Uradiance

Good Sunday morning, creation's first day! I enter the Kingdom of Little Things. I find something very small to hold in my hand, a pebble, a feather, a berry. I cherish its mere mysterious Thingness. Through my senses, I breathe the Little Thing's color, weight, shape, texture into my body. Then I breathe out gratitude. This is called 'living & breathing on earth.' It is the meditation that humans practice all day unaware. It requires neither church, nor temple, nor preisthood, nor scripture, nor belief. Just Awareness. Just some Awareness is needed to turn our daily breath, among little things, into worship.

The Warrior and the Pacifist each have their role to play. Does one have the right to judge the other? I would not count on the Warrior to make peace. Neither would I count on the Pacifist to defend my children from attack. To claim that the world needs no warriors is the luxury of the well-protected. To claim that the world needs no pacifists is to starve for a vision. Let those who love peace not condemn the warriors. True warriors do not choose our foreign policy. They choose to protect our children. Rather let us condemn, with all the fury of God's righteousness, the powers and principalities, the rulers of the darkness of this world, the corporate profiteers and politicians, who never spent an hour in combat and whose children are too privileged to fight, yet who abuse and misuse our valiant soldiers for the purpose of mastering Third World resources, to line their own pockets with the wealth of empire.

After the collapse of post-industrial corporate feudalism, its imperial armies and global banks, its hierarchies of priestly credit and debt, all that is vast, abstract, untenably complex will die into The Local like a cluster of vines to the root. We too, locating ourselves, will return to the family farm of origin and remember how to eat, how to grow woolly well-muscled sheep and uniquely delicious tomatoes, discovering our hands for seed scattering, for stone setting, for writing poems on trees and caves; discovering our feet again for grape crushing. Later, by December fires, we will listen to silence, we will learn to listen again, energized by wind and water. In a terrible and lovely antlered mask, the village shaman will birth us in Springtime and bless our old bones in Autumn, preparing our Winter souls for new bodies. A circle of friends, chanting, drumming, dancing, will bind us to our Creator, as our Creator is bound to this heart.

Red begonias with burgundy pelts, opulent, furry as otters wriggling in November rain through your vacuous eyes, where a constant wind sucks inward all light, to make a compost of pure consciousness. No need to stop time, just take a moment for eternity. Observe all day the back yard sacraments, trans-substantiations, a drowned mouse in the birdbath. Nothing is ordinary, not even a coke bottle in the black loam, polished to a smooth green talisman by the tumbling earth. Rest in no space but your own clarity, that which is never a distraction. Let your tongue, your nostrils, ears and eyes become the angels of revelation.

A friend asked me, 'Why bother to meditate?' This picture of my teacher is the answer. When I gaze into the eyes of the Beloved, I have no choice. Meditation happens. 'Then you have lost your freedom!' the intellectual replies. Intellect feels threatened by the Love that is beyond choice. Intellect feels alive only when it restlessly pinches itself with choosing, 'This is better than that, this is true and that is false.' But as intellect comes to rest in the radiance of choiceless love, which is the choice that ends restless choosing, there is freedom. That freedom is meditation. 'Our hearts are ever restless till they come to rest in Thee.' -St. Augustine (Thanks to Scotty Hague for the beautiful darshan picture.)

If your meditation doesn't 'work,' you must have turned it into a job. Let meditation be play, the wave-play of awareness resting in its oceanic self. Meditation is the source of play, the primordial play of Silence. This universe arises from nothing through Lila Shakti, the power of play. In Indian philosophy, there is no other cause for creation than divine playfulness. Unmanifest pure awareness spontaneously arises in waves of creative intelligence, which become particles of matter. This is the bubbling bliss of the Samadhi state in deep meditation. Quantum physics describes the same bubbling up of the vacuum in spontaneous creation, where 'virtual photons' and 'virtual electrons' vibrate out of silence, out of the zero at the source of all mathematical equations describing matter. Founder of quantum physics, Sir James Jeans, wrote that to modern science the universe appears less "like an enormous machine" and mo...

I was walking down the sidewalk feeling rather low, worrying about work, about paying bills, about all my mistakes. Hearing a song, I looked up. Three carousers, their arms across each others shoulders, half danced and half stumbled toward me. I recognized them immediately: Jesus, Krishna, and Buddha. Jesus said, "Hurry to the Tavern! Happy Hour is almost over. But while it lasts, everything is free." Krishna said, "He's talking about the Tavern inside you." Buddha said, "There is no Tavern. You're already drunk." As they passed by, I became blessed with confusion, the music in their eyes, the sparkle of their laughter. I couldn't even remember what I was supposed to be worrying about.

