Layam

 

"Layam vraja: Dissolve now!" ~Ashtavakra Gita

Why not dissolve this quest for certainty, for order, for a 'path'? Dissolve into a blessed chaos of electrons, which is truly all we are. And what if the All of the cosmos is encircled by every electron?

Being is enough. Being is miraculous. Being is an ever-perishing and rebirthing Radiance.

Vanish into that Radiance without imposing any concept, any story, any past upon it. This is causeless ecstasy.

At the deepest order of resolution, there is no resolution. There is no order. There is only annihilation, making room, restoring emptiness. This is the fructifying darkness.

The apparently solid world rests in groundless dissolution. This is “the fall of man” into bliss.

The Source is an all-pervading vacuum, where quantum particles instantaneously appear and disappear on a tumbling ocean of formlessness, as atoms, stars, mountains, tulips, human faces, in the warp and woof of the void.

For what "purpose" do these quanta disappear and re-appear each instant? To dance. To play. This is Lila-Shakti. There is no continuity, no incremental "progress." Each moment is Omega, the final end, a radical upheaval that springs from the catastrophic dissolution of the previous moment. This is only lasting condition: Wonder.

"Destiny" and "evolution" are mere thoughts, veils in which we cloak the causeless ineffable explosion of Now. We superimpose our ideas of order, history, or a "divine plan" upon the wild granular discontinuous void. But when we have the courage to relinquish notions and concepts notions, we get dazzled by a fierce onslaught of compassion.

The messy blessed anarchy of creation spills from the womb of divine darkness for no other reason but loving-kindness.

You don't need to conceptualize this mad message with your mind, because there is no mind. Mind is just a momentary fire-dance of axons in your brain and spinal cord: the Burning Bush. Moses gazed into the sparkling tree of his own nervous system, and heard the voice of God. So can you. Just listen with your photons.

There is no way to understand because there is nothing under you to stand on. Feel the blessing of groundlessness. Taste it as communion wine. Hear it fermenting in silence as a carillon of bees drowning in the soma juice of your synaptic blossoms.

This sound is the source of all mantras, all sutras, the origin of the Vedas and the Torah. It is God's Word, the echo of the big bang in each neutrino of your body.

The subtle interior sound has been called "shabda" in Yogic tradition, "the still small voice within" in the West. This familiar phrase was taken from Elijah's experience of God's voice on Mount Horeb, recounted in 1 Kings, chapter 19.

In the Biblical Hebrew, Elijah hears the voice as “qol d’mumah daqah.” Literally this does not translate as "still small voice," but as “sound of finely ground silence,” which is a precise description of energy at the quantum level, where the vacuum fluctuates in waves, vibrations of no-thing bubbling up into sub-nuclear particles.

You too are immersed in this juicy mess of music. It is your flesh. Your body has no edges. Who are you? You are the ineluctable rose of the cosmos appearing and perishing in this human form. You are what Danté beheld in the final canto, where vision itself dissolves into God.

No, you cannot possibly comprehend your own lethal explosion of sweetness. You must just surrender. Surrender is dying unto eternal life. This is power.

I will prove it to you by pointing to a wild forget-me-not in your back yard, if you leave the borders of your garden ragged and unharvested. Or perhaps I will show you the morning glory covered in dew drops, growing over the rusty spokes of an abandoned bicycle.

A Deeper Work

 

You may be a strong voice proclaiming your truth to the world. You may be a do-er of weighty deeds. You may gather many followers. Or you may go about your daily tasks in blessed obscurity, quietly holding space for God. Wherever you go, whatever thread-weaving or bread-baking of bread or stroking of brow your hand might engage in, know that you can be part of a deeper work. Your very Being on earth is a portal to the vast silence, the ineffable peace, the boundless delight of God, who cannot begin to conceive of a universe without your presence. Has the Creator not dissolved a grain of you in the heart of every creature? Has the Spirit not mingled her motherhood in your breath?

Art by Elżbieta Stawińska, who is reviving the ancient art of Orthodox icon painting.

Vocation

When I discovered

the emerald in my chest

I gave up every calling,

wealth, adventure, fame,

just to follow this menial

vocation: I became

a Jewel Polisher.
With the tincture of awareness,
I moisten the soft ragged cloth

of this breath, burnishing

my grail until

aloneness becomes wine.

I drink, and there is plenty.

Let me ever be quenched

by my own thirst.
And when I pray without words,
let the earth, not heaven, answer

with a whisper of wildernesss,

meadow and forest, a wreathe

of insouciant cloud

on the sober mountain,
incandescent blackness of a panther’s eye

in the face of the unhoused stranger,
lips of the lover who lies beside me,

all entangled in the misty nimbus

of my breathing.
Now consider that you also

might mother a new creation

just through this work
of being still.

