth, where there is no path at all. Leave the empire where you never were, and come to the forest where you already are. God has no name. She is the wild green spirit of the heart.
Deep pain in my heart tonight. America needs a new concept of justice, one that does not entail getting back, getting even, or getting revenge. Let justice be consumed in compassion. Every person, black or white, Christian or Muslim, rich or poor, is equally and incomparably precious in the eyes of the Divine. Because our souls, in fact, are made of the very light through which God sees.

Sahaj

Desire is never fulfilled, because as soon as fulfillment comes, the mind is already off on another desire. Better to surrender awareness to the place in the heart where desire is fulfilled before it arises. This is Sahaj Samadhi. And better yet, to be filled with overflowing gratitude at the sheer diamond radiance of Existence itself, no matter what arises or dissolves within it.

Pathless

"Give up all other dharmas, all other paths,
and simply surrender to Me..." ~Bhagavad Gita, 18:66

Just assume that everyone is more spiritual than you,
everyone has a purer, more vegan GMO-free diet,
everyone is one-up on you in political correctness,
with a far more impeccable resume of service projects
to the needy...Then fall on the earth in surrender,
totally relaxed in the knowledge that you are irredeemably
hopeless, more lowly than a blade of grass, and be
the happiest of creatures! For God has no choice but to
cradle you in Her breast. In Kali Yuga, surrender is the
pathless way. All other paths are like climbing a stairway
of flames.

Lila

Jesus was and is a human soul of supreme beauty, who with his consort and feminine energy, Mary Magdalene, reflected the celestial relationship of Krishna and Radha, the eternal lovers who play as Two within the Unity of Absolute Being. The generation of all the energy in creation comes from their lila, their love play.

And when we meet the Beloved in the nuptial garden between two breaths, deep in our own heart, we recapitulate this timeless play of Radha Krishna, Christ and Mary, illuminating the earth and raising its vibration. This is the work of divine love.

Water Prayer

The next time you hold a glass of water, before you drink the water, speak gently to the water in friendship. Walk through the door of each water molecule. Let the breath of your prayer pass through every atom of water into the Water Spirit. The Spirit of Water will hear your prayer and feel your sincerity. 'Thank you, Water. Please return to me. Forgive me. I love you.'

Photo: Christina Coffman praying for rain in the North West, where over 300 major fires are ravaging Washington State.

What Meditation Is Not

I thought we'd gotten over this. I still hear people dismiss meditation as "thinking about nothing," or "trying to make the mind a blank."
"Thinking about nothing" is not the condition of No-Thought, which is transcendental awareness, the dynamic radiance of the Void, whence every particle in the universe arises.
"Making the mind a blank" is fruitless, because a blank mind is still the mind. Real meditation means going beyond the mind, and diving deep into the sparkling source of energy which creates both mind and body.
Thinking of nothing and making the mind a blank only produce dullness and inertia. But the sign of meditation is an invigorated body, a purified nervous system, a heart bathed in bliss consciousness.
Transcending the mind is not negating the mind, but refreshing the mind at its source. After the stillness of meditation, intellect returns to activity clear, refreshed, and serene.
I offer this not in criticism, but as an invitation. Please don't waste another moment! Get initiated into real meditation, not just for your own sake, but for the sake of our planet.
Peace on earth comes from peaceful people, because peaceful people are dynamically peaceful in their actions. Peace on earth arises naturally when awareness is established in divine peace.
Jai Guru Dev

Falling Asleep

As you fall asleep tonight, take a break from saving the world. With your radiant mind, kiss your eyelids gently shut, then follow your breath to the glow that flowers beneath your breastbone. Rest your mind on the pillow of your heart.

Now feel the Lord of Creation enfolding your body in the petals of an emerald lotus. Sink into the hum of silence at the center, a quietness deeper inside you than your own name.

Drown in the green depths of the heart's space, and know that this primal repose in your Self is the seed of all other affections. Your love is one and the same as God's love for you.
Don't think for one moment that this is imagination. All else is imagination.








Don't expect life from a flower 
that is not rooted in the ground.
Don't expect truth from a mind 

that is not rooted in silence.

Transcend and Become Present


The central event of our age is the discovery that we can transcend the mind.

The knowledge gained by transcending the mind is infinitely greater than anything the mind could know, even though this knowledge contains no object, no image no thought.

This "knowledge" is not the known, but the knower. It is the luminosity of consciousness its Self. It is the only peace, the only freedom. Through the practice of regular meditation, the radiant and boundless transparency of this knowledge can become the ground of our daily experience.

