Uradiance

The world is not such a violent place. It is really quite lovely. And it's not on the verge of extinction. Research indicates that "a smarter, more educated world is becoming more peaceful in statistically significant ways." In one of several new books about the decline of violence in our world, Harvard scholar Steven Pinker writes, "The decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species." ('The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined').  According to Pinker and other researchers:   * The number of people killed in battle – calculated per 100,000 population – has dropped by 1,000-fold over the centuries as civilizations evolved. Before there were organized countries, battles killed on average more than 500 out of every 100,000 people. In 19th century France, it was 70. In the 20th century with two world wars...

Do you want to know my secret? I don't mind what happens. ~J. Krishnamurti The gist of ignorance is believing that we have some control over what befalls us. The future is not an option, not a choice. I have no idea what will happen, and neither do you. Our only freedom is to be, or not to be, in the present moment. Suffering is resistance to change.  ~Maharshi Mahesh Yogi   Of course, I can't control the present either, because it's already happening. Freedom does not lie in choosing what happens, but in choosing how to receive it. I can embrace what is with spacious love, or I can resist.   Do not resist.  ~Jesus, Sermon on the Mount Our culture claims to be Christian. Yet the One we call savior said, Do not resist... the meek shall inherit the earth. Yet ours is a culture of resistance. Resistance is chic. Resistance is politically correct. Our schools teach the intellect to protest, to object, to argue. They do not teach our hearts how to surrende...

"When you seem to understand a situation and label it, This is how it is , that is the beginning of your problem. Problems arise from knowing, not from not knowing. Suffering is a product of limited knowledge. "When an event occurs, there could be many possibilities to explain it. You label it wrong from limited knowledge. But when there is amazement, patience and joy, you are in a stat e of I don’t know, may be, and life shifts from the limited I know to all possibilities . 'Stop seeing intentions behind others' mistakes. Then you stop bearing grudges. Your mind drops craving and aversion, and you become free.'    ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Thank you, Beloved Teacher. Humbling me, you expand me. Emptying me, you fulfill me.

Peace to you... The Peace that only comes when the mind is quiet, and the heart spills over with the innocence of a newborn child. This morning, every body is flawless, every atom is pure, every photon of light is perfect, and there is nothing that is not made of this perfect light. In the whole cosmos, the only thing that is not perfect is the thought, "This is imperfect." Celebrate the birth of divine love in the human heart. All holidays, all rituals, are just re-enactments of love's breath. With a mind spacious and free from judgment, with an innocent heart and the eyes of a newborn child, observe what is; deeply, deeply observe what is. Peace be yours... For only the action that flows from Peace, makes Peace.

Learn the lesson of a single snowflake. Isn't every flake flawless in its unique and sacred geometry? The intelligence who perfects a snowflake designs this whole creation. Divine Mother pours perfection upon us, and weaves the very molecules of our flesh from the fibers of her beauty. She is not only Holy Mater, she is Holy Matter. Like a snowflake, each sub-nuclear spark of the physical world is an instantaneous revelation of God, and a momentary effulgence of heaven on earth. Merry Christmas from the inconceivable, born in every photon of your perfect body. Though you dwell in form, form does not confine you, for each particle of you is boundless, and eternity infuses all that appears to change and die. Physicists confirm this: an electron is surrounded by a photon-cloud in which each instantaneous photon of light has an energy charge that is infinite. Your body is made of no-thing but the boundless self-luminosity of the void. The illusion of imperfection ar...

Thoughts that feel good in our hypothalamus and reticular activating system we call rational . Thoughts that don't feel good we call irrational . The gist of our thinking is more often determined by what we had for dinner last night than by any inherent quality called reason . The most radical wisdom requires no thinking, no reasoning at all. Reason is a hoax. For example, the invasion of Iraq felt good to millions of Americans in 2003. Thus it felt perfectly reasonable to bankrupt our economy, exhaust our military power, kill a million people, and hand Iraq over to Iranian influence. This idiotic scheme seemed rational because thinking was simply a disguise for sweet feelings of revenge in our primitive brain. On the other hand, when Osama bin Laden sent us a message in 2004, explaining the reasons for his antipathy toward U.S. foreign policy, we heard it as the ranting of a madman. What he offered was to end the war if America fulfilled three conditions: show neutrality ...

