The Place

There's a radiance around our heart. Yes, this beating organ of blood in our body. The radiance of the heart is more magnificent than the energy around the brain. These healing golden beams flow into every cell, every atom of our flesh, making the human body a divine temple. And they flow into the environment around us. Neuro-cardiology shows that this is as true in bio-physics as in the language of the Spirit.

As soon as we insist on a name for this radiance, we diminish its power, and forfeit the guidance of our lives to the brain. But if we simply rest our breath and our attention in this mysterious golden flower, the pollen of grace bursts out, and seeds the miraculous.

The heart space is our sacred door to the eternal, immovable, and self-luminous. It is the portal to a love so universal, yet so personal, that the Beloved longs for us as much as we long for the Beloved.

Name this presence the Christ, Buddha, Shiva, Allah, Wakan Tanka, Mother Divine. Or leave it nameless. But whatever the name, isn't it time to stop looking for that place, and start looking from that place?

How Do You Know?

How do you know that you know?

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say, "Of course I don't know. But within the limitations of my mind, my heart, my senses, this is my current opinion. It may not be true for others, and it may not be true for me tomorrow, but for now it is my truth."

Let us call this the Confession of Limited Knowledge. Would we not see 98% of human conflict dissolve if we all just prefaced our statements with this confession?

If the Pope prefaced every encyclical by stating: "This is my personal opinion;" if the Ayatollah began every fatwah with the words, "This is only a suggestion, based on my best advice;" if the scientist introduced her conclusion with the caveat, "This is only a theory that other evidence may modify in the future;" if every political leader commenced speeches with the words, "None of what I say is certain; neither I nor my party has any right to proclaim its policy as absolute truth; but I ask you to consider my view as you form yours...;" then wouldn't we live in a more sane and peaceful world?

Yet few would respect such a humble Pope, evangelist, imam, president, or scientist. Their tentative statements would sound uncertain and ambiguous to us. We hunger for unquestionable authority. We secretly yearn for commandments written on tablets of stone. Absolutes absolve us from the anxiety of being free.

Now please, do NOT agree with me. Do not agree with anybody. You are not here to agree. You are not here to find the absolutes that are true for all of us. There are none. You are here to bounce off the opinions of others into your own uniqueness. Just thank everyone for their ideas and consult your own heart.

You know that you know your truth, not mine. I know that I know my truth, not yours. Now we can dance, because we are not required to agree.

Cleanse

Wash the dust from your smile with tears.
Trying to be happy has made you stiff.
Frown boldly, fall down, unpolish yourself.
Cleanse your forehead with grass and soil.
Into your bright wounds rub this
tincture of darkness.
God is all of you.

Painting: Mary Magdalene by Domenico Feti, 1617

Kiss

Drink the full moon in
to the night of your heart.
Hold her like a breath.
Now set her back gently in the sky.
Gaze awhile and you will see
the bruise of your kisses.
She loved that. It awakened her.
That is the how God kissed the earth
and you must kiss the stars.

Art by Josephine Wall

Edge

It is like standing at the edge
of a canyon at night, calling your name
waiting for the echo and hoping
to hear my name return.
It is like standing at the edge
of an empty canyon calling 'Beloved!'
and hoping to hear your voice in reply.
It is like crying in the desert of the heart
and listening until I am thirsty,
so thirsty I must drink silence.
It is like standing at the edge of love
without a name
in a place where longing has taught me
to abandon the cry.

Reflection

In my love mirror, your heart sees itself.
Thousands of petals spill out.
"What fragrance is this?" you cry.
O friend, O friend,
you are the beauty you yearn for.
No one can burst you open
but you!

Nights Like This

Nights like this 
I stay home and gaze.
The full moon and I.
Clear secret sky.
Mirror facing mirror,
celebrating emptiness.
Astonishing dazzle
of the Self in the other,
the Other in the self.

Dream

All night the moon sail sweeps across an ocean of blackness, pulling my red boat toward the shores of awakening, where you wait by your candle in the hour before dawn.

I steal through your window, bend down to kiss you, run my golden beams through your glistening hair, set these lips of fire on your forehead, like the ruby wound of the pearl-fanged serpent.

Only then do you open your eyes and inhale, imagining that my journey was a dream in the moment between two breaths.

