Here Am I

The distance from my soul to the Master is the distance of my doubt. It may be ten thousand light years, or a thin veil of mist, a mirage of separation. A single exhalation dispels it, and i am I. 

That distance is only the length of my breath, a journey from the space between my eyebrows to the hollow bowl of my chest.

The golden thread that leads my heart back to Him does not stretch above me into the heavens, or out over the sea to an ashram in India, but inward, through the depths of my own consciousness, to the golden Sun at the center of my heart. 

Here is the truth. There is nothing I receive from the hug of Divine Mother, the darshan of the Master, the touch of my forehead on the Guru's sandals, six months in the ashram, or even the most secret whisper of the Divine in my ear, that I cannot receive where I already am, right here in my own meditation room, breathing down to the deepest center of the soul.

This is not to say there is no need for the Master, for it was the Master who ignited this light at initiation. Yet when the Shakti ignites, there comes a time when invisible wings unfurl, and the nest is too small. 

Then the sign of devotion is not how near the Guru's feet I kneel, but how freely I wander the world in that ever-expanding Presence. For I practice the Master's sadhana, full of grace; and because of this, wherever I find my Self, the Master is inside me, solid as gold.

Jai Guru Dev

A Perfume Called Friendship

"I do not call you servants anymore... I call you Friends." ~John 15:15

No need to keep returning to the garden, seeking another glance, another taste of the flower. The essence of Guru Shakti permeates us now, however far we wander, the seasoned wine of an ancient friendship. It is light and nonbinding, this perfume. Love is freedom.

No need to worship a white robe, a beard, a pair of sandals. We worship the light that radiates from our own heart's depth. Then we serve the light in every person we meet. This is true bhakti, and this inward light is the real Guru.

Work

 

My problems arise when I try to do what is happening...

I would be declared insane if I claimed to make the sun rise, the seasons change, the earth turn, and the stars rotate through the Zodiac. Why am I any less insane if I claim to bake bread, make money, or lift a single stone? I cannot even "do" the physiology in my own body. Do I breathe my breath while sleeping? Who breathes me? Do I beat my heart? Who beats it day and night? I cannot control the morphology of a single cell, or instruct a strand of DNA to mutate and not to mutate.

Therefor, when I work or play, who works and plays? When I achieve success, who succeeds, who fails? When I work hard, the work gets done, but where does "hard" come from?

One person says, "This is hard work." Another accomplishes that same work without stress. What is the difference? Is it in the work done, or in the sense of do-ership imposed by the mind?

There are two ways to be ignorant and karmically bound. One is claiming that no work needs to get done, the other is claiming that "I" am doing it. 

Liberation means, engaging in dynamic work without any do-er. One who is free accomplishes a great deal without claiming that "I" have done it. This is not false humility, but the actual experience.

What Happened to the Occupation?

 "All netted together." ~Charles Darwin

We did not occupy ourselves. And therefor, we were not whole. We were 99 against 1 percent. But to succeed, we must be 100 percent.

Our culture of conflict loves its old apocalyptic story about the armies of light vs. the armies of darkness. It isn't a religious story any more, except among fundamentalists. We've made it a secular story, but it's still the same story of division, taking sides, and being on the right side against "them."

The religious tell the story in terms of saved vs. unsaved, chosen people vs. infidels, pure vs. impure. The secular atheist tells exactly the same story, but using different characters: Worker vs. Capitalist, rich vs. poor, black vs. white, military vs. anti-war movement, "off-the-grid Freegan" vs. the corporation. In either case, we invest our energy in conflict, needing someone to "other" and blame.

Any movement that defines itself through conflict with an "other" will fail. But if we can act from our wholeness, from our heart, as one world family, we can succeed. The only true political movement is humanity. No one is "off the grid." The grid is the Earth. The grid is the stars. The grid is consciousness. 

This is why the practice of meditation is fundamental to politics. Spirituality and politics are not in conflict: they must be linked for success. Politics begins with practices that make us whole again, practices that center us in the heart's silence.

In the heart's silence, we are all netted together. We are one earth family. We don't need an "other" to blame, we need each other to belong to. We are particles in one vibrant field of energy, each connected to all. This is the field where political action must arise of it is to be successful. The most radical act is to be present. The revolution is to breathe...

