Zone

People keep saying, bust

out of your comfort zone!

Why?

 

I love my comfort zone.

And the more I love

the wider the space

between heartbeats,

until my comfort zone

encircles the stars.

 

On this April morning

why not follow the honeybee

who drowns in the pistil

of a rose, at the center

of a love with no circumference?

 

Why not dissolve

into pure fragrance

overwhelming the garden

with your formlessness?

 

I think something infinite

invented flowers

to remind us of this

soft explosion in the heart

of the effortless.

 

How the pulse of your breath

becomes the motion of repose,

and then it is so clear that

this drunken bee is God,

who keeps stumbling back

to the well of your body

for a sip.

 

 

Photo by my friend, Aile Shebar

Journey

 

 

No need for a pilgrimage

to Machu Picchu or Katmandu.

Become empty, grow full.

You are the path.

You will not find the Goddess

at the source of the Amazon

or on a snow peak lost in clouds,

nor will you gaze on the Lord

of Mount Meru by traveling

Eastward toward sunrise.

You need to follow more intimate rivers,

the current of this inhalation

deep into the virgin wilderness

of your alveoli,

where the Mother of waters

dwells in a hidden valley

between your nipples.

Cancel your plans for the journey.

Stay Om, sink inward.

Your marrow is quicksand

covering lost gold.

Explore the secret corridors

in the vine-tangled palace of your bones.

Let this exhalation carry you

to earth's highest summit,

six inches over the soft spot on your skull

where Shiva reposes, ever awake,

his diamond eye swirling the stars

with a glance of stillness.

Light a thousand candles on

the crystal chandelier of your pituitary

hanging over the ruined ballroom

in your ancient brain.

You are the jungle that swallows

every attempt to civilize

the wild glory of the Serpent Queen.

You flower in reptilian splendor

with every poison and every medicine.

Now ripen in the sunbeam

of your own presence.

Let the stalk of your spine be clustered

with Wasai root, Tawari bark, breath

upon breath of Chacruna leaf, galaxy

upon galaxy of crushed begonia.

Spiral down the staircase of your vertebrae.

A green and beautiful world

will undulate to meet the kiss

of your descending footsteps.

Do you need a teacher?

Follow the one who is already here.

The furry one with the rippling pelt,

chestnut, roan, or the color

of moonlit wine, glistening

in the track of the snail

across the vast Caladium.

Grow full, become empty,

You are the path.

 

If You Listen

 

 If you listen carefully, but don't try too hard, you can hear the entire Rig Veda in the burbs and giggles and farts of a baby. It has no meaning. It's just music. As soon as you impose 'meaning' on the music of creation, the ocean of matter solidifies. You turn the verb of God into a noun. Connections and entanglements become 'things.' Then we no longer hear the song because it is smothered with ideas. The whorl of the whirled congeals like dead blood into a crust of concepts. It becomes intellectual property, the territory of the mind. The sacred chaos of our formless beauty, which is the beauty of each human form just it is, gets divided into races, tribes, nations, group identities rather than unique persons. Then wars begin. But it's going to be all right. Because, eventually, we all die. We return to the loam, dead landlords, fuel for mushrooms. We are fungus again, singing without words, and listening to the stars.

Possession

       

Even if I possessed the most precious diamond mined from the soil, or the wealth of a billionaire, I would gladly give them up for the soft light, the gentle light, that You have awakened in my heart. If I possessed power over all the governments of the world, I would gladly surrender it for the soft light, the gentle light, that You have awakened in my heart. If I possessed complete knowledge of the planetary spheres, the constellations of the zodiac, the secrets of the past, the vision of the future, I would gladly let it go, to make room for this ineffable and incomprehensible light. If I possessed the wisdom of all scriptures, East and West, and committed the Vedas, the Qu'ran, the Torah to impeccable memory, I would gladly forget them for your soft and gentle radiance. What is the sun or all the clustered galaxies compared to the fragrance of the Hridaya, that blossoms in the wild and secret darkness between my exhalation and inhalation? Neither the storm of destruction nor the Word of creation compares to the tender majesty of your breath, that grazes and wounds my chest like a garden under the first moon of Spring. Beloved Teacher, I bow down to You, not because you are divine, but because You have awakened the divine, Narayana, Lord of the cosmos, in every cell of my body. Jai Guru Dev.