This knowledge, of course, is recorded in the ancient Upanishads. But it was the domain of the rare mystic, immersed in his ascetic religious lifestyle. Today, a critical mass of humanity is realizing this direct experience of transcendental conscious, beyond the mind, yet deeper within the Self: the spaciousness that is here before a single thought arises. When great numbers of people touch this awareness, the world will be transformed by their silent radiance. 


The consciousness transcending thought may be known even during sleep, as described in the Bible's Song of Songs: "I sleep, but my heart wakes." Even while the body is in deepest slumber, awareness remains awake in the bliss of Turiya. Turiya is defined in the Mandukya Upanishad as the fourth state of consciousness, distinct from waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. Beginning with an article in Scientific American, 1972, "A Hypo-Metabolic State" by Dr. Robert Keith Wallace, modern science has confirmed that this meditative awareness is physiologically distinct, and not to be confused with either REM or dreamless sleep.

Turiya is self-effulgent silence free from thought. It is the natural birthright of humanity. We know that when we lack sleep, our lives become stressed and unhealthy. Humans who lack the regular experience of Turiya also live in an unnaturally stressed and unhealthy condition.  

Forgetting to meditate has produced a human race that is hyper-active, aggressive, angry, prone to illness, and inefficient. But incorporating Turiya into our daily lives, through meditation, we become fully natural and healthy human beings. Life simply becomes whole. What if a flower has soil, air and sunlight but no water? It withers. But when we add the fourth element, water, the flower blossoms. One would not say that this flower is saintly, or that it has been touched by the supernatural. One merely says that it is healthy. It is a normal flower.

Those who incorporate Turiya into their daily round of waking, dreaming and sleep, become normal human beings. The present state of humanity can only be called abnormal.  Bringing meditation into the daily life of humanity is the normal way to establish peace on earth and restore harmony to civilization. No political, economic, or religious ideology can do this. What is lacking is simply awareness at its most fundamental and silent level.

Mind without silence is ego, and ego inevitably undermines peace. The ego-mind feeds on division, argument, and conflict. Through conflict, the ego acquires a sense of self-importance. Such a mind knows how to engage in conflict, but has no idea how to engage in peace. Because peace is not an idea; peace is silence within. When this inward silence underlies our actions, our actions are sane.

Every peace conference, political assembly, business meeting, or university class should begin with silent transcendental meditation, because successful work arises from inner silence. We are more available to one another when we transcend ideology and dissolve the busy chatter of thinking. Then every thought springs out of the ground of silence as a flower of pure intention, manifesting in  appropriate action free from strain. To become an effective community, church, business or government, let us begin our activism with transcendental deep meditation. Jai Guru Dev.
 ________

LINK: NBC News on how Transcendental Meditation transforms inner city schools in San Francisco.

What Really Matters?

We imagine ourselves divided by race, religion, party, class, and tribe. These divisions are mental constructs, not biological facts.
If we are to survive, we need to more deeply honor the elements we actually share in common: the air we breathe, the aquifer we drink, the soil that grows our food, the sunlight that graces us with energy.
Every human being is made of soil, water, wind and fire. This Sunday morning, I walk barefoot in the dew, with a silent mind and a heart full of gratitude. Earth matters: This is my worship, and my politics.
Published in The Olympian, editorials, 8/16/15

In Every Atom

 
We love the mountaintop journey, because up there we breathe a boundless clarity, a radiant blue, which hints of something we secretly long to find inside us...
The great adventure is coming back down, to experience here in the valley that all-pervading sky at the heart of every muddy atom, and in each cell of our terrestrial flesh: a sparkling emptiness for which the mountain sky was mere metaphor.

                     Photo: Humbled by Mt. Rainier.

Free Fall



Loss need not be heavy. Loss can be the way to weightlessness. Did Jesus not say, "My burden is light?" (Mat. 11:10)

The weighty shadow of my grief is only the beginning of a wondrous free-Fall. Jesus tells my heart, "Keep falling, all the way through the abyss, until you realize there is no ground. Then your loss is my grace."

And if there is no ground, there is no violent impact, no end to the freedom of the Fall.


Through his life and death, Jesus modeled the grace of loss. The Biblical word is "kinosis: self emptying," which occurs in one of the oldest fragments of New Testament literature, the hymn of Philippians, chapter 2.
"Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a status to be grasped, but emptied himself, and took the form of a servant... Therefore God highly exalted him."
Loss, like love, is a free-Fall, a process of non-grasping and self-emptiness.

Jai Guru Dev

The Guru is not just one man in a white robe, a beard, and sandals. The Guru is a lineage that spills the all- pervading grace of Shakti, the Holy Spirit, down the centuries through embodied channels, where it can flow in a more concentrated form, and pour into your heart at the moment of initiation.

