Uradiance

Your belly button is the blossom. Something buzzes there, making honey of all this blood, these forests and mountains, the darkness between stars. Into the mystery of the Goddess you have entered  more deeply than the Goddess. She longs to be where you are now, nursing miracles out of the green earth. Why else should you taste the butterscotch sun, the chocolate moon scented with herbs from an ancient garden? All that can bow bends toward her through your breasts. Come, engender yourself. Humanity kicks from within, then pours out of you like wine. Dear one, your body is proof that there is no other world. Photo: 'Embryo' galaxy in Cassiopeia.

What attracts me is not your flawless diamond perfection. That is too cold and hard. I am drawn by the falling curves, the dimpled shadows, the pause and lilt of little flaws that make you utterly, uniquely beautiful. If God had wanted you to be perfect, you would not have been created.

The Chosen People are the people who choose to be present. They return to the homeland of Now. They live on the planet where every seed sprouts into a Burning Bush of revelation, every tree is the Tree of Life, each pebble is the Kaaba stone, all streams are the Ganges, and the rolling green hillside wherever you pitch your tent, is the Mountain of God. Their worship is to breathe.

Surrendered so totally to my will, he allows me to experience what it is like to be God. But this does not make me vain. It makes me melt into my original nature: radiant, all-forgiving, golden, unconditional, even-though-there-is-poop-on-the-floor-and-chewed-up-socks love. Therefor he plays precisely the same role in my life as the Guru, awakening me to who I really Am. The same cannot be said of my cat.

The Goddess whispered to my heart, You are not here to suffer. You are here to make honey. Visit the dark sticky places in everything that blossoms.

Good bye, old friend.  I remember how you taught me at midnight, in sparkled  lightning-bug mist that swathed  green Pennsylvania clover,  to ride cows. Silently  we rode them until dawn. They were never quite awake, but we were. That was years ago. Drowsy and patient, the cows are gone, the meadow is gone,  you and the days are gone - but not this friendship. English landscape by John Constable

It flashed out of the void, then vanished. You said it wasn't real. You said that clinging to it was sorrow. You attended long lectures about its non-existence, weekend retreats to get rid of what wasn't there, but at night, alone, you admit to having no idea what it is, where it came from, or what it means to the darkness that fills you even now with ineffable yearning and dread. All you really know is that your life has become its perpetual echo, an after image in the eye that cannot see out of dazzled blindness. Ripe and desperate now, why not confess how much you need the Beloved?

A featheriness rustles through all hearts, in-furling and unfolding brilliant wings to christen each atom and inflect the stars with the light that belongs to children. Each of us is all of that: no edges, this shining, only waves, A single atom of whose burning is the curved horizon of God's joy. You keep seeing this in Jesus, in Mary, in bold voluptuous lovers. Why not let the beauty be You? Don't just be a flame. Become fire.

Don't just be happy. Be happiness. Rest in the unshakeable, the imperishable golden core of your heart. There, happiness does not come and go. Everything except happiness comes and goes.

The  Subject pervades the Object, and the Object has no existence outside the Subject. This is the reality. However, when our consciousness is weak and wavering, the Object annihilates the Subject during the act of perception, creating the illusion that there is an "external world of the senses." This delusion of separateness can usually be overcome by running your fingers through living fur, while repeating the mantra, "I love you."

A Buddha transcends creation, gaining freedom, because he takes nothing personally. But I like being a person. A Bodhisattva feels the pain of all sentient beings, redeeming the whole world, because she takes everything personally. But I'm not that saintly. So I don't follow the Buddha path or the Bodhisattva path. I just bathe my imperfections in the Master's perfect love, and trust that some spills over.

You created all this for me. With infinite gratitude, I breathe in. Now receive your creation back as my offering as I breathe out. Inhalation, exhalation, the two-fold Eucharistic offering, grace and response. Just to breathe is worship. Painting by Mark Keathly

Nothing has ever been perfect. Nothing will ever be perfect. But everything is perfect right now. This is the blessing of Presence. Your world is imperfect. Your nation is imperfect. Your body, heart and mind are imperfect. But you are perfect. This is the blessedness of Being.

We're all haunted by the ancient myth that something is wrong. Something is wrong with the world. Something is wrong with "me." It just doesn't feel right... But there's an even older story, about a place where we lived before anything went wrong, a place where it all felt right. In the myths, it's the Sacred Garden. We dwelt there before the Fall... That place is inside you right now. That place is who you are. At the ends of their outstretched wands, without any magic but nature's grace, white magnolias burst into blossom. The sun-drenched air is not too chilly, not too warm. Abandon your shoes. Slip off every garment and remember what it was like to be You.