 

This Is The Time

 

It's not complicated. It's very simple. This is the time for us all to rest in the Being that is deeper than thought, deeper than any name, label, image or picture in the mind. Even if just for a few minutes a day. This Being has no opposite. This Being is the end of conflict, whose nature is peace. This Being is not "a" being, but Being itself. And this is who you really are. When you spend a little while resting in Being - not doing it, or thinking it, for Being is prior to any thought or action - then you create a magnetic yearning in every atom of the earth, every star in the galaxy, a yearning to follow you there, to feel your unity, your fullness, your peace which surpasses understanding. This may seems like no-thing, but No does not exist there. There is only Yes. This only happens now, never in the future. Let it happen, the journey into Being. A journey greater than ten thousand miles, yet nearer than you are to yourself. The journey of a single breath.

 

Photo by Peter Shefler

Don't Look

Don't look for the center.

Just be the roundness

in whatever spins.

Your sit-bone saddled in

the space between planets.

A pebble honed by eons of water

the way your embryo was shaped

by swirling desire.

The design of the nest

in the mind of the robin

even before the curve of the sky

in her tiny blue egg.

The pull of a proton 

reining in its star.

Grapes ripening.

A withered dandelion

with nothing left to give,

dispersing herself into 

useless beauty.

The new moon's hollow

storing up an ocean's pulse.

And those rims of emptiness, 

the galaxies, spilling 

effervescent night.

You also have a yearning 

that exerts a circumference of power 

from belly to horizon,

causing every breath to rise

and set like the sun.

Now notice the implicit prayer bead

around each stranger.

Include everything 

in that tear.

Don't look for the center.

Rest in a Being 

that has no opposite.

Pray. Include.

Photo by Kristy Thompson

Don't Try

 

Don't try to love yourself.
That's asking a lot.
A lot from One
hurting for the warmth
of an Other.
Mists, prairies, waves.
Nature wants to enfold you.
Who commanded you to love?
I say, don't try.
Better to feel the throb
in a single cell
than the numbness in the marrow
between stars.
Better to taste your wound,
digest it like the pièce
de résistance,
than struggle to rise above.
That effort only divides you,
doubling your sentence of lashes.
"Love yourself"
is a very hard commandment,
hardly the healing you need.
Just rest in the unspeakable care
that already covers you
with a gesture of forgiveness
that has nothing to do
with your will to perform it.
Honor the graceful mistake
that ended in this disaster,
the bruise concealed,
the holy incompetence
of a wandering mind,
the pilgrimage of distractions,
the love who cannot find
her way home.
Honor the ache.
Little numbers are best.
Not more than 9 in a circle
to worship, to praise
and sing their journey
into silence.
3 gathered to grieve,
with six hands held and so
many fingers entwined.
See how our entanglement
begins from almost nothing.
2 gazing
through each others eyes,
dissolving galactic distances.
Now just 1 alone, enthroned
in her womb of zeros.
To enter the heart
requires less, not more.
Be poor in Spirit,
mighty as a wind-scattered seed.
Don't try to love.
That's asking a lot.
Just bathe in the bittersweet sea
of the next moment.
What washes over you now?
All these sparks of darkness
spinning inside your heart.
Mists, prairies, waves.
Nature wants to enfold you.

Renunciation

 

In the sacrificial fire of the present moment, everything is burnt up. The past is consumed. Awareness is purified to prepare for what is always new.

