Uradiance

  I hear a lot about embodiment. But what if the molecules of your pituitary are made of galaxies so distant that their light is only now arriving as your flesh? What if they are hanging in a spacious ballroom of awareness like a chandelier? Wouldn't you begin to waltz for no reason? Look for a partner, anyone, anything. Bow to this crocus, who wears her heirloom crystals and her mother's purple gown. She is so still and new, just risen from this fertile tomb, the Imbolg caesura between Winter and Spring. Now enter her silence. Speak these words only in your heart, "Shall we dance?"

  Just ripen, burst open like a pomegranate, and let all the opposites spill out. They are your seeds. Don’t mind the splitting, opening, darkening sweetness of the bruise. The juice is more essential than the shape. You include everything, the sour and the ripe, the bloody and the radiant. Don't you know that every breath is full of grace because it is choiceless?     Photo from gardeningknowhow.com

  Finn, my noble red poodle, is a reincarnated Tibetan lama being tested in his final lifetime by taking birth as a dog. It is my duty to sponsor him on earth, feeding him, making sure he doesn't hump people, etc. I am learning to listen to him, which is a wonderful new art because he speaks with his eyes, and through his cinnamon hair. This morning, just before dawn, he gave me this silent transmission, which I have tried to put into words. 'Mindfulness? I prefer Mind-Emptiness. Mind is the problem, not the solution. 'We look at the earth through the gray dusty window of the mind and wonder why the world is gray and dusty. We do not see the ineffable radiance that shines from every atom. We do not smell the musk of the present moment. 'Mind invents religion. Then it invents politics. Then it invents the "news." The mind's greatest invention is time. Out of the past and future, which only exist in the mind, fear is woven. 'The great insights, invention...

O friend, how many workshops must you attend, how many ashrams and institutes of spiritual healing must you visit before you learn the truth? Every dimensionless point in space is filled with 10 thousand suns that you just don't see because y ou're living on all of them at once. This is called 'consciousness.' Now here is the final spiritual practice. You won't need any other. I learned it from a fat golden poodle. When anyone approaches, friend or foe, throw yourself on the ground before them. Lie on your back with a vast empty smile and invite them to rub your belly. This is the only way.

The Savior was pure silence. Then he put on flesh, like yours. To touch the Christ, look deep into your body. Underestimating your glory is the only sin. Now drink up the rest of this day: bask in yourself and squander the kingdom! A fountain of something like starlight will rise up your spine, spilling over, showering the world with burning seeds of wonder, gold as the stuff in Mary's womb... The 2nd Century Gnostic, Valentinus, defined the Virgin Mother of God as “mystical eternal silence.” St. Hesychius of Jerusalem called this mystery, “The heart’s silence, unbroken by any thought.” Inward silence is the untainted virgin who dwells at the center of your soul. Resting there, you give birth to Light. Of this archetypal event, St. Bonaventure wrote, "You too must become a Mary if you would give birth to the Light of God's Son in your soul." The 12th century mystic, Meister Eckhart, said, "The birth which happened two thousand year...

Who is my teacher? A small golden dog. I love the dusty footprints on clean sheets and pillows. I love the furry scent of unwashed Presence. The way he runs in his sleep and yelps at dream rabbits reminds me of people who think they are awake. I love his disobedience. Through cherishing a small golden dog, I learn how God loves me. I have not learned so much from any school.

When I laugh I have no chakras. The sun is my heart. When I cry the moon comes down to caress my forehead but finds no lotus to kiss open. Breathing the Beloved's scent clears my horoscope of every planet and sign. The astrologer is bewildered. All he sees in me is an empty page full of light. Don't give me any more of your esoteric books. Grace has made me too stupid to understand. Photo by dear friend Kristy Thompson

Earth is a good place to keep returning until you become a horse, a tree, the wind. Let's say a horse for now, ambling through alfalfa, swishing flies. Then, after a long time, dare to be a willow, or carry the rain in your breath. Whatever lone and lovely perishing creature you become, practice the four Immeasurables: Sit like a mountain. Walk like a cloud. Stand like a lightning flash. Repose like a spring in the forest. Even if you’re simply whisking bugs away with your deft magisterial tail, you are here, rooted by grace in your luminous bones to honor the darkness of loam. I took this photo from my brothers porch in Chester County PA.

