Tarot Card 322: 'The World'

There is absolutely no need to change the world. No need to change anything. The world is changing anyway, every moment dissolving and recreating. The world is the field of ceaseless change. So if I think I need to see more change, then it is my thinking and my seeing that need to change.

I get stuck in recurrent thought-loops and inflexible belief patterns. They may be "conservative" or "liberal," but if they are inflexible, then I am still stuck. I can be a stuck liberal just as easily as I can be a stuck conservative. I see the world through this stagnant mind and think the world is stagnant.

So the revolution must come in my awareness before I can see it in the world. To experience the revolution, I explode my mind through meditation, and blast the top right off my skull with the breath of Kriya. Then I can soar into the stars, and endless transformation happens. This is what it means to "become the change you want to see in the world."

Create Abundance

"Redistribution of wealth," either upward or downward, is a concept that arises from lack. "Creating abundance" is a concept that arises from fullness.

"Redistribution" is entropy. "Creation" is life, and livelihood.

There is no lack. At every infinitesimal point of space or time, even in the emptiness of the vacuum, there is only fullness, pressed out and overflowing. This is why creation happens, and there is something rather than nothing.

So stop playing the victim of lack. Charge your mind and body with life energy, through the power of meditation and kriya: then start creating abundance.

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पुर्णमुदच्यते
पूर्णश्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

Om Puurnnam-Adah Puurnnam-Idam
Puurnnaat-Purnnam-Udacyate
Puurnnashya Puurnnam-Aadaaya
Puurnnam-Eva-Avashissyate ||

Om, that Absolute Unmanifest Spirit is
this manifest material creation is full.
From fullness only fullness can come.
Taking fullness from fullness, only fullness remains. ~Isha Upanishad

Ecstatic

The ecstatic can never be sought, or experienced. The ecstatic is the silent explosion of that which is already here before I look for it.

The ecstatic is the flowering of emptiness, so fragrant with the absence of "I" that it feels no hunger to be filled. Now the world ecstatically appears in the vacuum, as the radiant afterimage of my non-arising. And this is the graceful celebration of freedom from the search.

Gift of Tears

"Few are those who shed tears of gratitude. There are so many tears of misery, but those few who shed tears out of love, they are like lighthouses for this planet. They are the purifiers for this planet. They purify their families, their traditions, their towns and villages, they re-purify this earth.

"If you sit and meditate, if you sing with your heart, you think that vibration just remains with you? No, it goes all over. You purify the whole atmosphere. Such moments of gratitude are a blessing for this planet. Such moments of deep love make our life worth living." ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, commentary on Narada's 'Bhakti Sutras'

The early Christian saints of the desert tradition spoke of "the gift of tears," received in the Prayer of the Heart. Such tears are not ordinary tears, but tears of grace.

A tear is the sign of release, complete relaxation of all your efforts. In this very moment of surrender, consciousness instantly returns to it's ground state of boundless expansion, all-pervading and non-local. Yet this golden void of love must also be the ground-state of the universe, the unified field that, according to quantum physics, is the source of creation.

There cannot be two different voids, one inside and one outside, one in the mind and one in matter. Both are infinitely abstract, and there can only be one infinite abstraction. Therefor the void in meditation is the ground-state of creation, and every particle of matter arises from the silence at the center of a tear.

When love's teardrop falls, it carries you into such a silence that the whole universe trembles... Because the unconditional surrender of your heart IS that boundless expanse, that perfect void, that ocean of stillness whose waves (called "fluctuations of the vacuum" in quantum science) emit the subtlest particles of the material world.

One tear of your love cannot help but re-generate the earth.

Jai Guru Dev

Haiku Chain, Written Under The Full Moon

Love pervades silence
just as a blue color stains
the clear empty sky...

Let stillness move you.
The Beloved will suffuse
each breath and footstep...

You were created
for a kiss that is deeper
in you than yourself.

Let that Otherness
be the dark bruise of longing
in every heartbeat.

As You Are

Its always tempting to believe in "another reality" just out of sight, beyond this world. But I can really only ever know one world, one reality: the projection of who I Am.

