Uradiance

"Spiritual bypass" is a trendy new term used to describe self-delusion and avoidance of the shadow. But it is often used by people who have never tasted the boundlessness and bliss of transcendental consciousness. To transcend is not to bypass. Transcendence is not avoidance, because transcendental absolute unchanging divine consciousness pervades every particle of this body, and every moment of pain and grief. The clear desert air does not avoid or repress the mirage: the mirage just happens as a tremor in the clarity. Of course, if you want to spend a lifetime affirming the "spirituality" of your anger, your grief, you unhappy moods, your mirage, then go for it. When you have exhausted the fantasy that "spirituality" is just the ordinary pain of human life, then come to Transcendental Meditation and taste the peace that passes all understanding. On this pathless path, nothing needs to be controlled, repressed, or surpassed. The transcendent embra...

When we feel overwhelmed by so many conflicts in the world, we imagine that we cannot be happy until we solve them. But it is not our duty to solve the world's conflicts. Our duty is to solve just one conflict, the one that underlies them all: the conflict between who I think I am, and who I really am. Can I experience Am without putting any thought, any noun after the verb? Can I feel that joy bubbling up from the unfathomable well of pure Being in my core? It is a gushing spring of silence. When I taste it, then in a very spontaneous way I can pour healing waters over the earth. Share that joy with others, in whatever unique way is most effortless and natural. This is the only solution to the world's conflicts. They cannot be solved until I am happy.

Devotion has many flavors: sweet, bitter, spicy, or tasteless and clear as sky. Sometimes it's the bouquet of divine love with passionate hints of the soul's pain; sometimes the dissolving of the two in one trembling scentless silence. We lose so much when our palate insists on one flavor only. Photo: passiflora incarnata, or passion flower

If you witness thoughts arising, just where they arise, before the power of maya converts them into words and pictures, you can see that thoughts are simply ripples of stillness, boundless vibrations of pure awareness at play. And in its ground-state, pure awareness is utterly silent. This means that there is no conflict between thoughts and silence. Thoughts are made of silence. We have been told that, when we meditate, we must concentrate on a single thought, or repeat a single word, in order to silence the mind. Disciplinarians, posing as spiritual guides, have indoctrinated us to believe that the mind must not be allowed to wander. But whether they teach in the name of Buddha, Yoga, Christian prayer, or New Thought, their doctrine of concentration and mind-control only suppresses the lively nature of our awareness, and makes us dull. When you see that thought is silence at play, why is there any need to control or concentrate? The mind automatically gets centere...

We live in the perpetual irony that, what we most need to remember, can never be recalled because it is only alive in this moment. So we use all manner of ritual and symbol, by hand and thought, to remind ourselves of what it is like: the bread and wine of Jesus's last supper; the fruit and flowers of puja ; the alms we give to the poor and the service projects, which we often do, if we admit it, only to cleanse our guilty conscious, or acquire sufficient merit to bring our hearts a m oment of peace. Then we practice all sorts of meditation techniques, trying to still the mind, that we might behold the elusive transparency that is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. And what are we trying to find? The very light through which it must be seen. Yet we cannot, no, can never retain or remember, by any vision or merit, that which we are seeking, because it is This .... This is the Fire that burns to ashes the age-old story of our search. We already stand in the...

I was eleven. My father and Dr. Jackson took their sons pheasant hunting. Dad and Dr. Jackson were about forty yards away in the Autumn stubble of a corn field. A pheasant took flight. They aimed and fired and missed. The pheasant flew toward me. I led it a few feet ahead in my sight and pulled the trigger. The pheasant went limp in the air. I felt an ancient exultation. But in the two seconds it took the shot pheasant to plummet earthward, then thud against the ground, dead, I experienced an inner transformation of 10,000 years. That feathered thing of air fell down, but I was falling too, from power to grief to shame... Yes, I was only eleven. But I pledged to my secret heart that I would never use a gun again. I have not told this story until now. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Thank you. Painting: Dead Pheasant, J.M.W. Turner

  Why is it that so many of us always need to be right, always need to win? If we want to ripen and deepen our fragrance, we need to lose and be wrong sometimes. Yoga - which really means ripeness, wholeness - doesn't mean constant victory. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna defines Yoga as "equanimity in loss or gain." Loss is a great teacher. Only one who knows how to embrace loss learns how to be a mighty and humble warrior, how to fall down on the field in defeat, then arise to win. Thi s is the sport of wisdom. I have always learned more from my losses than my victories. Victory could create ego, but loss created a depth, a silence inside. November evening. The moon is full, hanging from a leafless branch. Forms hollow out in the frost, holding space for the formless. They glow with the brilliant colors of their dying.

 You can be an activist by planting Winter squash, walking in a fern forest, listening to your children, or smiling from your heart at someone who is lonely. True activism means gently immersing your whole astonished body in the river of Presence, moved by the breath of beauty like a golden leaf, falling right where you are. True activism means drowning in the mystery of communion with the creature right before you: a disheveled crow, a boy in the rain with his shining basketball, the moon gazing through a spider's web, a crone at the grocery store, marveling at all the soup. These are your tribe. They have no political party. This is your native country. It is all sacred land. Earth is not transfigured by how much you do, but how wantonly and nakedly you plunge into the ocean of this perishing moment.