Go to your chest
bioluminescence of emptiness,
undulating in the fertile sea
Your Beloved is so intimate
Photo by Kristy Thompson
Photo by Kristy Thompson
Dear friend, I am Jesus,
and I have come to tell you
to eat.
Eat without shame.
Eat without listening
to experts,
the ones in your head.
Make peace with gluten.
Hug that little demon
peanut butter cup.
Be no longer afraid
to bake with
real butter.
Dunk a home-made
oatmeal raisin cookie,
no, no! Better yet,
a fresh-baked toll house
chocolate chip cookie
in a big glass
of cold milk filled
with the double digested cud
of green grass,
oats and sunbeams.
Just so, just so,
I pronounce all foods pure!
Why not ginger snaps
made with real molasses?
why not donuts in
steaming dark coffee?
I know that you can smell this.
I know that these words
like the odor of cornbread
will make you crave and eat
what you should not.
Why shouldn't you?
Where does 'should' come from?
If you were here to abstain,
your mother and father
would have abstained
from conceiving you.
Now make peace
with gluten.
With little demon Hershey kisses.
Fall
in love with butter again.
Take, eat this cookie.
This is my body.
Savored as a prayer
in your mouth,
devoured with all your heart,
moist and chewy,
hot and round,
let it be a host
for the ravishing down-pour
of my love.
My breath is woven
out of your breath.
Your breath is woven
out of mine.
Strands of evanescent
pearl, each bead
a cluster of gazes
that have not yet
received their eyes.
The tapestry of stars,
a warp and woof
of seeing.
And you an undulation
of spider silk
from the pit of the belly
to the crown of the skull,
a filament of respiration
reeling in the moon.
Sacred kinesthesia,
braiding air
with light and song,
the gossamer
pull and release,
how you spin a body
from the ineffable loom
of stillness,
how you knit
your silence
into a garment of fire.
Mine out of yours,
yours of mine,
even God is woven
from our breath.
My belly refuses to obey. My patriarchal tongue colonizes my whole body. I have other organs who are anarchists. They throw bombs at the officers of my sacred story. Sometimes my heart is a pot-still of Irish whisky. All I can trust is the mud between my naked toes. And listen to the whisper of my knees. I bow down before an old cedar, and give up self-improvement. There is no me left to feel like a victim. Only the messy sweetness of grace, the incalculable unity of chaos. It all comes together when I abandon trying. Things don't fall apart, they fall in place.
Photo: took this in the Carbon River Rain Forest, Winter, Mt. Rainier
Merge with your doubt.
Drown in bewilderment.
Though non-existent, past and future
are too heavy to bear.
But take heart.
Every atom of bones and trees,
stones in the path,
eyes of ornamental owls
guarding the gates of the
abandoned sanatorium,
are filled with empty sky.
At home in loss,
you too are weightless.
Be a golden mountain
dancing in the void.
Ever moved by the stillness
of a Mother's breath,
fall into the orbit of your song,
that old favorite called,
'I Don't Know!'
Photo by Jim Graham, my homeland, Chester County PA
Every quark of gristlesings to a starabout some incomprehensibleconnectionbetween pain and beauty.Angels cocktheir heads, perplexedand ever so sweetlytroubledby the musicSomething about yourgravity and griefgives themcourage. They longto clothe themselves in bone,the very stuff thatweighs you downto this motherof bodies,the planet pulsingwith silver hair, sweet grass,empty parkbenches andlonely facesof dissolving froston maple leaves.All Gods yearnto fathom theopacity of your tears,and smother theirbrilliant soulsin dust.
Cistine Madonna Cherubs by Raphael
Sometimes when I've poked my stick too much and muddied up the water, the best thing to do is absolutely nothing, silently, until the stream clears.
To attain perfect clarity by not interfering is also action. Waves of stillness. Words full of quiet. To dance like a mountain on a cloud. These are the signs of the Witness.
Lie fallow, boldly decay, regenerate, take time. When I take time for time, I move in eternity. I hear ten thousand seeds of Spring singing in the silence of Samhain. Winter comes lovely like a bride, rummaging among my bones. Isis, Ishtar, Cybele, Anat, the Magdalene weeping at our tomb. Desolation is the field of the Mother.
Perhaps you hold great knowledge, great power. Perhaps you have become the "spiritual teacher." You no longer need the Beloved. You no longer need a morning and evening practice. You no longer need a lineage of wisdom to root you down in the ancient now.
But I do. I am a fool. I have dropped knowledge. I have dropped power. I thirst for the grace of the Beloved, who is deeper inside me than I am.
Pungency of the ruined gourd. Musk of the withered chrysanthemum. A dazed bee in a wild meadow turned gold, I scent fragrant nectar. Here is the secret, friend. The Beloved's grace is deeper than knowing, deeper than power, deeper inside than I am. It flows out of my heart, to seek my heart, to gather my heart, and guide my heart home.
