She

You don't have to journey to Katmandu. The fern marsh just beyond the backyard fence is deep and wild and quiet enough. No need to climb Machu Picchu. There's a mountain in your chest.

Unplug the electronic pounding. Listen to the hip hop of chickadees, acoustic bees in the lilac bush. Your first response ability is to power off, shut down, open your window and breathe.

Now listen to the real news, the throb of divine Silence gushing from the wellspring just beneath your breastbone.

Your cardiac plexus contains richer information than any media; yet it vibrates in stillness, flowing from the a priori, not through words, images or ideas, but through the amber hollow of a synapse in the blazing Life Tree of your nervous system.

To become silent is the greatest adventure. How do you do it? "Do" just slightly less than nothing.

Don't climb the mountain of mind. Follow the ancient river of surrender, the current of Prana-Shakti, down into the valley that lies between your exhalation and inhalation.

This journey takes no time. It is a journey into presence, the quest-less discovery of who you really Are, before you have a single thought, even a thought of "I." To get there, you must green and be-wild-er your heart.

But perhaps it is imprecise to call this vale of the a priori a depth: it is more intimate, more near than deep. It is not a hiding place, but the plain ever-revealed surface of awareness, the lens of infinite transparency through which you witness your thoughts and perceive the world.

You already are the source. You already are what Jesus called, "the inner spring, bubbling up unto eternal life." Don't just listen: be the effervescent silence of the listener. 

Anahat, the unstruck sound of creation, echoes through your vegus nerve. Stars and planets originate in you, sparkling out of what makes you awake.

Polished by the breath of meditation, shining like a diamond with the clear light of recognition, requiring no thought or object to taste the ever-expanding bliss of the Self, your own awareness is the supreme authority. Bow down to That. Take refuge in That. Sing about That. Tat tvam asi.

You are the seat of learning, and your teacher is Wisdom herself. Know her by the musk of the dew of light born from the dark womb of your own presence. She is before the Word. She is the nectar of devotion distilled into honey sweeter than the world.

But devotion of whom? To what? Devotion of your mind to your heart, the pouring of the ghee of breath into the homa fire.

Now you can hear Saraswati's secret, Lady Hokhmah's hidden sutra, the bejeweled silence of Mother Sophia whispering, "I who enfold you am within you."



Photo: a place I go instead of the mountaintop.