Uradiance: The Shaking

This is the time of the great shaking. One of the terrible blessings of Kali Yuga is that what may be shaken falls away, so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

Our personality is shaken. Our emotions, minds, and bodies are shaken. Now, thrown back into what is never shaken, we drink from the unquenchable wellspring of pure consciousness.

Tapping the nectar of hridayam, the silence of our heart's core, from there we sing the causeless music of the unstruck bell. This is not a time of crisis, but opportunity: an invitation to distinguish the changing from the unchanging.

Our spiritual journey is not to rise, but to fall. And fall not far. Simply descend through a breath of Grace from the mind to the heart. Let the Friend guide you to the hidden treasure of your Self.

We do not discover the Self in the angst of division and blame, but in the fragrance of unity. The scent of this flower is uniquely your own. Yet in your trembling core of stillness is the wedding of Shiva to Shakti, Jesus with the Magdalene, Lover and Beloved, the kiss of pistil and stamen. The bursting flower of the Self contains all others.

The most fruitful work we can do, is to Be. Being is our lost quintessence, the dark matter of creation. When we send ripples of our stillness through the field of Being, we touch every creature who Is. We bring them healing.

Here is a mystery. You are the bud whose cup contains the pollen of the human family, gathered round the ancestral fire in your chest. A divine sun with eight billion rays shines from the imperishable blue sky of your consciousness.

This is no mere intellectual concept, with a fancy Sanskrit name like "advaita," but a direct sensation of the heart, a piquant savor of the peace that transcends understanding. It is not attained by political strife, but by touching, opening our Seed, in the fallowed wilderness of meditation. Nor is it "spiritual by-passing," for here we enter the real, the ground, the changeless energy in the radiance of the body.

We need not rise to the occasion, but sink inward. The very root of the word "occasion" is the Latin "cado," which means "fall." Our grace is not ascension but collapse, the collapse of all our effort, all our seeking.

Enter the catastrophe without resistance, and touch Being. Rest beyond the conflict of opposites - "suffering" and "happiness," "activism" and "silence," "liberal" and "conservative" - for these are only concepts in the head that keep us paralyzed in polarity.

Return to the heart, where pain and beauty are one terrible sweet energy, before it has a name. Dissolving concepts and beliefs, the field of eternal Being remains, unshaken.

Dwell in the uncertain and call it possibility. Drink from the unknown and call it wine. Savor a breath of stillness through your broken places, and call it bread. This feast is far better than a thousand right answers.

I am afraid. I am unsure. Yet I Am. And just to Be, is to be a survivor. If only for a moment, let me place no noun after the verb. Here is what the stars are singing about. Here is what the womb of boundless night is whispering: "I Am." Here is courage. Here is the heart.