Uradiance

Thank you, tree. Goodbye. Were you a Christmas tree? A Yule or Solstice tree? Or simply an excuse to sparkle? Names fall like needles. Go back to the forest now. Become the smallest parts of yourself. We all do that. Remember your seed, closer to earth than light. Now grow downward, into darkness. 

I've noticed that the rage of the political Right and the rage of the political Left are one and the same energy. For some folks, political anger is the only rush: the rest is numb. Whenever I become political - and sooo progressive - two things happen in me. First I become right : as in righteous . Which means I stop listening to anybody who has a different view. Second, my heart contracts. Love becomes less important than being right. I tune into a global wavelength of anger that feeds my outrage, making me more and more like the people I despise. I guess this is why Jesus said, "Love your enemy." He wasn't so much giving us a way to address our adversary as to save our own hearts from poisoning themselves. After all these years of being in "the peace movement," I really ought to take him up on it. I've written nearly a hundred newspaper editorials where I've lambasted the political right, their corporate fascism, and their wars. B...

Paths meet. At the other side of the Crossroads which is which? Or would you rather wander in a desert imagining that God has chosen you alone?

The crack of the pine at midnight where a deer leaps in the woods. Winter rain against my window. A seal's cry over miles of still water. Fifty silent Christmas's ago, my mother's voice. Every perception arises in the Self. Every motion is returning. Distance is the last illusion.

"No belief is required to travel with the Buddha. You can come to him with all your skepticism. He accepts and welcomes you, and he says, Come with me." - Osho. Precisely the same is true of Jesus. No belief is required to walk with Jesus. He accepts you as you are and says, "Walk with me. I don't want to lead you, I want to walk beside you, and be your friend." Jesus is a Presence, not a belief. The dogmas and creeds invented by Church councils, hundreds of years after his birth, have nothing to do with this friendship.

Why do you count? What would happen if you stopped counting? the hours the years the days until christmas face book friends hits runs errors heads calories beats miles blessings breaths beads mantras reps of surya namaskar hail mary's stars sheep votes... How many more? More than what? More than this? Could there be more than this? What if you count til the end and the number is one?

Improve schools: abolish grades. Do you grade your own children? Is your child a “C”? Grading is degrading. Future schools will regard grading with horror, like slavery, or frontal lobotomies. Grades either make children feel unworthy, or inculcate that false superiority which spawns the arrogance of class. With a 740 on my verbal SAT, I attended an Ivy League college. The kid next to me got a 340 and became a mechanic. When my car breaks down, I have no idea how to fix it. I tow it to his garage, awed by his superior intelligence. The grades we got in school mean absolutely nothing.   Grades encourage inside-the-box thinking, the box being a standardized test. Standardized tests produce standardized citizens, risk-averse and suppressed in creativity. Grading pits students against each other, reinforcing an ethic of me-first narcissism rather than cooperative problem-solving. Like child abuse, grades demand submission to the elite and powerful. Teachers who d...

Are you alone? Then Be alone. You were alone from the beginning of time. You are alone until the end of time, which is now. If you are perfectly alone, you are not alone. With every fiber of your being, embody aloneness. Let each atom encircle a magnitude of aloneness. Rest as the majestic body of limitless star-clustered aloneness, and you will never be alone.

The bee knows how to avoid the thorn, alight on the blossom, and steal the nectar without getting stuck. The bee makes honey, not from one flower alone, but many. There are many flowers in our garden: we are free to make honey from them all. We are citizens of the whole earth, and all religions are our birthright.

Breathe out slow, root sunk in dark earth. Silent pause, the still deep seed. Not-doing in-breath, green heart gift Sprouting sunrise.

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-A...

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 

 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.

"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 ...

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

  "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 substa...

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 wo...

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 a...

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 s...

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

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 b eauty 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.

