Uradiance

  "We seldom notice how each day is a holy place where the Eucharist of the ordinary happens." ~John O'Donahue Out beyond Christianity Mary Magdalene and Jesus are dancing in a garden where things grow wild, where things grow simply into what they are. Many paths lead here, not one, and the gates are always open. Over each there is a sign that says, “Wanderers Welcome.” Mary thinks Jesus is less like a god than a gardener, and he is. They drink the wine that turns these temples into bodies again. She reaches out to take his hand, and he lets her. There are three rules here: Yearn, Risk Everything, Connect. A poem from my book, 'Wounded Bud.' Photo from my back yard.

The Holy Trinity is love falling in love with love. Originally, it ws not a theological doctrine, but an experience in the depths of contemplative prayer. The Holy Trinity reveals relationship within the absolute . Yearning that moves in the motionless. Silence that tells a secret. Pure consciousness vibrates in waves of divine love. Through this vibration, love becomes its own object, its own Beloved, and beholds itself as an other, even though there is only One. Love embraces itself, and through that very embrace, Lover and Beloved dissolve back into the love from which they flowered. This dissolving is the joy of the Spirit. And this constant vibration of love in the heart of transcendental silence -Lover, Beloved, and the Joy of their union - is the same Trinity found in the heart of the Vedic tradition - Sat, Chit, Ananda - Being, Consciousness, Bliss. The Holy Trinity is the hidden seed of every relationship in creation. Wherever a subject beholds an object, whenever two meet in ...

Those who have dwelt in heaven, as have we all, know that a time comes in the life of each angelic soul, when God calls you aside, sits you down in a little office, and says, “We need to talk.” You say to yourself, “I knew this was too good to last.” “How is everything?” God asks. “Well, fine,” you answer. “just like always.” “I’m referring to this business of perfection. How’s it working out for you?” “Is there something wrong?” you ask. “Of course not,” God laughs. “How could there be anything wrong with perfection? I was just wondering if you might need a change.” You gulp. You knew this was coming. “I was just thinking,” God continues, “it might be time for…” You feel a furrowing in your brow. “Are you talking about… that place?” “I think you know what I’m talking about,” God says gently. “You’re ready.” “Please, no. Not ready yet, no.” “Admit it,” God says. “You’ve been getting a little bored here.” “Well, maybe a little. Because, you know, everything is perfect. But I haven...

Those who have never tasted the grace of living silence sometimes mistake it for negation, absence, even worse, suppression of the human voice. But suppression is the opposite of silence. Suppression is an inner scream. True silence is the flower at the heart of Being, where songs are born. Great music and poetry spring from the womb of silence. The intuitions of true science flash from a fountain of quietness. When thoughts dissolve in the Wordless, even the thought of "I," you can hear the canticle of the stars, galaxies falling up in a roar of beauty on gifted wings through ineffable depths of your soul. Silence is the call of God. Mural by Melozo da Forli

Let me no longer speak of Higher and Lower. Let me no longer speak of Oneness and duality. Let me no longer speak of the cosmic Self and the petty little ego. For my petty little ego is the playground of the devas. My personality is the jungle gym of the Goddess Kundalini. Let me no longer speak of East and West, left and right, enlightenment and ignorance. From now on I will speak  only of Lover and Beloved. Let this proclamation be a murmuring so soft your heart must be still  to listen. Don't shatter the rose window just to enjoy the sun. The white light and the dome of glass are both holy. Smell and taste and touch are golden temples of emptiness. The artist mixes God's radiant beams with umber dust to make a pigment for the invisible. Shiva sits very silent for his portrait, and Shakti loves to wear bling. The Lord who dwells beyond all forms is dancing in your body. Christ gets bored with himself alone. He longs for friendship. Without you the Buddha could feel no inti...

5 a.m. meditation . Blue sky fills every cell of flesh, each with its own sun. But it is all one sky. Beams of the heart don't stop at the outline of flesh, they penetrate other bodies, distant hills, every grass blade and moth wing. Do I have edges? No need to wonder what a star is. Trembling drop of neuro-peptide soma-juice on an axon tip, dripping into a synapse of pain or delight. Just like the dawn reflected in myriad puddles after a Spring rain, I am the mud, I am the sky, I am the sun. And what is the sun after all? A golden sound, God's resonant quietness. This Sabbath meditation only lasts for one vanishing instant of eternal radiance. Yet afterward, these words linger on the breath: "Silence is alive. Space is awake. Emptinesss is a sea of diamonds, the rippling transcendental light of the body. Merely to Be is to love." Photo by Erwin Buske, cherry blossoms at dawn, University of Washington

Whenever I touch my dogs I feel a shift in my nervous system, a shift not into the new age, but into the ancient Kingdom of the Fur.

