Uradiance

I wish you the happiest New Year. My first spiritual teacher, Mahesh Yogi, taught us the sacredness of midnight on New Year's Eve. Not a time for noise making, but a profound turning point in the heart of silence. He encouraged us to spend that midnight moment in deep meditation, giving an impulse of Sattva, purity, to the whole coming year. Of course, one could do this any moment, but the moment our culture values as the end or beginning of a cycle in time becomes a sacramental portal to transformation. Maharishi himself always spent the first seven days of the New Year in silence, stirrin g the field of cosmic creative intelligence from the deepest level. As a pinch of sugar sweetens the entire pitcher of cream before it is poured, so the bliss of one Samadhi-moment permeates eternity. A breath of deep meditation elevates time, before and after. Our heart only needs to capture a single God-particle. That divine spark ripples out through rings of stillness into p...

What is your keynote, your special word for the New Year? I think mine will be "still." Today my soul said to me, "Don't confuse mere activity with accomplishment. Look around at all these do-ers. Many activists think they accomplish something just because they are busy. Often they are simply restless. Do the inner work of stillness first, and find the cause of your restlessness. Discover what Truth is, what Beauty is, what Goodness is. Then only can your work make the world better, truer, and more beautiful."

Once I asked the Guru, "What can I do to serve?" He answered, "Be happy."

I was once an intellectual. Now I am not so smart. I find intellectuals way too thoughtsy. For me, the deeper work of the intellect is to empty itself and become a clear mirror, reflecting the brilliance of the heart.

The 'fall of man' is simply the shift from awareness to thinking. Thought is a tool to use and let go of immediately; but clinging to thought is our 'Original Sin.' We were not created to become trapped in ideas and beliefs, a thought-world of conflicting opposites. This is eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We were created to eat from the Tree of Life, living awareness free of compulsive thinking. To return to the Garden is to rest in the innocence of the still mind, empty like the blue sky, self-radiant, free from concepts. One root for the Hebrew word 'eden' means 'bliss.' Eden is the bliss consciousness of our original nature. It is what we are the moment we awaken in the morning, before the mind of yesterday returns.

Solstice is a pause in time's turning, when we re-align our energies with the Sun in the Heart. Peace on earth only comes as a reflection of our inner clarity. As long as humanity fails to touch the clear light of the Heart, there will be no peace in the world. What keeps us from Heart alignment? Our own mind: this clouded lens, smeared with anger, fear, and blame. If we look through a cloudy lens, everything we see is blurred and dark. The world appears to have many problems. But there is really only one problem: this mind. To a fearful mind, the whole world looks frightening. To a bitter mind, everyone seems to be wrong. Negative thinking tarnishes all creation. Many of us work at polishing the lens. But can a lens polish itself? Light is not attained through any mental self-effort. Clarity is much more graceful and astonishing than anything the mind could manufacture through its own work. We don't have to labor at cleaning this lens. We can just drop it and sta...

 At any given moment, one can truly say, "Life doesn't get any better than this," because no other moment exists. There is no "better" future or past to which I can compare this now. When I give up the business of comparison, my thoughts, desires, anxieties and regrets instantly collapse into wholeness - a continuum of silent awareness that pervades every detail of the moment, wherever I may be, regardless of the content of my experience, regardless of its circumstances. The quality of wholeness is perfect simplicity, fullness, healing, and peace. Immersion in this ocean of wholeness imparts these same qualities to others in the environment, because there is only one field of awareness in which both "I" and "other" are waves of the continuum. To be a true peace-maker is to give up anxiety about the world, and become utterly present in this incomparable moment. Once I surrender all comparison, and embrace the ineluctable fact that there ...

What we fear most is not conflict, but the absence of conflict. We fear the singularity of wholeness, where duality disappears. Therefor, we seek conflict. Conflict and duality are useful distractions, allowing us to avoid the fundamental reality of our solitude. Conflict is imagined: it is a product of our thoughts. Then we project this inner conflict into the world. We spend our energy passionately struggling to resolve it, but the apparent conflict is only the ghost of thought - which explains why everyone sees the conflict differently. In actuality, the conflict isn't really out "there." It is in the mind. The world presents us with situations, not conflicts. Every is illuminated by the stillness of Presence. Situations are always manageable, because they arise one at a time, in the present moment. A "problem" is a situation perceived through the haze of thinking, which always carries images of the past, distorting and catastrophizing the situa...

