Wishing To Tell

Wish I could tell you
about the ancient starlight
that pours into your body
through this breath.
Wish I could reveal
the power of your heartbeat,
how it turns the world.
I want to share the withered
Gospel of an alder leaf
but its whisper is too quiet.
The chime of raindrops after midnight
threading your dreams.
What wind and sky, the moon
in her gown of falling snow,
and what the white fox, binding
her arrow wound in fur,
would say if they could...
Who you strive to become
is not nearly so lovely
as who you are.
Abandon your vows.
Follow wonder.

Nativity

"We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God
is always needing to be born.” ~Meister Eckhart

Wise One, drop the reins
and let the camel lead you.
Follow the rising falling animal
in your chest.
To be wise is to be guided
across the wordless desert of prayer
to the birthplace in the valley
of your missing rib.
There the Unspeakable answers 
in the odor of fur,
the gesture of a tiny hand

releasing impossible beams
into the face of the lady
who gazes down into the straw
through the half-light of amazement.
Her silence is immaculate,
her heart is the fecundity
of emptiness.
Her void is moist with stars.
Prior to conception
She gave birth to light,
joy and sorrow mingled
in the milk of her nipples.
Now the one who cradles
all the whirled
has become your breath.
What can you not say?

 

Shed

I shed every petal, crushed every pollen drop to fragrance without form, peeled away the seed husk, cracked the casing of the emerald germ down to the black Upanishadic hollow.

Still, I could not feel You.

I relinquished every veil of innocence, became more naked than the moon before the sun. I melted every photon to its wave of darkness, offered my flesh to the fire before wanting.

Still, I could not touch the Love of whom fools stammer.

So in your hiddenness I hid my face, tore off my wings and spiraled down into the rhythm of your stillness. I fell into the ocean of Unknowing, where each breath goes before it comes Om...

Knelt and stayed, an exile on the shore of my own ancient heart, where no white sail pulsates in one final exhalation, come to bear me away.

Then, in a wickless flame of chaos without root or stem, I unfolded, and became infinite. Longing blossomed in the crimson void. I became You.
_______

A splash of the Sun that neither rises nor sets, and knows neither solstice nor dark: Photo by Kristy Thompson.

Dusting

With your softest breath,

polish all those dusty thoughts

from your heart mirror.

Alignment

 

I understand there's a

Grand Alignment coming!

But if you don't align your

mind, breath and bones,

what use is a horoscope?

The new moon in your forehead,

the sun in your belly,

the total eclipse is a trough

between two heartbeats.

Your mind is night itself,
sparkling with silence.

The portal to the New Age
is your next inhalation.
Why wait for a conjunction
of Venus and Mars?
Those lovers have been waiting
for this very moment

in the bridal chamber of your chest.
Now ease into that bower.

Repose in your Self.
This is the shift that was prophesied.
Ascend to higher worlds

by hugging your own atoms,

practicing the asana

of a smile.

To be joyful for no reason

is to master all

the planets and stars.

 

 

Image: askAstrology

Initiation

 

The true Word

is not a mantra
or an affirmation
that rattles in your skull,

but a pure pulsation

of silence,

a kiss of star-song

seducing your heart

deeper and deeper
into the flower

of emptiness.

The true Word is given
through the whisper

of one who has become

the breath of stillness
herself.

This breath contains

the swirl of every galaxy

and the fire

of every sun.

Bow to the giver

of the soundless song.

Body

'We awaken in Christ's body as Christ awakens our bodies, and my poor hand is Christ. He enters my foot, and is infinitely me. I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him, for God is indivisibly whole, seamless in His Godhood. I move my foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning.' ~St. Symeon the New Theologian, b.949

Philosophers who asked, 'Why am I trapped in this body?' were not trapped in this body. They were trapped in the mind.

Your body is not a tomb, or a trap, or a punishment. Your body is the universe inviting you to wake up and dance.

Your body has no edges. It is an ocean of energy expanding in waves of breath, teeming with stars, swirling with galaxies, overflowing the very rim of time and space. And your dance can be as wild as a whirlwind, or as quiet as a heartbeat. You need not even move; your body is moving anyway, hosts of cells, countless atoms in the marvelous ballet of incarnation. Your body is filled with the same breath Jesus took, the same breath Buddha received to polish his spine and sparkle his emptiness.