If I vibrate the light of heaven inside, I already dwell in the "higher world." If I attune to judgment, fear, and resentment, if I constantly diminish myself by playing the victim and blaming others for my circumstance, then I perceive only a world that reflects those qualities and attitudes.

That is why Jesus said, "The Eye (of Awareness) is the light of your body (material world). If your Eye is single (in the state of Yoga, Unity), then your whole body is full of light. But if your Eye is dark, then how great is that darkness!" (Mat 6:22)

Or as my first Teacher, Maharishi, simply put it: "The world is as you are."

The One Who Is Free

The one who is free feels no need
to demonstrate freedom.
The one who is wild feels no need
to demonstrate wildness.
The graceful shaman dissolves boundaries
only when necessary.
The rest of the time,
she just dances with them.

Lamp

"Her lamp does not go out at night."   ~Proverbs 31:18

I simply can't be always doing what I want, or wanting what I have to do. That is a magical childish dream. I actually don't have so much choice in what I 'do' at any given moment. Karma comes to me and I have to handle it, even when it isn't what I want right now.

I can't control the present moment, but I can establish my heart in Divine Love through meditation. Divine Love is the Witness to all doing, all karma, pleasant and unpleasant. Divine Love is prior to what I do. It is who I Am.

To rest awareness in the field of Divine Love, beyond doing and not-doing, is freedom. The only freedom. Then, though I can't always do what I love, I can love in the midst of whatever I do.

And Faith is to know that the time will come, through regular sadhana, when all I do on earth will be outshined by the kingdom of heaven within.

My heart is like the golden flame in the lamp of the world. I can't change the shape of the lamp, or make it bigger, or turn a brass lamp into a golden one. But I can keep the flame burning with each sacred breath, and shine. This is what matters.

Start the Day

Start the day with
three miracles.
Take a breath.
Feel your body.
Become aware
of awareness...
Like a breaking seed,
allow your world to flower.
Nothing is ordinary.
If you begin with
astonishment,
God will do the rest.

"Don't Worry"

When you fall, no one will catch you. This is your blessing.

You will just keep falling into No Ground, which is Ananda, bliss: the unimpeded perpetual expansion always happening in the space of your heart.

Just notice this space and relax. Not the space "within" you, but the space you already are, before you "do" anything.

The Master has come to assure you that you will not be in danger if you fall, fall endlessly into repose, repose in groundless Being.

There is only one religious message from all Masters of all paths: "Relax. Don't worry." In Bhagavad Gita (18:66) Krishna says, "Ma sucho," don't worry. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) Jesus says again and again, "Meh phobeo," don't worry. "Don't worry about your food, about your clothing, about tomorrow."

Primordial worry and fear have haunted us since birth. Fear is rooted in the birth trauma. This fear is not a memory IN our mind: it IS our mind.

We were not born into original sin but original anxiety, what the Buddha called "duccha": the constant subliminal fear that "there is something wrong, and I must be in danger."

Here is the Good News: We don't need to work on this primordial fear. We don't need to do anything about it. We don't need to try to change it into faith, or joy, through any mental discipline.

No labor of our mind can overcome fear. Since the mind IS fear, any mental effort only reiterates our anxiety in a new form.

Therefor, if we want to drop fear, we must drop the mind.

Fear dissolves when the mind dissolves. To dissolve the mind is meditation.

Changing the mind is difficult, but dissolving the mind is easy.

We are not here to think. We are here to love.

Thought may happen in love's space, of course. When needed to answer a specific problem, thought arises; but effortlessly, like a line drawn in air. Rain drops appear in the blue sky, then they are gone. In love-space, thought does not linger, does not accumulate as anxiety.

The bridge from thought to silence, from fear to love, is the grace of the Master.

When we are near the Master, thought simply vanishes.

This is the sign of a true Master: in that Presence, our mind will be stunned into perfect silence.

The Master takes our hand, leads us across the bridge by a single breath, across the bridge of fear to the edge of love's abyss, then whispers, "Leap!"

Friend, you got here by following the rules. You’ll get out of here by breaking them.

When you go, please leave an echo of your song, the way a fallen petal leaves the scent of jasmine, so that those who truly listen to what's hidden in silence will close their eyes, savor this breath, and hear you calling from deep inside, "Don't follow, just dissolve."

Mandala by Socrates Geens: Link