"I have too many thoughts in meditation." So what if you have a thought? A thought is just a wave in the sea of silence. Like right now, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, and Sarah Palin covered in hot melted chocolate wrestling an elk, and Laotzu floating in an emerald sky, playing his pearl-encrusted violin from which stream melodies of silk connected to every star, as a radiant winged donkey with the eyes of Jesus alights on my brow, whispering lyrics of unpublished Elvis songs, which I will sing only to the children of the 60's who remember how we wept by the waters of Babylon, and hung our harps from the willows there, smashed on buds that sprang like green nipples from the sugary bosom of the Great Mother, whose black body of starry Silence dissolves all limits between form and formlessness, allowing us to dance in fractals of Delight, the only energy that is. Welcome to the mirage, where boundless awakened space pervades every ripple of mind...

99% of what gurus say, you could say. You just don't have the white robes and long hair going for you.  99% of what college professors say, you could say. You just don't have the capital letters after your name.  99% of what politicians say, you could say. But you're too intelligent to talk like that.  What I'm saying is, you are the supreme authority in your life, and no one else. What do you say? My most exciting discovery on this journey is that spirituality has nothing to do with authority. Spirituality is an adult issue; authority is an infantile issue.  Many follow a guru, a pope, a holy book, a charismatic preacher, not because they want to be free, but for precisely the opposite reason. They want a surrogate daddy. They want to give their innate authority away to someone else. The infantile comfort we get from giving up our self-authority accounts for much religious behavior. I love my Guru: I do not give him a...

Stop sending yourself postcards: "Having a great time, wish you were here." It's the picture of happiness we send ourselves that makes us miserable. You don't even know your address: how will you get the Christmas card you put in the mail box years ago, full of sleigh bells and snowy farms and mothers who never get mad because they have no job but gazing at babies? Fuck these Christmas lights. You break one, and they all go out. There's a better kind of light, fainter but always glowing in the darkness of your aching heart. This light is never born and never demands perfection. It's your real home. Rest here. Don't send pictures.

Jesus said, 'I am troubled. I need you to hang out with me. Stop your work and come to the garden.'  So I stopped work and went to Gethsemane, where I gave Jesus all my prayers. He said, 'I want your friendship, not your worship.'  Then I told him my ideas about happiness, and gave him all the advice I could think of. He said, 'I love your presence, not your opinion.'  I offered to serve him day and night, ending poverty, fighting for justice, cleansing the earth of corruption.' He said, 'I cherish your being, not your doing.' Then I dozed off. After some time, his voice gently spoke again: ' I just need you to stay awake. That's all I ask. Just be with me, without going to sleep.'

You enter my kingdom by ten thousand roads of death. Each chariot wheel rolls toward its center. No restless search for honey in some other garden, but this dark syrup, blood thickening to stillness. Some pray until dawn. Some ask, "Who listens?" But you have become a wonder without words, eyes dazed wide, worshiping the lance that pierced you. Never crying, "Withdraw it!" you seek no immortality, the whisper of your ebbing breath, my Name. The song swells up your throat, a voice that is yours and not yours, the way smoke curls from a wick just blown out. Then you return to my lips.

Even if you don't "think" your laughter is real, just laugh and it will be. Your body is the channel of joy, not your intellect. Your flesh knew the beauty of its smile before you ever conceived of  "happiness." Smiling takes you to your source. It is a revolutionary act. Your laughter is more ancient than your cerebral cortex. It bubbles up your spine and flowers on top of your brain stem, which is the tree of life in the wildest garden of your physiology. New research in neurology indicates that consciousness reflects in the cortex only when the cortex is flooded by energy from the hypothalamus and reticular activating system of the ancient brain. Whatever the problem, simply wrap it in a belly laugh and you will see the problem, quite literally, in a new light.

It's so crystal clear that each morning we choose to wake up or to wake back down. The moment we awaken, we can start looking for the same patterns of stress and negativity in the news of the world that the mind was mired in yesterday; or we can wake to the miracle of Presence, welcoming the revelation of a Winter sunbeam, the symphony of a raindrop. The mouse-mind is free to click on 'Yesterday' or 'Today.'