 "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

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 "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it." (John's Gospel 1:5) John could not trust a woman to be his teacher. He refused to transmit what Mary Magdalene taught him after Jesus had filled the womb of her mind with Wisdom. Mary sang this teaching to John in a language of sighs. But the meaning is something like this: "The Light shines in the Darkness, and the Darkness opens like a womb. As a Mother bears her Child, the Darkness gives birth to Light. Yet many who see the Light forget to honor its source, All-Mothering Darkness. "Do not follow those who teach that there is war between Darkness and Light, for they do not comprehend the Unity. Darkness and Light are both divine. Honor the Light, but return to the Dark Mother. "Learn from Earth and her seasons: After sunshine blesses the land with harvest, its glow turns inward. Returning to the womb of Winter, light rests in a seed until the season of rebirth....

When Issa was on the cross, he did not say, "Father, forgive them for their sins." He said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ." Does this not make it clear that, in the end, Issa regarded humanity's problem as Ignorance rather than Evil ? But his followers, reverting to their ancestral tradition, turned his path of enlightenment into a cult of guilt and atonement. We Christians have been beating our breasts in contrition ever since, expecting someone to come save us, when we might have been meditating on the Christ Within, and shining that Light on one another. As Rumi said, "Knocking on the door, it opens. I've been knocking from inside!" My calling, as a friend of Issa, is not to judge but to awaken; not to make war between Good and Evil, but to choose Awareness instead of Sleep.

A new revelation is born when we grow so weary with the duties of religion that we drop them completely and awaken to the present moment. All the old stories and commandments fall away in the radiance of pure Presence. Revelation dawns when weariness with the past makes us bold. There is no revelation in history. Revelation is always now. Now, we let go of old rituals and beliefs to investigate the simple phenomenon of awareness. We discover that all our suffering, which the old religion was supposed to alleviate, results from the mind's clinging to images of the past instead of resting in our innate awareness. We abandon believing as a means of gaining spirituality, and simply rest in Presence, free from thought . Since this involves no doing at all, we let go of our spiritual practices. Yet the moment we relinquish these duties, a dazzling effulgence fills our soul, a blissful compassion warms our heart, and all the graces we sought through our religion now shower upon u...

My original sin is disembodiment through thinking. Thinking alienates me from Presence, separates awareness from its radiance, the body. But I am redeemed through sacraments of hearing, tasting, smelling, touching a sparrow's song, a sip of tea, a scent of bread. The storm of your fur, sweet animal, annihilates my past and future. Anointed by your fingers I return to sinless Eden, un- alienated Earth. My body is the garden of your breath, flowering with divine sensations.

I worked so hard to connect the dots: Man, God, Earth, Woman, a single Photon, the infinite Cosmos. But the pattern was too complex for my Mind. Then I opened the eye of my Heart and saw that there was nothing at all to connect. They were all one dot.

Basic sanity is an explosion of Grace at the center of the soul. We return to basic sanity not just for our own sake, but to infuse the world around us with Grace. Let the mind be in the heart. Sink into the luminous bubbling golden cauldron of the solar plexus. Do nothing, seek nothing, be nothing. Rest in the space where you were never born, you are never one moment old, each breath is a gift from eternity, and the host of atoms, the myriad electrons of your body, are all angels of Light.

"Have compassion: everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." (Plato) To what struggle does Plato refer? I think he speaks of the battle between judgment and forgiveness, the apocalyptic battle at the end of time, which is always Now. This battle constantly engages me. I cannot serve both sides. I am either a serf under the old empire of judgment, or I rebel to live free in the land of forgiveness. A heart that forgives much, yet reserves some judgment for its "worst" enemies, is a traitor to itself. Lord of Love, give me the strength to choose forgiveness, even if my battle ends with unconditional surrender! Pictured above is a detail of The Dying Gaul, from Rome's Capitoline Museum. It's one of many versions of the dying Gaul, a figure that seems to have gripped the imagination of the late Roman empire. As evidenced by the cord around his neck, he is a slave. Once a conscript into the army of the empire, he joined the rebels, returned ...