You have a good point. I'm trying to make a point. Everyone has a point of view. But God is the vast space of intelligence without a point. God is pointless.

In the tavern of my heart I get drunk twice a day. On the door there's a name that turns all other words to laughter but I can't pronounce it when I get like this so I just point and dance. I yell at people in the street: "Don't go to work! Step inside, drink this bewildering wine! The tavern keeper won't bill you till the end of time. Then you can tell him, 'It's your fault: your grace made me tipsy!' Such wine is better than breast milk. When nothing is left, you'll see your Beloved gazing from the bottom of the cup. This is the emptiness we all adore!"

In this sacred season of turnings, I cannot let go of the past until I bow down to it. Whether I honor an old love or an old wound, I must bow down. In that very moment of surrender, I am free. As my forehead touches the earth, loss become a blessing that opens a way.

Afghanistan is not a safe place. Fort Hood, Texas, is not a safe place. This hometown is not a safe place. The closet in the bedroom is not a safe place. The mind, full of doubt and desire, is not a safe place. There is only one safe place in the entire world: a heart surrendered to its song. Are you singing the song no one else can sing? Only this song brings peace.

For a long time, I've been harboring doubts about my humanity. After deep soul searching, I've figured out who I really am. I've decided to come out of the closet and share my true human identity. I am God. Don't be shocked. There are more of us in your life than you ever imagined. We're your brothers and sisters, your sons and daughters, even your parents. Some say as many as one out of every ten human beings is God. I think it's more. I think there's God in all of us. Just because I'm God doesn't make me any less human than you. I will no longer hide my divinity under feelings of shame, inferiority, and sin. I will celebrate being me, fully human and fully divine, just like my brother, Jesus. On the surface, I may get confused and unhappy now and then, but deep down inside, where it counts, I know who I am. I Am. I Am Being. I Am God. Are you sure you aren't God too?

Wizards utilize the power of uncertainty. When we are unsure, we often seek certainty in the mind and become limited by our beliefs. But wizards regard the Uncertain as a deep ocean of Possibility: an opportunity to sink from the mind into the heart. There, in the heart's core-silence, wizards operate through pure intuition, free from the bondage of thought and belief. We are all wizards.

The world is a theater of mirrors, all wildly tossing one image from emptiness to emptiness, in a sea of clarity. That is how God dances, remaining motionless, and the One expresses multitudes. Souls, devas, angels and demons: all reflections of the same divine Likeness, many from one for the sake of love. Almighty Father casts his reflection in the mirror of his own consciousness: that image is Mother Divine. The Mother reflects herself in the mirror her own consciousness: that image is the Creator. Every soul is the image of another, cast in consciousness, spilling through spaces of infinite possibility down stairways of reflection, until a brilliant beam awakens as You, staring every which way and wondering, "Who am I?" Don't you remember now? You are the original Light. Great Mother, Creatrix and Theotokos, gives birth to souls, angels, Avatars and Bodhisattvas in the multiversal unfolding lotus of light, petals within petals, all born from one Seed, all finished and ...

The ocean is the waves. The waves are the ocean. The one has no need to become two. It is already two. The two have no need to become one. They are already one. To dwell in this No-Need, just seeing how the other is already yourself, is enlightenment without practice.

"He who expects nothing enjoys everything," said St. Francis of Assisi. When the world doesn't meet our expectations, is the problem in the world or the mind? Our mind imposes expectations on the present moment from the storehouse of past impressions. We pick the best of the past and project it as "hope." When experience conforms to our hope, we call it "good." When it doesn't, we call it "bad." Granting authority to the past, we live in a constant conflict between the way the world is and the way we remember it. This is suffering: the conflict between the present and the past, between what Is and what Should be. Suffering is irresponsible: a failure to respond. Suffering happens when we get so stuck in how it should be that we can't respond to how it is. Pain, of course, is inevitable. But suffering is a choice: a choice to prefer the past. When we drop our expectations, what happens? We eliminate suffering before it arises. We relie...

Stunning new Hubble telescope images give us hope. Just to gaze at them is health insurance. Is this vast space out there , or is it in here ? Perhaps this is the trail of a quark in the nucleus of an atom at the tip of a neuron in your brain as you gaze at this very image and form a thought about it now. Why not? "O Nature and O soul of man!" writes Melville in Moby Dick , "how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! Not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind." So declare the Upanishads of ancient India, "Ano raniyan mahato mahiyan: One atom of the smallest is greater than the greatest." The empty space between electrons firing neuropeptides through a synapse in your hypothalamus enfolds golden galaxies of starry intelligent virtual light. You make the universe conscious. You are the miracle. You are God's body, born to manifest a uniquely unfolding image of the total creation. Don't you...