Americans are paralyzed by a culture of blame.   Right and left, rich and poor, 99 percent and 1 percent, we blame each other. The tea party blames labor unions. Liberals blame corporations. The occupiers blame Wall Street, and are so disdainful of government they refuse to join the political process to offer real policy changes. College graduates blame employers for not hiring, yet seldom ask themselves, “Why did I major in sociology instead of engineering?” Blame loves to generalize. All bankers are crooked, all poor people lazy. All government programs waste money, federal regulations always dampen growth, and capitalism always makes people greedy. Our national IQ is hardly bolstered by such mindless stereotypes. The blame game cripples our two-party system. But Steve Jobs observed, “The axis today is not liberal and conservative. The axis is constructive-destructive.” Let Americans develop marketable skills instead of blaming scapegoats for our non-p...

Teach us to be gentle, Four Leggeds. Teach us the Way of the Fur. It is said that people of the land know this. But when we occupy our hearts, we are all indigenous people. Not one of us is not a native in the land of divine silence.

I yearned for the great mother's breast. Saraswati, Saraswati! By the grace of my own yearning I heard music. I became milk.

"To care, and not to care..." ~T. S. Eliot I  count out the rhythm of my heartbeat. I work so hard to keep it regular, I sometimes forget to breathe. Monitoring my lungs, I painstakingly exchange oxygen and CO2 in every little alveoli. Meanwhile, I carefully maintain the electrical gradient between sodium and potassium ions in each cell of my body, watching over every membrane to let in nutrients and expel toxins with utmost vigilance. Whew! Concentrating on 700 trillion cells at once isn't easy. Not to mention manually spinning every quark in the nuclei of each atom. No wonder I forget my telephone number. If all this sounds ridiculous, then how much more ridiculous to imagine that the Divine must pay attention to the details of creation, and to each of our little cries! Your body simultaneously carries out quadrillions of complex operations without the slightest effort, and without the slightest demand for your attention. In the same way, the cosmic o...

The sign of an awakened heart is gratitude. Why not give thanks for every atom of dust - seeing that t he ocean gives thanks to the wave, the tree gives thanks to the seed, and the universe gives thanks to its smallest creature? She holds you in the palm of her hand, whispering, "We are so grateful! None of us could be complete if you were not you !"

Upanishadic texts declare that the very nature of existence (Sat), is bliss (Ananda). In the Bible's opening verses, Creator rejoices in creation because it is all pure Goodness (Tov). Every particle of the universe is made out of Bliss, molded from Goodness. Utterly delightful is each atom of dust. If we think we need a reason to be happy, do we not deny the gracious gift of life itself? Therefor, give thanks for the simple, immediate, ineluctable purity of mere being. A wet voluptuous fern in the midnight forest taught me this.

  I know less and less about anything but who I am. Empty and un-knowing, I gaze into the miracle of your eyes. I see petals falling from the Autumn rose: the naked center is so beautiful. I marvel at the engines of transparency in the wings of a dragonfly. Beyond understanding, I bow to every creature. When my forehead touches ground, the whole earth sings in silence, "You are the miracle!"

I took a non-dualist friend to an ice cream parlor on a hot day and said, "The treat's on me. Which flavor will you have?" The non-dualist said, "Chocolate, please." So I bought vanilla.

Every moment, mental chatter arises and dissolves. Yet the boundless Silence in which this Mind chatters has been here forever, and will be here forever more. Which do I identify as me: the Mind or the Silence that contains it? This is the only decision that really matters.

Ever thickening mirage of interwoven mythologies, corruscations of I upon I ,  the names of gods contending with gods, of thoughts the thoughts of thoughts, the mother's body of momentary splendors, virtual galaxies enwombed in perpetual darkness, diamonds of thisness not yet "this'd" by a word or a kiss of possibility, unspoken, dreamless, waking sleep: what Mater Matter is made of.

