Uradiance

Someone said, "You need no other." But I do. I cannot light the wick within me. I am lit. From the instant I was planted in flesh I needed someone’s milk and tears. Even the absence that encircles the moon and stars is curved by a Mother's inscrutable care. Aloneness created us to love. Before first light, a thrush waits blindly to feel that same pull: the jasmine breath of our listening. Here's the mystery: we do not thirst for the One, but the Near.

"Layam vraja... Dissolve now!" ~Ashtavakra Love is just an excuse to be ourselves. When I am nothing but me, and you are nothing but you, we are crazy about each other. it can't be helped. Then, remaining just as they are, the stars form necklaces, a crown and sparkling slippers with which I adorn the perfectly dark and naked body of your night. A flower can feel it, blossoming in silence. A cloud knows it, moving in the blues of stillness. A breath needs no path, but softly follows itself back to the Giver. Then why should I linger in prayers and questions? Why not dissolve now into what I Am?

One clear light pervades each color of the rainbow. Pure sap suffuses the blossom and thorn. So God is intimately present in our sins. Grace flows through every failure and wound. Receive the gift of imperfection. It is an opportunity to breathe through boundaries, so that you too may become a Creator.

From the base of your spine to the crown of your head, She leads you up the path of diamonds crushed fine as mist, as midnight breeze. Each step is love, which means you drop a veil. Now She is nearer than your name. Her fingertips are the silences between heartbeats. Can you feel her not touching your lungs, as if, what has held your breath for aeons, releases its grasp forever? Why have you refused, until this moment, to take the wedding walk from belly to brow under a canopy so black it is the color of stillness? Because the most terrible journey is from self to Self? Because you thought you would find the Beloved in an ashram, a temple, a cathedral, a mosque, a book? The Beloved does not wear sandals or a white robe. The Beloved wears the soft cloth of your inhalation. The Beloved is a vine of roses on the trellis of your vegus nerve, more inward than your lost rib. When you were swimming like a minnow in the womb of night, the Beloved sang to you from...

This is the night you transcend the mess by remaining inside it with an open heart. Be like the red wolf moon howling in the glory of darkness. I took this picture of the Jan 20 Wolf Moon just before the eclipse

The Way to make peace is to shift your attention from thinking to Being.

The empty blue sky of pure awareness, free from thought, fulfills desires before they arise.

Play and dance, or fight if you like, wearing the mask of race and gender, party and religion, tribe and nation; but don't forget who is behind the mask - bliss without form. Awareness is like water in a moonlit net. The mind gets entangled, but not the Self. One who knows how to sing is both He and She, Dark and Bright, Silence on Fire. Night gives birth to billions of suns yet remains all-mothering emptiness. Do you really want to dance? Then don't mistake names and forms for the whirling stillness inside you.

I gave up world sorrow for the hidden pain of love. Now I hear petals weeping, seeds grieving their lost flowers. I see mountains gliding home on clouds. I follow the pilgrimage of a snail across the hosta leaf. I gave up charity and pity to gaze into your face, where I find everyone. With a single inhalation I bind and heal the wounds of rich and poor. My temple is the sky, my altar the garden. We hold satsang in the wetlands, the frogs, blackbirds, and I. The revolution is to breathe. The radical act is being present. Taste the wine between your thoughts. When in doubt, take off your shoes. Walk barefoot in wet grass at midnight, un-naming the stars. It’s not the earth that makes you suffer, friend, but your judgments about it. And surely, the last judgment is the silence of a white chrysanthemum bursting under the Autumn moon. This is the Gospel of Astonishment. This poem was published on Jan. 16 in 'Braided Way: Faces and Voices of Spiritual P...

How could God let there be light without your eyes? To spread a mantle of Glory over all that you see is your vocation. Now get bus y burning yourself to ashes. Didn't you know? Each photon of your body is the whole sun. On a dendrite's tip one proton of dark matter condenses the death of a thousand galaxies into your wonder. It is not enough to illuminate the mind with knowledge. Your body must dance, a wickless flame, jump off cliffs into the void, drown with frogs in an emerald forest pool, tangled in the fetid delight of mud-sprung water lilies. You need to starve for forty nights, then get drunk on a buttercup. Life is too furious for the merely enlightened. A wild one needs nakedness and victory, a storm to ride back into her heart-beaten stillness.

Listen Life Coach, listen Spiritual Teacher, and all you Ascended Masters up there: I want you to know I'm not as perfect as I was yesterday, and I love it. I want you to know I have a right to feel more like an animal than a god, a right to get my darshan from an owl. I have a right to feel endangered, hurt, sad and put my own arms around it, not yours. I have a right not to name the big empty circle of my hug "enlightenment." And where are all the DE-scended masters? They're the ones I need to talk to. Because I have a right to sweep up my pain and darkness in one mighty inhalation, then shout, "Fuck it Ho!" I don't need your guided meditation to tell me what it feels like to be a gnat sizzling in a flame. I don't need your $5000 week end yoga retreat in Bali to tell me to let my belly out. I got a right to shape-shift into lust and crazy, ferment my sweetness, hunt stars at midnight plucking t...

