The Hollow

The hollow

that runs through your spine

runs through the Milky Way,

the center of Andromeda,

the serpent coils of Laniakea,

one silken thread

of emptiness

that causes all creatures

to quiver and beat

with a weightless kiss.

It is a whirling of atoms,

minds, and stars

into something like a nest, scraps

of twig and berry twined

by the great winged mothering

stirring trembling warming

the round smooth blue

egg of the sky inside of which

is no one knows

what.

Call it the ancient light of dawn

that has not yet been born,

holding in tiny seed cups

the coming Spring,

curving infant embryos, the curl

of their hands, the petals

shaping themselves in dreams

at the tip of a stamen,

the grey stuff in cocoons,

neither wing nor worm,

our destination.

Or say that it is these

twin infinite beams

gazing through all centers

from the mirror of your face

into the mirror of mine

until they collide in

that kiss, the catastrophe

that is everywhere.

O uncreated brilliance,

O ancient light of dawn

who has not yet been born,

fall on us now,

make all things new.

Points

 

Your point of view and my point of view are equally "right" and equally insignificant facets in the dazzling holographic diamond of inter-radiant opposites. 

 

Whatever is, the opposite also is, simultaneously arising. Yet neither of these little flickers of local light is Truth. Truth is what illuminates the entire jewel. 

 

If we spent as much energy expanding into the Whole as we spend constricting ourselves to a point, each of us could illuminate the wide world with one silent glance, one gentle touch. 

 

This is the breathing of grace: to expand into wholeness, then to exhale, fall, and break into bodies, incarnating All in each photon of joy, each tear of pain, each trembling seed of beauty. It is effortless. It is not an intention but a happening. It has already happened.

 

As knowings, we are very very small. As Beings, we are vast beyond imagining. We include each other. This is my New Year's prayer. It has already happened.

 

To Those Who Are Alone

To those who are alone tonight,

please understand that

we are all alone,

yet we share one beaten heart.

To be alone is our core, our

essence, yet this crystal

solitude encircles

the stars. The moon

is always full

three inches above your crown.

The sun is always rising

one inch in front

of your heart.

The wild constellations, those

enormous black animals,

roam and graze among the flowers

of your body.

Be plowed and furrowed

and sown again

until the seeds in your

numb places burst.

Find the courage to know

perfect intimacy

in aloneness.

Let your most silent question

go unanswered tonight,

like a hollow sky containing

both midnight and dawn.

If you need a friend to tell you

what will become of this world

or where your path is leading,

don't wait.

Draw near to your own lips and

listen to this breath.

We all meet here, strangers

and pilgrims.

In the cavern of a Kiss,

there are never two.

Logic 101

 

If it is true that the black hole at the center of the galaxy, the dimensionless point at the core of a proton, and the ayin-soph in the center of an electron each contain the total information of the cosmos, then it follows that your great grandfather smells like a mushroom, his roots entangled in mycelium-darkness under the Winter forest. What more proof do you need that the alignment of planets and stars is insignificant compared to the blinding diamond laser of joy that fountains out of the earth up your spine? Just pause for an instant between breathing out and breathing in, which is to say, between the timeless beginning and the eternal end. Then you will comprehend the logic of next Spring.

This Morning

The bones of heaven
are the bones of the earth.
There are things that cannot be told,

that can only be breathed.

There are things that cannot be breathed,

that can only be held

in the stillness between

this breath and another.

There are things that cannot

even be held,

that must be let go,

scattered out of the heart,

the stars, the faces of all

the children, the countless

miracles of the sun

in frosted alfalfa this morning.

Look down.
The bones of the earth
are the bones of heaven.

Painting by Andrew Wyeth

Magnificat

 

"My soul doth magnify the Lord." I love these words. The human soul, or individualized atman, is not merely the servant of God, or the seeker of God, but the magnifier of God: a crystal prism of Christ-all consciousness channeling an invisible ray of divine energy into this rainbow incarnation, magnifying God into You, as embodied radiance, at once completely unique and yet a hologram containing every "other" particle of creation. I wish You not just to Have a wonderful Christmas, but to Be a wonderful Christmas. Peace.

 

 

The Simplest Meditation

The simplest meditation

happens when you hug

every cell of your body.