"Δp × Δx = h"  ~Werner Heisenberg "Dwell in possibility"  ~Emily Dickenson Blessed are you when you are uncertain. Uncertainty is quite different from doubt. Anyone can doubt, but it takes a very courageous person to be uncertain, and to stay there, dwelling in the positive energizing force-field of uncertainty. Uncertainty expands the space of what is possible. A doubter cannot tolerate possibility, and so becomes a true believer. But one who rests in uncertainty refuses to cling to any belief. Uncertainty is the secret force within the artist, the poet, the improviser, the creator. The electron's uncertainty in time and space  is the spirit in matter, the lightness in creation. Nobel Physicist Richard Feynman said, "It's more interesting to live by Not Knowing than to live by knowing what might not be true." Feynman's language, by chance of course, resonates with the radical Christian mystical tradition of "Unkn...

If you think the world is unfair, just imagine how much more rotten it would be if you had no one to blame. Blaming brings us consolation in the midst of chaos, the consolation of pretending that someone is really in control. Blaming feels good because it assures us that there must be a few bad guys up in a sky scraper smoking cigars and oppressing us. If we could just string them from the lamp posts, the shattered crystal of our perfectly imagined world would magically recompose itself with the ping of a marvelous chime. Blame is fantasy. We grew up and abandoned our imaginary friends, but we never stopped imagining scape goats. The real division between us is not money, religion, class or politics, but blame. No one is to blame. Blame is an illusory link of causation formed out of ignorance through maya . Blame solves no problems Our ultimate defense against impending chaos is the infantile fantasy that somebody is doing it to us. But what if no one is doing it, and ...

Beware the Viral Luminosity of the Heart If you get a message in your heart that says, "Open Me, I Am Infinite Light," don't open it! It is a virus that will erase all the doubts and fears that have kept you safe in the illusion that you are finite, that you only exist as this body, that you are a weak fallen creature of lack, that anyone other than you is responsible for your happiness. This virus is extremely dangerous. It is God.

1. No one is to blame.  Blame is an illusory link of causation formed out of ignorance, feeding the sense of separation. Every time we blame someone, we make them the cause of our life and forfeit our freedom. We empower whoever we blame. 2. Money is an illusion that we can live without. Money was invented to give few power over many. Money was never a necessity for human community. Humans will one day awaken to the realization that we could have lived without money all along, communicating at the subtlest level of trust , extending to one another unlimited credit and debt-forgiveness in every transaction. 3. We will discover the free, clean, unlimited energy source. We will tap into the infinite energy that is inherent in pure empty space, liberating us from dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear power, and every previous source. Empty space overflows with abundant potential energy, in the form of virtual electrons and virtual photons of light. These virtual particle...

Today, become so free you cannot find your way back to an I.

You think you are liberal? God is way more liberal. God's wild open-hearted forgiveness makes every radical look conservative. How else could humans get away with it? Sometimes I think God should be more strict. But God knows what She's doing. She wants us to mature beyond the laws of right and wrong, fulfilling all possible commandments by following one simple rule: Namastes Me, Namastes Me, Namo Namaha. Bowing to the divine in you, I bow to the divine in me. We bow to the divine in each other.

Does a Buddha feel sadness? Does a Buddha feel joy? A Buddha is established in Upeksha, which we can translate as dispassion or detachment. Many Westerners conclude that to be a Buddhist one must suppress or annihilate all one's feelings. This misinterpretation makes Buddhism seem nihilistic and even depressing to Westerners. Yet it is precisely the quality of Upeksha that empowers a Buddha to embrace the richness of human emotion, without getting stuck in it. A clear empty mirror reflects every details of the world, yet the world is really not in the mirror. The mirror is always clear and empty. When the events are over, they do not stick to the mirror. So detachment allows a Buddha to experience the passions of others with understanding and forgiveness, as if they were her own. Sakyamuni Buddha compared this state to a mother's infinite care for her only child. When the child cries, the mother feels the cry, yet does not share the baby's fear of abandonmen...