When you come Om to the body, you are already where you need to be, and your heart opens like a morning glory to contain the blue empyrean. The axis of infinity runs up your hollow spine, a silver thread of silk to tether your skull to the most distant star, and your belly to the fire of darkness in the center of the planet.

Your body is the lightning bolt that grounds God, connecting heaven and earth. When you spread your arms, you embrace all your ancestors and unborn children. When you sense the rain, the wind, the sun upon your skin, you are covered not just by the grace of angels, but by the fur of every four-legged creature. In truth, it is only the limited mind that insists on distinguishing the spiritual from the physical, the animal from the angelic. Celestial dolphins leaping and playing in the waves of the vacuum, far beyond the Milky Way, are leaping and playing in the waves of your body.

You can wear this little brass trinket of mind around your throat and use it to carry precious pictures, a lock of your grandmother's hair, a prayer, a map, a tiny key. Or you can take off your mind like a woolen shirt. Lay it aside when you want to refresh your Being, bathe in the sea of God's breath, or dance naked with the Goddess. Then when you need it again, you can put the mind back on, use it as an instrument to deconstruct a problem, or as a box to hold important memories. Whenever you need space, you can empty the mind again, sweeping it clear with an exhalation.

But please, don't mistake this mind for your Self. You are not your mind. You are more vast. You are the cosmos. You are the universal body of Christ.

The breath in your body is the very form of the Goddess, who is the Holy Spirit. And a single breath, flowing in gratitude through the energy of your flesh, dissolves your mind into the infinite sky. Be bold. Leap into the unfathomable ocean of your body. Live in the silent grace beyond thought.

I am sure that Jesus was born in a human body just to show us who we really are, and reveal the diamonds in every handful of dust.

Bindhu

 

Your hair on the pillow.

The mare's tail swishing in the dark.

Rain scented alfalfa.

Fireflies over the meadow.

It's a pixel night.

You'll go crazy trying

to connect the dots.

Simply be a dot,

so centered you expand

to include them all.

A small exquisite flash

of loveliness,

this is how vast you are,

how you encircle me

when you just

occupy your body.

Solstice

There are good teachers
and there are great teachers.
They enter this world
through your body.
They come from some eternity
beyond night and day,
beyond Winter and Spring.
The good teacher brings light
and speaks of light.
The great teacher says,
Do not fear, do not resist
the darkness.
The great teacher says,
Become the darkness
so that you may give birth
to what is radiant.
O Mother, O Child,
teach us to breathe in
world sorrow,
and breathe out
fierce joy.
This is how it must be.
Teach us how Christ is born
again in the breath
of humanity,
again in the womb
of my chest.
This mystery, this recreation
of the sun
on the darkest night.

Photo: Mt. Rainier by Sveta Imnadze

 

Hello

 

Hello my name is Fred
and I am addicted to light.
I am addicted to my angel guides.
I am addicted to the ashram diet.
I am addicted to Jesus, puppies, and vitamins.
I am addicted to Christmas
and Tibetan sound healing.
I am addicted to the golden arches of my heart
and the ever expanding cosmos of hope.
I am addicted to old Joan Baez videos.
I am addicted to love.

Hello my name is Fred
and I am addicted to my shadow.
I am addicted to trauma.
I am addicted to Bernie,
midnight and the menstrual moon.
I am addicted to the numb throb
of digital post-modern hip hop sociology.
I am addicted to my skin.
I am addicted to hot flashbacks of ayahuaska.
I am addicted to the violent eternal recurrence
of a big bang in the balls.

I am addicted to You are addicted to Me.
I pretend to be nobody but my name is Legion.
Addicted to gazing into your eye voids
at a weekend workshop where the teacher
says there is nothing to teach
and nothing to learn, then charges us
each a thousand dollars.
Addicted to competing with you for attention
from our surrogate mommy guru.
Addicted to being your rainbow dragon
slain by lances of envy.