But I was there, my dear. O yes, I was there! And which is the dream: that presence or this absence?

Now it is morning. Walk down to the shore. Above, even in blue day, the moon sails on, driven by a nameless yearning.

The tide recedes, but in ripples of silver sand you'll find my heart still beating, a strange living sign that there are creatures in the deep....


Painting by Josephine Wall

God Wants Friends, Not Servants

The beginning of every moral corruption and abuse of power is to surrender authority over our own spiritual life to another human being.

 If we give away our innate authority to Pope, priest, imam, evangelist or guru, we are bound to suffer abuse, for we have abused ourselves. Forfeiting ourselves to another is a consent to corruption.

What then is our relation to the Divine? A relationship of infinite friendship, not subservience.

Any spiritual leader who demands our absolute obedience, threatening us with punishment, excommunication, or hell, is a thief who robs our very soul. Thus Jesus said, "All who came before me were thieves and robbers." (John 10:8)

A real guru never gives commandments, never demands surrender of our will. A real guru is our dearest friend. We follow the advice of a trusted friend not out of fear, but because we know we are loved unconditionally.

This is why, at the close of the Gospel, Jesus said, "I no longer call you Servants, but Friends." (John 15:15)

Hand Held

Take this wild rose and hold it
in your hand.
Here is your mistake.
You assume that God is a cause.
But God is just as bewildered
as you and me. In fact,
God is pure
bewilderment.
The difference?
God doesn't search for an answer.
God just rides astonishing waves
that spiral ever outward and inward
in the shape of a rose, yes,
this rose.
The difference?
You have yet to fall
into what you see, but God
has dissolved into laughter and tears.

"We dedicate ourselves to a peace so profound that it inspires everything we do... We offer the world a new vision of peace. Now more than ever, we need the courage and compassion to believe and live and love and work as men and women of non-violence. There is no higher calling!" ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar 

Politics didn't nourish me any more. Too heavy. I thirsted for weightless joy.

The active-aggressive Right held a gun in its hand, calling it righteousness. The passive-aggressive Left raised its clenched fist in protest, calling it peace-making. I looked for a way that was neither of the Left nor the Right, neither passive nor aggressive, neither the protest nor the police. For these opposites merely create each other, and sustain each others polarizing negativity.

Then I found Sri Sri's practical teaching of Sudarshan Kriya, Sahaj Meditation, and Seva, empowering the mind to transcend duality and enter the Kingdom of the Heart. Established in the Heart, we don't stand 'against' anything, we stand 'for.' For one world family.

But what about the injustice, unrighteousness, and inequality around us? Our response to it all depends on our vision. We respond as we see. If we try to carry the world's problems, we gain a lot of weight.

Holding all that suffering, suffering is all we have to give. But becoming light, we share light.

Let go, become light, become free right now. Doesn't this sound irresponsible?

Well it isn't. Being light and free in the present moment is the deepest response-ability. Only with a spacious mind and an open heart can we be fully Present, and respond.

The English word 'courage' is rooted in 'cour,' meaning 'heart.' Right now, rest in the heart. Whatever conflict engages us, whatever battlefield surrounds us, whatever prison cell encloses us, breathe peace. This is courage.

Every breath we breathe is an invitation to soften the heart of the world.

Jai Guru Dev

Think Small?

If you were there in the early days of the movement, you are blessed. Ride that energy. Your work is with beginnings.

Spiritual transformation is not a business. Measuring excellence with numbers is often the way to mediocrity.

You don't need to be one of the movers and shakers, who often shake down fruit that others have planted. That is their work, you have yours.

Stay with the seed. If you keep dissolving the great into the small, you will never lose touch with the infinite.

Jesus said, "Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." He did not say two or three million.

It's perfectly all right to think small, as long as your Being is vast.

Wings

Are you in time and space
or are time and space in you
as fields of presence? 
Perhaps we only use them 

as moths use wings 
to approach 
Fire.