If we offer everything in this sacrifice, it sounds like emptiness, but in fact this offering brings wholeness. There is a paradoxical relationship between wholeness and sacrifice, fullness and renunciation. We attain complete wholeness only when we sacrifice all. 

True renunciation does not mean giving up one thing for another. It does not mean giving all your money to the ashram, in order to receive the Guru's blessing. It does not mean exchanging your wardrobe for the white robe of a monk. True renunciation does not purchase the pure with the impure, the spiritual with the worldly. All that is just doing business with God, the sign of immature faith. True renunciation offers the entire cosmos into the fire, including the mind of the one who offers. It's a fire-sale. Everything must go.

No-thing remains. And now in the very space of Nothing, everything is given back in glory, dancing in the fire of wonder. This is the miracle of the rainbow light of the void.

Let go of All, this instant, and everything catches fire! Let the fire of God illuminate All with the Wholeness of nothing.

A Walk On Saint Paddy's Day

 

Chickadee drippings on green cabbage stone,

vinegar fog so cold to the bone,

 

vintage poured from daffodils, 

"Slainte!" to wind-drizzled hills.

 

Raise a tulip cup, toast the plum

bound in its bud, still scentless and dumb.

 

Batter the cherry, the loam-loaf knead,
sweetened with drops of meadow mead.

 

Leavened by what makes peepers sing,

dollop your eyes on the littlest thing.

Feasting on crumbs, keep walking alone.


Note: "Slainte," pronounced "slan-cha," is the ancient Irish toast.

That Path Is Best

 

“There is strength in gentleness… gentler, gentler, gentler, so gentle it hardly has any substance… the breath of Silence. Then it is infinitely powerful, infinitely creative.” ~Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

That path is best

whose first breath is all  

you will ever need

because it is the stream 

of wonder 

that created the world, 

whirling earth and stars

like milkweed 

over the bee-wildered 

meadow.

Now it is midnight.

Stay awake.

This is when  

the Goddess comes,

lovely, nearly naked,

draped in her golden veil

of stillness.

Almost, almost.

Use what flows

to polish your heart.

Small Green Patch

 

The cosmos explodes from your eyeballs. Beauty arises within, then pours into what is seen. But your life is too feverish. Why must you think so much and invent other worlds?

The small green patch at your feet is Shivaloka, the center of the labyrinth, the holy thorn that un-knits all entanglement. Only here is there no mind. Plunge your sacrum into black loam, and thrust your crown into the cobalt void, igniting stars with your diamond fontanelle. The Goddess wields your spine like an ivory scepter. 

She uses the flame of your body to illuminate all bodies. Some say everything happens for a reason. I say nothing happens for a reason. Milkweed ripens, snaps and billows from its pod, spilling countless bewildered selves. Be-wilder. Ebullient chaos is the nature of bliss. Why not become a peacock feather in Tara's fingers, brushing the forehead of every stranger with the shakti of your searing glance?

 

Like silk is matter spun, but who is the spinner? Don't try to understand, for then you become a believer. It is better to drown in astonishment, where agitated questions turn to pearls of gleaming silence, unasked. Simply let Not Knowing become an electrical force. Then you will start whirling.

 

The gush of grace arises from a pool of trauma, like melted stone, Kundalini from the compost of your dreams. If you can't find wholeness in the hot mess, where else would you look? This thirst for Soma juice is futile. Your own nerves are the mycelium network under Mount Kailas.

 

Surrender confusion to a vaster confusion. The fever subsides with the jolt of awakening. You ARE the mandala, the indecipherable kaleidoscope. Entropy contains a secret counter-force that orders chaos through hidden laws of wonder. We have told you this before. We, the sparrows of dawn.

Now be thrown into the sweet-smelling cauldron of your ancient heart. Here is your duty: heal the planet by savoring your Self.

