One Moment Meditation

The first amphibian surfaced from a murky pond to gaze at the vast blue sky, briefly glimpsing the starry realms through which he would one day evolve to soar.

So it is that, for those of us who spend countless lifetimes mired in thought, memory and desire, it is sheer delight to drop the mind and truly See, even for a brief moment.

We can practice this one-moment-meditation often throughout the day. Just rest as the clear sky of Presence, without thinking.

You did this as a little child, but were never rewarded for it. No one ever said, "Well done! That was a wonderful moment of Presence!" So you quit your natural meditation practice.

Brief boundless wonder - freed from past, future, and the mind that creates them - recharges every cell of your body with eternal Being.

Thou

Kindness is nearly impossible when I generalize, when I abstract humanity into groups - by religion, nation, class, or ethnicity. But kindness is a miracle of simple joy when I meet humanity in one person: the person who happens to be right in front of me now. This person is not black or white, rich or poor, Muslim or Christian, Syrian or American. This person is simply Thou.

Take Care of Consciousness

Just take care of consciousness and all will be well. Don't worry about your body. Don't worry about your thoughts. Don't worry about the stories you hear from far or near, the stories you hear from your own mind. Don't worry about your nation, your race, your religion. Don’t worry quite so much about your food, your water, your air… Just take care of consciousness.

Not "your" consciousness. Don't worry about "your." Simply repose in the gorgeous primordial warmth of the un-created One who radiates pure kindness in the heart of all creatures, if they will only turn and see...

Hug pure consciousness. Nourish the light of the Self. Let consciousness bathe in her own reflection. Feed consciousness her own nectar. You are the invisible sap. You are the seed and you are the soil. You are the sun of awakening, and you are the golden flower.

Waves of Love

 

 “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength." ~Isaiah 30:15

Love is not an action. Quite the contrary, Love always already is.

We simply melt into the innate condition of Love when we refrain from doing what divides us. We think that we must do and do and do, but it is our doing that divides us into parties, clans, nations, religions.

Love unites us not by doing, but by Being.

When I allow my heart to flow back to the ocean of love, I find only Persons, not parties. And I see clearly that each Person is a wave of Love's ocean: unique at its peak yet, at its base, merged in every other wave. All our waves are made of the same water. What is that water? Pure consciousness. 

The water stirs itself into expression and arises as a Person. But in rising up with great enthusiasm the water not only becomes a wave, it leaps out of the sea and becomes a drop. For a brief moment, the drop separates itself from the ocean. This is what most human beings on earth experience: separation from the whole.

Love incarnates as a human child, crying, I lack! Fill me! Then love takes a journey of return to fullness. This is the eternal story of the ocean of love, repeated in each wave as a human soul.

In our brief life of separation-consciousness, we imagine that Persons are in conflict, and that the solution to the conflict requires competition, aggression, even violence. Separation-consciousness is the real cause of war.

In separation-consciousness, each group blames its rival as the cause of the conflict. We blame Islam, Christianity, capitalism, communism, white people, Arabs, Jews, liberals, conservatives. We blame one nation's foreign policy or another's. But the truth is, we are each the cause of war when we insist on being separate from the world.

I perceives a world of conflict because I am the conflict.

War will never solve the conflict out there. Political action from the Left or the Right will never solve the conflict out there. I will never solve the conflict out there.

The conflict is solved in here. When I enter into the deepest meditation, and probe the very nature of pure consciousness, my false and separate identity dies. The separate me dissolves into silence, releasing a fragrance of grace, an elixir of wholeness.

The end of war will only come when a critical mass of Persons return to themselves, consciously nourishing human nature at its source.

This world is a creation of consciousness. The world is transformed when consciousness awakens consciousness. This transformation is not a doing, but a deep repose.

Rest in the heart. Rest from every thought and act of division. In rest is returning. In returning is wholeness. In wholeness is healing.  

When Jesus gave us the new commandment, Love one another, even as I have loved you, he did not mean that there was anything we must do. Doing was the Old Law. Jesus liberated us from the Old Law, the law of doing, the law of karma. Jesus meant that we are now free to Be. We are free to rest in our own nature as pure love, beyond doing.

Then is there no action to perform? Of course we perform action. Action is inevitable. Right action flows spontaneously from the grace of Being, just as fragrance is released from the opening bud. Action is a flowering of stillness.

Let the drop fall back into the ocean. Let the mind fall back into the heart. Fall in Love and Love will welcome you home.

Jai Guru Dev.

Be Kind and Meditate

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Actually, these words were not written by Plato. No one is sure who first wrote them. But they are worthy of our practice.

People are stressed these days, and the stressed mind feeds on conflict, because it seeks its reflection in the world outside.

A red Starbuck's cup becomes a cause for "the Christmas wars." One person says "black lives matter," another says "all lives matter," and people take sides. Why can't both statements be true? Why can't a cup be red? The stressed mind will see any situation as a conflict, when in reality it is just a situation.