Nirvana Blues

At the heart of the warm is the cool.
At the heart of the cool is the warm.
At the heart of the full is the empty.
At the heart of the empty, the full.
The deeper you sink into darkness,
the closer you come to the source of light.
Not knowing this, we cling to warmth
and freeze.
We cling to wealth and become poor.
Why not be a tiny black bug
with enormous golden wings?
Last night's starry radiance,
inflected by a hazy blue afternoon,
now thickens to curds of mist and drizzle.
I'm meaningless this evening,
burnt out, empty, cool.
Aren't you? What shall we do?
Non-resistance is our discipline.
Don't even try to strike a spark in vast loneliness.
Instead, become the dark.
Do less than I am, so boundlessly alone
it's easier to abandon being than solitude.
Listen!
There's a spark in the heart of emptiness
that never had to be struck.
Sink so low you ignite! 

Vase

Like the blossom in a vase,
I place the stem of the smile
in my heart, to keep it fresh,
unfolding and real.
I do not tell about the Master,
lest people weary of my words.
I let the fragrance of the Master
seep through me. He glistens
on the dance of my hands in service.
Who do you think filled the vase?
Where do you think the petals
get their nectar?

Password

One password I will never change
is the pass-word to my Heart.
Thousands of hackers have already
entered the space inside,
but when they learn what's there,
they just surrender, and become Me.
Whisper "सो ऽहम्" and gain access
to the One who wrote our software.
So'ham gets you in with one click.

Breathe Dark Energy

Dark energy is 73% of the universe. Dark matter is another 24%. Scientists know that dark energy is thousands of times more powerful and luminous than light. But they have no idea what dark energy or dark matter are made of, being utterly beyond the models of classical physics. That means, all the matter and energy we know anything about is 3% of creation.

Science knows that it doesn't know. That is good. That is the beginning of wisdom.

We can't define it but we can use it. We can breathe dark energy. Dark energy is Prana. In samadhi, we immerse in dark energy. Like infants from the birth canal, we emerge from meditation, wings sparkled with luminous flecks and bubbles of dark energy.

No Nation, One Breath

 

"All things share one breath." ~Chief Seattle

Yet on Sunday, 2/17, Benjamin Netanyahi said, "Israel is not like other countries."

The notion that Israel is special is the source of 99% of its problems, just as "American exceptionalism" is the source of 99% of our problems.

Nationalism is a fantasy whose time has past. Nations are drawn with lines that only exist in the minds of conquerors and surveyors. National boundaries have no reality in the edgeless curves and fractals of the natural world. They exist because imperial occupiers impose them on indigenous peoples.

Nation states are dissolving. We'll replace them with bio-regional tribal confederacies, empowered by local shamanic circles, regional business collectives, and diverse sources of local green energy. We’ll have no need for the tyranny of an international banking system, or the dehumanizing oppression of multinational corporations. The best elements of  "liberal" cooperative and "libertarian" individualism converge in the authority of The Local.

A fantastic dream? No, this phoenix already rises from the ashes of burnt-out government and corporate systems that only function on fumes of the past. The new vision awakens wherever local entrepreneurs, farmers, healers, and energy producers work to exchange services in cooperative free enterprise.

Cooperative Free Enterprise? Entrepreneurs realize that free markets work better through cooperation. Socialists realize that local markets engender creativity. Then “left” and “right” vanish. Worker-owned cooperatives replace corporations. Local credit unions replace international banks. No bubble of debt. Only the earth.

Photo, Piotr Krol

Ordinary of the Seasons

I don't need a lifecoach who tells me to burst my limits and push my comfort zone. That is for people who feel limited and uncomfortable.

My life-coach is the warbler on a cherry twig. My life-coach is a shaggy stray. My life-coach teaches me the art of living within my limitations. Accept, surrender, allow grace. Not pushing against boundaries, but infusing them with boundless Presence. My life-coach points out miracles of the ordinary.

Have you truly looked this morning? Have you seen the unfolding petal of a daffodil, whose golden edges are not edges at all, but fractals interwoven with soft mountains of infinite space?

Have you noticed that deep silence is not silent? It is filled with infinitesimal bells of joy.

Have you watched the motionless explosion of your garden awakening, weeds lit from within their seeds?

Thrust your hand into the loam as into a birthing mare. Search for the foal's head. Help what emerges. Have you bowed to the world?