They all dissolve in one

gentle breath.

There is no other.

Consuming the thinker

in her own sacred

flesh-flame is called

the opening of the heart.

Now there is nothing left to do

but frolic with stars

and waltz with the moon

through an ever-widening

luminous swirl of compassion,

which is the space where

your darkness gives birth to the sun.

Was there a path? Ah yes,

it led you in all directions at once,

like a small blue flower

unfolding, touched
by the dewdrop of bewilderment.
Adoration is the fragrance

of your Being.

Now sing and play in the highest

world, which is this one,

where you learn to say Yes.

Yes to aloneness, to snow,

to the scarlet berry of pain.

Where you learn to behold

your face in the gaze of a stranger.

Go outdoors and play in the rain.

Play more intensely, as children do,

making it your work.

Risk amazement.

Love until there is

no other.

 

 

Mandala by St. Hildegard of Bingen, 12th C.

How Old Are You Now?

 

Photo by S. Prakasha

Jai Guru Dev (12/20)

On his birthday, I honor the Teacher of my Teacher, who in fierce beauty and with feral grace lived deep the forest of India for many years, then emerged to become the Guru Dev, Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati, Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math. He passed away the very year I was born, yet his tidal wave of living silence flows down through thousands of years into the grail of my heart, and my life has been transformed by his disciple, who was my beloved Friend and Teacher. My Teacher never called himself "Guru." He always bowed down to his Guru Dev, as Guru Dev bowed down to his, in that never-ending bow of humility that flows back to the source of creation. So the mysterious current of lineage runs deep through the caverns of time to nourish divine Presence. This is a mystery that few of us can comprehend, and many reject. They may claim to need no grace, but not I. My need for grace is infinite. I bow to the ancient Now of the Teacher's breath, and the liberating gaze of his darshan. I am just a dust mote dancing in that untamed beam of golden radiance.

Proof

Random fluctuations in the Vacuum, waves of emptiness in silence, give birth to the universe. Intelligence, energy, and matter all the same stuff, flowering with inexpressible beauty into a galaxy, a snowflake, a holographic molecule of silicon crystal, the face of a child, the warmth of fur. And yet, somehow, the Inexpressible expresses itself, and reflects upon itself, in art, music, poetry, and simple acts of kindness. For me, this spontaneous blossoming of self-reflective beauty out of nothingness is not only proof of God, it IS God. Have a blessed Solstice and a wonderful Christmas.

NASA Hubble photo, 'Cosmic Rose.'

Rooted

 

 Don't tell me what love is.

Just make me laugh

for no reason.

Make me cry at some

ordinary beauty, lit

by a dying sun,

rooted in a perishing

planet, where the bones

of the earth

are the bones of heaven.

 

 

Tired Of Gods

I'm tired of gods

who come down from above

and blind us with their fire.

I'm waiting for a god born

from the belly of an earthworm,

with, instead of wings,

fungi cilia flying

underground through hummus,

alchemizing the detritus

of moldering bodies 

to live again

and rise into green nipples

for the suckle of hummingbirds 

and butterflies.

That too would be a Christ,

a Son, loam-born 

of a single Mother.

And the Father?

He would stand Wordless,

bewildered,

barefoot in the mud,

leaning on his ancestral hoe.

 

 

Painting: 'Man With A Hoe,' Francois Millet, 1863

ODE TO YOUR HEARTBEAT

Heart has no metaphor.

The rhythm is all, a beat that kneads

its tenderness into each creature

with an open wound,

drumming a circle of comfort for the half moon,

a circle to gather the ebbtide of a thousand suns,

a circle that widens this moment into timelessness,

awakening your ancestors,

all their troubles and blessings.

A drum circle in the heart to hug the unborn

like sand grains melting back to Now,

this bubble of hot glass blown into its globe

of fragile beauty.

What your heart beats is not blood only

but the Milky Way, wild honeysuckle sap,

the DNA of buffalo stirred

into the batter within a cocoon,

from which a herd of winged bulls emerges

stampeding across the rainbow.

What the heart drums is your pain,

folded into the dough of your body,

when risen, punched down to rise again

into the warm loaf at the oven's core.