Then we might occupy the wild rose and nestle in the meadow, settle like salamanders in cool silt
at the bottom of the stream. We might occupy the kingdom of the ladybug under a dandelion, occupy the cocoon and the dream of wings, the rings of the oak, the curve of the raven's beak, the roundness 
of a mushroom. We might occupy unnamed weeds for tea and the pebbled womb of a mountain spring. We might ripple over rocks with snow-melt into the secret fury of trout spawn. We might save the earth.
 
We might hold utopias in handfuls of loam. We might democratize our DNA, each one of us, finally, an aristocrat, just like the dolphin, the bee, the golden headed sunflower: with no right, no left, only the government of awareness. 

Awake on behalf of the earth, awae on behalf of creatures that are not yet fully aware, practicing mindfulness for the sake of the poppy and moth, the larva beneath the stone, and the stone itself.

Surely, this is the purpose of the occupation: to inhabit all that is local with boundless love, to homestead the mass of every proton with pure consciousness.
______________

You can hear this talk on video at LINK

  


What happens 
to pain 
when we don't 
resist?

God Seeks Advice from the Sage

Instead of telling your kids all those violent myths about "heroes" slaughtering their enemies in the name of God, you might tell them this one...

God was so plagued by human prayers, he needed some quiet time. All he heard was, "I want, I want, I want. Why won't you give me this, why won't you give me that!" The voices in God's head drove God crazy.

So God left the temple and hid in the forest where it was peaceful. But people found him in a tree and started praying to the trees, "I want this, I want that!"

So God hid in a rock in the desert. But people started worshiping stones, crystals, Shiva lingams, praying, "Please fix this for me, please fix that!"

Then God hid in a snake. "They'll never look for me here!" But people started worshiping God in the form of serpents and other animals, "O Serpent God, give me, give me, give me! Why won't you answer all my prayers?"

Then God escaped into the stars, far far from the earth. But people started praying to the stars, "I want this, I want that, give it to me, please!"

Finally God went to visit the sage Kamalanda. God bowed to the sage in respect and said, "You know these creatures better than I do because you're one of them. I'd like some advice."

"Welcome to my hut," said Kamalanda. "Be my guest." Kamalanda gave God some tea, then asked, "How can I help?"

God explained to Kamalanda, "I'm not saying I regret creating them, just saying I never knew these humans would whine so much. I made them free and gave them my creative power, my Shakti, so they could solve their own problems. But instead of using my gift, they torment me with ceaseless questions. Where can I go to find some peace and quiet?"

For a few moments, the sage Kamalanda listened within. Then he smiled and tapped on his chest. "Hide here," he said. "They will never think to look for God in their own breath, their own heart."

So God became a breath and hid in the human heart. To this day, very few people look for God here, and those who do are filled with so much joy they don't have any questions.

Doing Silence

It's not enough to be an activist. We have to do nothing too.

It is so important to honor silence! During a very stressful time in the world, when tension, antagonism, disconnection abound, we need to imbibe the power of Silence and give it to the world for grounding and stability. Most of us focus too much on what happens in silence - the changing forms that arise in formless space, the sounds coming and going, the chaos - but we don't attend to the spaciousness in which it's all happening. Silence may embrace chaos, but the Silence that contains it is creativity, nourishment, and peace. Have you ever shifted the background to the foreground, and honored Silence itself?

Please honor pure Silence until it solidifies into a jewel, shining out of your breastbone, sparkling deep in your center, flooding your heart with pulsations of pure Presence, the Presence of divine Being. This is an essential practice for sanity during chaotic times. Do it not just for yourself, but to bring peace to the whole environment.

And please don't underestimate the profound effect of letting this shift happen for short moments, repeated often during the day. Don't try to sustain it: just a moment can flood the world with the grace of Silence. Then it can grow wider. The Infinite gets its foot in the door through tiny cracks.

Rumi & Shams

For a Rumi to be, there must be a Shams.

How easily we forget that St. Francis of Assisi was not just a flower child. He was a deeply disciplined practitioner of daily prayer, surrendered to his Master Jesus. How easily we forget that Buddhist poets who spoke of spontaneous satori were profoundly absorbed in meditation practices of 'Zen,' a word which comes from the Chinese 'Chan,' which comes from the Sanskrit 'Dyan,' which is the seventh limb of Astanga Yoga, meaning 'Meditation.'

