Uradiance

Just for a moment, drop your opinions. The world will survive without them for a little while. This is a spiritual practice, is it not? Drop your opinions and feel the freedom, the ineffable clarity, the boundless expansion. Do this not just for yourself, but for the whole entangled field of consciousness. Even a moment of inward silence is of great service to humanity.

 

  Wake in the whisperless prayer of listening. Out in the blossoming plum a sparrow breaks her vigil to praise sunbeams unborn, unfallen. April morning mind hollow, free from yesterday. This could be the last morning, a crack in the glass of singing. What would you do? Go barefoot into the garden. Recognize the gardener by his garment of silence. When you touch the hem of his shadow, and he demurs, don’t believe his gesture: cling! Yearning turns darkness bright. That which bruises must be alive. Secret wine from his gashes. Ease out of pain into something more fragrant, the swollen lily of the present moment, exposing her cup of golden dust. Now the God in the sparrow's heart sees you. On tremulous strings the music rises to your throat from a throbbing hollow in your rib cage. No words, only the instrument of your body, floating on its river of distant stars. What would the stars say? What would your lyric be if your breath turned to sod, and all yo...

 "Be a wanderer." ~Jesus, Gnostic Gospel of Thomas "The grail knights thought it a disgrace to quest in a group. So each entered the forest where there was no path, and where it was darkest." ~ La Queste del Saint Graal , 13th C.  Up until the age of seven, I wandered. Then I began to buy the propaganda of my school. The teachers insisted that if I wanted to grow up I had better get life all figured out, and learn to be a success . Of course, they were just passing along to the next generation their own fear of failure. Took me the next half century to realize that they were pretending. Absolutely every adult I met was pretending to know. Over the years I too pretended, and played the role of knower . So that I could be a successful do-er. Now I know that I don't know. And the more I don't know, I know who I am. And the more I am, I do. Because it is not the do-er who does , but Being. If you've found the true path, congratulations: please ...

Christ all eyes and then dissolve. Dissolve the soul into the body, the body in the soul. Everything is made out of wonder. In the marrow of emptiness is a diamond light that precipitates from no-thing - the pith of each atom in your flesh. Those who make a distinction between transcendence and embodiment are like infants crying for milk. Now stop crying and drink. The silence of I, the silence of Thou: exactly the same. A resounding absence of word or thought, yet containing the intimate mystery of relationship. This silence is your Being, but because it is boundless, there is always more of it to become, to dissolve into, and thus a perpetual otherness in the depth of your heart. Painting, Mary Magdalene by George De La Tour

If you knew how inconceivably near the moon is to this pearl of silence between your eyebrows, threaded by a finespun sparkling dew of pure attention; If you knew how many elixirs of love you imbibed with your last inhalation, how many potions of healing you'll pour out through your next astounded sigh of praise; you would awaken before dawn to spend the darkest hour in radiant stillness, simply caressing the earth and bathing the stars with this breath.

  She is a ribbon of moonlight rippling on still water. Is she the path, the saunterer, or the gleam inside this inhalation? She is a tall thin vase of spikenard saved for my burial, its round bottom nestled firmly in my hipbone, its lips unsealed, spilling stars from my skull, that other mouth of speechless praise. Her wisdom is the warmth of my blood. Her vision is a branch of plum buds blossoming in the darkness behind my eyes. She rises and falls inside my chest, ancestral breath who keeps resounding with a prophecy of silence. At my throat I wear her sky, an edgeless sapphire of burning emptiness. Her name means "tower of spices," bittersweet myrrh saved for my wedding. I was betrothed to her, and she to me, before we were two. She is the mother of this poem.

While it is still dark and the stars are still singing, listen, listen to this ancient breath, this ancient breath.   While it is still light and moth wings pulse on the rim of the lily, listen, listen to this ancient breath. At dawn and evening meditate, listen to the unborn light. Hear evening fall. Receive this ancient breath. At dawn and evening, meditate on the one who pours the Milky Way down your spine, this ancient breath. The one who comes at midnight on silent wings like the moon, like a hummingbird to the garden of your heart.   Beyond the far faint music of the galaxy, listen to the darkness, friend. Listen to the silence of this ancient breath.   Listen, cleanse your soul. Wake the sparkling grace of the present moment. Bow down, bow down to this ancient breath. Listen, listen with your whole body. Shatter your crown on the earth and spill a t...

  He would be 106 today. I still overflow with gratitude for the silent whisper of his gift, grace-fresh this morning as it was at my initiation, 55 years ago. When one is ripe, either with yearning or pain or both, the Guru enters your life to nudge your true nature awake. Then you taste the sweetness of what was always already here. The Self outshines all its shadows. The Guru doesn't give you a new philosophy or religion, but a direct experience of God in the radiance of your heart, nearer than breath, more intimate than thought. The Guru doesn't come to be your therapist or fortune teller, your surrogate mommy or daddy. The Guru has one sole purpose in your life: to pour the stars down your spine, and ignite the boundless splendor of pure consciousness. Happy birthday, ancient Friend.

A small group of us were sitting with Maharshi in 1972, marveling at how graceful meditation is. We asked him, "Who created the teaching that meditation requires effort, concentration, control?" Maharshi laughed and made up a little parable right on the spot: "The wave asked the sea: could I be like you? The sea replied: it's easy, just settle down!" So much harm has been done in every religion by the teaching of concentration, control, and effort to over-come the body with the mind. This obsession with spiritual effort stems from a sense that there is something wrong with me, an essential sinfulness, a journey I need to take, some distance between me and my source. But a wave does not need to go anywhere to merge with the sea. No distance ever exists between the wave and the water. At its peak the wave may appear to be an individual, but at its base, every wave is already the whole ocean. Therefore, no energy is required for a wave to return to...

Balthazar's legs were stiff. As his servant pressed the animal's powerful neck low to the moon-washed desert sand, the old philosopher slipped from his kneeling camel. More nimbly than their elder, Melchior and Gaspar dismounted without assistance. A porter led their camels to the palm grove for water as the three pilgrims spread their caftans for an hour's rest. They reclined in silence, the respite of a long night's journey. While traveling had constrained them into an acquaintance not unlike friendship, the three maintained that mutual aloofness native to men of rank. Until now, the three had known each other only as fellow, nay, even rival masters at the Academy in Baghdad. Old Balthazar was a Persian mathematician who had studied at the temple of Pythagoras in Italy. Having traveled the civilized world, even as far as Tibet, he was lauded as the great Magus of his generation. Leaving hundreds of disciples at the Academy, he had departed with two fellow...

No need for a pilgrimage to Machu Picchu, or a hike on your knees to the Black Virgin of Rocomador. Just become empty and grow full. You are the path. You will not find Her at the source of the Amazon, or a snow peak lost in clouds on Mount Meru. Traveling Eastward toward the dawn will get you no closer to the sun. You need to float down more intimate rivers, the current of this inhalation deep into the ancient forest of your alveoli, where the Mother of waters dwells in a hidden valley between your nipples. Cancel your plans for the journey. Stay Om and sink into your marrow, that quicksand full of lost gold. Explore 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 in his cavern of crystal harps singing with no sound, that one still sleepless diamond eye swirling with all the stars. ...

Give me a winding path          that leads nowhere       and I'll follow. Give me the straight and narrow            that points right at the goal     and 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           ...