Winter's Silence

We want some fiercer love
that sears the lover,
some terrible sweetness
that burns a hole in God,
zeroing down the beloved.
Our fire needs
a sepulcher of blackness,
a cauldron for the worlds
that circle and spill over.
It cold be a vulva or a gash.
Between seasons,
we singe our stitches,
weave a silvery veil
of ice and thaw,
gowning our nakedness
in waves of ambiguity.
Put it on, take it off.
Melt edges, get clear.
Drop the sprouting
germ of despair
into the softest furrow,
the place you mistook
for a wound.
Now the snow-kissed
gender-fluid crocus
unfolds purple lips,
abandoning all distinction
between pain and beauty.
At your core is the brilliant
bulb of annihilation.
Therefore, do not reveal
the whole glory.
Keep a secret.
Cradled by night,
be a new moon.
It is enough to know
that the path is simply resting
the mind in the heart.
Winter's silence is the Mother
of all creatures that break open
and swirl up in green fire.

Art by Wendy Andrew

Shabbat

 

Just for an hour 

on a Spring morning,

give up being right.

The earth won't disappear.

You will.

Not being of the world 

refreshes the meadow. 

Just for an hour,

or even the time 

it takes to breathe,

allow the golden

swamp cabbage,

the shy forest

trillium to fill

your absence with joy.

Be irrelevant.

Let the snowdrops

flower without you.

Puddle

Spend a little time today

getting lost.

Find your way

across the rain puddle

in your back yard.

Meet me on the shore.

We will build a shelter,

weave a hut,

thatch it with breathing.

Now take my hand and enter.

The journey is just beginning.

There is a mountain

of silence inside you.

Inside the mountain

a cave, even quieter,

where you will find the bones

you buried before 

you were conceived.

We've had other bodies, friend.

But no other song.

Listen.

The first song still 

echoes inside the bones,

inside the cave,

inside the mountain 

of silence.


Painting, Andrew Wyeth, 'Quaker Ladies,' 1956

Thoughts and Prayers

 

Please, 

no thoughts and prayers.

Just prayers without thoughts.

This is enough for now.

Everything falls into place,

yet there is no place

and the falling never stops.

Some call it stillness.

When the X-class

solar flare of God

irradiates each atom 

of your flesh with madness,

let it pass through you.

Don’t be so foolish

as to imagine 

you are anything but space.

Take no thought

for tomorrow.

Resist nothing and become 

as solid as the diamond 

on Buddha's crown.

But if you fight 

against the terrible  

sweet radiance of death,

you will be a hungry ghost.

Therefore learn to tell 

the difference between  

thoughts and prayers,

ease and dis-ease.

By the time you understand this,

it will be too late.

Just dive into the silence

where the question never arises.

That is the answer.



Image: mythologysource.com

Generations

My generation looked Eastward,

traveled to Rishikesh, Bangalore, Katmandu,

brought home gifts of qi gong,

mantra, pranayam.

Thank you.

This generation looks Southward,

journeys to Cusco, Volcano Poaz, Machu Picchu,

brings home gifts of ayahuasca,

forest song and Shaman's flute.

Thank you.

Where will the newborn pilgrims go

in their beautiful and terrible flesh?

Perhaps they'll wander Omward

into the heart,

bringing back the gifts of

this moment, this body, this breath.

Thank you.

Share

 

We share the same breath.

We share one dust and light.

One field expands

from your heart and mine.

The radiance in your chest

contains me.

The radiance in my chest

contains you.

All that divides us is a thought.

Why cling to a mirage?

No path led us here.

This meadow hums

with blush and blues,

impermanence of moth

and wild anemone ever

cross-pollinating in our

golden death, a circle 

with so many centers

God breaks into tears.

The song sparrow need not 

believe in anything.

Pavane of scarlet poppies

conquering the mind

of warrior and artist alike.

Fearless, soft, we share 

the same breath,

one dust and light.

The work of Beauty is 

to dance in stillness.

Her

 

Who is she? A tower of silence, a storehouse of myrrh, in the very core of your body. The distillate of pure compassion that remains when the trauma has been felt, savored, expressed, forgiven, and transmuted into wisdom.

Migdal, the tower. Miryam, the bittersweet ocean of myrrh. Cave-dark, carved from stone, a naked ascetic, yet gowned in the luxury of her own black hair, she held a candle under the alter. Yet she was the alter. That is how I first beheld her in the tiny chapel of the Prioré de la Madeleine. So humble, yet her mission? To awaken the modern world to Christ Consciousness.

Why did a Spirit-wind blow her rudderless boat to the shores of southern France, this grotto in Provence? To bring us the gift of the meditation that Jesus taught. The Gnostics called it "the sacrament of the Bridal Chamber": union of the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine in the heart.

Jesus and Magdalene are not mere lovers, but the undulation of love itself, Christos and Sophia, Shiva and Shakti, dancing in our subtle physiology, swirling up the vertebrae, to fill our flesh with the wisdom of the stars. Her tower is the spine, her myrrh the sweetness of this very inhalation. Her ocean the gift of Presence.

The Gnostic Gospel of Mary says, "He spoke to her in silence." Jesus did not give his deepest teachings to Peter and the apostles. He gave them to Mary in a more intimate non-verbal transmission of energy, the flow of Ruuh, the vibration of Spirit herself.

