Uradiance

Too much order is paralyzing. Too much chaos is terrifying. Find the balance between order and chaos, just where breathing in becomes breathing out, where discipline becomes letting go, where you are neither on the left or the right but gently swaying, where you give up the argument for perfection, where you stumble into grace, and surrender to the gift of your dance.

"I" hate to bow. It means losing the separateness that is "me." But there is that of God, deeper inside me than I, who loves bowing. A bow happens when I have no idea to whom I bow. My forehead touches the soil and whatever was in here spills out... Then I am so empty, all creation bows to itself through me. Friend, let's kneel to one another for no reason. Let's throw ourselves gently on the sweet earth, and scatter our bodies like brown sugar.

Rest as Self-radiant awareness. Whenever you feel stressed, divided, weary, off-center, just rest as You. Rest is not passive. Rest is dynamic return. Rest is empowerment. Rest is healing action. This is the real meaning of the Sabbath. True rest is that act which re-establishes the wholeness of matter, energy and spirit as one continuum. Matter, energy and spirit are just different densities of a single essence, which is your own awareness. This means that your awareness runs through the seer and the seen. All that is around you, from the nearest flower to the most distant star, is the intimate extension of You. You are the cosmic continuum. In order to find true rest, we must know where to rest. If we think we must go somewhere "else" to rest, that very "going" will make us restless. If we seek rest in a temple or an ashram, in the image of a God, or in a chakra of our subtle body, we will be restless. If we seek rest in a faith or ...

In the center of your chest is a muscle full of blood, fire, and air. And around that pulsing organ is a resonant field forming a hologram that contains every other heart on earth, as well as the heart of every Buddha, Bodhisattva, God and Goddess in the subtle worlds. The work of this heart is the duty of a rose: drinking from its own root, absorbing the sun, opening, offering a breath of pollen to the sky. The work of love is simply to embrace your own heart with attention , and give it room to beat. It's beat will nourish heaven and earth. The beginning and end of all spiritual practice is to rest awareness in the heart. Let action spring from there. Photo by Kristy Thompson

"The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men." ~1 Corinthian 1:25 "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." ~Shakespeare (As You Like It) The greatest good you could do for another person is to free them from their own thoughts. Not replacing their thought with another thought, but giving them a taste of infinity, a savor of the nectar of pure consciousness, liberated from the bondage of any thought at all. "Guru" means "the light that removes darkness." A real Guru is the reverse of conventional Western notions about teaching. The myth of our tradition begins with the darkness of the unknown. Then an authoritative teacher imparts the "right" concepts to believe in, leading us to the light of knowledge. But spiritual truth is just the opposite. The darkness is the known. A Guru plays the role of trickster and fool, startling us out of the shado...

"If we are established in our Self, then we feel connected to everybody." ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Like so many of us, I was raised with the Western Christian concept of the self. Self was a dirty four-letter word. I was supposed to condemn myself as a "sinner," and regard everyone else as a "sinner" too. Then, somehow, I was supposed to love, selflessly. From the earliest age, our religion educates us to believe that, at the primal core of our being, there is something wrong. In fact, we are at fault even before we are born, infected with "original sin." But this is only the teaching of the Church, not the teaching of Jesus. Jesus said: "The kingdom of heaven is within you.... You are the light of the world." A spiritual Master never teaches original sin, but original innocence. When I was in college, I received initiation from the Guru, through the Shankaracharya tradition of India. By Grace, I directly ta...

The death of Pan reminds us that the most brilliant comic genius, the most visionary poet, the greatest artist and musician, is nurtured by the cool deep spring s of melancholy, grief, and sorrow, as surely as by rays of sun. Those who expect life to be a constant smile or laugh will never know the wellspring of creativity, the seed of light, which is an immaculate, terrible, magnificent darkness, a God beyond god. Robin Williams, d. August 11, 2014