 

Notes On Our Entanglement

We can never un-knot our green entanglement. Spiritual discernment does not mean judging one person as good, another as evil. Each person is both. Nature hides her roses among thorns, and sweet fruit under bitter husk. If you grasp a stem of Devil's Claw in the forest, your palm will be useless and inflamed for days, shot by a thousand microscopic darts, shaped like serrated arrow-heads. But native people knew they could make healing tea from her roots. So if we gaze with discernment into the most broken and vicious human being, we can see the soul, even our own soul, seeping out of the wound.

                                                     

                                                                 * * *

Compared to Presence, the past always has the quality of a dream. But this moment, now, has the quality of awakening. And was it ever only YOUR dream? Are your dreams not hopelessly wondrously entangled with the dreams of all your dearest friends and enemies? We need not seek forgiveness for our dreams. We are not judged for them. We merely wake up. Love heals all past karmas because love is here. Love is awake. Love is never in the past.

Be God's Body

Every woman's body is divine. Every man's body is divine. Be God's body, that is the answer. What was the question?

 

To honor God in your body is the most radical revolution. To honor God in another's body is political healing. Jesus's most sacred communion was a meal. He did not say, "Take, eat, this is my Spirit." He said, "Take, eat, this is my body."

 

The gates of paradise are the portals of your flesh. You cannot transcend your body, but you can journey through it to the stars. Each atom is filled with the sky. Angels arrive and depart in your nuclei. Christ is born again and again at the core of a proton. No need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb: you were baptized in the blood of your mother's womb, and the microbiome of the birth canal. That was salvation.

 

The sacred practices of every wisdom tradition are techniques of Incarnation. They do not negate, but glorify, our human flesh. The bread of the Eucharist. The shaman who draws Spirit from plants, animals, stones. Grace that flows, not down from heaven, but upward, through the soles of the Qi master's feet, and the cilium of fungi. The whirl of a Sufi is body-prayer. Buddha's breath is lower than your belly button, in the Hara. Sprouting in the paradise of your nerve-garden, the Tree of Life is your spine. Not in other worlds, but here in your chakras, you blossom.

 

Each of these centers is a door to the heavens, as are the palms of your hands. O Mother, all disciplines ripple on the ocean of your effortlessness. The four syllables, "just as it is," contain the most secret name of God. Esoteric paths are nowhere near as mystical as the revelations of your flesh. Whether yearning or sated, you are always whole. To shine like sapphires, your atoms only require a little Awareness. Gaze into them, and polish your heart with breathing.

 

The journey beyond is a journey within, through intergalactic physiology. The way up is the way down, a pilgrimage into the sacred mud between your toes. Your weight is prayer, your gravity is grace. Did Jesus not say that the one who ascends is the one who descends? (Ephesians, 4:10)

 

A thunderbolt connecting earth and sky, your spine is the axis mundi. Spread your arms and be the cruciform matrix of North, South, East and West. Standing just so is the most ancient prayer, gesture of the Sioux warrior on a vision quest, an upright Qi Gong meditation, the prayer asana of the first Christians, called the "orant posture."

 

Your torso is a ray of Dark Matter, a temple spire to the Dark Mother. She is the crossroad-goddess, and this is the tavern where angels meet their animal familiars, celestial gandharvas learn plant songs, Holy Spirit glistens through the wish-granting prism of a mushroom spore. "Therefor glorify God in your body" (1 Cor. 6:20).

 

Laugh, cry, sing, meditate. The eye is holy. The nose is holy. Lips and tongue are holy. Holy the clitoris. Holy the belly and buttocks. Holy the wrinkle and crow’s foot. The supreme Goddess, who is the deepest power of creation, dwells in your body as this breath. Delight in Her!

 

Thank you Mother for this human form, God's flute, and for your breath to play it. Thank you for all my wounds, these golden cups that overflow with cinnabar wine. Let them stream with bittersweet nectar. I honor You by remembering the truth: Darkness is not the absence of Light. Darkness is the womb of Light.

Engraving by William Blake

Did No One Tell You?

