Golden Hollow

There's a clearing in the wilderness of the body, just below the heart and above the navel. A ring of mushrooms grows here, where we gather to study the physics of miracles. And this is why we have no time for outrage.

What do you learn from the anointed animal of your own physiology? When the mind wanders during meditation, don't chase after it. Let it explore the farthest edge of interstellar amazement, and mingle in the golden atoms of a rose.

Even when you have as many thoughts as there are zeros after the one in infinity, your meditation is silent and hollow. Do you know why? Because you are not your mind.

You are the space through which it wanders. You are the motionless green journey of a seed spiraling into the death of its flower. Therefore let your mind roam through time as well as distance, without the slightest effort to grasp or lead it home.

Just as a mother's love enfolds her wrestling whelps, so you watch over the play of thoughts. As long ago as your great grandmothers sing, and as far ahead as your unborn children dream, your mind is the refulgence of this present moment.

Through the sacred art of listening, know what the owl sees at midnight, how a new snakeskin shimmers under the old one, how a moth wing feels passing through a flame.

Why is there no journey? Because the beginning and end are the same breath. No judgment arises from the golden hollow in the core of your body, because the glow of "Nothing Wrong" engenders a new earth with each exhalation. So just rest in the heart.

When you find that forest glade in your body, my smile will arise there. And when your smile arises from this place in me, each photon in my blood will remember the whole sun and whisper, "Thank you." Thus I am absolved, forgiven, and transformed by your emptiness.

But non-duality is not enough. Get rapt in the ineffably soft fabric of otherness, and caress my toes. Oneness is entanglement. This is how your power to bless keeps expanding, and the dance of the galaxy begins in every spiral of your DNA.

Let us drown in the well of each other's gaze, and find stillness in waves of chaos. Only then can we be sure that judging others is the root of dis-ease, forgiveness the nectar of healing.

If we study the marvelous science of the belly, which is deeper than any love, we will meet our teacher. And because our teacher dwells in the moment before creation, She is very near.


Painting by Sue Wookey