Uradiance

I don't go to "advanced" courses any more. I've observed that many folks at "advanced" courses are secretly anxious and competitive, glancing over their shoulders to see if they're really getting more "advanced." The very concept of "advancement" creates distance and separation. I prefer "beginners" courses, where I find humility, innocence, and wonder. Of course we can always cram more data into our heads, refine our mechanical skills, or make our muscles more flexible. But none of that has anything to do with the Spirit. In a particular craft, art or science, one can certainly gain technical improvement. But applying this notion to the spiritual life is a disaster. In the infinite space of consciousness, there are no "planes" to attain. We are either One, or separate. It doesn't matter whether we are separate by an inch or a thousand miles. Separation is all the same distance. There are no...

There is no universal law requiring us to say Yes or No, to take sides, or to have an opinion. Sometimes it is wiser simply to rest in infinite possibility. Powerful action arises directly from the Void, as intuitive intelligence. This intuitive intelligence of the Void percolates through every cell in our body. It has nothing to do with ideologies and belief systems. Our total cellular intelligence chooses every moment, whether to eat this or that, to turn right or left at the crossroad, to listen to jazz or classical. Those who are stuck in ideology do not respond to the living earth. They try to impose their ideal of the world upon actual life. The ideal always represents the past, projected into the future, but has no relationship with the energy of Presence. To impose an ideal or an ideology on the present moment  is an assault, an act of aggressive, not a caring response to life. Beware of any man or woman with a plan. No one needs to change the world. The wor...

To me, the greatest discovery a human can make on earth is that we can transcend the mind. Though containing no object, no image and no thought, the Knowledge gained by transcending the mind is infinitely greater than anything the mind could know. It is the deepest freedom, and the only real peace. This Knowledge is nearer to me than "I" am: the all-enfolding nature of boundless space aware of its Self before a single thought arises. It is the luminosity of the Void, vibrant with waves of love. Where Knowing, Being, and Joy are one and the same, this is the Self. This is God. And with a few minutes of deep meditation each morning and evening, this becomes the practical ground of ordinary experience. Jai Guru Dev. All gratitude to the masters who have handed down this elegantly simple meditation through the ages.  ________ LINK: NBC News on how Transcendental Meditation transforms inner city schools in San Francisco.

Today I arrived at the gym feeling extremely proud, having resisted the temptation to stop at the House of Donuts and eat one of their irresistibly delicious fresh-baked classics. On the way home, after an especially challenging workout, I felt doubly proud. So I stopped at the House of Donuts and had two. O yogi, the body is innocent. Beware the mind!

The intellectuals that I admire are the ones who passionately defend both sides of the argument, then fall down laughing crazy among violets and dandelions. Now I must tell you that tears of joy and sorrow both effuse from a hollow space between the words. When truth is known, only that silence remains.

What is revolutionary action today? To chain oneself to the White House fence and get arrested? To shout angry protests in the street? To join a Tea Party? To hold sit-ins and sing peace songs in front of banks, shutting down commerce? To overthrow the government and spill the blood of the rich? These are hardly acts of revolution, for they have all been done before. What is radical action now ? To slow down (this is advancement). To subtract (this is abundance). To say thank you without words to a hummingbird or flower (this is healing the earth). To savor one breath (not the last one or the next one, but this one). To welcome a distraction (this may be the gateway to a new world). And just for a moment, to be rather than to do (this drops a seed of Eternity into the earth). True acts of revolution are radical acts of prayer.   Painting by Floy Zittin (www.floyzittin.com)

Have you laughed for no reason? Billows of stillness. Have you cried without  knowing why? Tears are crystal wells of silence. For what purpose does your chest rise and fall? Flowers of gratitude. In Winter, let it be Winter. In Spring, let it be Spring. And now for no reason, without knowing why, breathe love. Painting: Renoir's 'Spring'

I see the world I choose to see. If the mind is in crisis, everything appears in crisis. The crisis is the mind that sees. The world will be healed, not by political or economic reform, but by the realization by multitudes that we see "through a glass darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12). We see the world through our mental states. It is time to heal what we see by healing the lens through which we see it. All our misguided attempts at reformation and revolt are but reactions to our own mental qualities. "Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2). I bring about the most radical revolution when I  awaken to my deepest response-ability: to see the world I Am.

If an electron is made from the light of God, and every atom is filled with divine presence, and if the densest proton is a black hole charged with all the intelligence in the cosmos, then a mote of dust is sacred, one particle of flesh is holy, and our central task is simply seeing things as they are. The crisis of our civilization is not a crisis of belief, or faith, or economics, or political injustice, but a crisis of perception. No one who SEES what IS could ever harm the smallest being. Let us open our eyes and usher in the Age of Astonishment.

While the media replicate one act of yesterday's violence a billion times, a billion marvelous deeds of creative kindness are happening now, and the media ignores them. So I turn off the news, which is never new. Then real news awakens in the silence all around me. My back yard sings with seeds of Spring. In the infinite dimension of Presence, I am free to love. Illustration from Barbara Berger's, 'Grandfather Twilight'

In the stillness of the flower is the dancer - you!  Awareness is unbounded, yet awareness cannot become  conscious of its unboundedness without the experience  of boundaries. Blessed be the edges.

How beautiful to dwell in the garden of opposites! When they are flowers, I never call their colors "opposites"; I call them "complimentary." Why can I not call human opposites "complimentary"? I say I want to be free, but do I? Really? I am not free for abundance if I am not free to be poor. I am not free for joy if I am not free for sorrow. I am not free for gentleness if I am not free to be aggressive. I am not free for generosity if I am not free to make a profit. I am n ot free for voluntary simplicity if I am not free  to consume. I am not free to be liberal if I am not free to be  conservative. I am not free to be spiritual if I am not free to be  sensuous. I am only free when I allow the opposite to be OK. But when I condemn one side as "wrong" and the other as "right," I am bound. This is the most difficult less on earth, but it is why I am here in this glorious broken-open bewildering world of co...

When you stand at the edge of your meadow and gaze at this full moon, and I stand at the edge of my meadow and gaze at this full moon, is it the same moon? Well then, when all your thoughts dissolve, and the mind is filled with this marvelous light; when all my thoughts dissolve, and the mind is filled with this marvelous light, is it the same mind?