How easily we quote Rumi's most ecstatic verses, forgetting that he was devoted to the feet of his guru, Shams, from whom he received initiation; that he and his master were embroiled in the religious disputes of their age, committed for life and for death. Rumi spent his life in exile because of his beliefs; his master, Shams, was murdered by his rivals.

How easily we smell the rose blossom, and forget that it has been deeply rooted in one place for a long time, humbly grateful for its daily watering.

Sacred Distance

How cruel to imagine that there is no sacred distance
between us. Otherwise we are ruthlessly One, and love is
impossible. Distance is an ocean of delight. Therefor, we praise
the distance, and swim through it with our whole flesh.

(Picture: Ariadne in Naxos, Evelyn de Morgan, 1877)

The Discipline of Non-Resistance

 

A hawk attacked a serpent who was sunning on a rock. Repeatedly the hawk aimed its beak at the serpent and dived down. Each time the hawk attacked, the serpent languidly and effortlessly rolled its body, and the hawk missed its mark. Over and over again the hawk attacked with intense concentration, while the serpent merely followed its nature, lounging in the sunlight, rolling ever so slightly, this way and that. Finally, the hawk broke its neck against the naked stone. The serpent continued to luxuriate in a pool of afternoon sunlight. 

Non-resistance would seem to be the opposite of discipline. But non-resistance is the final discipline, the most radical form of activism.

Awareness is contracted and over-shadowed by whatever it resists. This contraction of awareness is ego. Ego is nothing but the naturally-expanded, already-liberated, sparkling clarity of awareness contracted and self-limited by resisting some form that arises within it.

In meditation, non-resistance is the purest practice: not resisting any unpleasant form that arises, and not clinging to any pleasant form that arises. For clinging is also a form of resistance, resistance to the loss of passing pleasure.

Whatever arises, let it go. This conscious act of non-clinging returns to the subject all the energy that was invested in the object. The act of non-resistance solidifies the observer in diamond-like freedom. The way is an open hand, not a clenched fist. 

This action-less act of non-resistance also makes renunciation effortless. When we "give up" something or someone to whom we have formed a painful bondage, we are really not giving up any thing at all, because what binds us is not the object but our identification with it. We have projected the excitement of our own consciousness onto the object to give it an aura of glamor. We do not need to reject the object, but simply to rest in the Self, allow our own projected glamor to return and settle as pure consciousness. This requires no effort, only understanding. In fact, this act of effortless renunciation actually increases our energy, because it restores to the Self what we gave away to another. And bringing the energy home to our own center is not hard, since the experience of pure consciousness is more blissful than the experience of any external object.

Therefor, the act of non-resistance is ten thousand times more energizing than any act of control, concentration, or self-denial. The instant I stop resisting, I am liberated: awareness returns to its natural clarity, self-luminosity, and ceaseless expansion.

Is there a practice of non-resistance outside of meditation, in our activity? Here too, dynamic non-resistance is the mother of all practices. Action performed when the mind is in the space of non-resistance is ten thousand times more powerful than any act of resistance.

Action in non-resistance gains the power of the void. It is infused with the infinite silence of the vacuum, where all quantum particles of the universe arise. Such action is a wave that incorporates the ocean of consciousness.

On the other hand, an action performed by the clenched fist of resistance is only a contracted droplet of the ocean, empowered by ego alone. Such weak action receives no cosmic support.

When we resist our so-called enemy, we only feed the enemy's energy. By taking sides in conflict, we increase the polarizing energy. Jesus called us to love our enemy and practice non-resistance. Why? Not to save the enemy, but to save our own awareness from resistance, contraction, and egotism. Jesus calls us to be serpents, not hawks.

"Be ye therefor wise as serpents and gentle as doves." ~Matthew 10:16

Heart Work

What a tragedy to waste our life imitating someone else's work, no matter how great, instead of doing our own, however humble. Life has given each one of us a Gift to share. No one else in the world can give it.

This earth would not be complete without your small but essential Gift. Your duty is not to worry about how "great" it is, but to share it unconditionally. That is the secret of joy.