I don't want to know what I should do. I want to know where the should comes from. Through this inquiry, I discover that should is an echo, a ghost of the past, which has nothing to do with Presence. Presence is where I respond to life, where I discover response-ability without any should. A wise counselor advised me to gracefully let go of should. But it kept gracefully returning. So I grabbed the should by its throat, dragged it to the top of Mount Sinai, and threw it back into the fire. Should is the fear of judgment. Take away Judgment Day, and only now remains. Pure presence, free from judgment, is Love.

Nothing is greater than silence. What I feel in "great" art, poetry and music is silence between the notes, silence between the words, stillness in the brush strokes. Creation is rooted in the silence that was there before Creator said, "Let there be light." Creativity blossoms from the void. Master craftsmen communicate deep silence through their chosen medium. Otherwise, it's just busy-ness and mere technique. To improve my work, I deepen my silence.

Money is the symbol of our willingness to dance with the Wheel of Sacrifice. Money represents the responsibility we take in our energy exchange with the universe. There is nothing impure about money. What is impure is to expect money when one has not earned it, or to withhold money from one who serves you. The ignorant waste their energy figuring out ways to avoid paying for what they receive. The enlightened are glad to give fair wages and profits to those who provide them with true service. The universe is a Great Wheel of Sacrifice, where energy consumed in one turning pours out in another. We participate in the great wheel through seva , service. No new energy is created, and no energy can be lost: therefor every service has a cost and a reward. Whatever is of value has a price. One who does not feel the cost can never know the value. What is received here is paid for there, given to one, purchased by another. Is anything free? If you value yourself, you will as...

The Crucified said to my heart, "Suffering is not my way. Relax on the cross." "Relax into the center of paradox, where verticals of eternity cross beams of past and future." "You can float in the sky like a cloud, or fall to the ground like a stone, but can you balance your body where opposites converge, where soil and stars, joy and sorrow, God and womb co-mingle?" "Can you ease into your flesh, cradle creatio n in your heartbeat, touch heaven and earth with a single breath?" "Let the wounds in your chest and crown, your palms and feet, be eyes ever opened to witness both laughter and weeping."

If Easter and Passover are mere myths and fairy tales, then what use are they? But if they are real, then I shall practice Easter each morning at dawn. The Resurrection of the Body shall be my daily discipline. I shall make the Passover my path: from the realm of bondage, through the desert of purification, to a new land within the heart, flowing with milk and honey. These are mysteries of Presence, facts of direct experience, not only in Spirit but in every particle of flesh. The effortless resonance of the mantra , vibrating as subtle sound through the nervous system, is the incarnation of the Logos, the Word made flesh.  The techniques of yoga bring the Resurrection of the body.  In both the Hebrew and Greek books of the Bible, the word for Spirit is precisely the same as the word for Breath: ruach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek. The invocation of the Holy Spirit is the Holy Breath of mindfulness meditation, conscious breathing. The chrism or anoint...

"I" call on the Lord as Christ or Krishna, Amita Buddha or Mother Divine, but the Lord already dwells within me as "Am." The thought of  "I" is a moth that dances around the flame of  "Am." Some teach that "I" should be annihilated in the flame. But why this violence against my intrinsic playfulness? Why not just let the moth dance with the Beloved, knowing the moth as a moth and the flame as the flame? Delusion only happens when I confuse them, identifying the winged dance of "I" as my eternal Radiance. I Am both moth and flame: playfulness and liberation.

Jesus cries from the cross, "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do." In that moment, does he carry the sins of the world, or drop them? The center of the cross is a place that is light and free, without sin or blame. At the center of the cross, no one carries anything. If you load your cruelty, your bitterness, your blame upon the shoulders of one who dwells at the center of the cross, he won't take it personally. Centered there, Christ-Consciousness radiates without judgment, from a vanishing point beyond "sin." At the center of the cross, there is no "I" to be burdened or offended, for "I" am crucified. This is the crossroad of paradox where opposites collide, annihilating one another in an explosion of pure awareness. On the cross of paradox, concepts disappear, and awareness becomes available as free energy, no longer bound up in opposing viewpoints. On this cross, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Pas...

Sometimes we rise in a wave, sometimes we fall into a trough. But waves and troughs of what? Our own crystalline awareness. Our highs and lows are just a playful mirage in Self-luminosity. The ocean of our being is one seamless radiance, eternally at rest in its own transparency. That is why both Christ and Krishna said, "Don't worry. Just rest in Me."  

  It's not enough for me to tell you that you have a beautiful soul. You are beauty. Every atom of your flesh is an awakening universe. Your breath, your secret smile in sleep, the tilt and sway of your ambling, the tingle of wet grass on your bare feet, your wrinkles and soft spots, the skip of your mortal heart, your moments of silence, your shadow, the mistakes you make, the things you leave unfinished settling just where eternity intended them, your sacraments of bathing and eating dessert, the landscape of your body rising and falling under the close and distant stars: beauty that can't be helped.