Portal

Don't stop in the doorway
dancing and shouting, "I have arrived!"
The tavern sign is the shape of the path
that led you here, not what's inside.
A vagina glistens, but she's only
a portal of skin.
There's a darkness beyond that quivering
made of Mystery.
"Dangerous, sexual, holy" are just carvings
on the lintel.
"Jesus, Guru, Lord" are but fluttering veils.
Pass through lips and words, be swallowed!
Wind your way down warm crimson canals.
Dissolve in the swirl of music
that first made you want to sing.

 Painting by Georgia O'Keefe

Never Born

All creation celebrates the Birthless by giving birth. Whatever sings, silence hears. Listen, you who were never born. Listen!

Gravity

Fall
into place.
Befriend
entropy.
Be the slope
of grace,
the soaring wing
that dances on gravity.
Rise only
by surrender,
not knowing how
the melody is made
out of listening silences.
There are ten thousand reasons to be unhappy.
Not one of them is this
cherry blossom.

Painting by Zoey

Lenten Meditation

All religions and political systems based on a conflict between good and evil have assumed the classical model of physics, where the life-force of Creation struggles against the death-force of Chaos, or entropy. But there is a new model in which Chaos contains Creation, and Entropy contains the secret counter-force of Life itself.

Dance replaces struggle. Systems integrate, evolve complexity, and live quite effortlessly through sacrifice and surrender. The angst of individualism dissolves in the circle of community, where each evolving spark shines brighter because its light is wave, not particle.

I heard this song from a Seed who surrendered to gravity, only to sprout and tremble greenly upward again, toward the grace and warmth of a dying star.

Or as a Master said, "A grain of wheat remains just a separate seed, until it is dropped into the ground and dies. Dying, it produces many seeds. Those who love their own life will lose it; those who lose their own life will keep it for life eternal." ~John 12

Photo link

You Are the Light

Only the Eternal sees time pass. Only stillness witnesses the whirled. Only Silence can listen. Therefor, just to be aware of life, there must be some still eternal silence inside you. That is Love. You are That. Tat Tvam Asi. Isn't it time to stop looking for that place and start looking from that place? Others will drink the fountain of your presence. Just being here will be of great service. That is why Jesus said, "You are the light."

Information of Silence

We spend our waking hours loading the mind with sense data, in-forming ourselves with the external world. After gorging on streams of random conversation, iPhone, TV, radio, internet sound bytes and constant sensory stimulus, we shut down and go to sleep for a few hours, sorting it all as best we can through mad dreams, only to wake again and plunge into another world of in-form-ation.

This is how we form ourselves out of the material world, but how do we receive spiritual formation? Do we ever take an hour, or even a few moments, to turn 180 degrees and gaze within, to receive the radiant information of Silence?

To be informed by the formless is enlightenment.

Perfect Disappointment

Why not be disappointed? Be disappointed in everything. Perfect disappointment is bliss. 

When I am disappointed, I am free from expectations. Then the ladybug is a ladybug. The twig is a twig. When I make no appointments, every moment is an appointment with beauty. And when I have an appointment to keep, I keep it without expectation. I don't mind being disappointed.

I am disappointed in God and God is disappointed in me. We expect nothing from each other! God Therefor I am showered in grace.

I am disappointed in my guru. I am disappointed myself. I am disappointed in you. Expecting nothing, we shower one another with unconditional love. 

I am disappointed in the rose, the honeybee, and the mountaintop. Therefor every creature is free to be what it is. God is free to be graceful, and you are free to be yourself. Freed from my expectations, every blade of grass is a miracle of the unexpected.

I'm sure that liberation is the final disappointment. How do I know? I am disappointed.

Art Link

You Are the Human Condition

You were born into a world where people kill people. You chose to be here. Think about it.

You are the whole human condition. I am the whole human condition. We all embrace the best and the worst of it.

Yet our so-called 'spirituality,' and our 'liberal' politics, though they pose as compassion, are often but a form of disdain, a cynical idealism that finds most human behavior intolerable. That is why we spend much of our energy protesting in anger and trying to reform the rest of the world. But our endless protests and reforms don't really change the world, because the human condition is just as it is.

There is another Way to be in this world, a Way which has nothing to do with protest and reform. It is the Way of non-resistance.

Embrace everyone, embrace everything, just as Jesus embraced the world when he spread his arms on the Cross. He didn't say, "Father, reform them. Father, wipe away their ignorance and teach them the path to enlightenment. Father, overthrow the hierarchy and fight for social justice."

