Uradiance

 "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 ...