Uradiance

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...

In every religion arise both dogmatists & mystics: dogmatists who turn the founder's words & works into a rulebook; & mystics who re-ignite the founder's original experience. The mystics are condemned by the dogmatists, but not before they bequeath their poems, inner practices, and reports of ecstasy to us. Ironically, it is these poems, practices & reports - not the doctrines of authority - that become the lasting heritage of that religion. There is no law in the universe prohibiting us from choosing what works from any religion. Being SELECTIVE is not being superficial: it is being CONSCIOUS. It is being free. You are a citizen of the Earth: all religions are your personal heritage. You are utterly at liberty to construct your own path. Choose well. Choose love. Live like the honeybee. Drink the nectar, leave the flower, and don't even touch the thorn.

I used to suffer too, until I got tired of it. When I stopped telling my life as a story about suffering, I began to notice that life was actually charged with bliss, punctuated by occasional episodes of pain. Then I noticed something even more remarkable. When I allowed myself to go deeply into the pain, to experience the pain 100% without narrating it, without superimposing a story of suffering upon it, the pain turned into pure energy: the same energy that bliss was made of! What made the pain feel like suffering was resisting it, and labeling it with the story of Poor Me. The past is the story of Poor Me. The future is the story of Great Me. But Now is not a story. Now is the space of pure life, pure love. Whenever I want to enter the Kingdom of Now, I just give up the story. But this can be a painful lesson.

St. Augustine wrote, 'O God, our hearts are ever restless till they find their rest in You.' But God is restless too. God yearns for our hearts. From divine yearning, creation arises. Oneness yearns for relationship just as relationship yearns for Oneness. So if we desire true rest, let us rest in the God who yearns to rest in us. Such tipsy quivering syncopated jazz in the heart of God causes the universe to vibrate. Without this constant pulse of yearning and union, there would be no creation. Waves rise, then settle back into the ocean: action, stillness, action, stillness. Through this pulsation, divine awareness awakens from the void to seek itself. In self-awareness, subject-object relationship is born. From the relationship of self with self within the void of pure consciousness, virtual particles are born as fluctuations in the vacuum of space. Then the vacuum overflows, and the Word of light bursts forth. The opening verses of Genesis describe this restless physic...

Being human is just so intensely paradoxical that the place inside me where I feel the deepest pain is precisely the place where God invites me to sing. Let these wounds become eyes. And when the whole world aches too much to bear, let me return to my heart, and love myself until I overflow. When I was with Maharshi Mahesh Yogi I once heard him say, "The closer you come to Truth, the closer you come to Pardox."

"How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!"* We were the world's only superpower; our bombs were smart. Our enemies quaked with shock and awe; war was a card game called, The 52 Most Wanted. Patriotism was a yellow ribbon; our president had moral clarity; he solved our problems with a tax cut. His mission was accomplished: he left no child behind. "We will win their hearts and minds; they will greet us as liberators, waving flags." "Democracy will break out like Spring, and the war will pay for itself." But America needs humility more than triumph. "Pride goes before destruction, an arrogant spirit before a fall." º * (1 Samuel 1:19) º (Proverbs 16:18) __________________________ (A prose version of this was published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

"I have a melancholy of my own." (Shakespeare) "The source of my grief and loneliness is deep in my breast: this is a disease no doctor can cure. Only union with the Friend can cure it." (Rabi'a) In profound loss and grief - a passing, a parting, a depression - we are offered a stark moment of Grace, a dark gold gift. It is the gift of descrimination between that which is eternally present, and that which falls back into ashes and dust. Our depression may be a profoundly spiritual moment in life. Do we honor it? Do we name our depression spiritually , or merely diagnose it medically ? I do not suggest that your depression is a lack of faith, a sign that you should "get religion" and be saved. That would be an insult to your experience, and I would rather praise your experience. I am suggesting, on the contrary, that your depression may be the sign that you are already deeply engaged in spiritual work without knowing it. Saints have called it, ...