Uradiance

In the chaos of Kali Yuga, there is so much to be outraged about! I am as prone as anyone to faultfinding and negativity; it is my fallen human nature. That's why I refresh my screen twice a day with meditation, to discharge the negative energy, empty the trash, and become a blue sky again. Then I am reminded of this truth: When we put someone down - their religion, their party, their nation, their lifestyle - we waste our precious moments on earth. And when the angels look for us, all they see is a gaping hole of non-existence. But when we lift someone up - finding something to prai se, choosing to stand for rather than against - we vibrate in tune with our dharma, our destiny. And when angels look for us, they see seeds of love bursting  into golden suns.

Renounce the tyranny of positive thinking. People who only talk about success, abundance, and joy usually want to sell us something. There is grace in loss, sorrow, and bewilderment too. Breathe through tears, troughs, shadows. The seer of light is the seer of darkness. The nectar of seeing alone is sweet. The moment I abandon my preference for the full over the empty, the void is a voluptuous rose.

'Israel' in Hebrew does not mean a land or a nation. It literally means 'he has struggled with God.' It means exactly what 'Jihad' means in Arabic: 'Struggle for God.' These sacred words do not refer to a patch of land, or to a religious war. Only the adolescent mind of the fundamentalist would so reduce and impoverish their meaning. Both terms describe our inward journey, often lonely, to lift the human heart beyond the ego, toward the beauty of the divine will, the will for peace and justice.

May the part of you that never gets married wed every lover on earth; the ceremony is bewilderment. Marry the honeysuckle and wild rose, marry the sound of a bumblebee in a late afternoon sunbeam. All through the black hours be wooed by the incoming tide; then consummate your silence with sunrise. Though One and Two were never betrothed, marry the confusion. Your engagement ring is the uncut di amond hidden in a vein of sorrow; polish the gem your chest with tumbling tears, until the water is quiet. Neither give nor receive that brilliance in marriage; stay single, remain voluptuous. Those who never knew this gratitude, where questions simply don't arise, will ask how one virgin satisfies so many paramours.  Don't tell them that the true bride is an exhalation of surrender, a golden body of breath stretching into fragrant darkness. Don't tell them that this silver-crowned gift-laden inhalation is the groom, who enters the ga...

The rind of life is rough, bitter or tasteless to protect the succulent softness within. That is the way of all ripe fruit. We don't judge the banana or the mango as hard because the skin is inedible. We know how to peel the skin and taste the tender sweetness underneath. Grace of the Mother is to realize that all we need for this moment is already given. Only soften your gaze and see a little deeper.

"Evil is not the power of darkness. Darkness is the womb of compassion. Evil is the craving for an excess of light. That is why Satan's other name is Lucifer, 'light bearer,' and the evil ones are called 'Illuminati,' who pose as the enlightened. Embrace your darkness, and sufficient light will be given as the gift of grace. 'Let there be light' is an invitation to 'let,' not to achieve. This I learned by falling, and by washing the feet of divine humanity in my tears." ~Miryam

Some say that there are no "holy days," because all days are equal. How tedious life would be if that were true! Every religion celebrates "holy days," "feast days" and "festivals," just as every religion honors ordinary time. In fact, in the liturgical year of the Church, the days that are not feast days are called "the Ordinary of the Seasons." What a beautiful phrase! The Ordinary has its own daily prayers and chants, just as Holy Days have theirs. Each day has a fragrance. The troughs are as rich as the peaks. Eternity is no seamless continuum. Eternity is granulated with the infinite particularity that we call "time."

