Uradiance

To dwell in the kingdom of now, and to love from this unconditioned space of forgiveness, is the totality of Jesus' teaching. Churches and sacraments, heaven and hell, mnemonic stories and end-time prophecies, the "prosperity gospel" of the right and the "social gospel" of the left, were all invented later by followers who insisted on clinging to the past and future.

It is not my ancestors who heal me, nor the old holy stories of my tribe. It is not the prescriptions of scripture that heal me, nor the priest's absolution in the temple. I sip the Great Medicine, the pure transparent nectar of Presence. This very breath is my soothing balm. Now is the Sabbath. I rest in being just as I Am.

"When the bud breaks, it becomes a flower. When the heart breaks, it becomes divine."  ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar   I offer this remembrance of Guru Purnima, the full moon of the Guru, not only to beloved Shri Shri, but to all who might not be able to attend the celebration of Guru Purnima in the Guru's presence on July 31. It doesn't matter. You are the presence. Oh my Guruji, we were in Nova Scotia at a ten-day mid-summer silence course in 1991, ending on full moon. Seventy people attended: a large course then, though tens of thousands gather with you now. On the final night, after Sat Sang, about twenty of us took a moonlight walk with you. The night was hot, humid, yet breezy. Through onyx skies gleamed the full moon. Cool mist draped the forest vales and meadow edges. We strolled to a field and sat in dewy grass singing, "Shri Radhey Radhey Radhey Shyam." Suddenly, you stood up and began to dance! Silk trailed in the breeze about your...

No garden, no mind. Grow weeds. Let them gesture and blossom as noblemen who bow. Let there be a meadow like your body without edges where a rose pours into its bee, the bee surrenders to honey, the honey melts on your tongue, evaporates into a kiss that disappears into the sound of the empty flute, and God knows where that breath goes! Let soil dissolve into rain. Let rain dissolve into sky. Let sky dissolve into a sunbeam. Let that greatest of all fires be snuffed out in the breathless vacuum at the center of an atom. Now let empty space pervade the bones and emptiness awaken. O mind, be silenced by the vast soul. May this playful droplet,  this tiniest of all pearl selves, return to the ocean of wonder.

Mistakes become flowers when there is no 'should.' I let weeds blossom. Some gardens are too tidy. Einstein's desk was a mess. The earth is not so sacred when you cling to it. Remember, we're just passing through here. Being careful is letting go. Touch everything with a sweet farewell. The hug of ownership is what ruins a place. God never says  'I'm sorry,' just 'I love you.'

'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' ~Matthew 6:12 Maybe we should all pay each other reparations for what our ancestors did, and when we find that everyone owes an infinite amount to everyone else, we can all agree to forgive the debt and live as one human family in the present moment. But this is not about money. At each moment, with each breath, we are free to assume the burden of the past,  or let it go. Yet so many of us would rather imagine that, whatever the burden  we carry, someone else is doing it to us. So we make up a story about it, full of  blame and victimhood. And this story tells itself over and over in our mind,  clouding and o're-shadowing the clear diamond radiance of the Present Moment,  which is pure love. Love needs no story. Presence is so much happier than any story about the past. And presence is always infinitely available. This is the grace of Being.

Jesus said, 'Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there Am I.' He did not say two or three million. A faint breath may move us in ways a mighty wind cannot. There is deep power in the intimacy of small groups. Success is not always measured by numerical increase. The sat-sang often transforms souls more profoundly when it is a spontaneous circle, not yet structured into a hierarchy. Later on, when the beloved community grows to a worldwide movement, though numbers increase, spiritual potency may  diminish. If you are doing transformational work with small groups, don't be too impatient to grow in size. Savor the small.

Through the gift of meditation, mind begins to settle into stillness. Then I am no longer stuck in the outworn grooves of anger and blame. I can sink through a portal of silence into the deeper music of creation, where an effortless interior harmony reminds me that the cosmos is woven from a single thread: the vibration of Love. Let me follow this trembling string of affection, the song of the name, the mantra, calling me inward. This vibration is the gift of the Master, leading me back to creation's source, where All Mother spins the universal web for one purpose: that Love may fall in love with Love in countless hearts. Now it is self-evident that laughter and mourning, injustice and compassion, chaos and community, intimacy and sleepless despair, the whole bewildering dance of opposites, whirls as one majestic pattern of divine Beauty, whether it be a galaxy or an atom of dust, a breath, or the spiral of a human lifetime; and it is all a play in the theater ...