Let us not define our work as others define work, or measure its value by status or income. Our work may be a global business enterprise, or a gentle smile. It may be the Gift of listening, or the simple act of being present, and letting a troubled heart feel heard. Our work may be our children. Our work may be food for the hungry, or singing to feed souls. The work may be a single poem, a single painting, one well-thrown pot, after a lifetime of practice. We abandon it to the earth, for others to find.

How do we know our Gift, our Dharma, our own unique Heartwork?

Plunging into it 100%, there doesn't seem to be any doer. When most busy, we appear quite calm, but inwardly we are on fire. The task is self-nourishing. It feeds us with energy, like play. As we work, the difference between mind and heart dissolves. Focused on the small, we feel vastly expanded inside. And when we are lost in the humblest detail, angels from the farthest corners of the universe bend over our shoulders, whispering, "Yes!"

Food

“Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body. In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." ~Mark 7:17

If your soul is troubled, even the purest food can make you sick. If your heart is full of light, you can eat with the "common" folk and the food will be blessed by your love - but more likely, by theirs.

Some people feel fortunate to have any food at all.

Purity

'Compact Fluorescent Bulbs Release Cancer-Causing Chemicals': LINK

Now it turns out that energy saving light bulbs are bad for me.
Whatever was good for me turns out to be bad.
Peanuts.
Milk.
How about soymilk?
Yes, even organic unsweetened soymilk.
And fuck whole wheat.
I mean, with all that gluten.
Every luscious green I buy in the farmer's market:
tainted with some chemical or GMO that blew in on the breeze.
And even the breeze, tainted with over 400 parts per million Co2.
Gag me with a spoon.
We're doomed.
Every particle of dust is impure.
The stars are impure.
Kali and Shiva are impure.
Jesus is having impure thoughts about Mary Magdalene.
The battery in my $45,000 electric car,
if I could afford one.
According to my manic-depressive girlfriend,
the perfect guru made her manic-depressive.
Tell me about it.
Time and space are tainted. 
Everything is tainted.
Shit.
You can say that again.
Perfectly impure.
Absolutely perfect with tainted and sainted impurity.
And if perfectly impure then in that "perfectly"
there must be purity, Alleluia, thank the Lord,
there is no hope.
I'm free at last,
I can give up the search.

Please Don't Clone the Truth

Can you clone the Truth? Can you organize the Truth, believe in the Truth, or turn the Truth into a technique? Please don't try to package and sell the experience of Truth. Because if you do, you will kill it...

Truth is a direct encounter, not a fact or a teaching. Truth can never become the content of your mind, because Truth is consciousness itself, not what consciousness contains.

Truth is utterly spontaneous, flowing gracefully and ever-dissolving. Truth is the melting of all boundaries and containers in one ever-expanding formless moment.

That is why Truth cannot be institutionalized by a spiritual movement or a church. As soon as we try to packaged and program the Truth, it ceases to be true.

Truth awakens in a small community of equals, a spiritual family, not an institution. They gather around an ecstatic Friend, who is a candle of awakening. The Friend passes the flame of Truth to others through innocent spiritual friendship. Each member of the circle catches the flame of Truth, like a divine madness. Then each burns in their own unique life of Grace, conforming to no doctrine, imitating no master.

But inevitably, the period of innocence comes to an end. The spiritual family grows into a religion, too large and over-organized to communicate the spontaneity of Truth. The zealots of this organization try to imitate the master. They program and systematize their master's teaching. They write it down as a formal doctrine. They seal it in cans, to preserve it. Then they market and sell it, offering their glitter on a slick website to attract the multitudes.

The more successful the organization grows, the more canned and dogmatic it becomes. A hierarchy of the privileged encrusts itself between the common people and the master. The master is no longer a spiritual Friend, but a well-marketed demigod, a personal savior.

What happened? The spiritual family became an institution. The institution became a religion. The religion became a corporation. The corporation now sells its product to a professional caste of yuppie seekers, the only class who can afford "the truth."

Eventually, the movement stops growing, because its members get so insulated in their bubble of official language and doctrine, that they only talk to themselves. Though they don't realize it, they have become a cult in the eyes of the world, speaking holy gibberish.

In such a movement, conformity is valued above spontaneity. When conformity is valued above spontaneity, Truth disappears, replaced by an army of True Believers.