Despite all the failures of humanity on this earth, we are redeemed by one small possibility, a thread so frail and thin we may forget that it is even there, but once we take it up and follow it home, we've begun the weaving of a new earth, a new creation. That infinitesimal thread is simply the capacity of our heart for giving birth to Beauty. 'O Magnum Mysterium' is a Latin chant from the office of Matins for Christmas morning. O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentem in praesepio! Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum. Alleluia. English translation: O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the new-born Lord, lying in a manger! Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear Christ the Lord. Alleluia!

As a Christian Pagan, I want to thank all the shamans of field and forest for decking my halls. Christ means "anointed." The chrism is pressed from the olive tree, healing oil. Jesus was a shaman too. He opened blind eyes with balm of mud and saliva, made a vision quest in the Wilderness, spoke to trees, turned well water into wine, practiced elemental magic with bread and fishes, uttered spells fro m his groaning bowels to raise the dead, slept in stone tombs, dialogued with demons and corpse people, just like a Shaivite sunyasi.  Jesus embodied shamanic Breath: in the Bible, Breath and Spirit are the same word and power. I thank my Pagan friends, for no religion worth its blood and salt rejects its predecessors. Rather, it weaves their wisdom into a fresh new body. I thank my Druid ancestors for this sparkling Yuletide tree, for holly and mistletoe woven over my lintel, entwining my carvings of Green Man and elephant-headed Ganesh. I thank my Tantric bre...

And so after thousands of years of religious struggle, the body and the soul were wedded in this magnum mysterium: the Incarnation. With the humblest simplicity, the footsteps of the Master on earth demonstrated that humanity can no more be separated from divinity than the warmth of the fire from its radiance, or the color blue from the sky. Matter is pure awareness christallized in form to radiate light. "Yes, it is true," said my body to my soul, "every particle is made of Mater, the Mother. Each atom is a cathedral where pilgrims arrive from the stars to celebrate the miracle of flesh. You irradiate the world through me. I am your dance. Let there be no more talk of our difference." Then my soul knelt down in the radiant darkness between heart beats, and my spirit poured back into its body, one breath offered to another.

'Loneliness' is only a thought. You are never alone. Your breath connects you to the universe, and the universe whirls in your heart as a radiant Cloud of Witnesses: angels, Buddhas, all your ancestors, all your friends. Every inhalation is a wave of the omnipresent Creator's breath, and this Shakti animates each atom of flesh. A single photon is the communion of countless saints. Your body is made out of love. Believe this with your bones.

Here is the only Christianity I know. At the end of each breath,  the death of Jesus. At the beginning of each breath, the resurrection.  What happened 2000 year ago, what will happen at the last judgment,  does not concern me. The sound of the wood thrush is the end of time.  Because I am awake, now is the coming of Christ. I fall perpetually into  Grace , and Grace is the only ground. From what should I be saved?  My soul was never lost. Could God lose a spark of her own heart?

“Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.” ~Meister Eckhart Many people get depressed in this holiday season because they feel so much pressure to be all about Light. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is not to cheer them up or preach about happiness; but remind them that darkness is the womb of all that is radiant, and only when we welcome the void into our hearts can a truly luminous humanity be born - born not from any effort to 'enlighten' ourselves, but from our very non-resistance against the oceanic waves of the mystery of this holy Night.

The problem with the mind is that it is everywhere else but here. The problem with the heart is that it thinks it is here, but it is everywhere. If you don't understand, look at the beehive. The whole comb overflows with honey, yet each cell does its work. Now your little mind is one cell of this comb, but you are the honey. If you still don't understand, notice the rose. Its scent begins in the bud, but when it opens, it fills the whole bridal chamber. If you still don't see what's happening, you are just like me, a perfect fool married to the universe.

Beware of the One. It may become the oppressor. Let a thousand bees make this honey. All is not One. All is All.   "Non-duality" is just a word. The fact that we have to say "non" means that the duality is naturally there as a part of consciousness. For so long I mistook oneness for wholeness. Oneness ruthlessly annihilates relationship. But wholeness is the harmony of others and selves, drawing intimately near through love. I seek nearness, not annihilation. I seek intimacy, not submersion. Virtual particles dance in the void, each part of the flower enfolded in the seed, all bija mantras vibrant in Om, many notes singing in the beauty of a single chord, each with its own distinct voice. We are all too wonderful to be annihilated in God: that is not why She breathes us into creation.