'Layam vraja: dissolve now.' ~Ashtavakra Gita They say that dissolving the 'I' is enlightenment, and this is extraordinary. But didn't it happen when you were a child, in ordinary moments of wonder, every day? Wonder at a caterpillar, wonder in the eyes of a new friend on the playground, wonder of a shooting star? Doesn't it happen now, when you give yourself completely to your grief, and dissolve into a tear? When you give yourself completely to your joy, and dissolve into l aughter? When you give yourself completely to the sound of Miles, a Monet water lily, a sonnet of Keats, and dissolve into beauty? When you give yourself completely to the Friend, this touch of divine breath, and dissolve into love? In such an ordinary moment of no-thing, who is left? Doesn't enlightenment happen a thousand times a day? Painting by Claudia Olivos

Lord, I have a confession to make: I don't believe in Sin. Even at the age of seven, It was self-evident to me that my Creator, whose nature is pure love, could not possibly judge one of her creatures to be any less divine than herself. But I do ask forgiveness for one thing... Please forgive me for ever having doubted your immediate, immaculate, overwhelming, unconditional presence, at every moment everywhere, in darkness and in light. For you are Presence itself.

The thought of silence is not silence. Thought can never appreciate the beauty of silence. Only silence can taste its own beauty. The concept of God is not God. Concepts are bound by their definitions. They cannot taste the infinite, because the infinite is boundless, indefinable. We must become the infinite to savor the infinite, and become silence to taste silence. When we encounter "great thinkers," it is not the form of their thoughts that are great, but the depth of silence resonating inside them. That thought which dissolves into living silence, awakening silence within you, is true mantra. That form which transports you to the formless, is true art.

 "I love your silences; they are like mine," wrote Anias Ninn. There is more than one kind of silence. There is the silence of repression and fear. There is the silence that is just an absence of noise. There is also the silence of deep communion. And there is the womb-silence of infinite possibility, a silence that vibrates with waves of potential, silence of the ocean of bliss, silence foaming and bubbling with unborn planets and galaxies...

'Smart' people believe in their thoughts, especially the thought of 'me.' How can a thought discriminate between 'right' and 'wrong' ideas? Only the silence beyond ideas, who watches without thought, can discriminate. Don't be so smart. Be a little stupid. Watch thoughts come and go without grasping them. Even the thought of 'me.' You can rest beyond mind as self-radiant emptiness. You are not an idea, ceaselessly arguing with other ideas. You are sparkling omnipresent free s pace, where all ideas arise and dissolve without conflict. I know this because I am the stupidest person of all: the way to peace is awakening the Witness.

Today I went to see my therapist, because I felt the ancient anxiety returning, that shadow of the past, that ghost in my body, with all its stories of conflict. So I visited my therapist and lay my body down on her couch. Without speaking a word, she rubbed her silken spine against me, gently climbed on top of me, sat on my chest and gazed into my eyes, her pupils expanding with implacable nowness. She let me stroke he r cheeks and run my fingers through her fur. Her body shivering with delight, she arched her back, and I could feel the stress flowing out of me, a current of stale electricity cluttered with images of yesterday. My muscles released their grip on themselves. My brain dissolved its stories. My neurons became vibrant hollows filled with golden streams of imageless bliss. Because I was whole again, the world was whole again - the actual world of furry suchness, without blame or division. Suddenly, the therapist leapt off my body and wa...

I inhabit this body for more than half a century. I inhabit this mind for less than half a second. What lupine-blue moth from the mountains lands on my chest, gently pulsing its wings until they find the stillness that is always here? Or what edgeless sky, camouflaged as my soul, awakens in each honeyed cell of flesh? It withers and dries in the Autumn of my bones, returns in a breath with the fragrance of wisteria, purple riot on gnarled roots of patience. The morning sun is completely contained in a dewdrop on the hummingbird's tongue. If you want to evaporate into pure compassion, hold two opposites in a hollow place: the desiccated wick of the old moon, and this promiscuous flame. (It leaps from lover to lover, eye to eye, one star to another, crying "Yes!")

The Lover said to the Beloved, "I am in love with You." The Beloved replied with laughter and twinkling eyes, "You have no choice!" Who comprehends this conversation? I love because I have free will. But when I surrender completely, the will is annihilated in love, and this is perfect freedom. I know this because I became a fool.