Hello I changed my name to Ananda.
I am addicted to recovery.
Addicted to emptiness.
Addicted to spelling "am" with a capital A.
Addicted to non-duality,
to not needing a teacher or method.
Addicted to march in the streets for whatever.
Addicted to the boundless no-thing of now.
Still searching for any escape from the ordinary,
from hearing my own sweet name in the silence.
Hello.

Thank You For This Breath

I don't know what a "guru" is, such mysteries are beyond me. But I know how to say thank you. I don't know what a "master" is, and don't really like the word.

But I know what "Friend" means, and surely my best Friend must be the one who introduced me to God in the most intimate and personal form of my own breath.

And I'm not sure what a "prophet" is. The only prophecy I trust is the whisper of my next inhalation.

This is the open secret I would most want to share if this were my last day on earth. Your breath is not just a likeness, a metaphor, for the Divine. Your breath is the very form of God, and God's nearest most intimate name. The one who created the galaxies and all this world descends into your body as this breath. Each inhalation is his second coming, and with each exhalation you ascend. For every breath is a new creation, and every breath is the end of time.

Yet there is a vast difference between mere unconscious respiration, and a breath infused with the grace of awareness. In the first case, breathing is an autonomic biological reaction. In the second, breathing is a sacrament.

God the Father, who in Vedic culture is Lord Shiva, is breathless silence, the stillness before creation. God the Mother is the Holy Spirit, in Vedic culture, the Shakti. In the Bible, Spirit and Breath are the same word. When the silence hums and the stillness vibrates, Lord Shiva manifests in waves of creation: this is the dance of Mother Shakti, the Holy Spirit. Her dance begins as breath, then it becomes a song, then the song solidifies into matter. Matter is the Mater, the Mother, giving you an opportunity to dance, to breathe, and to glorify your creator. Don't miss one instant of this chance to worship!

And the simplest form of worship is to breathe. Each humble inhalation embodies communion with the Holy Spirit herself, the luminous nectar of grace descending into the heart. Each exhalation embodies surrender, a precious chance to return the gift as a thank offering. Eucharist happens in every breath: the descent of God into the breath of this body, the offering of this body back to our creator. Why else are we here?

The Friend awakened this play of love, this music of bhakti in my chest. Therefore to him I bow down. Yet my bow is not bondage. It is a bow of freedom. Gratitude is the deepest freedom.

The Guru comes not to bind you but to free you. And the Guru frees you by introducing you to your Self. My Teacher, Maharishi, awakened the Guru-tattva in the silence of my own heart. When he left this world, his disciple Sri Sri took up the further work of teaching me to breathe: to breathe Divine Love. Therefor, to both of them I sing, "Jai Guru Dev." All praise to the Divine in the form of the Guru!

But when I sing my praise, am I really worshiping anyone in particular? Or am I simply playing in the waves of the ocean of worship-fulness? For the fragrance of our worship pervades the cosmos. The Creator, the Goddess, the Guru and the Soul are all petals on the blossom of our Heart.


Photo of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar by my friend, Scott Hague

Why Not?

"The real Virgin Mother is mystical eternal silence."
~The Gnostic Valentinus, 2nd C.

Why not have a merry Christmas? You can't complain the season is too busy or too commercial this year. Stay Om. Listen to Darkness. Feel inward Light. Bathe in the Mystery.

Don't take night for granted. Especially at this season. Let Night have her way with you. Turn off every light in your mind of names and images. Just hear the silence and gaze beyond seeing. When you can taste pure night and not jusst what it contains your wonder will give birth to the stars.

This radiant darkness is God asking, Who am I?

Juice

When you opened your eyes this morning,
you broke every law that made yesterday real.
Why insist on being who you were
before you took this breath?

Can you withdraw your kiss, or send the ocean
flowing back to mountain snow?
Do bees bring honey to flowers, murmuring
"Here's the pollen I borrowed"?

Breasts of honeysuckle express nectar
for the hummingbird, then wither with contentment.
So your chest shows hospitality to a wandering heart.
Is there an angel in your next inhalation?

You must die of sweetness, like a pilgrim
who never comes home. This is the Law.
Don’t ask the vineyard’s forgiveness.
Grapes can't understand why you crush them.

Bold naked feet also dance on your bones.
Ferment yourself and drink from the grail
of your own body. Once the madness starts,
be choiceless. Mingle and discard your skin.