Unconditional Love contains both Yes and No. Parenting is tricky. For years I thought I was in an advanced state of Buddhic non-attachment. Now I realize my parents put me in time-out and I'm still there. On the other hand, the children of blissed-out New Agers I know are mostly brats. And they're all named Ananda, which is depressing. Is the boy pictured here in time-out? Or is he a child of the New Age, whose parents allow him to urinate in my living room? It really doesn't matter. However we parent them, our children turn out to be who they are. They manage to survive us, and they survive every new theory of parenting pretty much unscathed. So stop worrying about parenting and just be YOU with your kids. If your child is really a beam of God's light - and I hope you believe your child is a beam of God, or why bother to have a child at all? - then how can you diminish God in any way by sticking Her in a corner? Maybe God is a brat who needs a little discipline now and...

When I question my assumptions, I glimpse my mythology. When I see through my mythology, which is all about getting the past "right" by repeating it in the future, I let my story dissolve like mist in the clear air of the present moment. This is "viveka," discrimination. Viveka leads to freedom, freedom to dwell in presence, freedom to drop every story about a tragic or heroic "me" from the past who will return. Then who is left to be offended, avenged, forgiven or redeemed? Who needs to be saved? From what?

Baruk etah Adonai h'Olam! Blessed are you, Lord of all Creation! What audacious blessing from the Hebrew Prayer Book is this? We do not ask for God's blessing. We bless Him from whom all blessings flow! What creature has been blessed deeply enough to bless the Creator? The lion cannot do it, the orchid cannot do it, the sun cannot do it, nor the galaxy; creatures mightier and more lovely than Man, but with no voice of praise! Only one small otherwise worthless creature can do this thing, can bless the Blessed One. Ever creature has a purpose. The lilac's purpose is releasing fragrance and seed, the lioness hunts to feed her cubs, the cloud brings rain to fields of wheat. But what is the purpose of a woman and a man? We cannot bring rain. We hunt not nearly so well as the lion. We release no lilac fragrance, nor till a garden as well as a worm. So inept we are at the tasks of other creatures, that we employ their skills and strengths to sustain us. We took the power of th...

The bed is soft, gentle is her sleeping hand, The old cat bundled and purring at our feet. I had almost entered the memory, my soul drifting toward another birth, forgetting how far from home I fall, my face among small flowers that worry down my cheek like child fingers, only child of ours. A dark pool widens in the grass under my belly. Cannon fire, numb and muffled through the golden mist of equanimity where past and present mingle in some final chemistry of silence. Do not call it death: it is too familiar, opening like her hand asleep in mine. A voice, 'well done, rest now, soldier,' speaks from the stillness that enfolds all battles, calling me back to the field where I have fallen so often before, refrain in a melody of bones, soldier's body among blue flowers.

Are not the shadowed valleys of my soul permeated by the same bliss as the mountain top? I love to walk through misty lowlands as much as to sit in the sun. The relentless optimism of those wh o insist that I must always be happy is a subtle form of oppression. Don't insist that every moment be a peak. Embrace dark valleys as legitimate spaces in the landscape of your wholeness. The best deal is to settle for who you are in this moment, with all your rough edges and unresolved emotions. When happiness happens, be happy. When it doesn't, don't search. The moment you give up the search and allow yourself to be , just as you are, peace arises. Everything comes to rest in the present moment.

"Why should not we also enjoy an original relationship with the universe?" (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Nature,' 1836) Spirituality is not imitation. If we pattern our soul on any other - whether Jesus, or the Guru, or our favorite hero - we may feel safe, but we will miss our own personal love-affair with the Infinite.

My love surrounds you. But that is no concern of yours. I love you for my own sake. Your love surrounds me. But that is no concern of mine. You love me for your own sake. Knowing this, our love remains unconditional. Forgetting this, our love slips into attachment. Love is divinely Self-centered. Every wave of love arises in the ocean of the Self, and returns to the ocean of the Self, to delight the Self alone, who is both "me" and "other." Many of us cling to the myth of "selflessness." But there is no selfless love. We only have two choices: love in passion, or love in dispassion. We either love the other as an other, or love the other as our Self. This is why Jesus said the greatest commandment, equal with loving God, is "to love thy neighbor as thy Self." If we could handle this truth, we could avoid much pain in relationships.

O God, I looked for you there , and could not find you. I found you here , where the radiance of seeing outshines what is seen, where the mystery of loving dissolves what is loved, where Being drowns all beings, and joy springs up without a cause. As an Other I sought you, but I found you as my Self.