Merely by resting in your heart
you soften one thousand miles
of space around you.

Those who come near you
feel the touch of wild cotton,
the radiance of seven pearls
threaded on a sunbeam.

Their souls begin to orbit your belly button.
They enter your invisible garden of Presence
and somehow taste those blood-red seeds
from the pomegranate's core
without gashing the husk.

This is why you must repose
in the golden shrine of your chest.
Let others make the haj.
You just need to be more hollow.

Supreme attainment is a mind
that no longer seeks
because it has dissolved
into the erotic splendor
of the void.

Let this exhalation be what pours
from the libation cup
offered by a dying warrior.
The triumph is surrender.

Let this inhalation be
the Beloved's sparkling kiss.
Welcome home, dear one!
Did no one tell you?
Your breath is the name of God.

 

THe Rapture of Nicodemus

 "Let Jesus be your breath." ~St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain

Let Jesus be your breath; He is the Door that is always already open. The frame may have a shape, but the passageway is empty.

Let Rama be your breath. The arrow floats back to the bow. That is how true warriors win before the battle begins. Let Allah be your breath. Hu dissolves sugar into sweetness. But the sweetness is already here, before the sugar oozes from the broken stem. Let the Goddess Kundalini be your breath, turning your midnight nerves to silent lightning.

At dawn, the sound in your chest is a forest full of exultation about nest-building. The fierce blossom in your body may appear as a reflection on the mirror of the world, spinning with fearsome beauty and chaos. But the stem leads inward. The golden flower is a path of drowning, petal upon petal, self within self. No distance, no journey.

This honey bee can't fly, his feet so weighty with star-clustered pollen. Yet he will make a supernal effort of surrender to the Queen, whose voice is the buzzing of his own wings.

 See how the face of the Beloved lures you inward, toward a Kiss of annihilation? When lips touch, there is no breath at all, and it is a thousand years until your next heartbeat.

 

 

Drop Every Concept

You asked me to drop 

every concept of “Other” 

and “God,”

so I did.

Then I abandoned “Trauma” 

and “Embodiment” too.

Love is not a therapy.

Now I sink into the infinite

physiology of light,

my true flesh.

The stillness in my chest

is an unbroken pour

that does not flow

from “there” to “here,”

but quivers in the void,

a braid of black lightning.

The taste is beyond

all thought 

and every breath.

I call it sweet wine,

but that is the language

of fools and lovers

whose story has drowned

in silence.

I will never know

who tilted fullness

toward emptiness

and made the starry rim

of this cup overflow

with a wonder

no longer

called “me.”

Yet I can still say,

Thank you, thank you, Friend.

I can still ask,

Was there a journey 

in that pour?

Or have I always

already arrived

at the Tavern of Amazement?

 

 

Painting by Mahmoud Farshchian

Times Like These Make Me Glad

 

Times like these
make me glad 

that of my twenty six
thousand genes
65% are exactly
the same as the genes
in a banana.
70% are exactly
the same as the genes
in a fruit fly.

The banana blackens

with sugary bruises.
The sacrament turns
starch into glucose.
Entropy is grace.

The fruit fly is happy.

We are all
food.

Photo: a mighty fruit fly, Discover Magazine

Grief Is A Place

 

Grief

is a place

without words.

Let's all meet

here

where myriad branches,

fragrant blossoms,

fruits both

sweet and bitter

spring from the hollow

of a tiny seed,

a seed that is planted

in darkness

deeper than prayer,

deeper than breath

can go. Friend,

we are the flowers

and we are the mud.

Let's all meet

here.

 

Midnight Meditation

To be perfect

is never enough.

To be

is enough.

 

You're already

there

when you're nowhere

else.

 

The luna moth lives

a few days, at most,

but in her 

chrysalis the wings

 

beat 13 billion 

years 

through an ocean 

of stone

 

just to breathe

this green secret

of midnight

to me.

 

 

Photo from Orilla News