He said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He just embraced their not-knowing, their ignorance. He embraced violence and gentleness, wealth and poverty, oppression and the oppressed.

One embraces all. The hug is unconditional. This is the Way of compassion. And the mystery is, the miracle is, if we embrace things just as they are, that is precisely when they blossom, transform, and unfold their wings.

Science

Science began with an elemental explanation:
"Earth, Air, Fire, Water,
and the Space of the Observer.
For every disease there is a living cure
in the soil and forest.
If you sing beautiful music,
sickness will not arise."
After thousands of lifetimes of research,
the scientist will stand before God and say,
"This is what I have learned:
Earth, Air, Fire, Water,
and the Space of the Observer.
For every disease there is a living cure
in the soil and forest.
If you listen to beautiful music,
sickness will not arise."

Don't Believe Me

Believing is a subtle act of aggression against the Self. You are only free when the radiance of the believer outshines every belief.

As soon as we begin to believe, we confuse Truth with the robes of religious authority and political propaganda. You are not required to believe anything!

Now here is what God really said to Moses. "I Am. Don't believe in Me: just Be. Then you will need no commandments."

Poems for Darwin

       Eve Naming the Birds, by William Blake

 "In Bahia, Brazil, April 1832. Sublime devotion the prevalent feeling... Twiners entwining twiners. Tresses like hair. Beautiful Lepidoptera. Silence. Hosanna!"  ~Charles Darwin, Journals

God Evolves
God is evolving.
She doesn't know what will happen.
That is the secret beauty
of her dance.

Naked
We were naked babies together
in the Mother's bath tub.
She instructed us to swim and kiss.
Later, someone gave us Commandments,
but She taught us the value
of warmth.

Not A Secret
You, my dear, are not a secret.
Don't wait to be discovered.
God has already discovered you
and shouted the name of your heart
to all the planets and stars, crying,
"Look what I did not make,
so that she could make herself!"
Your light isn't sealed in a can of humility,
a gesture of religion, or an asana slathered
in scented yoga gel.
You are not the shadow of a glossy image
from the pages of another world.
Be this body whom earth and water,
fire and wind are drawn to:
their dance the imitation of your joy!
Green things quiver from soil
at the faintest thunder of your aimless
barefoot wandering.
Birds sing, not to wake you up,
but because you are awake.
Why don't you slip out of all seven veils
into something more comfortable:
the pure original nakedness
for which creation trembles.

The Beginning
In the beginning, silence.
No Word, no Plan, no Idea.
God didn't say anything.
She was just humming.
It all starts to happen like this
in the infinite now.
There's one difference though,
between us and God.
When She bows down
and humbles her cortex
in the land of the ladybug,
whatever She touches, is.
Ping! The earth appears.
Ping! She bows to the moon
and there it shines!
Ping! The sun a golden dot on her brow.
Every planet, every star she bows to,
Ping! like a sandalwood mallet
creating the bell it strikes.
God does not design this universe
out of knowledge, but wonder,
and reverence for herself.

LINK to video reading of these poems.

Reflect

The pain under my breastbone
is your presence.
These distances of yearning
are the fields we play in,
vast rose wings spreading
from the moth-jewel in my center.
The beating and battering
of gentle twins.
Love's suffering,
just dust on a mirror.
Remember this, my heart:
whatever looks back
is never quite as beautiful
as what looked in.
Photo

Just Know

In constant dew the grass turned
all to moss.
Every stone is soft and green.
The sexual fury of a seed
became the glow of a rose,
the fragrance of beauty 
at death.
If you understand this,
you are thinking too hard.
Just know that everything you ever wanted
is already here.

Come to Me

"Beyond the heavens is my abode, don't stop there, come to me, come to me!"

Sacred Uncertainty

Any path that claims to know the final outcome is, for all intents and purposes, devil worship. Shall we sell our souls to the demon of certainty? Shall we exchange the energy of Presence for a tidy future? Beauty is the daughter of a million possibilities, born from the sacred womb of the Uncertain. This is as true in quantum physics as in spiritual living.

Shine On Me Now

I can remember memories. But I cannot remember myself.

My awareness may choose to clutter itself with impressions of the past. And I can project these images into the imaginary future. But past and future are not what is aware of them.

