Uradiance

  When you deeply rest in Being, your own presence is your dearest friend. Breathe from this place. Fall asleep here. Create a new earth from stillness.

  In a season of lengthening shadows, let us not just pray for peace, but breathe peace. Breathe peace from the heart of Being. Let us not resist the dark, but embrace it with our groundless depth. I say again, darkness is not the opposite of light, darkness is the womb of light. Be a golden leaf. As you pass through a thin sacred threshold of Samhain, remember that in ancient Eire this holy time was the New Year, the beginning. Time to bathe the dead in tears of Presence, and bear back the bones of your Autumn ancestors into seeds of Spring. A time for weeping, and a time for laughter. But between, and ever between, a season of silence. Painting by Henriette Wyeth

Did Jesus save the world from war and pain? Did Buddha save the world from lust and exploitation? Did Krishna? Did the Prophet? Of course they didn't. And neither can you. In fact, Krishna appeared right before the dawn of Kali Yuga. Just after he departed, this world descended into an age of chaos and destruction. The great avatars and spiritual masters do not come to save the world. They come to awaken You. You came into this world alone. You will leave this world alone. And when you awaken from the dream of your mind, you will awaken alone. So you can stop trying to be a bodhisattva. If you touch the hearts of two or three other people along your way, and help them awaken, that is very good work. But it will happen without trying. Your right hand won't know what your left hand is doing. For Jesus didn't say, "Wherever two or three million are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." He never played the numbers game. He said, "Wherever j...

 

"You will find more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you can never learn from schoolmasters." ~St. Bernard of Clairvaux Don't veer from the razor's edge. The grit of your bondage is the gravel path to liberation. In slivers of sensation, you are the unwounded witness. Be instantly enlightened through whatever you deeply observe. Pass through frog croak, wand of fading lavender, Autumn musk of deflated tomato in the ruined garden. The portal to the miraculous is this toadstool. The merest soundsmell touchtaste glitterblink is your Guru's countenance. Whatever jagged fringe appears before you this very instant is the Mandala of Supreme Awakening. If you're old enough, read the purple hieroglyphs carved on the back of your hand. Love glows from husks. Be starlight through a brittle leaf, a quivering nipple of blue chanterelle.   Notice how ferns remember to bow, how your naked attention illumines a rotted hollow squash, the broke...

  An empty circle of flying white drawn in the sky by no master of the brush. Bright hole in blackness. A silent gong that awakens me at 4 a.m. with a sound that comes from the hollow in my bones. Explain to me again because I am very thick and stupid how your being angry and depressed about the world improves it. Explain to me again because I am very thick and stupid how taking sides in the conflict solves it. Explain to me again because I am very thick and stupid how blaming one tribe while absolving another brings clarity and understanding. An empty circle of flying white drawn in the sky by no master of the brush. Bright hole in blackness. Explain to me again why it must not be each one of us who takes responsibility for creating the world and shining over it.

This is my spiritual discipline. I give myself permission to eat whatever is delicious. I act my age: not even one moment old. I vow to dance with the perfect stranger. Every morning I breathe away the dream and gaze inside, smiling at the radiant mirror of my heart. Then I go out in the world to embrace my seven billion lovers, satisfying each one with a feast of light, a taste of wine from the barrel of foolishness. Painting by Karen Fleschler

We do not move from here to there. We do not grow from this into that. Ever at rest in the changeless chaos of love, we only awaken, seven billion minds dissolving in one tear which we call the heart, this drop without a center. After the dream we find no vital distinction between a petal and its fragrance, the grape skin and its nectar, moldering tar of our ancestor's body and a fiery diadem. This is the law. Things become more precious when they get crushed. The bones of the earth are the bones of heaven. The 'O' of your prayer has no circumference. Therefore it is perfectly  silent. Water color by Andrew Wyeth

Who led us to believe we must dissolve our "separateness," destroy our little "i," and merge with a flatline of "non-duality?" That's a lot of work! It's the work of the mind, chewing on itself, creating concepts. "Separateness" is a concept. "Non-duality" is a concept. The divine Mother's ocean of love is not like the intellect of man. We can drop this mind into the starry night of the heart. When the little droplet of "i" falls into the ocean of her love, it won't dissolve into impersonal nothingness. Rather, the ocean will become the drop. Ah, my whole physiology thrills to say it! "As the drop merges with the ocean, the ocean merges with the drop." Is this not a mother's nature? Your mother became your body. She infused every particle of you, every breath of you. She poured her ocean of love into the droplet of You, and made your identity hers, and gave you her name. So pray, meditate, surrend...

