Uradiance

I turned off the news last night. It wasn't new. I'm sorry that I cannot join your party on the right or the left. I’m sorry if this face is not red with righteous anger. My beaten blood fills both chambers. The empty one says "thank you" to the one that pours, then spills back the gift.  My brain is busy with forgiveness in the dark. Lighting 8 billion lamps, I am all of us. No need to say what love is, or even use the word. It's been so long since I have taken sides that quarrels and feuds, wars and Armageddons seem like ripples on a golden sea. Now why don't we just plunge into each other's trembling chest, and drown?

  Dissolve the do-er and let the dance arise. Whatever you're doing is not meditation. Whirling arises in stillness. Stillness arises in whirling. Who breathes you? Who plays your body like a flute with seven doorways to emptiness? Silence knowing its own royal opulence, we call God. Silence undulating into creation, we call Goddess. No-thingness gives birth for the sake of love. Darkness spills light for the sake of play. Let there be rays and shadows, waves and troughs. Why does the sacred Zero become Two? Because One is not so interesting. Photo: Mt. Tahoma taken on my walk today.

To remind you of her soft explosion in your body Emptiness invented flowers. When you gaze into them you return to her diamond void. To temper the blinding night of her counsel She created your face. Now take off the veil of doubting. See in the dark. Inside the absence of noise is another kind of silence, the throb of her fingers on the lute of your spine, the tremor of a poem before its first word. This is how the Magdalen visits your sepulcher of bones after all the disciples have fled the garden. Her stillness whets the blade of your breath so that you might pierce Christ's heart and cleave it in two. one chamber is for her, the other for you. Photo: another amazing flower by Kristy

At this full moon, in the festival season of the great Mother (Dwali in India, Samhain in northern Europe), I share something of the mystery of the Breath, for this very breath is the soul of the Goddess, she who casts out the net of stars, yet comes to dwell in our bodies. There is nectar in this inhalation, the secret 'breath within the breath,' spoken of by Kabir. It is absolute stillness vibrating as luminous ecstasy, and absolute silence pouring out the song of love. The waveless is Shiva, its undulations the Goddess Shakti. I do not need to move to a 'higher' plane, or a 'higher' world to find Her. She is the very life that flows into my body through this inspiration. And each exhalation is a privilege, an opportunity, to express gratitude. A thin silk thread passes from the most distant yet personal star above, down through the crown of my head, like a sparkling pour of wine. This subtle thread becomes more solid, brilliant and clear the more I...

A true teacher leads you to the shores of the Unteachable. Gently pushes you into the waves. Lets you drown. Reach out for a lifeline. But the teacher won't throw you one. Only gives you a smile. Your body floats face-down for three days, salt in your wound, your soul a grain of sand chafing the gristle of an oyster. When the pearl emerges, you have no more need for polishing. In the blackness beyond your rim of light, breathes a soundless and beautiful catastrophe, the new green world. You created it without a Word. Now it is evening. On the beach by quiet waters, you walk with the teacher. Neither of you leave any footprints.

A bright cold clear October afternoon. Run in the park with my best bro', Finn, then come home to a guided meditation with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. His tidal wave of gentle words: "The grace of Divine Mother flushes away the entire past and brings the freshness of this moment." As we enter the final day of Navaratri, the Nine Holy Days of the Goddess, I pray that we might all let this be our experience every day, every breath, every moment. Don't miss the juiciness and radiance of the world! We superimpose our thoughts onto the cosmos, then mistake our mind for creation. But there are no concepts in the earth. There are no concepts in the stars. "White" and "black," "right" and "left," "socialism" and "capitalism," nor any "isms" at all actually exists out there in the Mystery, where the universe whirls in the grace of emptiness, through a wild eternity of silent wonder, getting on quite swimmin...