Mary's wisdom is so wild, so foolish, so simple, it need not be "taught," just stumbled on and fallen into. Be a pebble of gratitude dropped in her dark waters. She dwells under the words. Just let the vast blue sky of her gaze enter the space between your eyebrows. Her ineffable glance will say, "Don't worry. Don't be afraid. Beneath the noise and chaos of this world is a healing depth of unfathomable silence: it is your very Being." Her breath will take you there.

Photo: Prioré de la Madeleine, Bédoin
Art: Sue Ellen Parkinson

Ancient Now

All things being equal -

organizing 50,000 protesters

to march for justice,

knitting a wool blanket

for a baby,

building a sustainable

earth-friendly outhouse,

painting plum blossoms in April,

taking this breath

with outrageous delight

as if it is the first -

all things, yes, being equal

and every act a sacrament,

all forms one mirage

in the still blue sky

of pure attention,

I give up searching

for vast significance

and look for the great

in the small.

On my fingertip

the dissolving beauty

of innumerable suns

in a snowflake.

The galaxy we're lost in

balanced on a snail's back.

The silver-blue Pin Wheel Nebula,

170,000 light years across,

inscribed on a moth wing.

Etched in silence

with ancient stories,

a horoscope of frost

at my window,

foreshadowing the shape

of eternity.

Here is my faith.

At the moment of death

I loaf in summer grass.

A ladybug lands

on the back of my hand.

What does it mean?

It is too beautiful to mean.

My heart, which for decades

has been breaking,

finally pries itself open.

Bees gather on pungent weeds,

bent into arches.

I gaze

down the unfathomable nave

of a green cathedral

while a hummingbird

wearing her crown

of imperial rubies

gathers my last breath

into the silken whisper

of invisible wings

and carries me so gently,

not into the other world,

but deeper

into this one.

Immanent In Every Speck

 

Actual intelligence is the boundless clarity of pure consciousness, prior to the arising of thought. Thoughts are passing clouds in spacious awareness. A thought can be said to contain intelligence only to the degree that the blue sky can be seen through the cloud.

Most thought is spam. Wise is one who lets clouds of thought dissolve, resting as the sky, without an opinion about anything. Yet to those who cling to clouds of thought, this dweller in awareness appears to be a fool. For this reason scripture declares: "The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men." (1 Cor 1:25) 

 

Pure awareness transcends thinking. Yet pure awareness is immanent - the very stuff of creation. Every sub-nuclear particle of matter is a tremolo of pure awareness - the stuff our bodies are made of, the stuff the earth is made of, and the stuff of stars. 

 

Empty space is awake. The transcendent is immanent in each speck of dust. The progenitors of quantum physics understood this. Max Planck wrote, "I regard matter as derivative from consciousness." Sir James Jeans, a founder of quantum physics, wrote that this world is "a world created out of pure intelligence." Sir Arthur Eddington, president of the Royal Academy of Science (and also a Quaker) wrote that "the stuff of the world is mind-stuff." He also said, "all through the physical world runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness."

So matter is composed of what physicists call "fluctuations of the vacuum." What is the vacuum but pure intelligence? The greatest physicists of the modern age confirm the ancient wisdom of Vedanta. If you want to transform your world, transform your consciousness.

In an age of anxiety and information overload, there is no more healing discovery a human being can make than this: You are not your thoughts. You can bathe in the edgeless sapphire splendor of pure Being, to refresh your mind and energize every atom of your body. This is the gift of meditation.

Isn't It Time?

Lovers need not say, "I love you." Love is their gaze. Silence is not absence, but presence. Sink into the nameless silence where all mantras arise, where all gods are born, where all paths meet and dissolve in wonder. After you offer everything, just before the next breath, the world is recreated through the Wordless.

When I began the path of Love, I sought my fulfillment in an other: the Beloved, Jesus, Krishna, the Guru. But when my path dissolved into Love itself, I bore my own joy from my own molten core of golden, where a ceaseless melting bathes the world, the ancestors, and all the unborn in a secret fragrance, in waves of beauty, in tears of the Love I Am. Isn't it time to stop looking for this place, and start looking from this place?

Flower photo by Kristy Thompson

Complin

 

 

Rest ever
so gently now,
guided by a scent of myrrh
from the tower
of voluptuous silence
inside you.
I speak of the spiral
stairway of night
in the frail bones of your vertebrae

as you descend
to the sacred underworld

in your body.
Penetrate the dark
energy of absence,

and you will find
a mysterious sepulcher
in every stone,
hollow as your own throat,
a cup of Christ's blood
in the first tulip.
You’ll taste the bread
of higher worlds
in a plum bud.
The Spirit will flow from sod
into your foot soles,
consuming your flesh
with the green flame that
undulated in your marrow
before there was light.

Now gaze up

through your spine

at the radiance of a trillion stars.

Or are they reflections
in a deep well?
Stillness knows no distance,
no above, no below.

Let this breath be a kiss
on your belly.
You are the healing stranger

you've been praying for.

You are the ancient friend.

All will be well

through dreams and sleep
if your heart keeps
smoldering with love.