Is there a black hole at the center of the galaxy? Who knows? The dark energy of un-knowing is part of the hole. Creativity arises from this wound at the core, maelstrom of inward collapse, self-annihilation in unfathomable vulnerability. It is precisely here where the light comes from, but we don't even know where "here" is, because it is center-less.
The Bible speaks of the mystery as "kinosis," self-emptying. Buddhism calls it "anatta," no self. Most people want to take refuge FROM this black hole. The mystic takes refuge IN it. Of course, as soon as one says, "I" am a mystic, "I" am an artist, this "I" becomes a wall, a glittering mirror, that cuts off all access to creation's source.~ Photo by NASA, Andromeda galaxy floating in the blue light of pure consciousness.
Black Whole
Indisputable
Only humans argue with what Is.
Where is the argument between wind and thistle, wave and stone, the tooth of the lion and the throat of the crippled gazelle?
This indisputable world flows seamlessly on, through an eternal continuum of Presence. Our marvelous bodies respond in the moment, with just slightly more neurological complexity than sea urchins. This instantaneous organic physiological response is our entire destiny.
Creation happens without a future, beyond dispute. Our thoughts and labels for the circumstance are irrelevant. Our gift is not to think, not to argue, surely not to worry out a solution, but to be Awake. Nakedly aware in the vast terrifying beauty of the Happening, just as it arises and dissolves.
A fearless spiritual warrior leaps into the Transcendental Mandala of the Supremely Ordinary Empty Now, which is the face of God. As the Bible tells us, no one who looks into this face can survive (Exodus 33:20).
Which means, annihilation of the chattering 'me,' with all its opinions and objections. In God's boundless and eternal gaze, there is only room for wonder. No more arguing with what Is.
Witness
"I sleep, but my heart wakes."
~Song of Solomon 5:21The boundless eternal blue sky of the Witness reposes in the core of your heart, ever awake as radiance and peace, even while the body sleeps, and dreams, awakens, and dreams again. Rest as the Witness. Sleep well.
Privilege
White privilege, brown privilege.
The privilege of a human birth.
The privilege of seeing, tasting the rainbow.
The privilege of having an earthly body.
The privilege to breathe in.
The privelege to breathe out.
The privilege of dissolving
into the formless infinite heart
of emptiness.
The privilege of taking form, in order to dance.
All sentient creatures, blessed with privilege
because they are merely alive.
The privilege of a caterpillar whirling
all Winter in the chrysalis.
The privilege of an eagle soaring over mountains.
The privilege of a worm in the apple core.
The privilege of the last rose, frost scented.
The privilege of a maggot devouring death.
The privilege of pausing
to hold up your grandmother's cup
in a sparkle of soapsuds.
The privilege of clinging
to your grandfather's hoe each Spring.
The privilege to be a creator
with wet clay-covered hands.
The privilege to shape your story.
The privilege to remember
and the privilege to forget.
The privilege to blame
and the privilege to forgive.
The privilege that loss brings, awakening the heart.
The privilege of taking one more barefoot step
on this sacred planet.
The privilege of hearing a raindrop at midnight.
The privilege of praying the dark.
The privilege of giving back your breath
to trillions of invisible stars
whose light is tomorrow.
Uncredited image from Pinterest, photographer unknown.
Green
The Green is always local. It is never in general. Never in the State, the system, the all-regulating bureaucracy. Every true action is small, and it is here, right Here, a barefoot step on dewy grass. To be awake is to carry a little lamp in the night forest, illuminating no more than the next footfall. There is no destination. There is no solution. There are only steps. Solvator ambulando: 'It is solved by walking.' Not marching - walking. I don't protest what is, any more than I resist this breath. I protest the concept, the generalization, the program your mind imposes on me. I celebrate the incomprehensible dance of our molecules when we gaze into each other without ideas. Now let us take a walk, plant a tree.
Climate Action
If you want to save
the environment,
stop emitting hot air.
Plant a tree instead,
the heirloom ever green
you are.
Water an acorn
in your amygdala,
sprouting your heart,
spreading your brain
as a mighty oak.
Compost your words
into a fertile whisper.
Be a stem for breathing.
Now root your spine
in the loam of silence.
Pour yourself
into the furrow.
Gorify God In Your Body (Yom Kippur Meditation)
"Glorify God in your Body." ~1 Corinthians 6:20
When you get to heaven, you will meet many sweet souls and see fine scintillating celestial forms. But you will not find the light of God. Then you will ask, "Where is the light of God?"
And the angel of the judgment will tell you, "Remember when you were on earth, and had a body? Every particle of that body was made of the light of God."
And you will marvel and ask, "What shall I do?"
And the angel will reply, "If you want to find the light of God, go back, receive a body, meditate on the glory of your flesh. Then you will taste the light you are."
Friend, we are not here in exile. We are here because this is the only place to embody and express the divine radiance completely, from breath to bone. We are not here as a punishment. We chose this realm of chaos, this conflict of opposites, so that we could embrace the all, All, ALL.
