Uradiance

They say that nature abhors a vacuum. But nature is born from a vacuum, returns to a vacuum, pulsation of the vacuum of pure consciousness. If you need proof, just go out to your garden and look at a chrysanthemum. Of course, if you need laboratory proof, you can take 5,000 years and call it "the evolution of quantum physics." But some of us are impatient for eternity now. We only need to see one blossom of emptiness.

I delight to see God shining from my body as the super-radiance of evolving self-organized bio-chemical complexity. Does this glow come from matter, or does matter condense from this glow? The wick is dead without a flame. But the flame is dead without a wick. Matter and Spirit, like particle and wave, are just two ways of seeing the same phenomenon. Why not settle our bodies into meditation, or walk with awareness in the forest, observing every electron blossom from the boundlessness of conscious space? Then, instead of descending as a mysterious Other from above, will not the Spirit percolate out of the earth as the bio-radiance of sacred matter? I'm Wiccan, I'm Vedantist, I'm Buddhist, I'm Christian. Do you see a contradiction? Well then, maybe your eye is not open wide enough. The part you focus on defines the whole. When you focus on one sparkle, you see one face or facet and no other. Yet the whole jewel is greater than any facet. The jewel of God-Consciousness ha...

Here's my entry in the 'Personals' section at the back of the local newspaper : MHB Seeks SF. Mere Human Being Seeks Spiritual Friends. For soul nourishment, I don't need another Guru with absolute authority. I don't need a savior or an avatar. Not even the second coming of Jesus. (Did he ever leave?) I need spiritual friends , peers, people with the courage to share doubt as well as exaltation, pain as well bliss, falling as well as getting high. I just buried my parents' ashes under a willow tree by a pond in Pennsylvania. I don't want a new parent-figure, or a dependent child who makes a parent out of me . I want spiritual siblings. I need to ground my bare feet in a circle, not climb a stairway to the stars. I'm no longer charmed by someone above, or seduced by someone below, on the ladder of souls. I need you beside me, walking this pathless path that leads us to the present moment. Take my hand.

If anyone speaks of a "spiritual path," know that they are asleep. Is there a path to awakening? Do you decide, "Now I will take the path to awakening; I'll wake up in about five minutes; or perhaps by 5 o'clock this afternoon; or maybe in five life times"? This is the talk of a mad man, or somebody who doesn't want to get out of bed. The moment you are aware that you have been dreaming, you are awake. It takes no time at all. Awakening has nothing to do with time: it has to do with where you choose to rest your attention. "The spiritual path" is an invention of the mind who would rather persist in dreaming the future than risk Now. Are we ready for the motionless explosion of Now? Are we ready to live on the cutting edge of eternity, where the past and future do not exist? Enclosed in the gray armor of thought, our daily life is constantly one step away from reality. We do not live Life: we live a commentary on...

My meditating friends wanted to go out for dinner. As usual, it had to be Indian food: lentils and dahl with a cup of chai. I said, 'I'm feeling like spaghetti, with a glass of chianti.' They looked at me the way kosher rabbis look at a ham. I don't wear rudhraksha beads anymore. My wife doesn't wear a sari. To me, a red dot on your forehead is no holier than a zit. When fundamentalists reject anything that isn't in the Bible, we think them terribly narrow. Why isn't it just as narrow when New Age folks insist that everything has to be Indian to be holy? I love India and I love to chant krishna bhajans. I love France and I love to sing Gregorian chant. I even love Wyoming. There's a place in the Big Horn mountains, you have to hike in a few miles from the highway, with an ancient stone circle where tribes used to meet and make peace. That place is as sacred as Chartres Cathedral or Rishikesh. Did I mention 'Amazing Grace'? Why is that any l...

Imagine your Body. Let your Body imagine You. Your Body is what you have imagined in the past And your Soul is the glow of your Body in the present. What you imagine now is your future Body. To imagine that You are anything more than your Body is illusion. To imagine that your Body is anything less than a cosmos - each cell a furnace, roaring with delight in the radiance of biological complexity, each atom a wild and perfect swirl of sentience whose center is the womb of suns; and in the silence at the proton's core, the infinitesimal pause between the pulse of quark and anti-quark, this sky, the vast out-whirling mother of night who mantles your hope with stars - To imagine your Body anything less is original Sin.

The heart of the path is to rest our awareness in its own mirror-like emptiness and self-luminosity, even for a brief moment, again and again without effort, until the Inner Light outshines the world. Then we can cherish every person we meet, friend or foe, as the reflection of our own radiance. To discover the divine Self in the human other, and the divine Other in the human self, is the real meaning of love, the real work of God, and our real purpose on earth. We need not spiritualize the experience, making it a Mystery for the enlightened few. Nor need we politicize our love, reserving it for the poor or the oppressed, for that is a subtle judgment against everyone else. If the unity is real, it happens wherever we are, with whoever is right in front of us this moment. "There are no others." said Ramana Maharshi. "Love your neighbor as your own self," said Jesus, quoting the Jewish Torah. "See God in every pair of eyes," said Shri Shri Gurudev. Is the u...

Blossom to blossom, Learn it from the hummingbird: Dancers need no path!

Like a mirror, scripture reflects what we bring to it. Its words mirror the qualities of our own consciousness. The fearful find a fearsome God in Holy Writ, as the warlike find a justification for war. In that same scripture, those with awakened hearts will find the law of love. And the enlightened will see one truth, which is simply the radiance of their own Awareness, shining through all the world's great scriptures. When we find truth in an ancient text, it is because we have already awakened that truth in ourselves. Scripture gives confirmation of what we already half know, but hesitate to fully embrace. If deep in our own awareness we have not already experienced that truth as self-evident, we will not see it on paper, even when the words are printed in red. Neither the Bible nor the Koran can save anybody. Scriptures have power at the time they are written because, in the present moment, Awareness energizes words. But when those words become shrines to the past, there is no ...

Do you want to be saved? Do you want to be born again? Here's the Gospel, the Good News: If you want to be saved and born again, become aware . For a single moment, don't do anything. Don't seek, don't pray, don't hope. Just become aware. Salvation is awareness. Awareness is perpetual rebirth. Awareness is never a single second old. One moment of effortless awareness opens the vast silence, the eternal stillness of your Being, where a new heaven and a new earth are born. One moment of awareness is always the first moment of creation. The momentous grace of simply becoming aware is the only spiritual practice we haven't tried, the only way left to redeem the world.