I decree that all your dreams must be in color. Any dream in black and white you must live over and over in waking until it turns to brilliant pastels that cannot be named. I declare the numb places in your body unbearably sensitive to touch, even to the pressure of a summer breeze. When a butterfly settles on the back of your hand, you will faint with the intensity of its caress; and as for my caress, you cannot conceive of a world like that, where stones melt into song. Now I remove the veil of loneliness and pronounce you shamelessly happy. I command the waves, heightening your peaks and deepening your troughs. I clap, and the flatline of your dispassion becomes a typhoon of amazement. When you encounter a lover's gaze, oceans will still one another, every trough filled with a tear, and high places engulfed with sighs. I demand that you postpone the wedding until you have removed your shoes and walked barefoot beside me on a distant star. I abolish the straigh...

We New Age seekers are always attempting to dwell in the now. But there is no such thing as "the now." Eternity is not quantified into past, present, or future moments. There is just an eternally dissolving wave of what is. Catch the wave, do not stop for a moment. There is no moment to stop for.

The dream meant: "Wake up!" The vision was saying: "Get back inside your fur." The story in the ancient Book was always about this breath, this moment, this body. The lips of God were sealed because they were pressed against yours.

Einstein said that a problem can never be solved on the level of thinking which produced the problem in the first place. We must transcend to a new level of thinking. I would suggest that we need to transcend thinking all together, and find the answer in Presence, which is silent and ever free from thoughts. Let 'I' dissolve into 'Am.' Then see if anything remains to be done. First, meditate. Then act gracefully, carefully, in the present moment. Write a letter to the editor, have a talk with a neighbor, caress your cat, get a good night's sleep, or go to a candlelight vigil in your local community, where Muslims, Christians and Jews stand shoulder to shoulder in Presence. I think the only effective politics is being 100% committed to this moment.

O River Mother, May it Be. May it Be, Star Father. May it Be for Water and Wind. May it Be for Sunlight and Moonlight. For the Earth, the Winged and Creeping Ones, The Four Leggeds and Two Leggeds, Those with Words and those with Songs, For the river and its children, May it Be. May it be on Earth as in Heaven. May it be as it was in the Beginning When the Spirit said, 'Flow!' And pure Waters moved through holiness Up from empty darkness into light. May it be as the Beginning When the Spirit said, 'Breathe!' And a mighty wind blew seeds from East to West, Many-colored wings beating in green shadows And flashing in sunbeams, Gold Purple Wings of Quetzalcoatl, Blue Seraphic wings, Christ's diamond wing over the jade forest. May it be as the Beginning When the Spirit cried 'Sun!' and it was warm, The Spirit whispered 'Moon' and it was cool, Two lights opened their eyes, nurturing blossoms Bearing the Brazil-nut, Acai...

What is the distance between still water and the moon's reflection upon it? What is the distance between "I" and "Am"? God's otherness is so intimate! Through the Prophet Isaiah, God sings: "Can a mother forget her nursing child? So I will never forget you!" In his Confessions, St. Augustine writes that God is " intimeor intimo meo : nearer to me than I am to myself." St. Catherine of Genoa declares, "Between my soul and God I find no me at all!" And in the Song of the Lord, Krishna teaches, "I am the very self of your self." I cannot even begin to conceive of God unless God already dwells in me, at some inconceivably intimate depth of my heart.

A Bodhisattva is engaged in saving all sentient beings. A Buddha is engaged in savoring a piece of chocolate. What is the difference? In the midst of confusion and despair, when I am suddenly uplifted by a moment of transforming grace and inexplicable joy, I don't assume it happens by chance. Somewhere, a Buddha is tasting a piece of chocolate.

Clear empty Silence is the solid ground of the universe. Suspended in Silence, the material cosmos appears weightless, instantly dissolving, sparkling like a handful of snow thrown into a sunbeam.

"Take  no thought for tomorrow," Jesus taught. Yet we are incessantly planning! Tomorrow has no Being. Being is now. Therefor, the future has no power over one who is awake. Most of the time we can rest in Presence. And even when planning for tomorrow, we are in the present moment, for tomorrow does not exist. Our plan will be effective, not to the extent that we worry about the future, but to the extent that we are present in this moment.

