Uradiance

 My soul said to me: "Why do you mistake the nature of the world for your own nature? "The nature of the world is conflict. It has always been so, and always will be. It is a field of opposites in polarity. And this is the only place where you can awaken your Self to gain freedom, beyond the pairs of opposites. "Gradually, you learn to see the conflict as a dance, an inevitable play of light and shadow, until the dream itself awakens you. "Then you taste your true nature, not as philosophy but direct experience, and know that your nature is not the nature of the world. "Be still, and know that your I Am is God. You are freedom. You are joy. You are the peace that passes all understanding. "You are not here to perfect the world, or even to change it. For the nature of the world is change itself, imbalance, imperfection. "You are here for a nobler task: to wake up the Changeless in the midst of change, the Boundless in the mi...

New ideas don't come from old ideas. They spring from emptiness, flowers of silence. Therefor the wise confess, 'I have no idea,' and become Masters of Wonder.

We wonder why everyone is so stressed. But many of us would not know who we are without a conflict in our mind. This conflict is called "I." Democrat against Republican, socialist against capitalist, woman vs. man, black vs. white, vegan vs. omnivore, the enlightened vs. the ignorant - many of the most conflicted claiming to be non-dualists. Maybe the answer is never one side vs. the other. Maybe we could rest the mind in the heart. Maybe we could all go meet in Rumi's field, under the stars, beyond ideas of right and wrong. How do we get there? Listen to the silence. Trust this breath. Take off your shoes. Photo: taken on my full moon walk

The universe has an infinite sexual attraction to itself, and this magnetic crush is Shakti, creation's secret bliss, ecstatically pulsing from hollow awareness into the dance of countless relative forms, then sighing back into stillness. So Shiva dances with the Goddess in the eternal silence of the Self, yet this ever-ripening void is, paradoxically, the perpetual orgasm of the cosmos. The wedding is just getting started, I'll have another cup of emptiness!

Be grateful for the gift of Mantra. Mantra is a Sanskrit term meaning, "vehicle for the mind." The term combines "mannas" (Sanskrit for mind) and "tra," (Sanskrit root of the suffix, "tron"). As an electron is the vehicle for electricity, so the mantra is a vehicle to carry the mind inward, through subtler strata of energy, until awareness merges in its silent source, which is unbounded universal consciousness. A living mantra cannot be learned from a book or picked up in a casual conversation. Then it is just a hollow shell, an echo. The mantra must be ignited from that very inner source to which it guides the mind. It must be a "chaitanya" mantra, a living seed. This ignition happens at initiation, under the auspice of a guru. Westerners give little credence to initiation, as there is no correlate for initiation in modern culture. But once there was. References to mantra initiation abound among both Christian and...

Jesus, You taught no religion, no politics. You abolished every commandment but love, which is the ruthless law of softening the borders, melting the boundaries between the eye, the gaze and the other. When you live like this they arrest you because you are an anarchist of joy with tears of fire. They crush your heart like a dark red poppy until your fragrance fills their garden. Their own children forget them, yet remember You. Their children's children become wanderers, searching for that flower whose savor still makes them tremble. Finally You return, not as the other who is seen, but the one who dwells in the dark before knowing, where in-breath and out-breath merge. Now the crushing is complete. It was You who ground us and You who were ground - the gift of the winemaker to the grapes. Photo of blessed Assisi by Ingrid Henzler

"The path to the Self is subtle as the edge of a razor." ~Katha Upanishad Let perception take you to the edge. What happens where the blade is sharpest and thinnest? The blade becomes the very space it cuts through. Edge is emptiness, emptiness is edgy. Sharpen yourself until you become edgeless. When the mind is so concentrated it wanders throughout the cosmos, the wanderer arrives at home with every step. What is the significance of this? Focus purely on what you love, even if it is a tiny blue violet, and you fill the entire universe.

Melt into your longing. Longing is Guru. Longing is Shakti. Longing is the very breath of the Goddess. Longing is made of what it longs for. Photo by Aile Shebar

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Darkness is not the absence of light. Darkness is the womb of light.

If you pray because you believe it will change the earth, don't waste this precious breath. If you pray because your mind is at war with the way things are, then solve your mind, not the world. But if you pray because a bruised defiant bud breaks open inside you, these razor-sweet petals, this mad fragrance unquenchable, then pray for me, friend. I exist because you are here. In all this green lovely wounded world, you have entered my aloneness. I need you from afar. Photo: Ricardo Dacunha

4:30 a.m. Why am I awake? My thoughts are smoke. The flame is awareness. The wick is my spine. Let me burn blue, steady and pure, pouring warmth into the dark. Let me love for no reason.

I have never found true peace in a memory, a desire, or a thought. That is why no ideology will ever bring peace. I have only found peace in the space between thoughts. At first, this space is not even found, because the mind is so cluttered. But with meditation, this space is not only found, it is found to be eternal, unbounded, all-nourishing silence. And though this field of silence is groundless, the entire creation arises from it. Om Shantih Shantih Shantih.

Why exhale the toxins of moral outrage and burning judgment? Friends and trees don't need to breathe in more of that! Just take one silent moment to open the softer petals in your chest. Release the fragrance of the inward light this earth is thirsting for. Exquisite photo by friend Kristy Thompson

One Guru Purnima, 1991, we were in Nova Scotia. The last night of the course, before he left for India, he danced in the mist by the edge of a meadow under the full moon, while we chanted and played drums. It was definitely where we had been thousands of years ago, in the garden of Vrindivan. His form kept dissolving into white mist, then reappearing. He was dancing on the edge of formlessness, and he was teaching us that it doesn't matter whether his form is with us or not. The Guru-tattva is always with you, dancing at the core of your heart.

A silent stream of breathing sweeps away the chatter of the argument. Snow melt cleansing joy spills down to the valley of Presence. We first met in the place where this melting and spilling began. Now we have bodies, nourished by the grace of dust and tears in the wild tangled greening of the broken heart. We meet here now. Photo: I took this of Mt. Rainier from Gobler's Nob