That stream of grace ignites the Guru-Tattva, the Inner Teacher, in each of us. Then it is up to us to tend that fire, honor her in our hearts, and let her burn us up, until She illuminates every cell of our body. "Devotion to the Master" is devotion to this fire, this power in the heart. And part of devotion is our responsibility to share the beautiful Shakti fire with others, in love for all humanity.

After 47 years of practice, this is still my favorite film, because I know that every word is so innocent and true. But it must be said that this meditation isn't really a "practice": it is surrender to an effortless dive into the sparkling silence at the source of creation. Thank you dearest Friend, for passing the flame...



Nought

The essence of the Dharma, the Sanatana Dharma, and the Gospel is simply
this: before the slightest wave of action arises in me, there is an ocean of Gracealready here. The ocean precedes the wave. Even before "I" emerge from "Am,"divine Being has already bestowed perfect abundance, knowledge and joy.

This Being is nearer than my breath, more intimate than my soul. Subtract every action, every form, every thought, yet infinite fullness remains. I need no-thing to be complete. Only awareness.

Action that is truly creative, and truly free, arises from This.

Energy of Presence

The energy of orgasmic Presence pervades every atom in the universe.
Each photon, each electron, even the gravity waves at the heart of the quark
in a star-forged proton, are permeated by a Presence whose energy is infinite.
What prevents us from experiencing this ananda, this bliss of Presence, is
our mind's anxious habit of inventing time, the illusion of a past and future.

Through meditation, we allow these mental images of past and future to dissolve. Then we can see the simple miracle that mystics of all the great traditions saw: "God is creating the entire cosmos fully and totally in this present now, a now which always and without end is itself new." (Meister Eckhart, 12th C.)

The peace and sanity of the world depend on whether humanity will take this
gentle step, and make this radical shift, into Presence.

Falling Asleep to the Peepers


I am falling asleep to the thousand-petaled sound of Spring peepers in the wetlands, one of nature's many elemental mantras, given to us for shape-shifting into heavenly realms within the earth's body.

If we would listen more to her healing music, gaze into her greenest eyes, touch with our bare feet her living flesh, we would return to the Sacred Garden in a moment, wherever we are.

What commands the fiddlehead fern to unfold, unfolds me. With every breath, I drink the milk of the ancient Mother. When I am awake, I arrive with each footstep in the Kingdom of the Goddess. All night long She gazes into my heart, and though my body sleeps, I love.

Breath of Gaia


I've been seeing photo after photo of American hunters posing with
dead lions, rhinos, giraffes, including Donald Trump's son posing
with an elephant he just murdered. I was going to post one of these
pictures to talk about, but I can't honor such images of ignorance.

What I need to say is: only the most pathetic and insecure men prove
their manhood by murdering beautiful wild animals. Their "sport"
disgusts and saddens me beyond grief, especially because it is the
same mentality that generates our weapons industry, and U.S. 
foreign policy toward indigenous people in the First World.

My grief takes me to a place in the heart, not a place of bitterness, but
a place of justice, where I can begin to sense truth from the perspective
of Gaia, begin to see through the eyes of her gentle winged and
swimming friends, her four-legged and green-leafed friends.

Mother Gaia is kind. Don't worry. With a deft series of earth quakes,
tsunamis and solar flares, her body will shake off the disease. She will
dissolve over seven and a half billion human beings, leaving a small
remnant to build a paradise on the New Earth. When this happens,
there will not be suffering on the planet: quite the contrary. All the
non-human species of flora and fauna will breathe a deep sigh of relief.

Yet even now, we can breathe that sigh with them, that cleansing breath
in sympathy with earth's creatures, through the practice of meditation,
pranayam, and sudarshan kriya. For this is true yoga: attunement with
the breath of Gaia.

Link to research on the Healing Breath: Sudarshan Kriya

Be The Whole


You've got to be the whole thing, not just the best part of it.

Many great Zen masters had deep problems with addiction.
Many great artists were cruel, especially to women. Some of
the most ecstatic saints suffered bouts of abysmal depression.
And some of your favorite "spiritual authors" drank themselves
to death. And as for sex among holy celibates, well...

I'm not saying, be cynical about spiritual teachers. I'm saying,
let them be human, and let yourself be human. You've got to be 
the whole thing. The same goes for dogs.

Which brings up the problem of Willy. Willy's the cutest and
most spiritual dog in the whole world. But that doesn't keep him
from SNEAKING DOWNSTAIRS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE
NIGHT AND EATING THE FUCKING CAT FOOD. Does it,
Willy? And then BARFING ON THE RUG.