Uradiance

Blessed Full Moon, cooling and quieting this restless mind with beams of transcendental light.  Blessed Sophia, Mother of Wisdom, Holy Spirit and Bride of Christ, whose breath opens and sweeps my heart.  Blessed Sarasvati, Goddess of Poetry, Music and Art: Om Aim Shrim Hrim Sarasvati Devyai Namaha!

A few moments merely Being, without being any one or any thing, flood the day with the ocean of eternity. Then it becomes so obvious that all the hopes and plans of men and angels are but dim reflections of this apple blossom's yearning for the sun.

Be a warrior of spells. Store up healing words like arrows in the quiver of your heart and dip them in deep silence. When you enter the mists of fear and discouragement, shoot your luminous blessing into a cloud and awaken the Sun! Words matter.

Visions that only taste of hopes and dreams are sweet but unsustainable. Visions that nourish are salty with tears of loss, spiced with a raw accounting of our failures, leavened with the honest embrace of wounds and disabilities. Refine your skills not in blind confidence but mindfulness of mutual frailty. Honor mistakes: they discover new paths. The blossom whose perfection takes your breath away grows in stuff you wouldn't name. What you refuse to put your arms around returns to embrace you. Kiss the dying. Cradle the old and useless: they give birth. No hug is wasted. Your mother's warmth is still here. Never be afraid to say with the reverence of a prayer, 'I don't know.' Rooted in vulnerability, you won't be felled by a sudden storm. Have mercy on your genius: restless, seasonal, bipolar, it seldom dwells in equanimity. Genius is native to cracks and craggy places, surging toward brilliance, then falling ba...

The point is not to be right but to be, not to be enlightened but to be, not to be successful but to be, not to be I but to be, not to be for or against left or right, Eastern or Western, Christian or Muslim, guru or disciple, advanced or beginner, not even to be good but to be. Give up being any one or any thing and at this very moment an inner sun will flood your soul and body with inconceivable light, the golden radiance of Being.

                  1) There cannot possibly be any alternative to What Is.  2) The space of Now is absolute freedom, regardless of its content.  3) No one is responsible for my experience of 'reality' but me.  4) Therefor, my only duty is to rejoice with the midnight frogs. _____________________________ (Painting by Elizabeth Fraser: 'Stars Over Sunset Pond,' Borestone Mountain)

"Om purnamadah purnamidam, purnaat purna-mudachyate, purnasya purna-madaya, purna-meva vashishyate."  ( Isopanishad )   Link to hear Pandit Jasraj chant "That (empty space of consciousness) is full; this (manifest universe) is also full. When this fullness is formed out of that fullness, or when this fullness merges back into that fullness, all remains the same fullness." "The vacuum carries within itself the possibilities of everything that can exist in the physical world. Once we attain true knowledge of the vacuum, we will have a comprehensive knowledge of everything, including the laws of nature. It is as in the thinking of the ancient philosophers. The knowledge of the void, the "nothing," is intimately connected with the knowledge of the "something." We take it as a matter of course that empty space is not really empty." ( 'Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space,' Henning Genz, professor of the...

Only lovers know the difference between contradiction and paradox. This is the secret they keep: God has no hidden agenda, God imparts no esoteric knowledge, wears no veil. Empty your mind. Open your eyes. What you see is what you get.

Spend the first half of life seeking the One and the second half celebrating Two so at the last breath you may wake in eternity and find someone to dance with.

I am happy this very instant because I see that the unhappiness I carry is not who I really am. It is utterly alien to the Self. Yet at a more profound level, the unhappiness I've been carrying is precisely who "I" am. The reason it's so heavy is because "I" am heavy. Dropping my unhappiness means dropping "me", the sense of a doer or owner for all these thoughts, moods and anxieties that pass through on their way from nowhere to nowhere. So-called "enlightenment" is not about acquiring something. It's about dropping what we never needed to carry. In ancient childhood, somebody convinced us to carry their suffering for them. But carrying somebody else's ancient pain does not relieve their burden. It doubles the burden. Now two of us are miserable. Jesus never carried our suffering: he simply invited us to drop it. His invitation is exactly the same as the Buddha's invitation to " anatta ...

"One infinite NO creates a universe of finite yeses." (Maharshi Mahesh Yogi) Shiva, light of pure consciousness, subject without object pervading all objects, watching all from within, as soon as I speak your name I lie. And if I call you 'Nameless' I lie. As soon I say 'Thou' I lie: Shiva transcends duality. As soon as I say 'One' I lie: Shiva transcends non-duality. If I say 'Formless' I lie, 'Tryam Bakam the Three in One' I lie, 'Existence, Consciousness, Bliss' I lie, 'Thou art' I lie, 'Art not' I lie. Let my lies reveal the tiny blue violet of your face blossoming through the dark crack, splitting open the stone. Let my lies reveal the warm brown hills and valleys of your power in a woman's body. Let my lies reveal the flash of your smile in the good warrior's sword, and the scent of your touch in the breast-bundled softness of an infant's fles...

God has nothing to do with creation, because God has nothing to do. It is we who have 'to do' lists. God simply gazes at worlds arising and dissolving in divine amazement. How can we know this? We are amazed. And when we are amazed, we are in God. Spend a few moments of your day just being amazed. Find some tiny creature like a blade of grass, a ladybug on a leaf tip, a pebble in the sand, and remember that you know absolutely nothing about the galaxies and worlds that spin through its atoms. You have no idea how this creature came to Be, or what force propels it through time. Take a moment to know nothing and be amazed. For that moment, you will dwell in eternity and dance with God. You will be totally refreshed for the rest of your day!

Seeing duality in this world is ignorance.  Claiming to see non-duality in such a world is arrogance. We're in a fix. What to do? Give up. Fall down into the heart. Laugh, sing, dance and meditate!

Who is the one who 'makes' peace? Who is the one who 'works' at it? Peace arises spontaneously, right in the midst of conflict, when this do-er dissolves. "I have come into the world to see this: the sword drop from men's hands even at the height of their arc of rage, because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound." (Hafiz) When I see the do-er in your body and the do-er in my body disappear into one dance, I no longer speak of war and peace.

Please, no more Walmart Vedanta! All these thousand-petaled lotuses floating around without roots doing Bipolar Yoga: non-dualism in the forehead, Tantra in the groin. A quote from Mira Bai and you long for the Lord of moonlight, but one verse from the Avadhut and all is empty space, that is, until you smell the pizza. Friend, these aren't glimmers of moksha: they're just states of mind. What comes and goes can't be Truth. Your guru costs you money but the cost of wisdom is death to shopping around. Sex has many disguises: touching your brow to the master's naked feet is one of them. And nobody's more stuck that a horny non-dualist. So if your thousand petaled lotus needs fertilizer don't sprinkle a withered flower. Get real, get down to the root.