Time is the content of awareness, but awareness is outside of time. Otherwise, awareness would not be able to observe time passing.

Unbounded awareness, empty of all content, shines as eternal presence.  Free from memory, thought and opinion, awareness illuminates the world. That is our real work: to illuminate the world as awareness! There is some other creature who can do another task much better than we. Elephants are stronger, cheetahs are faster, birds are infallible navigators, trees circulate much greater quantities of water into the air. But we can be aware. On behalf of the whole creation, we are aware. Through us, the earth becomes fully alive.

If, instead of being aware in the present moment, I choose to spend my "time" stringing memories together into a painful little story called "me," this is my act of self-creation, but I am not required to carry the past.

We receive the gift of awareness not to remember the past, but to bathe creation in God's radiant presence. Out of this luminous presence, the information I need from the past will spontaneously arise the moment I need it. Then it dissolves again into eternal clarity. For the eternal clarity of awareness contains all information and all history, as the still desert air contains a mirage.

Friend, I don't care who you were yesterday, any more than I care who I was yesterday. I am not nourished by your memory. I am nourished by your light. Shine on me now.

I Am a Good Tribe

Someone wonderful shared this story with me. I hope you share it with someone wonderful too. Friend, in your body is a tribe. In my body is a tribe. It is time to open our hands and see who joins the circle.

"There is an African tribe that has a beautiful custom: When someone does something hurtful and wrong, they take the person to the center of town, and the entire tribe comes and surrounds him. For two days they’ll tell the man every good thing he has ever done.

"The tribe believes that every human being comes into the world as GOOD, each of us desiring safety, love, peace, happiness.

"But sometimes in the pursuit of those things people make mistakes. The community sees misdeeds as a cry for help.

"They band together for the sake of their fellow man to hold him up, to reconnect him with his true Nature, to remind him who he really is, until he fully remembers the truth from which he'd temporarily been disconnected: I AM GOOD."

Hard to Believe

   Face of Jesus by Rembrandt

It's hard to believe. Life is softer without it. Nothing makes the mind duller than believing.

I wish when I was 8 years old someone had said, 'Kid, there's no law requiring you to believe in anything.'

I don't believe in my heartbeat, yet I live. I don't believe in God, yet I experience God. It is through tasting God, not believing in God, that one finds ecstasy. That is why the Psalmist sang, 'Taste and see that the Lord is good!' (Psalm 34:8)

With the courage to abandon belief, I can listen to others instead of hearing my own mind. Wonder fills the vacuum where believing used to be. Through sacred unbelief, I become a pure observer. I see into the borderless fractals of a fern, and open my radiant emptiness to the stars. I love, because I have no doctrine about love.

A ladybug travels to the tip of a grass blade and stares into the abyss. She is so present that she is filled with God. I too am filled with God when I am present without belief. I and this ladybug are equally filled with God.

This is what happens when we give up believing: we see everything equally filled with divine Presence. It is not belief, but the abandonment of belief, that invites God into our eyes, our ears, our nostrils, our tongues, our flesh.

The other day I met Jesus in the village of unbelievers. They were all dancing. I said, 'Can you teach me this dance?'

Jesus answered, 'If you want to dance, don't believe in me. Become who I Am.'

Mistake

Birds have been obsolete for thousands of years, yet every April, we yearn for the goldfinch. 

If there were no flowers, someone in a laboratory would drop something into the wrong test tube and invent one by accident. God would smile and whisper, "You didn't make that, I did." But some doubter would complain, "This isn't natural." 

Sister, every wrinkle happens through a process of perfection you can't control. Brother, your failure is the gateway to creation, your missed note a new harmony. There are no accidents, only discoveries.

Be a widening O, a ripple that disturbs the still ocean of possibility. Count carefully but remember, every mistake is sacred. In the end it all adds up to a perfect zero.

Humiliation

If I were humble enough to be a violet growing through a crack in the sidewalk,
if I were humble enough to be a drop of water falling through a sunbeam,
if I were humble enough to be a dust mote on a dragonfly's wing,
a baby's mouth at the mother's nipple,
an atom of green in a forest shadow where no one goes,
if I were humble enough to hear infinite praise in the first morning robin,
I would still not be humble enough to become God.