The sweetness of the fruit is not in the husk. Drink the dewdrop, leave the flower. Don't confuse the Teacher with the movement that encrusts itself around him. The Master and the movement are as distinct as Jesus from the medieval Church. You are not doing anything for the Master by imitating or worshiping him. Gratitude is enough. For by imitation and worship of the Master, you may be contributing to his fall.

Jesus never said, I am God. He said, "the Father and I are one," and so are you. He preferred to be crucified than worshiped.

You don't need to clone another's Truth, because the Truth is you. 

Political Complimentarity: Government & Free Enterprise are Yin & Yang, not Good & Evil

Complimentarity is as important in politics as in quantum physics. The complimentarity of free markets and regulatory government, is as essential as the interrelationship of particle and wave.

Why this naive and childish antagonism between socialism and free enterprise? Government and free markets should work together as a dynamic polarity, the positive and negative energies of one living system. They are compliments, not antagonists. They are Yin and Yang, not Good and Evil.

The role of regulatory government is not to eliminate free enterprise but to keep it free. Free from the monopolizing, cannibalizing power of the multinational mega-corporations. Good government keeps the playing field even, providing investments and tax incentives for small business start-ups, especially in economically depressed areas of the nation.

The real enemy of the free market is not government, but the mega-corporation. For when the mega-corp dominates the market, it fixes prices and eats up the competition. The mega-corp is the fascist enemy of true capitalism. We need a government who gives tax breaks to small companies, not to Exxon and G.E.

The freedom to start my own business, market my own skills, and sell my own product, whether it is a work of art or a better electric car, is a human right just as basic as the right to free speech. As I would not want to live in a nation with no government at all, so I would not want to live in an economy owned and controlled by a single monolithic federal bureaucracy that outlawed free enterprise. What is the difference between the over-control of a socialist state, and the over-control of the mega-corporate cartel? Nothing.

Many of my dearest friends are either artists who need to sell their art, or employees of non-profit philanthropic organizations. They spend a great deal of time looking for grants and donations to sustain their work. They certainly don't get grants and donations from their fellow idealists, who are equally poor. They look for donations and grants from those who have prospered through trade, commerce, and free enterprise.

Yet even as the Left begs grants and donations with one hand, it points to capitalism as the world's great evil with the other. The wealth that would sustain the arts as well as non-profit service organizations must be generated as someone's profit, through commerce and production.

Some believe, rather naively, that all we need to do is redistribute the wealth of the rich. This would result in economic entropy. The wealth would be spent in about one month, or less, if evenly distributed throughout the population, without creating any engines of market activity to generate new wealth. Wealth must not only be distributed, it must be created.

If you are a young person just out of college today, I encourage you to do what you love, offer it in service to others, and don't be intimidated by those who would make you feel ashamed about asking a fair price for your products and services. Please don't confuse the creative capitalism of small business with the fascism of multinational mega-corporations, who don't practice real free market capitalism at all.

When you prosper, you cease to be an economic burden on others. Accumulating your own capital gives you the spiritual opportunity to share abundance. This is one of the great human values, economic freedom. With the freedom of your own fiscal independence, you can invest in your chosen non-profit service. You can also give others freedom by expanding your business, creating new jobs.

If you work for a large corporation, what then? Learn business skills from your experience, be positive and grateful that you have a job, and then when you are ready, start your own business. In the mean time, vote for political candidates with a positive vision, who will use the power of government to promote your new business and help you seed it.

The freedom to market your own creativity remains one of your most precious human rights. Let's stop demonizing free enterprise. When those on the Left demonize free markets, they sound as strident and childish as those on the right who demonize government.

I pray that we will overcome the toxic dualism of government vs. free enterprise. I pray that governments and free markets will work together, promoting new businesses and eliminating the monopoly of the mega-corporation.

Seeing

Whether I choose to focus my attention on beauty or conflict, wherever I look in this world I am resonating with myself.



And whoever I blame for the problems I see - their capitalism or their socialism, their political party or their religious creed, their economic class, their color, or their whiteness - I am really blaming a shadow of myself, some aspect of my own humanity that I have not forgiven.

I see another's actions, but I cannot see their motives. The motives I ascribe to their actions reflect the quality of my heart, not theirs.

She Said

She said, "I am the Power, I am the Shakti, I am creating a new earth.

"I do not bring change in the old way, through your activism, politics, or religion. I am subtler and more intimate now, like the mist that watered the firmament before creation.

