Uradiance

Volcano mother of the island, island mother of the rainforest, forest mother of the sky, sky womb of stars, stars birthing protons that fall back into the sea, into molten void at the heart of the volcano, spewing the rainbow of you and me and the dolphin people. Raven, carry our songs to the shore. Osprey, carry our music over the waters. Hawk, carry our gaze over the land. New moon in Aquarius. We love us, we love us. No one is left out.

The Holy of Holies is not in Jerusalem, Mecca, Benares or Rome, not at Stone Henge or Macho Picchu, nor the ashram, nor the forest, nor between the Guru's toes. It's in the stillness where outbreath and inbreath kiss. Repose here. Rest at the center of the whirled.

  In meditation, desires and attachments become temporarily quiescent, as mind merges with vast silence. But when I emerge from silence, are those impulses of desire and attachment really transformed?  Is there any assurance that my spiritual practice will actually change me into someone better? Is there a mechanism in silence that assures the dissolution of my negative tendencies, and the growth of my positive ones? Or will a bank robber who meditates just become a calmer bank robber?  Surely the key is my intention . Intention is the link between the field of karma and the field of silence.  In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, there is a subtle aspect of meditation called samyama . Samyama means that our mind forms an intention just before it dissolves into silent formless samadhi . It is like holding a seed, then dropping it into a dark furrow. Samyama is the link between moral practice and spiritual practice. This is why the eight limbs of Yoga include ...

I said to myself, "There is no I!" And I answered, "Right on! I can get down with that!" To which I replied, "Shut up, you!" And I responded, "Take it easy, I'm just trying to be agreeable." So I said, "I don't need you to be agreeable. I need you to disappear, like NOW." So I just gazed at myself with compassion. Then I heard the breath of silence whisper, "I love you."

Serve in your own way, according to your own gifts, directly from your heart. As taught in the Bhagavad Gita, "Better to perform one's own duty, though faulty, than to perform another's duty perfectly." (3:35) To judge the service performed by this person as superior to another's, is as arrogant as judging this person's religion superior to another's. One of us serves by offering disaster re lief in a Third World country. Another serves by teaching stress management to veterans with PTSD. One serves by providing shelter for the homeless, another by starting a local business and hiring her neighbors. One serves by raising children with wisdom and compassion, another serves by creating healing art, and another by teaching yoga or meditation, to raise the energy of world consciousness. One serves 2 or 3 million people, another serves 2 or 3. All are absolutely equal. For love is not quantitative. One drop from the heart can change the ent...

        Rashani Rea transmutes the mud of my words into a golden collage card.

It is healing to know that everyone does not have to care about the same things....     It is healing to know that you don't need to waste energy criticizing what you don't like, when you can generate energy celebrating what you love... It is healing to know that when your dear one walks through dark shadows and moods, you can walk next to her, walk next to him, without needing to fix anything... It is healing to know, people value us more for our wonder and openness than our expertise; more for our silences than our words; more for our listening than our advice... It is healing to know that our heroes are utterly flawed, utterly human, and the great ones are just like us: they just let their passion for Truth take over... It is very healing to know that the truth of your passion is Your Truth, not someone else's... And sometimes, more often than you think, it is healing not to know anything.

Every new year I read prophecies channeled from some "Light Worker" or "Ascended Master," who is supposed to speak from a "higher plane." These predictions always say the same thing: We're about to pass through a cosmic shift, a planetary re-alignment, a reversal of earth's "polar field;" and this will transform human consciousness as never before. So prepare, prepare, because its always just ar ound the corner! If it's January, then the "shift" will occur in March. When its March, the "shift" will occur in June. By the end of the summer, we're looking forward to the "shift" at the next Winter solstice. But of course, it never quite happens, because the future never arrives... We can thank such prophecies, in a way: they are really invitations to abandon the future. A prophecy challenges us to remember that: The "higher planes" are all inside us... To truly "ascend...

 "For the one who descended is also the one who ascended far above the heavens." ~Ephesians 4:10 We don't get to universal consciousness, or enlightenment, or God, by transcending the body, by rising above our humanity, or by mere ascension. That is the old Platonic way, dividing matter from spirit. We attain the highest heaven by entering the humblest dust mote, the atom, the photon of flesh. Every particle of your body is a portal to the cosmos.

Devotion to Blessed Mother reveals human Jesus. Through human Jesus to divine Christ Krishna. Through Christ Krishna to infinite Buddha Mind, that gash in his hand, an eye. Infinite Buddha Mind reveals a speck of dust. Devotion to dust reve als Blessed Mother. Enter at any point in the circle. Breathe to center. Be the whole wound. Artist: Kate Hansen

"Chaos" is the ever-unfolding, spontaneously perfect order that my mind can never comprehend. The effort to control this chaotic sea of perfectly incomprehensible order is all that is meant by "ego." And to quit this striving for cont rol is "dropping the ego." It is no apocalypse or cosmic event, just a melting away of self-imposed boundaries: like discovering that I am pinching myself in my sleep, so I just wake up and stop pinching. The pain ceases. The parenthesis I've been inscribing in the air dissolves, because it was never there. I was thrown into this crucible of earthly existence just to realize that there is no other recourse, no other freedom, no other salvation, but here and now, at the inmost veil of the intellect, to quit striving for control. Then a full moon is a full moon.