Meditation is not an out-of-body experience. It is a through-the-body experience. This body is the portal to realms of glory.
Scent the way. Smelling, tasting, hearing, touch, are sacred paths. Yet there is a more voluptuous inward seeing, smelling, touching, hearing, compared to which external sensations are but shadows. Just as the spokes of sensation lead outward into the wheel of karma, so the senses lead inward to the hub of enlightenment. Whirl on that Dervish-dot between breaths. T'shuva, return. Feast on your own dark marrow. What is flesh but the sensuality of the soul?
Honor your body. Trust in it so deeply that your mind pervades each cell, permeates the interstellar space in an atom, piercing even to the glory of the knowledge in the black hole at the core of a quark.
Why does the Word become flesh? So that you may come Om to your body. Why does the Formless take birth in form? To carry every dust-mote back to the silence that was here before God said, "Let there be light."
Christ hangs on the cross like a grape on the vine for only one reason, to reveal the taste of the void on your tongue.
Be washed in your own precious blood, every drop a dark red jewel of God's love. When you embrace your own body without judgment, each breath is the Holy Spirit. From whence shall the Messiah come? Gaze here or there, toward the near or distant future, in vain. The next Avatar shall arise from the place in you that gazes.
From Wendell Berry
From 'How To Be A Poet' by Wendell Berry...'Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air...
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.'
Past Lives Are Bubbles: You Are The Water
Knowing our past lifetimes is of negligible value. What is of real value is knowing the eternal space between them, which is the space between breaths, the space between this moment and the next. This space is the scintillating ocean of consciousness itself. Past lives are bubbles. You are the water.
Quantum science tells us that the particle is just an instantaneous wave of the omnipresent unmanifest field. The vacuum fluctuates into this finite particle, yet the field remains boundless and silent.
So, in the field of eternal awareness, let there be this momentary particle, "me." Whether we define it as a now, a breath, or a lifetime, does duration have any meaning compared to the Ever we are?
"For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by" (Psalm 90). "Man is like a breath, his days like a fleeting shadow" (Psalm 144).
Why cling to a lifetime, any more than we cling to a breath?
Past and future lives are whispers of foam on the surface of our eternal Being. More and more, let us sink into Being. Identify with the ocean itself, not what trembles, sighing and dissolving, on the waves. Then we can play.
Painting by Josephine Wall
Speaking of Silence
'In meditation, silence is Mother.' ~Amma Karunamayi
'Silence is supreme administrative power.' ~Maharishi
'I love your silences. They are like mine.' ~Anais Ninn
Let us speak of true silence. No, it is not a negation. Not the silence of suppressed speech, which is no silence at all. Suppressed speech, or repressed thought, is a scream. And the more we repress, the louder our voiceless keening.
Let us tell of the inmost silence, omnipresent, effective, whether we speak or not. Silence infusing the best words with their Truth. Silence in a real mantra, guiding the mind to the hollow in the seed, through Winter root, Spring flower, or Autumn leaf.
'Mantra' means, in its Sanskrit origins: 'manna' meaning 'mind'; 'tra' meaning 'vehicle,' whence our suffix 'tron,' as in 'electron.' As the electron is a vehicle that carries electricity, so the mantra is a vehicle that carries the mind inward, to silence.
The silence of emptiness pervades all forms. It is the primordial silence of God, gushing tears from the spring of bliss in the womb of creation. True silence is the mother of poetry, the mother of art, the mother of music.
One Tear
One tear of compassion contains all the fire of your outrage. It is very important to find this tear, and weep.
The silence between your thoughts is pure intelligence. But as soon as this space awakens, you imagine distances where 'here' longs for 'there.' Let these distances collapse into a brilliant bindhu, the ayin soph of wonder.
If I dream otherness, I feel alone. But neither otherness nor aloneness exist in the seamless golden nectar of Am.
When confused, repose in the unbounded hollow around your confusion. You know that this hollow is here, deeper inside than your mind, because only through its clarity can you see that "I am confused."
Rest emptily, as the witness of your turmoil, without any attempt to untangle the knot. Become the immediate fruit of stillness without a seed.
Seeker, meditate on your body. One atom encircles the entire sky. The Goddess Creator dwells in you as this breath. Why does the vast wear the veil of the small? So that flesh can sparkle with knowledge.
Temple
There is a a temple inside emptiness,
a softer space within space
where darkness sheathes its secret
wealth of brilliance.
Here is where the world comes from,
and many things too beautiful for the world
until we imagine them.
For that temple is imagination.
Yes, yes, I know, there is only One,
but God loves reflections.
She becomes He, He becomes many.
Within-ness mirrors its face
in countless frowns and smiles
of utter bewilderment
all singing the name of their own
hidden splendor.
You must be very quiet to hear
the pillow talk between the chambers
of your own heart.
You and I? We first met in the Unborn.
We touched, and I think
the green earth tumbled
from our burning fingers.
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