Even though we're alone and in mourning, Hafiz wants each of us to keep our tavern open all night. To teach our wolves to howl. To teach frolicking and screeching to our alley cat souls. To bear loss in a full cup and drink it down. In this ambiguous world, we stumble on a body at the tip of every shadow, but we get to choose at the last moment whether to die of grief or ecstasy. Don't you love this bee-mused vine-tangled land of labyrinths, each night a different flavor of the moon, each day the pure light exiled to new hills and valleys of color? You were already so drunk when you arrived, you can't be choosy about who walks you home. Just for tonight, you saved all seven bottles of your precious love-wine. I will help you with them, dear. We will work together. You're thirsty, I'm thirsty, God is thirsty too, but it's all the same Thirst. Persian miniature by Mahmoud Farshchian

What you call falling She who breathes you calls the dance. What you call the wrong note She calls stunning harmony. You say "mistake," She says "creation." But you have forgotten the well within the well where when you drink many can drink from you. You have buried  her secret spring under your house of knowledge. How will you be whole again? You must thirst so deeply that healing waters burst out of your own breathless soul. Image from Elaina Beam, Starlight Muse

Come out to Rumi's meadow, beyond right and wrong thinking, where we loaf among wild poppies, spilling wine as they do, letting our colors run, carelesss as our mothers were about the moon; where old Basho sits and listens on a mossy stone, while dour-eyed Rilke gives advice to young poets and King David plays his sad sweet lyre. Isn’t it time for you to come home and be lost? There is no war in this meadow. Give up your argument: that was yesterday. Come and be reminded of your privilege. The privilege to exist an instant on this earth. The privilege to find a womb here and get bathed in the ocean of microbes. The privilege to be brown, to be green. The privilege to wear a human face; to stand or repose, to sit or walk slowly, going nowhere but your footsteps, amazed how a taste of milk, or the fragrance of a summer evening rose can liberate your flesh from the edges of the mind. Above all, the privilege to receive this breath, and welcome h...

"All through the physical world runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness." ~Sir Arthur Eddington, Nature of the Physical World When you woke up this morning, did you really? Have you tasted the light? Did you savor one actual breath of air? Then surely you felt like dancing. Surely you welcomed your heart home to this swirl of carbon dust, the nitrogen argon waltz of your body, to the wild expanse of probability waves we call "awareness." After all, what else are you doing here but gorging the void with photons of amazement? Nothing.

What is the sign of a true Teacher? When you try to forget him, you can't. When you to try to renounce him, accuse him, scorn or abandon him, he does not abandon you. When you crucify him, he keeps returning as a gentle breath and pierces your chest like a ray of atomized rubies. If you need to let him go awhile, he doesn't mind, he just dissolves into the transparency where this world -mirage arises. And in the darkest night, the more you pour your mind into his cup of silence, the sweeter the taste of the void, and the fatter the fruit of his sunrise in the morning of your heart.

If you want to spread far, root deeply. The peony opens in stillness. There is no seeking. Sun and rain arrive, gift-bearers. Begonias overflow, adoring shade all summer long. They do not gaze with envy at the beam-lit golden poppy . Blossoms of forget-me-not weigh their own beauty, bowing each to earth in a sea of electric blue. One breeze caresses petals of every kind, whispering to the smallest flowering weed, "Be incomparable!" Not striving is a practice of great power. This is how love descends into a heart where the stamen and pistil already twist. You need to meet yourself first, then take a lover. Photo from Wedding In A Teacup

By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the breath of his mouth. ~Psalm 33 Stars are gazing back at you tonight. They have forgotten their words. That your tiny empty cup of amazement could contain their rimless empyrean of distant fire awakens in their hot core a trembling like yours, without any need to say, Let there be light! Photo by Alex Noriega, 'Reflection Lake,' Mt. Rainier

This planet will not be healed by powerful politicians in big cities who spend trillions on a global strategy that never quite begins. They also burn much fuel. Earth will be healed   by villagers who sing, by backyard gardeners like you who walk more slowl y right here, who feel the green through bare soles, speaking fewer words, cradling each others anger like mothers, awakening the heirloom seeds of the heart.

Don't imagine that breathing is something you do just to stay alive. Breath has a secret purpose. Each inhalation whispers the most beautiful name to every cell in your body. A crystal ladle of exhalation pours your mind back into the bowl of silent wanting, where pollinated words distill into honey. Now you notice the gossamer veils over the shy moon, the glistening pilgrimage of a snail, the pungent promise of death in the catacombs of a fallen apple, how your home floats all night, netted in spider webs strung from withered larch twigs, while snug inside you dream of lost summer. Dear one, there are intricate miracles of attention woven into the muscles that quiver your ancient heart, each nerve threaded to a certain ache of sweetness in the meadow or the woods. This is not an invitation to understand, but to celebrate Unknowing with the wine between your thoughts. ______________ A version of this po...