They say the movement has no leadership. But perhaps there is a new kind of leadership, rooted in collaborative Unknowing, with a deep faith in Presence. This movement is only a taste, a rehearsal for post-2012 leadership, which will see the end of outmoded governments. What is our new leader's name? Issoa. Intuitive Spontaneous Self-Organizing Awareness. Follow Her. Painting by Regina Argentin

With the so-called Enlightenment of the 17th century, Western culture found its religion but lost its soul, embraced the methods of empirical science but forgot the methods of meditation, invented objectivity but turned the self into a four-letter word. "When I enter most intimately into what I call myself , I always stumble on some particular perception, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.... We are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity..." (David Hume, A Treatise On Human Nature ) Why does Hume write, "I never can catch myself at any time without a perception?" Because he tries to catch a thing instead of a Self. He grasps. And in the very act of grasping, he breaks reality in two. The subject denies its own existence as it reaches out for ...

    Being pissed off is not the answer. It only feels like the answer. Then you discover that you've given half of your energy to the very people you're pissed off at, in the form of your outraged shadow. I wasted most of my life blaming, scapegoating, projecting my anger on the "enemy." That's what my culture taught me to do as a "man." But I was just making the "enemy" bigger and more powerful by feeding him with my aggression. Now the enemy, the slogans tell is, is "the rich." For a while there it was Muslims. Then it was "the far right." We just keep replacing one scape goat with another: we need someone to hang our shadow on. I'm finished with toxic blame. Projecting anger and blame wastes half my energy, energy I could be spending actually creating something - like joy, like beauty, like abundance.  I refuse to buy into any more conflict between Rich and Poor, Left and Right, Christian vs. Musl...

Sometimes there is unity. And sometimes there is God and I. Why should two be less than one? I talk to God without words, the way a sparkling stream talks even in the darkness, flowing from water to water. God isn't interested in my reasons for believing or disbelieving. God is interested in my friendship. If  God and I were not friends, we'd have to settle for oneness.

  Ultimately, the purpose of science is to validate the benefits of laughing, dancing, and singing God's name.

  Let the sign of the movement not be a raised fist, but the Abahya Mudra, the raised hand of the Peace blessing, Eye of Wisdom in its palm, so open. Abahya means "without fear." Fear closes fists and hearts. The spirit of peace opens hands and hearts.

Corporate lobbyists own both major parties. The 99% Movement has the energy, but is not yet focused into a political strike force.  Perhaps the next step for this  movement is a viable third party: the Progressive People's Party of America. We need candidates and concrete legislative plans. But first we need a focused party platform. Here's a potential one to get the discussion moving. * Rid politics of private money: institute public campaign financing. * Cut military spending in half. Bring home the troops . The age of empire is over. * Link educational reform to the green economy: Make sustainability the basis of public school curriculum. Inspire students to develop clean energy technologies, and life-styles of environmental harmony. Use game theory and internet computer gaming to pool the nation's collective intelligence and produce collaborative solutions to green energy problems. * Extend the 7% FICA withholding tax to all earned inco...

Just beyond the edge of our sandbox, where we throw sand in each others' faces and make each other cry, ceaselessly whining, "Give me that, it's mine!", our Mother watches patiently over us, whispering, "Children, when you finish your hissy-fit, I will make you lunch."

Be a horizon, become a curve. No need to take sides when you spread your arms. The tantrum of this world is smaller than your body, smaller than your rising falling chest. Be unclosed, an embrace. from the galaxy of your crown to the belly of your atoms, one breath. This is how Jesus died, whispering "forgive them," and woke up inside every flower, every eye. Something in you has awakened to infinite rest. If your heart did not just open, what did?

‎"It is not enough to be neutral. I must passionately choose sides in the conflict." "It is not enough to take sides. A deeply centered part of me must remain neutral." Both of these statements are true. In the heat of conflict, each side stereotypes the other, projecting its shadow of fear on the adversary until what is beheld is not the other, but the darkest aspect of oneself. Thus the Capitalist and Socialist, Israeli and Palestinian, Believer and Non-Believer, energize the darkest aspects of each other. In such conflicts, the only sanity is neutrality. In progressive circles, it has become fashionable to condemn neutrality as implicit cooperation with the oppressor. But neutrality can be the deepest form of courage, and the way to peace. Without neutrality, where is the meeting place, the space for listening, for mediation, for conflict-resolution? Standing at the heart of conflict, with the courage of neutrality, our very Being defuses polari...