What your heart beats is the ocean of motherhood

saturating the placenta, regarded as waste

by the man but food by the earth.

It beats the plasma in a plastic catheter

hanging over the precious struggle

of parted lips that yearn for one last breath.

Heart-beaten also the arterial nectar of Gaia,

thick, black, crude.

Do not disdain the mastodon

whose bones were crushed

into a single drop of death for you.

Do not pretend your heart won't hurt,

or flutter, or lie moist and fibrilant

in the ashes of your cremated flesh.

Sometimes your heart feels like

a hermit organ living in a cave,

pouring the luster of her solitude

into a thousand trillion cells, those tiny mirrors

of distant nebulae, rhymed by your pulse.

Do not imagine that your heart is in

a higher realm. There is no higher.

This is the realm where all worlds kiss,

and finally all beams bend into a sphere.

Nor imagine that your heart can fly.

For the sun has melted these wings

so that you might fall, again and again,

into this vale of salted bones,

where Way itself is lost,

and the heart is the only tavern.

All wanderers rest here, you also

repose, and drink, and listen to their stories,

and hear the silence between the stories,

as you gaze into the fire.

 

 

Photo: Dizzy Hearts Tavern by ExitMothership on DeviantArt

Dwindling Daylight

Dwindling daylight, dark by five.

Bore down to root-glow, petals returning

to the seed, prayers withering into meditation.

If you kiss your shadow at this time of year,

something ignites. The Feral Lady,

single mother of the dawn hour,

will visit your secret chamber, the space

between the self and its knower,

where new worlds ring in bejeweled blackness.

What you call falling, she calls the dance.

What you call the wrong note,

she calls stunning harmony.

You say "mistake," she says "creation."

By Springtime, her musk

is on the heather, blood on the moss.

"I return," she says, "when you return.

If you choose me, I have already chosen you."

She visits all the bistros on this road,

The Crown, The Heart, The Coccyx.

Once at the Inn of the Unspeakable

I saw her face beneath the shimmering veil

of absence, sequined with stillborn moons.

I felt her dagger of silence slitting the throat

of my name. All my drowned questions

floated like corpses on her gaze,

and I became a river of stillness, sweeping

old stories into the abyss of now.

She lured me like a selkie, down

into the oceanic bulb of her golden poppy,

this cauldron of transfiguration,

where She changed the dark heart of my flame

into sap, into the terrible sweetness

that does not need to breathe.

Now I know that wherever we are

is the Tavern of Awakening.

If you meet her there, mention me.

Tell her I remember.

See if she smiles.

Can You Bow?

Can you bow like a broken necklace, scattering

your brightest tears? To bow is the first asana.

All yoga postures simply remove the stiffness

so that you can bend. To bow is freedom.

Don't just bow to a master, bow to a grain

of pollen like a bee. Genuflect like a thirsty panther

drinking from a pond at sunset. Bow to Spring

like mountain snow that melts into brook laughter.

To the sound of a tree frog in a jasmine vine at midnight,

bow down. To the plums of September thumping

the ground, showing you the way to fall, the way

to split open and offer your juice, bow down.

Bow to the silence of the doe who after all

is eating your roses. To your own breath, bow.

Fill the hollows of your body with the sky.

Bow so completely that you shatter your crown

and sow the earth with stars. It is a most sacred art.

God bows to the Goddess in the bridal chamber

of your heart, the binaural pulse of awareness aware

of its own radiance, its Self almost an Other,

a rhythm within the One. Let your knees grow weak

with the power of this melting. Let your forehead

strike sparks of grace in wet soil, the evanescent galaxies

that bowed to you before you were born, each atom

of the cosmos saturated with thanksgiving.

But please remember, gratitude is not a practice.

Your bow was always here, pervading the night,

conceiving your flesh to humble its curved space

with gravity. Bow to your mother and your father

right now. Bow to your child. Bow to your teacher.

Bow to your ancestor, and his most terrible enemy.

Bow to a ladybug, a cricket, blue emptiness.

But please remember, it is not your bow.

Bowing happens, a gift of grace, a first cause.

Your bow is God, bowing to you.

Photo: camellia blossoms on my Winter alter,
fresh from the present moment.