"I do not knock and enter, I seep through crevices of Being. You must be very quiet to receive me. Like a tincture of musk and poppies, I infuse. I use the yoni and the wound, the furrow. I fill the black hole with glittering stars of pure possibility; not far away, at the center of a galaxy, but in the core of your proton, the heart of each atom in your body.

"I do not need your works, your words, or your ideas. I need your Being. For the gateway to the new earth, the portal where you welcome me, is the stillness between your deeds, the silence between your words, the space between your thoughts. That is where we dance, and turn particles into waves.

"To receive me, do dynamically less than nothing. Shift your attention gently inward, settling from thinking into Being. This distance is less than the width of a hair, yet it is the pathless path from what has already passed away, to the new creation.
 
"I am the power, I am the Shakti, I am creating something completely different now. Do not await the shift. You ARE the shift."
________________________

A video version of this message: LINK

Now a Perfect Grace

Now as never before in history, a perfect grace and healing power pours into this world. But it enters in a subtler and more intimate way. It does not come through our activism, our words, or even our thoughts. It infuses through the space between our thoughts, the silence between our words, the stillness between our actions.

To taste this miraculous nectar of Presence, one must simply rest in the heart, and shift awareness from thinking to Being. The distance traveled is less than the width of a hair, but it is the portal to a new earth.

This shift is not happening TO us. It IS us. It is not difficult. In fact, it is too simple, for the ego wants to DO something. Mind loves difficulty. But Grace requires being without doing or thinking for a little while.

This new healing power cannot be organized, institutionalized, occupied, or enacted. It does not come through political or religious work. Its medium is Presence itself.

Institutions, belief-systems, and educational models from the past have already collapsed. Their substance is like an echo. But Presence now takes on a diamond-like solidity. 

All past ideologies and reforms were based on hope and blame, future and past. They failed because they were rooted in time, not in Presence. 

Hope is of the future. Blame is of the past. But love is always now. Therefore be hopeless, be blameless, be Present. 

Let your heart rest in the hollow core. Do not doubt the tidal wave of Grace that will flow through you.

Tomatos

"When you think everything is someone else´s fault, you will suffer a lot." 
~Dalai Lama

There are two things that crush the heart:
politics and religion.
If politics stifles your laughter
and religion stifles your tears,
better go plant a garden.
Bury your mind in the dirt
where there is no right or wrong.
That's where seeds grow.
Let belief be manure
for redder tomatoes.
Let words be fertilizer
for silence.

Borderlines

Who draws the borderline?
Does the finger of God draw the borderline in rock and sand and river water?
Were borders here when Creator Raven whispered the curved world with her wings, this planet without right angles or straight edges anywhere?
Were borders here when tribes and herds worked out agreements for sharing water hole and prairie?
Were borders here before the white man came to drill the Mother for black blood?
Strange how Invader drives the tribes out of their home, then carves borderlines, pretending those lives were written in the earth at the first dawn.
Who drew the borders of Jordon, Kuwait, Iraq?
Invader did, not Arab.
Invader etched them in the desert sand in 1922, to serve the 'Anglo-Persian Oil Company' now known as British Petroleum.
Who drew the borders of Israel?
Invader did, not Canaanite or native Palestinian.
Who drew the borders of Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Rwanda, and that garment factory Lesotho?
Not Ashanti or Ibo, Bantu or Masai.
Hutu and Tsutsi were friends until Invader set them against each other for the trick of empire.
Invader penned those lines in black blood.
And in the USA, did Seminole, Ojibwa, Tlingit, Chiricahua, Paiute or Lakota make these borders?
No, Invader drew them all.
So now we whites behave as if our borderlines were carved by the same divine finger that etched stone commandments for our African tribal shaman, Moses...
But who knows if even that ever happened?

(Took this photo at the Mother's Day Vigil in support of immigrant families at the NW Detention Center in Tacoma WA)

'Psychic Fair Cancelled Due to Unforeseen Circumstances'

When I laugh, I have no chakras. When my heart is immersed in love, my horoscope contains no signs or planets, just Light.

These so-called "chakras" are not wheels or centers of light. They are blocks and obstacles, corks on the bottles of God's wine. The moment I smile genuinely from the heart, my chakras dissolve. Shakti sparkles and pours, and Shakti doesn't care what color the cup is. My work is just to overflow.