Savor your breath, it is my Holy Spirit: this is the anointing of the Christ. While still on earth, taste each photon of your flesh as infinite light: this is my Resurrection. Welcome all into the radiance that shines from your chest: this is my Kingdom. Crucify my otherness, glorify me as your Self, for suffering is clinging to an ever-perishing outward form. Be risen from the tomb of the past into the garden of this moment. I taught this simple Gospel before entering eternal samadhi as your very Presence. What does it mean to say that I am risen, ascended to the right hand of God? It means, I have become the silent Witness within you. Feel my compassion as your own true nature. Have a joyful feast, share everything. Billions of years ago, this Easter feast began when the Breath of Creation offered the stars, the galaxies, garlands of galaxies, to her Beloved. In silent worship He witnessed her whirling, for He is the wonder and She is the dance. In her dance, Sh...

Sometimes the answer is vast Unknowing, sometimes the first apple bud.

Take this wound of wildness in your palm, Here is your mistake. Assuming that God is the cause when God is just as bewildered as the rose. She does not search for an answer, simply rides astonished waves, spiraling inward and outward on petals of purple fire, like yours. The difference? You don't dissolve in what you see. But God has fallen, tumbled into fungi and fern vein, sunk into a bulb of Spider Lily and confused her own diaphanous eye with a dragonfly wing. She whispers through your heart.   It is your own breath, saying, “ You are not here to suffer.   Learn from the bee. You are here to make honey,   to visit the dark sticky places in everything that blossoms.” Alberta Wild Rose by Elsie Baer

  O my soul, you breathe out  but forget to breathe in, speak, but do not listen, spend more than you earn, mostly on pain,   the entropy of your thoughts spinning the world from a hollow core where light escapes, never to come home. Waking at morning, you turn to your shadow instead of the sun. Why won't you, even for an instant, return to the beginning   where rainbow pinions enfold you, not God’s wings, but your own. Unfurl them, though  they sparkle with tears. Dry them in the golden morning of the Self. Choose merely grace, and you will discover that grace has already chosen you. Gaze through the tiniest violet and fall into the sky. Let your drunkenness be the harmony of the stars. What feels to the cup like pouring is stillness for the wine. You are not a grail any more. You are a fermented Spirit bubbling over the rim of your body. How could there be...

  Try any kindness. Remember how to ache and yearn. Become a leaf, kissing the asphalt. Be a stone in the meadow glistening with crystal fissures under a crescent moon, a nurse-log wounded with seedlings, a chrysalis on the ash twig throbbing with distant Spring. If someone with even an ember in their gaze opens the palm of true wanting, show them how their hollow hand already holds the night with all its weightless stars. Now plunge into the shadow of grace cast by the incandescent opal of your solitude. Hear the pulse of your own blood chanting Thou, Thou. Feel each atom as a tumult of patience awaiting the breath of the feral I Am, who comes to brush her silken fur against the glow of risen flesh inside your flesh. And what if your heart stops beating? She would be the midnight where a snuffed-out flame goes, infused with a fragrance of loss, the silence inside silence where prayers begin. She is nearer than aloneness. All I have ever wanted to share with you ...

Right now at 3 a.m. there are people who are alone and they choose to be alone and they feel the peace that flows through every budding twig and every chrysalis, threading the dark centers of distant galaxies into the rosary of breathing. Right now at 3:01 a.m. there are people who are alone and they do not wish to be alone and they are lonely. They are so alone. And yet you feel them in the night. You feel them all together somehow in the beauty of a Great Absence like a poised unfallen tear. My presence you feel, I yours. We are both listening. You can hear the silence of my breath, all breaths so near. And you wonder, are there seven billion solitudes or only one? Lotus by Bahman Farzad

  There is a stream flowing down from the mountain. It flows from your crown to your sacrum, where it spills into the earth, tasting of snow-melt and wonder. It's sound is the pine-needle breeze. It flows through the wilderness of your body, through the core of your soul. Inside you is a place where you are always outside, in a fresh mountain sky. Naked and deliciously lost in the wild, dive into the stream. It will cleanse and carry you. It is this breath.