"We seldom notice how each day is a holy place where the  Eucharist of the ordinary happens." ~John O'Donahue Out beyond Christianity Magdalene and Jesus are dancing  in a garden where things grow wild, where things grow into what they are. Many paths lead here, not one, and the gates are always open. Over each gate there's a sign: 'Wanderers Welcome.' Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener, and he is. They drink the wine that turns temples into bodies again. She reaches out to take his hand: he lets her. There are three rules here: Yearn, Risk Everything, Connect. This is poem from my book, ' Wounded Bud. '   __________ Arabic translation by Dana Chamseddine أهلاً بالمتجولين "نادرا ما نلاحظ كيف يكون كل يوم مكانا مقدسا نتناول فيه قربان الأشياء العادية المقدس". جون أودوناهو بعيدا ما وراء المسيحية ترقص المجدلية ويسوع في حديقة تنمو فيها الأشياء بريّةً، تنمو لتصبح كما تكون. مسارات ...

I'm sorry, forgive me, Thank you, I love you. A most disturbing thing happened to me this morning. i listened to Bibi Netinyahu on major network interviews. It struck me deeply that his behavior is only possible with my tax money, and my government's blessing. It happens in my name. It wrenches my gut. This man repeated again and again that "Israel regrets every civilian casualty." ("Regret," evidently, sounds good but demands no change in one's action.) When confronted with the massacre in Gaza, he said that it was "nothing but Hammas rhetoric." When confronted with appalling pictures of the dead, he said that "Hammas tries to create photogenically dead children for its propaganda." (Yes, those were his words.) He ended by reiterating that everything happening to Palestinians is their fault, and their choice. I guess the colonial power always expects the natives to submit to the superior culture, even when up...

The soul of a murdered Palestinian child is worth more in the eyes of God than the entire land of Israel, which is no more holy than any other patch of land on earth. And the soul of a Jewish child is worth no more than the soul of a Palestinian. Both souls are infinite in value, and shine brighter than the sun.

Fast from what you  think you love, so that you may love  beyond thinking.

I see Kali on her sacred motorcycle breast-feeding my grandfather Bible in one hand Stinger missile on her shoulder and a reefer in the other your favorite oatmeal raisin cookie in one a kitten with fleas in the other a crimson dildo wrappe d in Victorian mink in one hand a key to the president's nuclear suitcase in the other Aleister Crowley's Book of Lies in one and in the other the latest Vanity Fair on the cover a baboon in Giorgio Armani a pearl of Psychotria Viridis in one in the other a degree from Wharton School of Business stained with Ayahuaska the sword of the word of Jesus in one the Declaration of Inter-Dependance in the blood stained fingers of the other a bank-note from J. P. Morgan Chase to Vladimir Putin for $700 billion in one a South African miner's pick in the other an Israeli bull-pup Tavor-21 assault rifle in one a severed Palestinian head in the other a love-sick queen bee waiting in one for her drones to return and a golden lotus in...

Injustice, oppression, greed, and war are wilted reflections on twigs of confusion. The gardener doesn't rush from leaf to leaf trying to revive this tree. She quietly waters the root. The wise waste no time blaming shadows. Though appearing to be fools, they plunge naked into the sun. The stream you pour on the rose is this breath, the seed is in your chest. As for the radiant pearl of the full moon, dear, it glows from your forehead. Atoms get strung together on rays of the soul. your splendor fills every dust mote with compassion. When a wild dark fragrance fills your ribcage as if a many-antlered bugling elk walks through you,  know that the world is green and whole again because you are awake. Swell into edible berries on your luscious invisible vines. You will lack no miracle, nor take more sacraments than you require. Every species on earth will discover its abundance when you droop like an orchard laden with hearts falling, splitting op...

The solution to every political and economic problem is personal. Injustice, inequality, oppression and war are effects, not causes. The cause is always one.... We are not full present. We are not awake. We lack one fundamental key to all these problems: awareness. When one is full present, fully awake, the whole world is an extension of one's own life energy. It is impossible to harm any other person, or any living creature, for one is only harming one's own body. This is not a philosophy, but a practice arising from direct perception. When one is fully awake, the greed and anger that leads to war and injustice does not arise. In the present moment, one has all that is required for complete happiness - this breath, this earth to walk on, this sky to fill with silent gratitude - and therefor one requires only the simplest necessities for daily living. In this state of natural simplicity, there is complete abundance, for no one takes too much, and everyone gets what they n...