'Woman Pouring Milk': George Thiaru, Kenya, d. 1962 The Mother pours her milk, which is the self-effulgent glow of silence, into the chalice of my heart, where it spills into every cell of my body, into my senses, and through them into the world. I offer the chalice back up to her. This never ending stream of offering is my breath. Day and night, O my body, pay attention to the luminous circle of inhalation and exhalation! Be nourished at the divine breast. Receiving this unbroken white stream of living silence, I can never lack. From the aperture at the crown of my head, through the hollow stem of my spine, to the golden bowl of my heart, what am I but an emptiness to be filled by the Mother's radiance? And how can the Mother bless the earth without my breathing? Breathe in silence, breathe out compassion. Breathe in light, breathe out healing. Breathe in joy, breathe out creation. Some call it Shakti . Some call it Holy Spirit . And some call it Chi . I call it the milk o...

A woman I know went on retreat at a Catholic convent. After spending nearly an hour lamenting all her sins to a patient old nun named Margaret, Sister Margaret stood up, patted her on the shoulder and said, "Sweetie, God isn't interested in your guilt." God is interested in our joy, not our sin. Real faith is delight . We approach our Creator the more we delight in the ordinary miracles of creation, and God is always nearer to us than we are to God. Fear of hell won't bring us one inch closer to heaven. How many more centuries will we spend in gloomy angst about this petty little thing, the soul? The soul is not eternal. At best, it only lasts an instant! The soul, as an independent 'I', perpetuates itself through worry. As soon as I give up worrying about my own salvation, my soul dissolves. Yet when I delight in God's presence, I am God's Self-delight, and I am eternal. One pure instant of delight burns up countless centuries of sin, like a spark i...

I am simplistic. I can't imagine anything I'd rather be accused of than reducing life to great simplicities! When modern astro-physics declares the origin of the cosmos to be a mathematical singularity , that is simplistic, but I get it. When Gandhi says, God has no religion , that is simplistic, but I get it. When Jesus says, Let your yes be yes and your no be no, that is simplistic, but I get it. When St. John writes, God is love, that is simplistic, but I get it. When the Upanishads affirm, Om Tat Sat: Everything is God, that is simplistic, but I get it. What I don't get is why so many people hide behind complex arguments, and drape themselves in mind .

How can you see an angel in heaven if you don't know how to look at an apple blossom? "Take no thought for your life, for what ye shall eat, or what ye shall wear, or for your body; for who among you by worrying can add one inch to your stature?" Jesus spoke the complete Gospel in these simple words from the Sermon on the Mount. The Greek imperative "mei merimnate" means "don't worry." The King James version of the Bible eloquently translates this as "take no thought." Not to worry is freedom from thought. "Don't worry" is precisely what Lord Krishna tells Arjuna in the last chapter of the Bhagavad Gita: "ma suchoh" in Sanskrit. "Abandon all religious duties and simply surrender to Me. My grace will deliver you from all your sins. Don't worry." At any moment of our life, we have two choices: this now, or a cloud of worries. We shroud the reality of this now in thoughts, a gray mental cloud containing...

Consciousness is both playful and dangerous. It is the one phenomenon with the curious ability to form its own background and sneak up on itself from behind, just to thicken the plot. Therefor, it is wiser to dance with your ego than try to destroy it, because the most vulnerable ego of all is the person who thinks he doesn't have one.

A woman said to me, "Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my mind!" We all feel this way from time to time. So what if we lose our minds? Don't we lose them every night when we fall asleep? Go ahead, lose your mind. You'll get another one. When we say, "I'm losing my mind," who is the "I" who sees the mind being lost? That seer is completely separate from the mind. We are not our minds. We are the silent golden space of awareness, more vast than any mind we could lose.

I've been drinking this wine again all night with you. Not the wine in beautiful new jars, but the stuff at the bottom of ancient hearts. Now my cellar is empty as sunlight in moon beams. But this poem has nothing to do with what happened last night. Not even God remembers that. This is about your wedding: the party God throws today in the garden where laughter was never banished and true nakedness awaits you like a gown.

A veil of one thought separates me from perfect happiness: "I must do something to deserve it." No deed is ever good enough to deserve perfect happiness. It cannot be acquired by achievement. Perfect happiness is not achieved because it's already here! It is our birthright: the gift ever given before we do anything to deserve it. That is why little children experience moments of perfect happiness: they have yet to be indoctrinated out of it. A Vedic text declares, Antar mukhi sada sukhi . "One who perceives the Divinity within is happy." The happiness we are , before we do anything , makes love possible. When Jesus spoke the great commandment, "Love thy neighbor as thy self," he clearly taught that caring for others is rooted in self-care. Why then did so many of his followers turn S-E-L-F into a four letter word? To love others, I must love me. I love me, not for what I achieve, but for what I Am. I love me because I was loved by God before I did anyt...

