Uradiance

"Spiritual by-pass" is trending in new age conversation. But dealing with our pain and trauma, as spiritual practice, is not just the flavor of the month. Embracing suffering has been a venerable tradition in Yoga practice, Buddhist Tonglen, and Tantra for centuries, and was quite the cult in Medieval Christianity. This identification with pain can be as much a spiritual trap as pouring a layer of honey all over ourselves and calling it “ananda.” One trap is often a reaction to another. Today it’s sometimes hip to define spirituality, not as "holier than thou," but "more traumatized than thou." On the one hand, we bury our fear, our anger, our lust, our envy, our chaos, under a sweet self-induced hypnotic coma. This trap is easy to fall into when we employ a master hypnotist, the "spiritual teacher," who sits cross legged on a stage and charms us with his, or her, mellifluous voice. On the other hand is the trap of egotis...

Layers. Layers of weather. Layers of perception. Layers of consciousness. Troubled gray clouds of mind overhead, dark green body of earth below, between them a brief opening... Here in the Northwest Winter, a sudden clearing between storms, a gash of blue sky. Ah, it is just as when pure awareness opens between thoughts, the sudden grace of unboundedness, where the mountain of divine Light floats like a feather. But we are so immersed in the density of our particular la yer of consciousness, we think it is solid, we think it is the whole world; only to discover that it's just another husk to peel away. And even when we imagine we've gotten "woke," or arrived at a "higher state," this too is just another husk to peel away. Yet there are moments when we penetrate all husks, all layers of maya, piercing to the heart's core, which is, in fact, No-Thing at all. Here at the center, we know the Self. But to "know the Self" i...

A cellphone metaphor: if we have a weak connection to the signal from the tower, all our phone conversations are unclear, broken up by static. Just so, when the mind has a weak connection to its Source, all our relationships are troubled. But our Source is not above, in a tower or satellite. Our Source is within: the silent radiance of pure awareness, the Self who is deeper than thought, transcending the mind. This is why we set aside some time each day for meditation: not just for our own sake, but to nourish all our relationships. For the sake of the other we tap into the Self, the bubbling golden emptiness of Sat-Chit-Ananda. With a few minutes of morning and evening meditation, we recharge every atom of our body, and re-establish a strong connection with our true nature.

This breath is the Goddess. Don't waste a single exhalation complaining about the world. Just choose beauty and sing. The gift will not appear until you are grateful. Under the snow, seeds listen. The softer your voice of praise the more they reach upward, empty cups of thirst and yearning. Here is the secret: Creation happens in quietness. You are the cause of Spring.

From the top of my head to the pit of my belly, dangles a rosary of 10 thousand jewels. Each precious stone is a cluster of distant galaxies in the hologram of my body. For distance, though invisible, is the last veil of illusion, leshavidya. This breath is the hand that tells these beads without a word, only a whisper of fragrant light, in a realm of subtly beyond thought, where all the senses are one delectable nectar. Sap in an undulant green stem, my inhalation flows upward, offering its sigh to the sun that is, after all, just a golden droplet distilled on the breeze of the breath itself. And from this spacious intimacy, where there is no other, the gentle rain of my exhalation showers down, nourishing the loam of bones and flesh. Beneath my feet, the groundless dark Mother, whose womb is alive with the larvae of the dead. Above, the interstellar emptiness, virgin bell of the void, unstruck yet ringing, ever so faintly, with the murmur of all forms, davening ou...

"The world is burning. The species are being wiped out. The reefs are dying, and I cannot hold it all. I need some soothing nectar for my grief!" Dear one, I mean this from the groundless bottom of my heart: the grief IS the nectar. You must drink it all, drown in it, feel it not through the insulating concepts of the mind - which only create stories about the past and future - but feel it in every cell of your body as the force of Presence. Merge with the grief and it will ferment into something that cannot be described, only tasted as life-giving strength, pouring out of an infinite well of Unknowing. That is the true meaning of Faith. You are not alone.

'In the beginning, when Elohim was creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness was over the face of the Deep ('Te'hom), and the Breath of God ('Ruach') was stirring over the waters.' ~Genesis 1 Breath is a river returning to the Deep where every creature is conceived as a wave of silence. If you drown in this water there is no more thirst, no more searching for a spring. What pours always pours from fullness into emptiness. Now clash and break like a song-stone in the foam on the edges of a blessed turbulence, then grow still with wonder. The appearance is mirror-like, yet beneath the glass is an imageless ebb and flow, the undertow of love, pulling your heart ever downward into that burgundy sea of aloneness all lips yearn for speechlessly. Come, night.