Let my Sabbath nourish the earth.
What is the difference between a human breath and the breath of the Goddess?
Gratitude. Thanksgiving transmutes the air into an ocean of
Shakti.
The hollow of your nostril is the entrance to her grotto. On cool moist caverns
of your body are engraved the secret runes of her dance.
Beneath your tongue, nectar drops effervesce with the sound
of infinitesimal chimes.
A Spring breeze plays through the leaves and twigs of your alveoli.
In this garden of breaths is the kunj where Radha meets Krishna in a love
so pure it seems illicit to all who are not Gopis, or playmates of the groom.
And deep in the shadows of that kunj is a portal made of resonance,
where you pass into the name of Shambho, to disappear.
The black hole of swirling stillness at the galactic core of every atom
is the mouth of prayer.
What else can you do but fall into that spiral well of rubies, to become
a mere exhalation, tumbling down a staircase of crystal probabilities?
Follow the infernal passage, a thread of spider silk, until your gaze emerges
in the ruins of a desert palace. Use another eye to see beneath the veil.
You're in a city of thousand-fathomed temples encrusted in coral, at the bottom
of the breath-ocean, where reptiles made of amethyst sparkle with prana.
Surely, this is the night-breath you share with panthers, moth-wings,
mushrooms, snow, and worlds whose gravity has not yet kissed your body!
Don't be seduced by distances. All distance is a lie.
What were you looking
for?
Your own name engraved on scarlet petals in a blossom of astonishment,
as you receive a scorching kiss from the formless golden Sun.
Dear friend, the splendor without circumference is You. Your querulous gaze
emerges from the very orb of glory you’ve been seeking.
Whose voice is singing, “I thirst for the grace of a Being
who is deeper
within me than I? Yours, dear friend, yours...
The image of your own amazed face dazzles the mirror in your chest.
You marvel at feral constellations roaming the midnight of your amygdala.
As your veins breathe ancient rivers of blood, as your nerves
breathe quasars from the womb of time, as your lungs breathe
the unborn sky,
so your heart breathes God.
Whatever flows in and out, honor That.
Now a sunbeam pierces the bud. There is a cry of pain.
This
too is the name of the Goddess.
The bud opens, becomes a flower.
Yet the blossom does not
say, "It is my doing."
For the sake of the fragrance of devotion did Thou become I.
For the sake of the flavor of friendship did I become Thou.
_______________________________
Link : Hear an audio reading of this poem.
Photo: Underside of a cherry blossom by Dean Hueber.
This is not the end of the world, but the beginning. A time to do something New. Old ideologies, religions, political concepts of the left and right, dry up and fall like brittle leaves, all swept away, destroyed by a gentle breath of Presence.
You are not "shifting" into a new dimension, a new age, or a higher level of consciousness. You are dissolving all dimensions into one whole awareness, which cannot be divided into levels, planes, star-ages, or degrees of initiation. You must evaporate these illusions into energy itself. This is your real Dharma, your real Duty. It transforms the earth.
Such alchemy does not happen in time. The effortless sinking of Presence into deeper Presence has no duration. To awaken is to discover that the transformation has always already happened. It happened before the beginning, in the un-created core of this Ancient Now.
Is there an I who left Om at the age of One to finally arrive where I Am? Was there a journey? Simply turn from your fearful angry mind to the space between your thoughts, which is the space between the stars, which is the radiant clarity of an open heart. Then let the whole creation burst from that cornucopia of emptiness.
Root down in the hollow of your seed, be naked, drop every garment of belief. Let go of your hope and your story. Relax into the divine darkness of uncertainty, the wound of not knowing. Then the glory of ten billion suns will blossom from the stillness between your heartbeats.
Miracles happen in the field of the effortless. Repose in the ayin soph, the diamond point of no-thing, where exhalation ends and inhalation begins. This is the glowing dimension-less bindhu, the seed of the wild flower of grace, just an inch or two in front of your chest.
Breathe down into That, and for one eternal instant be breathless. Galaxies whirl out of this space. It is the loam of stars. Here, the earth is refreshed and recreated. Come and see for yourself. Bring all your relations.Mandala by dear friend, Rashani Réa, from the book we made together called, "The Fire Of Darkness: What Burned Me Away Completely, I Became" (See books below)
I got drunkon the ginof subtraction.From every creatureI deducted your name.From your nameI subtracted my breath.The remainderwas nectar.Then I took awaythe one who tasted it.I think I may have subtractedloss itself.Now there is onlya fragrance of poppies,a forest the colorof blood, the greenof parrot shouts,the silver of glisteningtoads, evocativeof death not by violencebut beauty.I subtracted the veilbetween worlds.What remains isthe entangled chaosof my astonishment.Pay attention.The Beloved is whispering,“Loss will teach you
everything.”Photo by Laurent Berthier