There's a secret to this madness. Everything is spiritual. A toadstool is made out of God. This rock is the supreme Being, because it merely is. Seen close up, the wing of a housefly reveals a thousand verses of scripture. Even the fur on a golden terrier is infested with celestial beings, countless as the stars. Your inhalation is the most intimate name of Lady Wisdom, the whisper only lovers know. How does Mount Fuji float on a cloud? It all happens through miracle. The planets and suns are in free-fall, yet they're caught and held by some colossal stillness. Pilgrim, didn't you know? There's a secret to this madness. The radiance of your final destination illuminates your starting place, and the space between them is a single breath of grace. All that prevents your enlightenment is seeking it. Everything is spiritual. Now polish the earth with your footsteps like a grail. What does it mean to whirl? It means to give up the journey and dance in all directions at once...

The fragrance of grace is a gift, but you must make your own honey. Listen to a darker silence inside silence. This is the sugar of creation where emptiness blossoms. Yet if you make the slightest effort, it sours into philosophy. Throw away thinking. Let go of concentration. Sink into the heart. Pollen condenses on your forehead whether you breathe in or out. Don't do nothing, do even less. The bells in your spine will sing softer than orchids when your pistil and stamen kiss. This bee-hum is your name, wings vibrating invisibly. Buzzing lovers with sticky feet gather around you to glut themselves with the nectar of that sound, the wine of the Goddess Shakti. This is when you break the news and say, "The fragrance of grace is a gift, but you must make your own honey."   Photo by Aile Shebar

Silent moon over the wetlands, a frog solo... Suddenly, ten thousand songs! What one Spring peeper says can keep the stars up all night, awakening the rainbows embalmed in cocoons. Never doubt your solitude. Never doubt the beauty of your lonely voice.      

  Weather for March 10: Cherry blossoms, one falling. The planet trembles.      

The moon is always full three inches above my skull. The sun is always at its solstice a thumb's length in front of my heart. The constellations, those enormous beasts devouring darkness, gently graze and roam through the meadows of my bellybutton. I need no horoscope to cast my destiny: I Am destiny, just as the hollow sky contains both midnight and dawn. If you really need to predict what will become of this world, or where the path might lead you, draw near to these lips. Listen to the roaring sea of stillness between that breath and this one. Let there be only the annihilation of a kiss.   Painting by Andrew Wyeth

There is nothing artificial about your smile. It springs from a silent hollow where every tear is wrung, every grievance wailed, the last thick bitter drop  of anguish emptied to its pit. You've heard the final  echo of receding thunder from your old story. Now you have no choice but to breathe,  entangling a boundless  abstraction with threads  of embodied night .  The mystery of presence  is not for scholars. It transcends the intellect  as golden dawn outshines last evening's candle. This morning, friend, there is no darkness in your smile. Joy is all   you have left. Artist: 'Meditation' by William-Adolph Bougeureau

Ancient river of Presence, may I step into you now? May I wade in your stillness and be swept away? Ancient river drowning my breath in waters of silence, your ripples never the same, yet always one, river of unspeakable light hidden in darkness, may I meet the Beloved beside you? I will bring my friend to quench her lips in your wild current of sweetness. I will say, "Let us go down to the river, the ancient river of silence." I will say, "Come, meet me there, but not tomorrow! Do not wait until tomorrow!" Painting: Valley of the Yosemite by Albert Bierstadt

  You say you must learn to embrace your dark side. But why did you need to take sides? Darkness is not the absence of light. Darkness is the womb of light.   Be the sparkling vortex of creation, a thousand-armed whirler, spun from the blackness in your core. That is where the Mother is.   Let a swarthy Madonna be your breath. Then you won't need any rule but wonder. Just for a little while, sorrow and joy will drink from the same grail of tears -   the cup you've been holding too long   between your ribs, and polishing  too carefully. What was full  must spill and get chipped.   Mother Raven, with those fire-flecked  feathers, will carry no sun in her beak to dip in the chalice of your heart,  but a porcelain zero, the new moon, brimmed with the swirling   splendor of emptiness,   portal to the un...