Uradiance

To be human is a gift. To be on earth is a gift, especially now, the worst of times, the best of times. The greatest gift you can receive is the gift of paradox. To spread your arms and open your heart in the cruciform gesture of early Christian prayer, the "orant posture," is precisely how a Lakota warrior stands in the Hanbleceya, crying for a vision, facing the dawn; and exactly how a Taoist warrior of peace, in Qigong meditation, stands tall, spreads her arms, and embraces the rushing winds of time. The gift of paradox is your flesh. Stumble akimbo, wildly widely hugging. Let East and West kiss in the chuppah of your heart. From your crown to your feet, let the lightning in your spine unite the North and South. Let shadows and suns from every end of the cosmos merge in your chest. Be the antipodes. When you cling to the light, you are lost. When you cling to the dark, you are lost. Don't be a fist, be an open palm. Heavenly beings envy your human birth. They ...

"There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest heaven. This is the light that shines in our hearts."  ~Chandogya Upanishad 3.13.7 "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ."  ~2 Corinthians 4:6 Both the Vedic and Christian traditions make the same astonishing claim: that the divine light embodied by the universe shines from the intimate core of our own hearts, as the light of Consciousness. This radiance is deeper inside us than our mind, yet it is the very energy from which the cosmos is created. Distance is illusion. I am wedded to the quasar ten billion light years from here, whose glow is my body. There is no such place as elsewhere.  I Am not estranged from the creation around me, and I Am never alone. Every blade of grass, sparrow feather, dust mote and star is a fiery golden...