The mountain of silence rises inward. The summit is the abyss. Climb by sinking.  There is only one word here, humming forever, "Am." "I" was never born. A withered leaf on its twig is a withered leaf on its twig. The moon in a puddle, r ainbowed by gasoline, is the moon in a puddle rainbowed by gasoline.  A stray white dog is a stray white dog, silhouette on garbage mound, bathed in luminous distance, washed by the diamond transparency of miraculous night. Thus, in solitude, attain intimacy with creatures near and far.

  I cried, "Give me a meditation practice! Give me a spiritual technique! Something I can do right now to gain enlightenment!" The Friend answered, "You are already doing it." "I don't understand." "You're not supposed to understand," answered the Friend. "The mind has no part in this." "Then what practice am I doing?" You are born in a body on earth. You awaken. That is the practice." "What is the meaning of this birth?" "You are on a cross, crucified by a paradox, with no escape." "What is the meaning of this crucifixion?" "The marriage of opposites, which occurs on no other world, and in no heaven. This is why even the gods must be born on earth if they wish to gain liberation." "What is the center of this cross?" "The vanishing point between past and future, spirit and flesh, joy and pain, stillness and action, converging in ...

                         Collage of my poem by Rashani Rea.

T he space between events is alive and sparkling with eternity. The path between goals is self-luminous and lovely, an end in itself. Awareness, not the object of awareness, is the ground we stand on, solid as diamond! Now we enter a new galactic rotation, corresponding to a shift in consciousness. The new paradigm exchanges background and foreground. The background was Awar eness, which seemed abstract, like nothing at all, while the foreground was concrete material form. But now Awareness solidifies into the foreground, the very substance of our life, while material form appears more and more insubstantial, dissolving, and transient. Oft have spiritual traditions said, "the real is everlasting, the unreal is ever passing away." But this metaphysical proposition is rapidly becoming our concrete experience. We perceive that the ever-fluctuating quantum vibrations of the external world are made of no-thing: but the diamond-solid changeless field in which t...

A small band of English Quaker refugees formed the Chichester Meeting of Friends in 1684. Back then they called themselves, Children of the Light. The old stone meeting house they later erected near today's Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, still stands. Quakers taught Western seekers to dwell in the apoca lyptic simplicity of the present moment. Why turn "liberation" into a cosmic mystery, a political utopia, or a distant goal that only happens when we are finally good and dead at the end of lifetimes? Liberation happens at the end of every exhalation, and at the beginning of each new breath. The cosmic mystery is Presence. Today, we are still and always Children of the Light.

At this instant there is no distance between your body and the radiant tongue of the Goddess. Taste everything at once. You are made of light. The smallest particle of You is boundless. Bee a hive. When weary, return to golden sweetness. Reduce your journey to Home itself. You only make real honey when you Are honey. "We can envision a particle such as an electron as surrounded by a cloud of virtual photons which buzz around it like bees round a hive. Each photon emitted by the electron is rapidly reabsorbed. Photons nearer the electron are allowed to be progressively more energetic because they do not venture far from home, and so need exist only for the briefest duration. "Picture, then, the electron immersed in a shimmering bath of evanescent quantum energy, intense near the electron but dwindling steadily with distance. This restless seething ferment of virtual photons is, in fact, precisely the electron's electrical field, described in quantu...

I no longer believe in "private land." It is only a cultural prejudice, and not a law of nature, that persuades us of our right to own the soil, the aquifers and springs, the woods, hills and prairies. Can any man own the earth, even a ha ndful of loam? My hands did not create her, she created my hands. At best I am a tenant, a steward of the Motherwealth. I do not own a single speck of dust. Not even the photons or electrons of my flesh are mine, for they dissolve in an instant, beyond my capacity to create or destroy. Every proton in this body of light is the gift of a star. And even that is composed of ephemeral quarks, shimmering in an unfathomable void, whose mysterious Source has no boundary or duration. When I say "privacy," does privacy have any edges? Or is privacy simply our mutual respect, in a boundless realm where we are, finally, each other? Mother, I belong to you. Father, I belong to you. Friend, I belong to you.

Every new year, there is a slipping into meditation after midnight to receive a keynote for this rising wave in the ocean of time. The keynote for me this year was very clear: Repose without a search. Have a happy new year, but don't seek happiness. Repose in the Knower who cannot be known, the Being who cannot be experienced. Give up the spiritual quest for any kind of "experience," because happiness is not an experience. Happiness is not an experience of God, Guru, or Lover; not an experience of "higher consciousness" or visions or groovy tantric sex; not an experience of extreme sport or mountaintop; nor even of compassionate service to humanity. All such events happen "out there," through objects that arise and vanish into memory. Through any such experience, we touch Truth only vicariously, second-hand, in the realm of body, senses, mind. Yes, even thoughts are vanishing objects "out there." Truth is not what van...