This horoscope won't bring me one step nearer the Beloved. The moment my eyes brim over, my horoscope is an empty circle. Planets and stars are as dust in the sunbeam I Am.

It is only when I am not in love that I busy my mind with signs and conjunctions, chakras and meridians, eight limbs of Yoga, Kabbalah, initiation, and the politics of getting somewhere.

Love is pathless.

*

A friend asked, "Is astrology just for the personality, the ego, the lower self?"

I would reply: The personality isn't lower. It's just on the surface and not in the depths.

Personality or ego is beautiful: we all need one. Personality is the glittering surface on the ocean of consciousness, reflecting stars, planets, moon and sun. But in the depths there are no reflections: only the pure waters of bliss.

On the path, as we're getting used to the depth of our original nature, we need such toys and talismans as horoscopes and chakras, herbal lore and elemental magic: they give our mind something to chew on, to keep it out of mischief.

But as our meditation deepens, pure Awareness outshines the intellect and memory. Then there is only Presence. No need for any more esoteric gobbledygook. 

Now we can just rest in the vibration of God's name, and radiate the light. A Tamil devotional song from India says, "What can stars and planets do when you have His name on your lips?"

Of course, friends will think you've become a fool. They'll say: "She used to be so smart. Now she just smiles. But she doesn't seem to have anything going on upstairs." And they're right.

Of course, my words too are mere gobbledygook, and I am definitely a fool.

'What Is Truth?' (Jn 18:38)

Truth is not the conclusion of a logically argued chain of thoughts, because no chain of thoughts ever ends. Nor can Truth be contained in a single thought, because a single thought evaporates as soon as it is born. Truth is not the content of the mind, because the content of the mind dissolves like mist: not even the most intelligent person remembers their own beliefs when falling asleep.

Could it be that Truth has nothing to do with thought at all? Perhaps we would come nearer to Truth if we looked into the emptiness between thoughts, the space around thoughts, the clarity before thoughts.

That clarity is not an idea. It is pure awareness. It is the gentle self-effulgent light of compassion, the bliss of unbounded silence, the sparkling of infinite possibility. It is not merely the womb of creation, but the womb of Creator. It erases it's own "it."

Now look at our culture. What is America based on today? Argument. Ceaseless argument paralyzes our government, and polarizes our entire society. Each side claims to have the truth, locked in polarity, spewing negativity. When the mind is dominated by thought, taking sides is more important than finding solutions. But what happens when the space of silence outshines its content of thought?

Truth is what we already are, before we have a single idea about it. So the real question is, what are we arguing about?

The first step to solving our nation's problems is to stop debating and start meditating. Meditate together in the silence of Truth.

Love is What We Really Fear

Ultimately, I am not afraid of any authority, spiritual or temporal. I am not afraid of the god, the government, or the corporation. I am not afraid of the terrorist or the criminal. I am not afraid of any principality or power in heaven or earth. What I really fear is my own heart, my infinite capacity for tenderness.

I fear the terrifying softness of surrender to love. Yet that tenderness is my deepest strength. And I would never be emboldened to recognize this paradox, vulnerability and power at the very heart of my humanity, unless I met a living person who embodied and lived it with each breath. This is the role of the Master in my life.

May Day

Let May Day bring peace. The blue sky of non-violence. At least for a brief moment today, discriminate between Awareness and Mind. For that moment, you will know eternity. This is the way to Peace. 

Gazing at the sky through a lattice of blossoming branches, I realize that the root of human violence is the failure to discriminate between consciousness and thought.  

Branches against clear blue. The network of budding twigs is like the network of thoughts and the network of neurons in the brain. For brain and thought are the same: overgrown pathways of reaction, fear and desire.  

But the blue sky is awareness itself. Awareness can witness thoughts, but doesn't need to get entangled in them, any more than the sky gets entangled in a tree. 

Mind carries the past into the present, with all the conflicts of desire, resentment, reaction, revenge. Mind projects its story of conflict into the world, meeting other stories.  

If we want to make peace on earth, we need to meet beyond the mind, beyond the past, in the present moment, leaving our stories behind. We have to meet as awareness.

Awareness is Presence, free from conflict, without a story. Be awareness. Be the sky.