Uradiance

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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