The bubbling stuff you must become
will never be nectar again.
Can you withdraw your kiss?
Juice is for children. Jesus loves wine.



Photo: Stan Schaap

Don't Tell

Don't tell.
Hold the offering
on your tongue.
Leave the sweetest
secret unspoken.
Try not to say, "I love you,"
too often.
That will store up the flame
in your eyes.
It glimmers from your shatterings,
the mirror shards around you.
Keep your Word,
it will warm the meadows,
arousing flowers.
Learn silent bending
from a gracious willow.
Let hidden love lift your hand
in ordinary gestures -
the way you stir honey into tea,
the way you wash your
grandmother's cup,
or hold an heirloom pear
from a tree your father planted,
gristling your fist
around his original hoe.
Be sure to keep intimate distances
in the otherness of your gaze,
and walk barefoot
through midnight clover,
your body tingling with stars.

After I took this
photo I picked the moon off
the twig and ate it.

I SENSE THE SUBTERRANEAN

This morning I sense the subterranean
Lethe of pain that surges through each
earthly atom. My tears are monuments
of emptiness, through which I see
the radiance of un-knowing:
that this is not my pain alone
but the ancient lash all humans share;
the wise arterial bloodstream of our ancestors;
the vomiting gasp of the newborn amazed
by betrayals; the oozing laceration of what
we've done to one another without taking time
for scar tissue; the redounding ache
of unnecessary blame, this throb of wanting
to forgive but not understanding how.
I surrender to uncertainty this morning,
the faith that I will surely taste a wellspring
of darkness gushing out of my chest
where the piercing is deepest, and will follow
this river of affliction to its source.
I will enter the blackest hole in every
uncreated star, which is the temple
of the wound in the smallest creature.
I will keen the uterine pang of primal
separation from the One. I am here
not for joy or sorrow, but possession.
Let me possess and be possessed by abundance,
by the sum, by the whole and not any part.
Let me give it all away with every heartbeat.
I am here to say Yes, this must surely be a world
where pain and beauty are inconsolable lovers.
Yes, all our bodies are suspended in the stillness
between breaths, like dust in a sourceless
golden beam. To each I say, “You are the sun!”
I am here to dissolve my photons in the void
and make my body solid as a lightning bolt.
To drink sweet tea brewed from thorns.
To finally see that the petals of the rose
won't slice my flesh like whirling crimson knives,
because there are no edges.

Stumbling Is Sacred

 

You’re all wrong.
Every damn one of you.
How do I know? I’m wrong too.
I’m better at being wrong than you are.
I’ve been wrong since the Big Bang.
Even that is wrong. There was no beginning.
We are ever-evolving mistakes in the boundless
green microbial slime of Beauty.
When you add and subtract all the Buddha’s
good deeds and little blunders over thousands
of Bodhisattva lives, the sum is neither greater
nor less than one. Without tripping,
there’s no dance. We eternally miscalculate
ourselves: that's how we survive.
Any slip-up might be the serendipitous
mutation that ensures our immortality.
O necessary sin of Adam!
How could we marvel at a butterfly
without the grisly mishap inside the cocoon?
Could we enjoy our popcorn were it not
for the grace of the hunchbacked caveman
with a fistful of kernels by the fire,
who bungled over his own enormous feet?
Stumbling is sacred, better than a tarantelle!
Where would you be without your mother’s
carelessness concerning the moon?
O sing, O praise propitious indiscretions!
Or would you prefer the impeccable symmetry
of Zero, the fat frozen mouth of a silent God
yearning to say ‘O!’ through the dense
white hole where no Word escapes?
As for me, I lie awake in the dark, surrounded
by snoring animals. I’m always wrong.
The people you need to watch out for
are the ones who are right.


Originally published in 'Braided Way' journal.

Chalice

Who dips the full moon

in the chalice of night?

Who tastes the wine of darkness?

You do, friend.

A mystery, but not a secret.

Let your stillness be rippled

the way water receives wind.

Let your silence listen

to ten thousand sorrows
of the voiceless.

How will you endure it?

By reflecting the whole sky

in a teardrop.
A mystery, but not a secret.

Look deep. Grow old. Rejoice.