Uradiance

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Where opposites are polarized, humanity is blessed. I once heard my teacher say, "Heaven and Hell are all around you: take your pick." This is truer now than ever before on this p lanet. This is the best time to leap out of old patterns and gain liberation from the bondage of duality. What is the sign of liberation? Perceiving the dance of opposites as a single field of energy, and not as a conflict. For every hellish event that happens, somewhere on earth heaven is breaking through. The discerning heart remembers that only in a polarized world is the evolution of consciousness possible. Here only can we get unstuck, for when we try to grasp at anything, its antithesis arises. Only here can we learn the secret: we are the creators. When we identify with the violence and conflict the media keep feeding us, we are co-creating that world. In fact, some political activists would rather sustain conflict than solve it, because the sense of "us" vs. ...

We will never solve a conflict until we observe the part of our own self that loves conflict, identifies with conflict, and builds it's "i" out of conflict. To "i"-dentify with the conflict lets us play the victim, the martyr, and the hero. As political activists, we would often rather sustain a conflict than solve it, because our "i" is fed by the sense of "us" vs. "them." Even the worst human being carries a good seed, a seed that flowers when nurtured with our positive energy. On the other hand, even the best of us carries a vicious seed, whose shadow we project onto others so we won't have to embrace it as the hurt part of our self. What good does it do to hate people on the other "side"? Better to dissolve the polarity of "us" and "them." Bathing people in our hatred and distrust only brings out the worst in them, but bathing them in the light of our goodwill awakens their better an...

Happy Thanksgiving. If you want to be happy, be thankful. If you want to be thankful, just remember that the world is made of very little things. Now breathe into your heart one small creature, one tiny blessing for which you are grateful, and you will radiate healing through every cell in your body. Who knows? Perhaps through every particle of earth, and the ocean of stars.

"To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at." ~Claude Monet What happens, happens. That is all. A flower of energy in the void,  incomprehensibly sacred, with absolutely no "meaning." The mind makes up a story about it, superimposing its melodrama onto this marvelous dance of unfathomable suchness. Yet, however heroic or tragic, our story can never be as extraordinary as what actually IS. What is, disguised in the form the present moment, is the formless infinitude of Being, arising in ever-dissolving splendor as a portal of liberation. But instead of stepping through the portal, we resist it. We want to change this moment, reform it, and redesign its Presence to fit our story. Which of course is impossible, because Presence cannot be "fixed." It is always already happening. Have you ever asked, "What would the world be like if I welcomed this moment, without copying and pasting my drama over it?" Perhaps ...

Sakyamuni Buddha taught that there are four great human virtues: sitting, standing, walking, lying down. All other virtues arise from these four,  because right action flows spontaneously from a relaxed and natural body. To relax is the most radical teaching, the most revolutionary commandment. When we truly relax, without falling asleep, something quite profound happens. All that is compassionate, all that is healing, flows from that restful alertness. What could be easier than to relax? Yet it is difficult for most of us. And even when we do, we fall asleep. Then we cannot taste our own delicious Being, the source of every virtue. Why can't the body relax? Because the mind is not relaxed. Why can't the mind relax? Because the “I” won't relaxed. Why can't "I" relax? Because the ego can’t say, “I don’t know.” Why can't the ego say, “I don’t know”? Because "I" won't stop clinging to opinions. Why won't ...

Material forms can never be solidifed. Mental concepts can never be solidfied. Yet we keep trying to hold onto our bodies and thoughts. The body is made of fleeting evanescent particles, ever dissolving into the vacuum. The mind is made of passing thoughts, and even our most cherished beliefs disappear as soon as we fall asleep. Yet humans cling to the body and mind as if they were real, without attending to the firm foundation of this inconstant life: their own Being. The creature changes and passes away, but the Being of the creature is un-created and immutable. Un-created Being bestows existence on the creature, and pervades each fleeting moment of time as an eternal Presence. How can the Un-created bestow existence on the creature? Through the breath of love. In the Indian tradition this breath is Shakti , the energy flowing into Prakriti , the material creation, from the Purusha , the unmanifest Shiva-consciousness. In the Western tradition this breath is the Holy Sp...

With every tear, your core becomes stronger. In the midst of grief, feel the silence within you solidify. You are a survivor. You are the inalienable light of the Self. Now breathe your power into the heart of a friend. It's compassion-time. No need to blame others. Just serve others, until you see that there is no other.

