Vesper Thoughts

Merging into the stillness of the Self is the deepest form of activism, stimulating the breast of Divine Mother to express the milk of Shakti, her creative healing power, through every atom in creation.

One of the subtlest forms of ego is to pride ourselves on how much grief or anger we feel, for then we get stuck in our grief, fixated in our anger, and they become our identity. We are so much more than our anger, so much more than our sorrow!

Your grief and anger are not to be denied. They are sacred energies. But grief is not a temple, and anger is not a palace. They are impermanent, empty as wind moving through the stillness of vast space. You are that space. There is room in you for the storm, and for the sun.

But if you let the pain and chaos of the world become your identity, the world will rob you of your smile, your birthright happiness. You will lose everything, for you will completely misunderstand the nature of reality.

The world is a mirror of your consciousness, reflecting your golden sun or your grayest cloud. The world mirrors the full moon of your compassion, rising over an ocean of peace, or the troubled waves of your anxiety. You have the freedom to project whatever mental state you feel onto the mirror of the world.

Life flows toward greater happiness. If I embrace my grief and anger, giving them the time they need, without force or resistance, nature will spontaneously move me toward joy. The energy of grief and anger will dissolve into clarity and peace. But if I cling to grief and anger, identifying them as "me," I cause unnatural suffering in myself and others.

When we practice meditation, our great discovery is that we can embrace our grief and our anger, breathe through them, transform them into free energy...

Now it is time for Vespers. Let the ocean of peace include our waves of grief and anger, until every wave settles down in the stillness of All-Mothering Awareness, whose nature is pure love.