Could we possibly forgive people for being who they are? Including ourselves? Most of us, in fact, are doing the best we can.

The stressed mind ascribes blame. If a person behaves incoherently, and makes a mistake, we want to ascribe motive. We want to take it personally. Our mind says, "That person did this to Me! They don't appreciate me. They are against me."

In fact, the person we blame wants to do what they believe is right, just as we do. And when they made the mistake, they probably weren't thinking of us at all. So why take it personally?

We all fall short. We don't need to waste our energy ascribing blame and intention to other people's frailty. Why not just say what Jesus said? "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

As we enter these long benighted Winter days, let us practice MEDITATION and COMPASSION. What is compassion? Honoring a person's Being above their doing. What is meditation? Compassion for one's self.

Happening

Whatever happens happens effortlessly, like a cloud forming in the sky. But until the happening, my mind creates a melodrama in which "I" play the role of do-er.

"I" sustain the illusion of effort. It feels to "me" as if a great deal of work must be done. But when it occurs, the action occurs in its own time, as a flowering, a mystery. The mystery unfolds from deep silence, not from the chattering of the mind, with all its efforts and plans. The action cannot be called "my" action at all. In fact, even the "work" I did in the preparation was happening spontaneously in the present moment, without actual effort. This is good news. The good news is that all things happen effortlessly in the field of Grace.

When the body hears this news, it breathes a sigh of recognition, and says, "Yes, that is how it feels. Please, just let me dissolve in the subatomic dance, the dance of dust and starlight, one continuum without separation. My body is the world and the world is my body."

But the mind, on the other hand, hears this good news as an insult. "How dare you denigrate my effort and hard work! This event could never have happened without me, and a great deal of planning went into it!" The mind perceives the event in time, as the effect of some previous cause, because the mind invents time, feeds on time, and exists through time. Time is thought.

But the body exists as Presence.

The event would have happened anyway, without the mind. And the happening would have been witnessed with joy and amazement - not by a thinking "me," but by pure awareness free from thought.

Whatever happens, happens in the Now as a flower of grace. There is no need to super-impose thought onto the wonder of creation.

No Loss

There is no loss
that is not an invitation
to birth new space,
no midnight that does not
contain a star,
no wound that will not see
like an eye.
Darkness hugs.
Emptiness cleanses.
Powerful medicine never tastes
like candy.

Art by Hildegard of Bingen, 11th C.

Chaotic Beauty

The beauty of chaos is the harmony of opposites. A creative mind welcomes contradictions. All the colors of the rainbow radiate from pure white light, and light is born in the womb of darkness.

Chittakasha

 

Chitt-akasha: literally, "conscious-space."

Space is awake! Awakened space fills each atom, vibrates as gravity waves in the proton's heart, spills over the rim of the farthest galaxy into the void beyond creation, filling the darkness with Self-seeing...

Chittakasha: the ever-expanding boundless space You Are, the space of your own pure awareness...

Awakened space is not 'spacy'! 'Spaciness' comes from detachment, from separation of mind and body. But awakened space pervades every cell of your flesh, and every particle of dust. Awakened space is not just the vastness above, but the holy ground...

Space is awake, witnessing the arising and dissolving of photons and stars in the same dimension of eternal bliss...

Space is awake, witnessing your dreams, witnessing your body even as it sleeps, witnessing the feathery brush of the faintest breath...

Even your death and your birth are enfolded in the limitless sapphire-blue sky of the heart...

In the West we call it the Anointed, the Christ-Consciousness. In India, Shiva. In Buddhism, Bhodichitta. In the deepest Earth-centered traditions,the womb of the Goddess...

What name we give this space doesn't matter. What matters is to awaken, through meditation, and begin looking FROM this space, instead of looking FOR it...

Everything Is New

"Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new." ~2 Corinthians 5:17

The most liberating political revelation is the discovery that we don't need to protest or resist the old paradigm. That struggle only polarizes, separates, and generates negative energy. Negative energy is that which makes us smaller.

We are not called to protest and resist because the old paradigm is burning itself down. We don't need to help it. We are called instead to begin rising right now from those ashes.

Rise and manifest the new energy, vibrating abundance and unity in the present moment.

The new energy values personhood above ideology. It does not superimpose concepts on the living miracle of Presence. Dualistic concepts such as 'white' or 'black,' 'capitalist' or 'socialist,' 'foreign' or 'native,' 'spiritual' or 'material,' only exist in the gray ghostly parallel world of thought, a world without juiciness. Those concepts divide. They do not heal. They have nothing to do with the radiance and wholeness of the Person, the wild healing edgeless contact of Consciousness with Consciousness, spontaneously generating a cosmos of divine Otherness, without separation from the stillness of the divine Self.

You vastly serve humanity simply by living, in and as this new vibration. Your very Presence is your protest, your dissent from all that is past. Don't let anyone diminish you by demanding to know what you are doing to save the world, or which "side" you are on. If they ask you, simply answer, "I Am."