I've been so distracted by the news of the world I forgot my heart was singing, singing silently all along about more important things.

Jew and Muslim break Ramadan fast together. By acknowledging our information overload and stepping out of it, we recover the space of sanity, the pure consciousness beyond all points of view. I. The Information Age will last until we discover that information is a hoax. We actually have no information about the real world: only our interpretation of it. And when we want to know about events in a distant part of the world, we are twice removed from reality, because all we have is our interpretation of another's interpretation. And to triple the illusion, we begin with our interpretation of events before we even seek information. Then we absorb the reports and images of those events from 'news' sources that fit our preconceived conclusions. This is why information almost never changes anyone's mind: because the mind chooses the information that fits its interpretation. This not only happens in our reading the 'news,' but on a jury in the c...

There is no news today. There was never any news. The light just keeps whispering its secret, over and over, every morning. The darkness listens, and hums. Only a few overhear their conversation, then reply like an ancient chorus, "Yes, yes, yes!" The rest just listen to reporters and think, "No, no, not again..."

A fountain of light gushes from the dark hollow inside the breath, the exhalation of the heart inside the heart. Yet this wellspring needs another's touch to open and flow, just as what's hidden in a bud needs a moonbeam caress to become a rose. When humans taste this secret bursting inside that causes the outside to become still and grateful, wars will end, bees will return, the oceans will be purer than tears. Only then, only then. It all depends on a melting in your chest. This is why we celebrate the one whose eyes are kilns tonight - they provide the heat. Look! The full moon floats by, a golden boat on the cloud ocean. Scattering the last fragrant petals of sunset over the Western alter, wizard hemlocks lift their arms in praise. Perhaps it is they who blew the stars like pollen into the dark, out of their cupped trembling green hands. Tonight, I exist for love. The earth is moist with that special midsummer musk called 'Desolation.' Tonight, I exist f...

When I was sitting with my first teacher in 1970, I heard him say the following words. I have never heard this from any other. I honor him so deeply, because he freed me from the need to idolize an external Master, teaching me instead to wo rship the Guru Tattva, the Guru Principle in my own heart.  The divine radiance of the Guru inside you is 10 million times more powerful than the Guru before you, sitting on a golden dais in white or saffron robes. Only if that one awakens this one can he really be called a Guru. I remember the words almost exactly, though I have never seen them written before: "The need for a personal Guru is fulfilled by the simple practice of this meditation. In deep meditation, the impulse that effortlessly draws the mantra into divine silence, the source of creation, is precisely the same impulse that draws the devotee to the master." ~Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Have a blessed Guru Purnima. Please overflow into each other.

It was 24 years ago, the day after Guru Purnima, the full moon of the Guru in July, that I was graced to have a very special conversation with Guruji in his room. I don't know how much longer I will be on this earth, so I am moved to share this conversation, for the sake of those who might find it useful. For others, it will just sound like nonsense - so don't intellectualize or argue, just forget about it. I needed to ask him about my experience in deep meditation, for it begins to pervade and saturate all the rest of my experience too. In deep transcendence, consciousness shines with a self effulgent Blue color, like the sky, the color of silence. That sapphire of pure beauty is a radiance of indescribable peace, so deeply personal, yet utterly formless. The Guru said, "This is Shyam, Krishna's blue color, the color of the infinite. 'Shyam' means the blue sky of infinity. It is a name of Krishna." I said, "It is pure love isn...

Purple penstamen, I think. Took this photo on yesterday's hike up a mountain in the Olympic range. There is far more energy and color, diversity and abundance half-way up the mountain that at the peak. Yet humans are always straining to get to the top. I've never understood that. I guess its so they can tell other people, or themselves, that they got there. But where do we do our living?