"Out beyond every idea of right thinking and wrong thinking, there's a field - will you meet me there?" ~Rumi Out in Rumi's meadow there's a Walmart. Someone who earns her own way, but makes a very modest salary, buys soap and clothing there. She feels proud that she can support herself. No one disdains her for shopping at Walmart. Out in Rumi's meadow, there's a man and woman who run a small farm to raise a family. They sell delicious strawberries, string beans, kale and cucumbers at market prices, in their own roadside farm stand. No one calls them "capitalists." Out in Rumi's meadow, there's an elder dying of cancer, who is very poor. Neighbors all pitch in to care for him, bringing meals, paying doctor's bills, singing to him in the evening. Each contributes what they can. No one calls it "socialism." Out in Rumi's meadow, the children play. They learn as they play. Wherever someone raises c...

No thing is more significant than any thing else. The daring leap of a tree frog from the spigot of your garden hose to her sanctuary in a pot of begonias is as important as the birth of a nation or a typhoon in Bangladesh. The universe is not only as you see it, but as the frog sees it. Your attention, focused on an infinitesimal event, magnifies its significance. Otherwise, it's no more relevant than a leaf in the wind. Nothing is more arrogant than assuming that your concern should be someone else's. The highest form of justice is letting others create themselves instead of trying to convert them to your opinion. Allow everyone to follow the wondrous river of their own interest. You don't need to convince anybody. Just bathe them in the light of awareness. A philosopher said, 'Be kind, for everyone you meet is struggling in a great battle.' A carpenter said, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged.' Here's a new idea: ...

I have always secretly believed that my spirit guide was a panther. But a wolf or an orca whale would do, even a great horned owl. I finally decided to find out. So I went on a vision quest. I prepared with a sweat lodge and three day fast. My teacher smoked my chakras with sage. Then I hiked to a secret place in the mountains. For the first few hours, I did just fine. Then a scratching sound in the bottom of my pack distracted me from meditation. I hissed and the mouse skittered away. Several more hours went by in the all-night vigil. But my deep silence was broken by that same fussy gnawing sound. I shook the mouse out of my pack again. Dawn came, a kaleidoscope, a silent pastel explosion in the Eastern sky. I felt so blessed, and sensed that my vision was immanent. Certainly it would be an elk, horns racked in a glitter of sunbeams. Or a bear, shining black and huge among the blueberries. But not even a raven circled in the sky. I was visited by nothing. Wearily I p...

"Loss is nothing but change, and change  is nature's delight." ~Marcus Aurelius We flee from our experience of loss instead of tasting its essence. We stuff our emptiness with sensation and belief, creating addiction and ideology. What if we had the courage to descend into the vacuum of our loss, and imbibe its bittersweet fullness? At the center of a galaxy, the black hole consumes and destroys; yet the same void spawns new stars. In the heart of loss is a counterforce of creativity. Loss is divine darkness. Loss is the mother of emanation. When we surrender to loss, we regenerate. After all, what isn't lost? Our yesterdays, with everyone and everything in them, are lost. Even a moment ago is lost forever. Our stories are the ruins of a Presence that has moved on. The past is an idol, molded of mere thought, devoid of sentience. Yet precisely because of this blessed loss, we are free. We are pure. Not as thought or belief, but as Awaren...

Now that the veil of love has dissolved into night itself, we won't need to waste the evening asking, "Are we one or two?" We can skip this bewildering foreplay and move straight to the moment before dawn, piercing the dark with a sudden inhalation, both you and I the same breath. The others are sleeping, dreaming of us, not only the bridesmaids, but the lonely, the rich and destitute. When they awaken, they will never know how we contained them as the sky contains clouds, as a lake disturbed by April contains a thousand rippling moons. We are two mirrors gazing with the speed of light, shattering against each others emptiness. This is how, in the abyss, we make wine out of stars.

After more than half a century of thinking about this, I have finally decided not to grow up. If you are plagued by any question - political, economic, or philosophical - just ask a little kid, and take their answer seriously. We are at our best when we listen to children, and respond to them with devotion. "Children's" books and films are far more visionary than those labeled "adult." Most products labeled "adult" are, in fact, addictions and obsessions. The adults who lead our governments and armies, our banks and corporations, even our academic institutions, are far less trustworthy than five-year-olds. Those who "succeed" in the adult world share one common trait: a chronic lack of real spontaneous joy. Most of what I believed in as a little child turned out to be true, including the realms of elfin and faery magic, the celestial worlds permeating plant physiology, and the advice of animals. The qualities I most ofte...

  Our common human practice is to avoid the suffering of the present by imagining a better future or remembering a better past. Thus we escape into time, and avoid the only real opportunity to find freedom from suffering through the practice of Presence. The great practice is No Practice At All. The great practice is to embrace what is, just as it is, with unconditional acceptance. Another name for this is Love. To welcome the flower of our pain, just as it arises, without any attempt to control manipulate the experience, releases the nectar of ananda, bliss. This is the greatest irony and the deepest secret. Unconditional embrace of what is already happening in this moment is true meditation, and the only liberation. It doesn’t matter whether you believe this or not. It doesn't matter whether you decide to take up this practice or not. You will enter this embrace anyway, without choosing it. The compassionate process that is Lif...