Body Hollow

Someone said, "You are not this body." But was there joy in his voice?

Look into the hollow between the galaxies, the vortex at the center of the spiral. Look at tiny sparks on the rim of whirling. Are you one or all? 

Then look into this human form: be grateful. The emptiness that hosts a dance of stars is the hollow in your breathing throat.

The hollow in the ear, the mouth, the nose, the hollow in the eye; the bellows in your chest, your belly, your womb.

Each vein a pulse and pull of emptiness, and every bone-full of sweetness a hollow: where do you think Spring goes in Winter? Your body's hollow roots.

Where do weary saviors like Jesus retreat to pray? The cavern inside your chest, the secret chamber of your beating heart.

Twin hollow tunnels of light, the helix of your spine, where the juices of the dance arise.
 
And in the core of your brain, an almond hollow; hanging in clustered sweetness, your pituitary drips wine. Angels come to fill their cups.

Every pore is hollow, every cell of your skin, every atom swollen with light years of imploding distance.

From fractal sub-nuclear vastness protons burst and spin the thinnest rainbow quark-threads on gusts of silence, thistledown threaded to the stars.
 
Friend, there is nothing in the universe that is not the laughter of your flesh. Even your pain is a knotted hollow, a bliss too thick to name.

Let distant worlds condense into a tear drop. That is the way to be in this human form.

Yoga Art by B. H. Zachary: LINK

Our Tribal Destiny

Isn't it clear that we are wired for tribalism?

We're not wired for democracy. We're not wired for nationalism, corporatism or globalism. We're wired to be a local tribe, dancing around the fire.

Every gathering you ever experienced as truly ecstatic was a tribal experience, was it not? Let this joy, not the state or the corporation, be our model.

Just look at Iraq, Syria, Egypt, the Horn of Africa, and what is happening in America. Humanity's experiment in nationalism has failed. Nations are breaking up into bio-regional tribes. Have you considered that this may be a positive, not a negative, evolutionary step?

The nation-state, even the democracy, is just a shell game, a front for the autocracy of Socialism on the left or Corporate Plutocracy on the right. But the tribe is the indissoluble building block, the proton of human community.

As nation states shake apart, the next step is not the democracy, but the tribal circle. Going tribal is evolution, not devolution. We don't cycle back to the past, we spiral forward to a new ring of the dance.

We learn from the ancestors to form local shamanic circles, tap local sources of green energy, and organize local communities, looking to our village elders, not national politicians, for leadership.


When we discover our tribal roots, our branches grow into the stars. The star people are organized not in the pattern of the modern state, which is just a mask of empire, but in tribal confederacies. When they see that we have awakened from the delusion of modernism, they will re-establish contact with us through shamanic visionary Circles of chant, meditation and sat-sang, where they will teach us to be tribes again. 

Brother, sister, give in to the pull of what flows through both blood and stars! We don't communicate with the star seed by watching the skies for UFO's, but by meditating in a ring. It is not through technology but through sat-sang that we rejoin the intergalactic tribal confederacy.

The human brain will re-connect its latent tribal circuitry. In the microcosm, the tribal community will pattern itself on the brain's neural pathways. In the macrocosm, the tribal community will reflect the network of the galaxies. A shamanic song circle is a fiery vortex whose collective energy is the luminous synapse connecting heaven and earth.

Gather in a shamanic ring at your local village commons or in the near-by woods. Meditate and chant, creating a vortex to invoke the intergalactic elders. Forage and gather green energy, plant vegetables, build yurts and longhouses. Reach out to other tribes, forming confederacies and cooperatives to care for the environment, to re-distribute wealth, and to share goods and services throughout the land. The revolution is to dance. The technology is to sing. The radical act is to be present. The government is a circle of friends.

Then the star people will join you in celebration, turning your circle into a multidimensional spiral of ecstatic wisdom.
Painting: Tribal Dance, K. C. Aryan  

February

Trembling pale
seeds of unknowing
dream of a golden tree.
Imbolc, one veil.
Summer wears three.
Winter was naked and thin.
Dance now, our seduction,
Spring.