"One who sees stillness in action, and action in stillness, truly sees." (Bhagavad Gita) I take refuge in slicing a peach. I take refuge in emptying the trash, stroking my blue-eyed kitten, grading papers, grinding coffee beans. I take refuge in whatever happens. And when I slice this peach, there's no romantic bubble called "now" around it. Now, I give myself permission to drop the future. I give myself permission to drop the past. I give myself permission to drop the "now." I tried taking refuge in the past, super-imposing an old and meaningful story onto the present. But I discovered that it's hard work dragging ancient stories, even the story of Jesus, into this moment. I tried taking refuge in hope. But imagining a beautiful future means attempting to create a whole new world, and that's a big load to carry. I tried taking refuge in God, but where was He when I really felt crazy? At the moment when I needed all my attention down here on ea...

To own much and be anxious about it expresses lack. To have enough money, yet dwell in constant fear of losing it, is a deep form of poverty. True abundance has nothing to do with how much we own. Abundance is a state of awareness, so enriched by the Inward Light, that no worry is wasted on outward gain or loss.

America is just the spark for something even brighter, something we haven't imagined yet, something beyond "me," "my country," "my property." It is We the People on a global scale: one world family. Who needs enemies? Imagine a world where the very concept of "enemy" is obsolete.

Where the question is, there is no answer. Where the answer is, the question has never arisen. That is why, when we are in the Master's presence, all questions vanish, and we cannot remember what is was we needed to ask.... The solution to any problem is not to struggle with the problem, but to rest in that awareness where, had we been dwelling there, the problem would never have arisen.

Be a buried seed, stirred by warmth toward radiance unseen. Surrender, through longing, to longing. Become your longing. Discover the secret: longing for God is God. Breathing is the simplest prayer. When you breathe in, God is your life. Now breathe out: through that breath, you offer all creation back to the Source. This is real worship, the only temple sacrifice required, and your body is the temple. All rituals and sacraments of every religion whatsoever are rehearsals for your first conscious breath. When you breathe life consciously, you need no other religion. When you inhale, you create a ritual for receiving the Holy Spirit. You can consciously imbibe Spirit into every cell, every particle of your body. A single atom contains the same vast space that fills galaxies. as you breathe God in, you incorporate infinity in your flesh. Then you offer the sweet incense of exhalation. In gratitude, you give the miracle of creation back to its creator. This perfect offering requires no ...

The best way to change the world is to see it as it is. The best accomplishment is knowing when to get out of the way. The best method of teaching is to let them teach themselves. Then, when you have ceased to be noticed, strike.

I have been so liberated by regarding my ego as a large hairy gorilla, I want to share the practice with my friends! Some seekers believe than spirituality requires us to annihilate the ego. They follow the path to No-Self. All I have to say to them is, "Good luck." If you attempt to annihilate your ego, you'll only put it in a closet where it will turn into a 700 lb. gorilla, like mine. This gorilla escapes and attacks you at the most inopportune and socially compromising occasions. So give yourself a break. Don't suppress or control your ego. Let your gorilla go. Let it sit on your shoulder and flutter its little pinions with delight, because when you let your ego out of the closet, the gorilla turns into a butterfly. Here's the secret: The more you free the ego, the smaller and lighter it becomes. The more you confine and control the ego, the fatter and denser it grows. Ego is never bad when you know it's there. Ego becomes a problem only when you pretend i...

Dante gazing toward his Beloved Beatrice, who gazes toward the divine Pleuroma ("fullness"). Follow your love to the Beloved. Follow your Beloved to God. Follow God to your Self. Don't be selfless. Be the Self. Don't be selfish. Be the Self. Be so overflowing with divine Selfhood that your heart includes everybody. The secret of love is that we never love anyone but the Self. Those who claim to be selfless, loving others but not themselves, are deluded. Every impulse of love arises from the subject, flows out to embrace the object, and returns to the Self as a wave of bliss. I do not love you for your sake, but for the sake of the Self. You do not love me for my sake, but for the sake of the Self. Thanks to our love, the Self can play in the ocean of its own divine sweetness. Love is a circle, ever returning to the lover's heart. You complete love's circle by reveling in the radiance of that supreme Lord who is your pure luminous Self. You may...