Give yourself permission to be human. Polish your heart with forgiveness. Only you have the authority. Your beauty pervades the sky, mountain brooks, meadows and loam, all wings like the breath of dawn. Today is the day the earth bows up to touch your face, and stars confess that the longing of their light for you is unendurable. Wiki image of Ruffled Grouse

  A problem cannot be solved on the level of the problem. The solution is always on a much subtler, more interior level, because the "problem" is an effect, not a cause. Trying to solve this nation's political problems with politicians, and economic problems with economics, is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The underlying cause of the problem must be clearly revealed, and that cause is the mind. The essential problem is that we have identified our minds with the world. Projecting the mind into the world, as the world, we mistake the mind for the world. Then we wonder why the world is so disturbed, and such a puzzle. But the world is ineluctably simple, clear, and radiant. It is the mind that is disturbed. It is the mind that is a puzzle to itself. The mind is like a spider entangled in its own web. You are the spider, not the web. You are the vast night, not a star. Knowing that you are not your mind is the solution to the nation's problems. If we just r...

  Everyone seems to be marketing something. But success eludes me. I get straight F's in business, giving it all away, just hoping you might give me something too. I learned another kind of wealth from the reckless poinsettia. Adorn your fleeting soul in scarlet and set emeralds of pollen in your golden crown. Lose all you thought was yours in the marketplace of amazement. Now fling yourself at the sun! Photo by Aile Shebar

There's some kind of blossom tangled in my ribs. Who knows where it sprouted? God's groin? This dizzy wheel of splendor didn't spring out of my subtle body: I don't have one. I'm all dark matter with a bittersweet fermented chocolate tang of my mother's placenta. But it’s right here in my chest between breathing out and in - a radiance without a name. I’m just a speck of pollen on a flaming stamen’s tip at the center of this thousand-petaled now.  

Listen to evening fall. Listen to darkness come. Listen to the stars. Beyond the farthest faintest sound, listen to silence. Listening cleanses the mind of thought, awakens the sparkling grace of the present moment... What was that troubled dream of the world swept away by this breath?

This must be why we have "service animals." In the depths of night, when I wake in despair of the world, I reach out and touch the warmth of this little dog. As soon as I feel the golden softness, my negative energy discharges into some ancient ground beyond the ken of human intellect, and I fall back to sleep in peace. Once again I have been blessed by the Kingdom of the Fur, and redeemed by a Grace that flows, not from above, but from below. Thank you, Willy.

I am the first line in the poem from hell. I am the wicked orchid of the id. I have no ideology, therefore I love you. I am an existential threat. WTF does that mean? It means I eat Christmas cards. My borders are fractals of fur dissolving in the sparkles of your shadow. You have been Me and will return. One stroke of my tongue on your palm erases all thought, settling your awareness in unfathomable silence. Breathe me if your dare. I am the flurry of popcorn galaxies exploding from the golden pistil between your chest and belly button. I am the butter you crave. I love you, did I say that? I slobber. I eat Christmas cards. I am the enormous puppy of amour. My thirst for companionship is your thirst for companionship. The saintly sinner you wanted to be. The ineluctable quiddity of suchness devouring fuzz off moldering tennis balls. Yes, I transcend cleanliness. I am the herald of an age without plastic. I digest it all. I w...

Silence marveling at its own resplendent stillness, is God. Silence breathing, undulating, pulsing into particles of the Mater, is Goddess. The quantum physics of cosmic creation way too sexy for monks and astronomers. Shiva hugging Shakti, the heart merged with its longing. Shakti's vibrations in Shiva fermenting love-juice into wine that satisfies a divine thirst. The Beloved dancing in the space of the Lover's boundless Self-bewilderment, even while She bears the Lover in her womb of oceanic bliss, oceanic pain, waves and troughs of light and dark, each impossible without the other. The stillness of One inconceivable without the dance of Two. You never left the egg. There was never a shell. The yolk of that moment embodied the eternal future, your ancestors, and your children’s children. The Embryo is All. A wise man follows the star in the eye of his own heart to the manger of the infant who was never born. The laughter of that baby is the dying exhalation of the crone. All...

  Give me a winding path     that leads nowhere         and I'll follow. Give me the straight and narrow     that leads right to the goal,         I'll veer off-trail where heather and woodbine     thicken, and a thrush         babbles no instruction. Now is the first day of the year,     oh so cold I'll follow my roots         down into the hollow where fur and larvae dream     of flowers, and seeds         lie awake in the dark, witnessing the long     quiet luminous breath         of Winter.