Play

The sign of God's presence is play.
Playfulness conceives Venus
in the star foam of the Father's loins.
Playful photons burst from Mother void.
Yet those who cannot play call it "chaos"
when hungry light cries from wombs of milk.
Through playfulness songs are born, dance arises.
Justice happens in the heart of play.
Play is the best economy, the best political reform.
The only program for racial equality is play,
and play is the soul of non-violence.
Through playfulness sex begins, tricking death.
The Rx for treating depression is play.
It costs nothing and its side-effects
are wonder, hugging, tears of celebration, popcorn. 
Let the random rooting of milkweed
and what mushrooms do underground,
let wind, cloud, kittens and tea
teach you to play.
Let nipple's flow, the gesture of snow,
sunlight in ice and the fire in old men
teach you to pray. Did I say pray?
That's Word play.
That's how Goddesses create the earth.

A History of Violence

  

"Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle." ~Psalm 144

Our Judeo-Christian heritage inspires many good works. When we read the Bible selectively, editing out the slaughter, we can find some sweetness. But entwined with the loving-kindness is a history of violence. Our scripture is bi-polar, both a luminous call of love and a gloomy manual of war.

According to the Bible, history's formative event is the brutal invasion of "the promised land," a divinely sanctioned genocide against indigenous tribes. "In the towns and cities I have given you for your inheritance, kill everything that breathes" (Deuteronomy 20). The Book of Revelation concludes the Bible with an apocalyptic battle. Jesus returns to conquer the evil ones, throwing non-Christians into the eternal "pit" with Satan.

The "pit" may or may not be a concentration camp, an Indian reservation, or the Gaza Strip, depending on how fundamentalists down-load their myths into history. The final Armageddon may or may not be a war between patriot militia survivalists armed with Bushmaster ACR's against Obama's black UN helicopters. But it's pretty obvious that our "gun culture" runs deeper than Hollywood or the NRA.

In America, the president poses with a rifle to look credible. Citizens arm themselves with brutal weapons of mass murder to feel patriotic. We raise our children in the aura of empire with deep psychic military propaganda, under the assumption that our violence is different than that of other tribes, because our violence is blessed by God. From the earliest age, we hypnotize toddlers with the glory of weapons. And no sooner does Jesus say, "Put away your sword" (Mat 26:52), than Paul writes:

"Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes... extinguishing the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit." (Ephesians 6)

It's glib to say, "We mustn't take these symbols literally," in a world where 98% of the people always take everything literally. From Joshua to Sampson to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, all the most exciting Biblical images indoctrinate our toddlers to sacred battle, teaching children that war is the final solution to conflict.

We wag our finger at Muslims for their war-like religion. We look down on indigenous people for their bellicose tribalism, especially when they resist our corporate profiteering, our military occupation. We are God's chosen invaders. If tribal people defend their land from us,, they must be "renegades," "savages," "guerrillas" and "terrorists." The violence of their self-defense is demonic, while the violence of our military empire is divinely inspired.

We Americans should show some real courage. How? Stop condemning the violence of Third World people, and honestly confront the pathological belligerence of our own religious tradition.

Then, simply let go of the old story...

Graft

In relationships, we often want to see only our partner's perfection. We don't want to meet their wound. But when a branch is split and broken, is it not most fruitful in its torn spot? That is precisely where it grafts onto another vine, if the other is also willing to expose a tear. Through our wounds we can heal each other, becoming one vine.

Painting: 'Tree of Forgiveness,' Edward Burne-Jones, 1882

In, Out, Above, Below

After meditation this morning, I wrote:

In-breath nourishing my heart with love, 
I am fully present. 
Out-breath cleansing my mind, 
I am grounded, planted in silence. 
Thank you Sky for filling each cell of my flesh. 
Thank you Earth for rooting me here.

An hour later, a dear friend shared with me this fragment from a Chinese scroll of the Chou dynasty, 500 BCE:

"Inhalation must be full: 
breath should be held and gathered. 
If gathered, it becomes magic. 
If it becomes magic, it descends and quiets down. 
If it quiets down, it solidifies. 
If solidified, then it germinates.
If it germinates, it grows. 
If it grows, it returns upward. 
Returning upward, it reaches the crown of the head. 
Reaching the crown, it still presses up, 
for the secert power of Heaven moves Above, 
and the secret power of Earth moves Below. 
He who follows this will live."   

Time and space are fields of Presence. Our connection is all.