After the prosecutor had made his case against her, she stood in the hushed court and began her defense. During her speech, the Judge's face grew increasingly red and fierce. Sweat poured from his temples: his crown continually slipped over his forhead and fell off.   "I can accept death, your honor, and hardship, and the pain of childbirth, and endless labor. But what I will not accept is guilt. My actions have a consequence, it's true: but I will not allow you to besmirch my good name. I have not done wrong. I have only done an act that results in suffering. I accept my suffering, but I do not accept the condemnation you would attach to it, and to my children." "But," spluttered the judge, "I clearly told you, as your magistrate and king, that you must not eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. You ate it. Therefor you disobeyed. Disobediance is an evil. Thus you are condemned as a sinner forever!" "You are mistaken, O Jud...

"You are boundless, you are infinite, you are immortal! Your Self is absolute oneness. Your Self is supreme consciousness: this is the final lesson." ~ Sri Karunamayi Amma And if we see and love our selves this way, it is also how we see an d love every immigrant child, every homeless person, every member of the 'other' race, or nation, or party. All that is required is that humans learn to rest the mind in the heart a few moments a day, and taste the truth about who we really are Are.

Lord, I have one prayer, but it contains all others: Let me be present. How can you be here when I am gone? In your presence, Lord, no circumstance be-clouds the bright and empty sky. And you are always here, Lord: it is I who am elsewhere. The only problem is my lack of presence. Let me be present.

Collages of my poems by Rashani Réa. LINK

I bow down to Sarasvati, the mother of creativity, whose grace is a river that carries me to the ocean of love on the little boat of her bija mantra. Without effort, without concentration, without repetition, the mind flows straight to the heart by virtue of her inner song, and through the portal of the open heart, one merges in her boundless golden Radiance. Therefor we bow and whisper, 'Jai Guru Dev.'

Through the ancient law of retaliation, my enemy and I descend into each others lie, a spiral of never-ending violence, based on the delusion that my act of revenge is a form of "justice," while the enemy's is a crime. A Palestinian Jew na med Issa once offered a new law. He said, "You have heard, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, do not resist the evil one.... love your enemy." Our minds are terrified by his teaching, inventing a thousand logical reasons to reject it; for his words reverberate at such a high frequency, they have never yet taken root in the human heart. But they will.

You have already breathed most of the atoms in the sky. The rest are waiting for that blessing. Thus there is wind. Mountain stream want to play in your veins. That is why they sing. The soil is a jostling marketplace of the dead and the living, where roots purchase nectar to turn into your cups of blood. Every pebble wants shattering and mingling with moonlight in a leaf for your salad. That is why you feel a strange longing for home when you take off your sh oes in the wet grass. Stars have no other voice but the atoms in your body, that whirring sound they make as you fall into prayer, just before sleep....  Yet your mind has convinced you to wear this veil of thoughts about separateness and poverty. Take it off and be naked again! All that divides you from abundance, from the marriage bed of the earth, from your breath of the whole sky and limitless sunshine of flesh, is this thought: 'I am alone.'

When I praise one petal of a pascal flower, bow to a ball of goat's fur in the lupine, bid the intercession of a hummingbird, or sip communion from the alpine aster, I worship the Creator. Every verse of Holy Scripture sings through a blossom of columbine. The passion of Christ is the ripening of a huckleberry. If I can't grasp the revelation of the bumble bee on an Indian Paintbrush, my soul will never touch another world. Speak, mountain, these feet are listening. Your paths are prophet songs. No need to free-climb sheer cliffs, or find the breathless nothing at the peak. Mid-way is enough. To saunter all day is my delight, the word from "saunte terre," sacred earth, Old French of my ancestors: thus the gait of pilgrims, lovers rambling yet intent toward Jerusalem. Now ease me naked into snow-melt streams that gush through purple penstemon and monk's hood, where cascade lilies slow-cook in the photons of God's fac...

Your first duty is to save the world from your mind. Believe me, everyone will be safer. You descended among the hurt and broken for compassion, not judgment. Hug your outrage until it stops crying. Feed it some milk from your heart...