Be an angel of gravity. Dance like a mountain on a cloud. There is nothing to understand. You are absolved from trying to figure it all out. How do you free your heart for love? Hug the opposites. They are just grains of pure space. Don't be so heavy. The New Land is one step away, a single breath. Now wiggle your toes. You are already there at the end of the path, the beginning.

Let Autumn come. Thin down, hollow out. Give away your fruit to wanderers. The world is ripple and reflection on the wet black stillness of what cannot be known. Things that really matter slip between your thoughts, dark energy, almost everything.   Photo by my daughter Abby

Blessings to all as we begin this sacred feast of Navratri, the 'Nine Nights' of Mother Divine.  May the rains come. In the Vedic calendar, this is the most sacred time of year. When we feel inner discord and disharmony, the discord reflects into our world. We feel anxiety and anger and despair, and think it is the world that arouses those feelings in us. We mistake the effect for the cause. But the truth to which humanity must awaken is this: "Yatha drishti, tatha srishti": as your mind is, so your world appears. We need to begin by healing ourselves in order to heal our world. How can I do this myself, when I myself am the problem? I need the grace of Mother Divine, the love of God, and the help of my Teacher for this work of healing and transformation. I am a brittle leaf without the life-giving sap of the Friend. That is why on this day I pray to Her: Heal and purify us, Mother Shakti. Inspire us with songs from the trembling silence of your vina, Mo...

  Rest your story in the wordless heart. A blue moth settles on the unburst thistle pod, a blackbird  on the quivering cattail, this exhalation settling in the fragrant petals of your next breath, down where the pollen is. Rest your story here, in quivering silence. Photo by Laurent Berthier

There are angels all around us. But we do not see them. They have bodies but we do not see them. We do not see them because they are Persons. Instead, we see blackness or whiteness. We see man or woman, gay or straight, colonial, indigenous, liberal, conservative. We see muslim or jew. But we do not see you, the angel, the human, the one who is breathing in this body, this moment, this breath. We do not see the Person  because we are afraid.   Photo from the film, Schindler's List

Prepare for the end of time. Practice the mysterious art of bewilderment. Spread translucent tear-stained wings and pulsate at a frequency so fast it stills you. This is how you rise into the kingdom of the hummingbird, far above the ministry of fear. This is how you enter the holographic quantum crystal of the present moment, a sphere of gratitude where there is no entropy, no mind-leak into past and future, which are only thoughts. Here's the secret: tell everyone! The end of time is this breath. Have you shattered the ampule of your wound-fragrance? Somewhere in these petals of fire there is nectar for the one who is not afraid of drowning. Dwell in the uncertain and call it possibility. Drink from the unknown and call it wine. Savor the softest inhalation through your broken heart and call it bread. This feast is better than a thousand right answers.

I am not a tribe, I am not a color, I am not a gender or a class. I am a Person. And there will never be another I in all the fallen uncreated stars. No genus contains me. No species explains me. I am all energy and every byte of information configured in one instant fragile twist of the kaleidoscope, the sparkle of a perishing mosaic in the crystal pandemonium of the Goddess. Earth did not need another Buddha. Earth did not need another Jesus. She needed Me. My piercing love note shall not be likened or heard again. A diamond of dew on Indra’s web reflecting every entangled jewel as each reflects the All-woven, I globe the cosmos in a drop, encircling the sea. I am a singularity. I am billions, a hologram of human faces, yours in mine, as mine in yours. We are each other’s eyes. We both embody paradise enfolding super-clustered intergalactic fire, incorporating gemstone, flower, fungal spore, each pilgrim thing of fo...

Earth shall not be saved by electing this political party instead of that one. Earth shall not be saved by erasing our borders or defending them. Earth shall not be saved by defining yourself as a color, or tracing your ever-dissolving name on the gender-fluid spectrum between “girl” and “boy.” Earth shall not be saved by the Om chant or the synchronized smile of ten million yoginis. Earth shall not be saved by an army of Baptists shouldering the old rugged cross. By the white-robed avatar returning in a cloud of glory, by the rose-garlanded zoom guru, by the silk-soft voice on the guided meditation app, Earth shall not be saved. Earth shall not be saved by the electric car. Earth shall not be saved by eating hot dogs made of algae and kale. Earth shall not be saved by the almighty State shepherding citizens into high-rise sheep-folds, each guaranteed an income without working, each entitled to a rent-free apartment exactly like everyone else’s. Earth shall not be sa...