The energy of Ananda permeates all boundaries, all forms, all circumstances in the world, yet the world does not in any way cause or affect the awakening of this boundless, ever-expanding bliss-consciousness. Awakening happens deep in the Hridaya, the transcendental heart, which was pulsing and surging with oceanic vibrations of Ananda before the world was ever created. This is why Christ said, "My kingdom is not of this world." This awakened heart becomes an invisible fountain of radiance, bathing and healing all humanity, imparting an invincible inner splendor to all souls, regardless of their external conditions. This why Christ went on to say, "I have overcome the world." Christ-Consciousness outshines creation. Mandala by St. Hildegard of Bingen

"Meditate in eternity. Don't stay in the mind." Lalleshvari The Mantra given by the Guru is not a word or a thought. It is a stream of Grace made practical in the form of a sound. The sound is heard, not by the physical ear, but by the receptacle of yearning in the core of the heart. In deep meditation, it is not one's responsibility to do, but not to do. Doing is the responsibility of the Guru's breath. All You "do" is simply give up clinging to thoughts. No need to suppress them or control the mind: just give up grasping. The stream will carry you to the ocean, an ocean not above you, but within you, the ocean of your very Self. Who can fathom the mystery of the Guru's grace? The one who, for a little while, does nothing, knows nothing, is nothing. Every-thing blossoms from this no-thing. Who can fathom the mystery of the Guru's grace? The one who, for a little while, becomes like a child at the breast of the Mother. And who is the Mot...

In the words of the Mahayana Uttaratantra Shasta: "I bow down to the Buddha who is un-created, spontaneously present, and not to be realized through any external cause." In other words, I honor the Buddha who is my own pure awareness, prior to thinking a single idea, even the thought of "I." This is not an "Eastern" way to bow down. It is very much the Biblical way of worship, the meaning of the Sabbath. In Hebrew, "Shabbat" literally means, "Stop!" Stop the mind's incessant doing and thinking for one hour. This is bowing down. This is worship. Too grueling? Then stop for one minute, or even for the duration of one breath. This is certainly enough to accomplish the whole creation. Then you will see the earth as a dancing sunbeam in the mist. Why grope for what you already are? Why get rid of what you never carried? Such effort is better spent gazing at clouds that carry their weightless cargo of mountains. Nothing...

Awoke this morning with the clearest conviction that each moment on earth is a miracle, each atom of the world is a temple of beauty constructed by the tireless skill of countless angels, and each sensation of this human flesh, tongue, ear, and eye, is a sacramental wedding kiss of Lover and Beloved. Merely by breathing we are heirs to inconceivable abundance, and if we lack anything at all, it is just a little awareness. Lord Shiva is pure consciousness, the eternal subject. His Beloved is the Goddess Shakti, the objective world, dancing in myriad forms of energy. They dance and embrace as spirit and matter, "chit" and "sat," meeting in the bliss of "ananda."  It is only the veil of our opinions, this restless mind full of names and labels, shrouding the world in a gray cloud of thought, that prevents us from seeing earth as it truly is: the foreplay of the Divine.

A feathered intuition, the mottled thrush returns to the Winter forest where the only leaves are frost etchings. The sensuous cat strokes my hand at 3 a.m. with her whole body. Has she come to me for love, or food? And how will night come? Solitary, homeless, with her bundle of suns. There is some black and silent generosity, the motherhood of sod around a spring, the groundless wound I grow out of. My spine the imperishable tree of death dancing beyond the wind, I shake stars down and all fruit free. An axis I am through the desert stone, Uluru, to the moon's pearl island, to Saturn, Pluto, out through a laceration in Andromeda's heart to the intimate Unknown, that purple bruise in eternity. What comprehends me, I cannot comprehend, and this is my comfort. I only know, there is a whirling, therefore I am free. I am uncertain, therefore all things are possible.

I served the pomegranate queen and tried to be her stem, careful in my green trajectory. But she taught me to burst, radiant to the unborn stars, radiant to blackest loam, radiant through every shattered window of my body until all that remained of 'me' was the fragrance of no-birth suffusing the whole garden like a vanished rose. Those who need a path call this perfume 'Catastrophe.' But those who fall in love with falling itself perish into the motherhood of seeds. Now Be as though you are not. Let Not-Being pervade every pebble with emptiness, the space between stars, the hollow in each atom of the mountain, making the mountain float on a cloud. Absence is holy, expanding Presence everywhere. Note: I did not say, 'your.' Comprehending this, the wise become fools and attain peace because there is no attainment. Friend, when you cease striving even to Be, you will surely welcome your next brea...

A small closed darkness brittle as the cinders of a used story, enveloped by a velvet darkness the size of night. Which emptiness are you, Raven? How could there be two, Raven? Now circle yourself, restless as a star, your wings the beaten shadows of silence, and out beyond what names and knows, become what you are, the healing darkness of God. Ravenart by my dear friend, Elizabeth Miller

We Western intellectuals who have studied a little Indian philosophy often try to attain Advaita, 'non-duality,' by superimposing a concept of 'oneness' over our subject-object experience of the world. But this only makes the mind dull, tentative, and artificial. Advaita is not attained by thinking about it, but by allowing our awareness to tap its source in pure consciousness, the field of Sat-Chit-Ananda, which is the substratum of both subject and object. Then there is a spo ntaneous up-welling of Grace in the Self-luminosity of a thankful heart, stimulating the effusion of soma-nectar in every nerve cell, divine light in every photon of our flesh. Love innocently leads to surrender, and surrender is true Advaita - the culmination of Bhakti, not the rejection of Bhakti. 'Non-duality' never negates relationship, but fulfills relationship. When honey overflows the comb, the comb is not obliterated. Every cell gushes its golden essence,...