Witness the whirlwind. The whirlwind of thought, emotion, and action. Can you find a "do-er" doing it all? Is there an "I" at the center of the storm? Or is the eye of the storm a wondrous silence, the silence of the witness? We forfeit this birthright of divine silence because we insist on forming concepts and holding points of view. As soon as we have a point of view, we lose the energy of the infinite, shackling our infinite space in a self-created enclosure. What happens when we cease enclosing space? There is no center. And with no center, there is no left or right. In order to form a concept that we feel right about, as opposed to wrong, we must first create and hold an enclosed space in the boundless space of our own consciousness. We must form a point of view in pointless awareness. Only then do left and right, right and wrong, have any meaning. Take away the point and the boundaries that enclose it, and infinite space has no center to be on the l...

Lady Moon, perhaps you are the great Sun's mirror. But there is a more ancient story that says, you are a portal to Divine Darkness. I travel to you on my breath, leaving this world of words behind. Lady Moon, the sound of So'ham is only the name of the gate keeper. I let all wombs reverberate with your silence.

The golden fullness of this Moon does not limit or condition the dark mystery of Night any more than the radiance of a photon gives boundaries to the womb-void that bears it. Devotion to the Master does not limit or divide the unity of the Divine any more than an open door encloses the space of the mansion one enters through it. Nor does the personal form of the Lord limit or bind the bliss of the Formless any more than a drop of sweetness contracts the ocean into which it falls. Let this drop become the sea. Let the sea become this drop. Don't be afraid to bow and enter the little door of this enormous tent! Let the nectar of your Master's presence be the flavor of the Infinite in the cup of your broken heart. Photo: My teacher gazing at the full moon

The energy you shine affects the world far more than the ideas you believe. People who need healing are not drawn to your ideas, but to your radiance. Don't worry so much about whether your beliefs are liberal or conservative, holy or pagan, politically correct or incorrect. Just keep raising the vibration of your light. This is what spreads love.

Between the rising and the falling of your chest is the portal to a marvelous world composed of nothing but fragrance and the music of dying. The furrow between your nipples was harrowed by this breath; the blossom of earth and heaven's marriage kiss grows there. Why do you think Gods and Goddesses descend in pairs? To heat themselves in little quarrels and tiffs, spinning their downy essence toward two-ness, then embracing to dissolve. The air around your face is a quantum field of whispers that suddenly crystallizes; you quit you work and look up, wondering why your mind stopped. These visitations come so that your soul and body might remember their long betrothal, and their lifetimes of courtship. Now you can boldly advance in the art of love toward that ecstatic union where pollen rains from the midnight sky, inebriating your tomb with star-melt. Deeper than sadness, deeper than sin, the state that you have fallen in... It is not you who awak...

We see the world in a state of crisis when our mind is in a state of crisis. But we see the infinite possibility for miracles when we breathe the breath of Beauty. Through a few minutes' deep meditation in the morning and evening, as we let the mind repose in the coral heart of silence, Beauty blossoms through our perceptions, as surely as the flower is born of the seed. Our first response-ability to mother earth is to purify our awareness of her.

Time, with its inherent anxiety, disappears when we stop resisting anything that happens. How could we possibly resist the continuum, the stream of dissolving forms, when we are part of it, and it is our own consciousness? The flow of happening need not be divided into separate "events." But our mental resistance granulates this gentle stream into "time." The continuum is one, not many. The liquid now is eternity, which is not a pond but a river. The frictionless pour of the unending moment is true wine; to drink from it is communion. Communion requires no "holy" place, no special sacrament, no spirit apart from the body. Communion is our assent to the ceaseless flowering of the ordinary. But if the mind insists that circumstances should be otherwise, and things are better elsewhere, then the ecstatic stream of suchness is dammed by an "I," and there is suffering. Nothing to seek, nowhere to hurry, just be dynamically pre...

In the heart of every liberal is a conservative. In the heart of every conservative is a liberal. Don't fear your opposite. The moth has two wings bound together by some primordial intelligent yearning for nectar. Drink from your heart.

'Discipline' comes from the same root as the word 'disciple.' In the Medieval Church, the word was associated with punishment, self-flagellation. But originally it meant profound learning, grasping the truth, and receiving pure knowledge. The deepest discipline happens without effort or control, through surrender to the Beloved. That is the discipline of pure freedom.