Consider the possibility that pure empty space is already conscious, creative, self- effulgent with healing light, overflowing with love, before you are even born into it! Therefor, all you need do is surrender to what is . The first verse of the Bible explains in poetic Hebrew what physicists have discovered through science: this universe pours forth from a vacuum. Every moment the world is spoken like a Word from the silence of the void. "The earth was formless and void... Then God said, Let there be light." Empty space is spontaneously creative. All you have to do is not get in the way. We realize the highest truth Now. In fact, we can only realize it in this Now. The beatific vision is always a revelation of what is already here in the present moment. And what is so wonderful about this present moment is not its content, but its Presence. This means that revelation can happen anywhere. When we unconditionally surrender to the pure Presence that pervades everyth...

What do I mean when I say, I AM? Why two words and not one? Is the 'I' distinct from AM? 'I' am the crucified martyred hero of this melodrama. But AM is the chorus of life itself. In classical drama, the chorus observes the action, reflecting wisdom from the experience of the separate 'I.' For 'I,' the story is usually a tragedy. But for AM, the same story is a divine comedy. Classic tragedies end in destruction and death. So for the separate 'I,' each moment seems shadowed with foreboding. Comedy, on the other hand, turns out well, despite occasional moments of darkness and despair. The tragic little 'I's' usually end up at a wedding, dancing, a circle of communion. When 'I' experience the story as 'mine,' there is an undercurrent of feeling that 'this may not end well: something bad could happen.' But the comic AM continually senses the abiding Presence of love. Love knows without rationalizing, 'A...

We usually associate atonement with pain. But true atonement is joyful. In fact, atonement is joy itself. To understand this, we need to be clear about the original sin which demands atonement, the two-ness that requires at-0ne-ment through Joy. Our original sin is a violent act of division at the heart of creation. We commit this violence in our very conception of reality. We divide subject from object, making two out of one. The atonement for this sin is Joy. Only Joy can at-one. The violence is in the division , not the appearance , of subject and object . The appearance of two in one is delightful. Appearance of two is the dance of one. Duality is lila, playfulness of God. In each moment, even as the dance of subject and object appears, the two collapse into each others arms and dissolve into bliss, ananda . This perpetual dissolving of appearance into the reality can recharge our consciousness in every perception , regardless of its relative beauty or ugliness. What generate...

 "Race does not exist. Rac-ism is a social construct." ~Toni Morrison This world desperately needs people who refuse to call themselves black or white, Eastern or Western, Aryan, Arab or Semite. Call us one earth family instead. Be a muddy rainbow, a ribbon dangled from the bridal gown of stars. Mix, friends. Let your colors run. Share the raw dark noble places in your bodies of grace, where honey mingles with musk. Nurture the blossom of astonishment. Touch the button under Mary's veil. Then have babies and babies, like brown olives ripened by the light that shines from their pits. Painting: 'Olive Trees' by Van Gogh

There are people dwelling in mansions, with multi-million dollar bank accounts, who live in bondage, while great souls like St. Paul, Gandhi, Bonhoeffer and Mandela discovered freedom in a prison cell. Freedom is not a condition granted to me by my government, my economic status, or my political action. Freedom is a covenant with my own consciousness, renewed by a continual revolution of the breath. (Photo: Skellig Celtic monk's cells, Ireland)

Every spiritual tradition honors the vajra sword. Even Jesus said, "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." Do not mistake it for the sword of war. It is the sword of Buddhi, discriminating intelligence. Much suffering arises from the idea that some past cause is to blame for my present situation. My restless unhoned mind invents and superimposes the notion of a "cause." No cause, no blame... The present moment, in all its ruin and splendor, is a flower of light witho ut a seed, a rainbow in the sky, a fatal enticement, a mirage. The elegant dagger of awareness is whetted by a breath. This blade sparkles, not because of what exists, but because of what does not exist - because of what has been honed and polished away in the sharpening. If there is not a cause, then who is responsible? Responsibility is ability to respond. When I am disabled by the past, shackled by imaginary causes, I cannot respond. But when I sever the cause, disconnect ...

Are you the bee who approaches a rose bush and sees only thorns? Then you will never settle on a flower long enough to taste its nectar. Are you the bee who tiptoes past the thorn to penetrate the blossom, and drinks and drinks the nectar of devotion, and never leaves the rim of the rose's cup? Then you will cling to the Guru, but you will never make your own honey. Are you the bee who drinks all the nectar you can, until you are perfectly wisely drunk, then staggers out of the rose to leap into the sun? You will fly home, your wings and feet so clustered with pollen you barely lift yourself. But flying strengthens you. You will turn that pollen into honey for your friends, the way a crushed grape turns itself to wine. The world will drink you. New buds spring up wherever you alight. Now which bee does the rose love best?