 Om Tahomaya Namah. I bow down to the Great Mountain Mother whose very name means, in the native tongue, 'breast that nourishes us with white streams.' I offer you these Cascade Lilies. Holding one for each of the five elements, filled with gratitude, I bow down before your snowy whiteness here at tree-line. Our entire ecosystem thrives through your snow-melt streams, providing our energy, our food, our green emerald home. Therefor I make flower offerings to you. The living sun, whose light goes over all, manifests Christ in nature. His golden power gently melts your snow, pressing your white breast, causing those streams of blessing to pour down upon us. Fire mingles with Water, Water mingles with Earth, flourishing green power. The green power of Earth sends forth the Air we breathe, and that breath becomes our prayer, transmuting all we perceive and offer into the Ether of consciousness. Therefor I place these flower offerings before you, Mother Tahoma. As I bow down ...

"See that your chief study be about your heart... for the true spirit of prayer is no other than God's own Spirit dwelling in the heart. And as this spirit comes from God, so doth it naturally tend to God in holy breathings and pantings." (Jonathan Edwards) If life seems confusing, it is because we complicate it by listening to the words of the mind instead of the wordless warmth of the heart. When we take a few moments to center down in silence, we open to the guidance of an Inward Light, a radiant sensation in the region of the heart, directing us as surely as a blindfolded child is directed by a Mother's whisper: Getting warmer... getting warmer.... To develop this intuitive sensibility is the greatest need of our educational system. Today's schools educate us to be data-processors, with complex technical skills but no inner voice. How can leaders guide the world if they don't know how to listen to the guidance of ...

It is said that Moses received from God a third stone tablet of laws, but he shattered it in anger. Or did he accidentally drop it, being human, and this too was ordained, since the laws engraved upon it were too abstruse for that age? Perhaps, as a result of God's mood swings, the laws on the third tablet contradicted the laws on the other two. Is there not evidence in scripture that the Almighty is bi-polar? But this may only be a flaw of human perception, refracted through regret over the past or anxiety about the non-existent future. For when we behold the Almighty as pure Presence, we avoid the polarizing effects of time, and God appears quite sane. It is in such moments of Seeing that the third tablet is miraculously restored, and takes precedent over the other two. Whatever the explanation, we may now receive the revelation of the third tablet, which was discovered intact in a chamber beneath the Sphinx.   * Thou shalt not worry, for wha...

I've often said, "I'll get to it when I have more time." But the truth is, "more time" in the future is a fundamental delusion of  mind. There will never be more time than there is in this moment. The feeling that "I don't have time" is produced in a tense, stressed nervous system. The anxious brain discharges a signal that becomes the thought, "I don't have time." What is really happening is stress in the body, and this stress is happening always in the present moment, causing constant rapid thinking in the mind, wavering between thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future. The whole sense of rush toward the future, and impoverishment of the present moment is a result of physiological stress. That is why, if I feel that I'm rushed, out of time, ghasping for more  leisure, hungry for that sense of eternal expansiveness that is available not in heaven, not in a monastery, not on vacation, but in Presence: then make the...

We think the problem is 'they' when it is 'I.' We think the solution is acting out there when it is resting right here. Let 'I' rest in 'Am.' Then see what needs doing.

Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.   Dear friends, if you can't build your mosque in lower Manhattan, build it here, in the ground zero of my heart. Here is infinite, empty, ancient space to fill with the call of the minaret. But you will find a Christian church here too, a Buddhist temple, a shrine to Radha Krishna, and a sacred tree for the Gods of ancient Ireland. If you don't mind sharing  the space of compassion, it's yours.

Here is a course of radical spiritual instruction, an ancient initiation, available today. This initiation is only for those who are serious about transcending ego, expanding awareness, embracing all possibilities, and shattering boundaries, even the boundaries of the Bodhisattva! The instruction is free, but requires everything you have. Though the teaching is profound, no master teaches it. The practices are mystical yet earthy. You will celebrate its beginning but not its end. The instruction is so intense that many drop it midway. The course involves no rules, but constant discipline. It is so intimate you cannot take it with a group, nor can you take it alone. What is it?