Underestimating your glory is the only sin. Give birth to the Christ in your own body. Drink up the rest of this day. Bask in yourself and squander the kingdom! A fountain of something like starlight will rise up your spine, spilling over, showering the world with burning seeds of wonder, gold as the stuff in Mary's womb.

I cried, "Give me a spiritual practice! Something I can DO to attain enlightenment!" The Friend answered, "You are already doing it." "I don't understand." "You're not supposed to understand," answered the Friend. "The mind has no part in this." "Then what practice am I doing?" "You are born in an earthly body. You wake up. That is the practice." "What is the meaning of this birth?" "Hang on a cross, crucified by a paradox, with no escape." "Why this crucifixion?" "To come to the wedding of opposites, which happens on no other world, and in no heaven. This is why gods incarnate on earth: to taste freedom." "Where is the nail on the cross?" "At the center, the vanishing point between the past and future, spirit and flesh, joy and sorrow, stillness and action: drive this nail through your heart." "If I need to cry ...

Won't you worship with me this Sabbath morning? Honoring your body, you honor the entire earth, the sun and moon. Honoring your breath, you honor the Divine Spirit flowing through all creatures. Honoring the space within your Heart, you honor the stars, the galaxies, and the vastness beyond them. Honoring the present moment, you dance in eternity.

"Ano-raniyan, Mahato-mahiyan One atom of the smallest, greater than the greatest" ~Upanishads Say yes because the small is more powerful than the great. The gentle overcomes the strong. A spinning quark contains the galaxy, a formless fragrance the death of a thousand flowers. Twelve soft voices singing in firelight shake the planet more than an army. The clan is wiser than the nation, and your mother’s nipple gathers all the ancestors in a taste of cream. See how a rainbow engulfs the sky, flashing from a droplet? Every language speaks from the silent bindhu, every book from the tittle of the ayin soph. One breath taken, given back, recapitulates the fall and ascent of your species. This soft inhalation is fraught with the weightless burden of ten billion suns. Oh the small, the local, is more lovely than any idea! The boundless joy of the coming day in a sparrow's chirp, the beat of moth wings in a moonbeam opening imperishable worl...

One breath is a deeper revelation than the Bible, the Qur'an, and all the Vedas. Savor every inch of this inhalation, from the bottom of your belly to the space above your crown, and you will possess incalculable abundance. Your breath is the river of wonder that leads to the ocean of God. In truth, every inspired scripture came from the silence where your inhalation arises. Can you be so present that the supreme adventure is your next breath? To delight in this breath is the end of war. To be grateful for the wealth of this breath is the end of craving and blind consumerism. When you are truly awake, just to breathe is the purest form of worship. Every conscious breath brings peace on earth. A breath is given, not taken. Rest in this revelation and be grateful. Just noticing this turns breathing into Grace. Let this breath free you from images and thoughts in the mind, which are of the past and future. Only people who are present can be response-able. In Pr...

A butterfly has two wings, a Left wing and a Right wing. They do not fear each other. They lift each other. Our names are written on both in hieroglyphs of fire and blackness. This how opposites dance into the sky.

One law: Love yourself. This covers everything, even the darkness, with a breath of fire. Photo by Aile Shebar

Polish the hollow of your spine with the soft cloth of breathing. Cleanse the bowl in your chest where drop by drop the nectar ferments. What is this wine, secret and dark, distilled from silence, containing the sun, the moon and stars? Break open your heart and see.

Why do you listen to so much news? It isn’t new. Wisdom comes from a pulsing well of silence. Remember where your root goes in Winter to get sap. A great Simplicity warms the earth from inside. What’s really new flowers here. Listen in the dark to the throb of your body and the breaking of your heart. This is the sound of the seed.

Ouroboros virgin whore maiden-crone enchantress slips amorously out of her own skin, bears her own infant body, suckles her death. Raven's wing demurs to grasp the night, slices through emptiness without a sound. Mist won't cling to the volcano, yet somehow floats it away like a pale blossom. What shines beyond the play of joy and sorrow, darkness and fire; what pervades the dream, the waking, and the deepest sleep; what is like the space between moonlit threads of the spider's web, is the Mother whose womb has no opposite. All paths become circles in the Unborn. Rest here beyond the search amidst the swirl of brawling zyzygies entangled in her ripe placenta. She is the chaos of love and the fullness of perfect loss. Use her to breathe. 'Ouroborus,' Metal repoussé by dear friend and artist, Liz Miller

  Hard to believe. Today is the 50th Anniversary of the most important event in my life. If I were to pass away tomorrow, I would kick myself for never sharing these thoughts. So here is my testament. Fifty years ago this day, I was initiated into Transcendental Meditation. My heart is filled with love today. I bow down, touch the earth with my forehead, and shatter my mind into stars. This is not a bow of servitude, but freedom. What is freedom? Freedom is infinite gratitude. It is quite easy to rant about fake gurus and false teachers; it is far more difficult to find a true one. And what is the sign of the true one? S/he is the one who awakens the Guru Tattva, the Teacher within you. Guru Tattva is a seed that has slumbered deep in your heart for a thousand lifetimes. A dark well of melted lightning waits to dance through your spine, flooding every cell of your flesh. Yet this seed must be ignited, this wellspring aroused, by the Beloved. Awakening the Guru Tat...