Is there an ego ? In a moment of real happiness, or in a moment of truly serving another, there is no no ego, no I who says, I am happy. But in a moment of dissatisfaction, the experience of separateness arises. Memory strings such moments of separateness on an imaginary thread & calls them me , as if they had continuit y. But they are just gray pearls without a string. Relax. Spend more time doing what makes you happy, and more time serving from the heart. Then there's no you who has to do any spiritual work to transcend your ego .

The prophet: your Mother. The scripture: your Body.  The holy name: your Breath.  The temple: your Heart.  The alter fire: Awareness.  Eternal Life: Now. All religions: Shadows. All rituals: Rehearsals for This Human Being Consciously Breathing.

I can't imagine being happy. I think about where I want to go, whom I want to be with, what I want to acquire, to make me happier. Do these images of happiness in the mind make me happier? Imagining happiness is the seed of unhappiness because happiness is never in the future. The image of Summer in thought only deepens the Winter of our discontent. Bliss is imageless. I only taste it in the present moment. Hence the greatest mystics rejected visualization practices, preferring the 'via negativa' or way of un-knowing in Christian mysticism; 'sunya' or emptiness in Buddhism; 'nirbija samadhi' or awareness without seed in the Yoga tradition. Bliss has nothing to do with what can be imaged or visualized as a thought. Bliss is the vast space of awareness, where the coming and going of thoughts is incidental. When I hanker for something better, an image of future happiness, am I not creating a conflict with what is ? That always promise...

Already today I've been baptized 12,000 times by the Holy Spirit. I'll be born again 9,000 times before sunrise. It happens with every breath, doesn't it, friend? All we can do is say "thank you God," bowing down to whomever we meet. Our bodies are the temples of this birthless deathless refreshment. There's no religion any more: just the art of living. We're all high priests. Our status is so high, in fact, we got to be born on earth! Millions of heavenly devas stand in line waiting for this opportunity. Don't waste a moment wishing you were somewhere else! Resting gratefully wherever you are is the fastest path to the next perfection of Now.

The object of perception floats on the surface of consciousness like a tiny crystal of sugar on top of my mango pudding. Whether I eat the sugar or not is irrelevant to my enjoyment of dessert. In itself, consciousness is already full of nectar. It needs no added sweetener. In itself, consciousness contains more sap than the blossoming lotus, more fragrance than the finest wine, more delight than any romance. The light of consciousness overflows through these senses, illuminating the earth: it's not the other way round. The earth is nourished by the light within us. This is why Jesus says, "You are the light of the world."

To end war, it is not necessary to kill the enemy: just kill the idea of "the enemy." To draw closer to God, it is not necessary to pray harder: just dissolve the idea of "God." To overcome attachments, don't worry about attachments: just drop the "I" who is attached. Seen through my concepts, the world needs many improvements. Letting go of concepts, especially the concept of "I," the world appears as it is, each atom lit from within by the radiance of God.

Whatever you say, I say right on, and its opposite even more! Every lie has its thread in the tapestry of truth. Every truth is a lie somewhere else. 2+2=5 is a wonderful mistake, for it leads to learning that  2+2=4. Every debunked hypothesis brings deeper insight. No affirmation stands alone. And no truth is worth killing for. I believe in everything. We don't go to war over what we believe, but what we disbelieve. True Believers spend most of their time proclaiming, not what is right, but what is wrong. Believing passionately in few things causes violence. Righteousness feels entitled to destroy falsehood. I believe in everything. One needs discrimination, vivekya . But the ultimate discrimination is stepping back into the absolute Self, separate from the relative creation, to witness the cosmos as a web of complimentary opposites. Creation is a play where all is true, all is false, and nothing touches the empty changeless silence of the witness. If I believe in th...