For
a little while each morning and evening, I vow to let go of all doing, all
thinking, and reconnect with the Silence of pure Being. Let go of effort, concentration,
and repetition. Let go of tradition and expectation. Let go of every thing and
plunge into thingless Silence, where I am no longer a creature, for I have come Om
to the uncreated. Where I am not an object, but the subject, and there is no noun after the verb, To Be. The pilgrim returns to the beginning of his journey, and it is
the end. I no longer look for that place, I look from that place.
I see the whole cosmos happening around me. But is not who I am, I am
the seer. I see the whole cosmos happening within me. It is not who
I am, I am the seer. In my mind I see the chaos of 10,000 thoughts, the residue of
10,000 lifetimes. It is not who I am, I am the seer. Can. In my body I
see trillions upon trillions of sparkling atoms dancing through stillness. It is not who I am, I am the seer. Let mind, body, moon and stars
be the dance. It is not who I am, I am the seer, at the center of the
whirled. And all that I call "creation" is an afterimage in a silent bolt of
lightning up my spine, flashing for an instant that stretches from one end of
eternity to another.
At the tip of my sternum, just beneath my heart and just above my diaphragm, is a point that looks like a sword. Anatomist call it the xiphoid process, or xiphosternum, from the Greek "xiphos," meaning sword. The sword points downward into the gentle wound-like indentation at the center of my chest. Then let this breath be a soft gentle sword piercing my heart, plunging down into this vulnerable hollow place. Here, in this wounded valley, at the end of the
exhalation, I let go of I, and plant the seed of Christ. An instantaneous bindhu of annihilation. Out of that seed, a new breath springs up like a dragon made of fire.
Jesus said, "Ameen Ameen, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the
ground and dies, it remains only a seed; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Whoever clings to his life will lose it, but whoever looses his life will keep
it for eternity" (John 12). He was not preaching a theology, but describing sadhana,
spiritual practice. His was witnessing the prayer of the heart, where I die through this exhalation, and rise again to eternal life in the next inhalation. The word for “breath” and the word
for “Spirit” are exactly the same word in Biblical languages. The sacrament of breathing
is the priestly work of the Spirit in the temple of the body.
The
sword of the Spirit does er gentle lethal work when awareness descends from the mind
into the heart, piercing even through the heart
into the vale of tears at the center of my body, where thought dissolves. Through the perishing of "me," silence blossoms. Death for the mind, but for the soul, life. The silence so vast, but
the portal to it an infinitesimal bindhu between breathing out and in.
If
I would truly live, this mind and every tender affection must root down
in the unmoving, the uncreated, the unknowable. Where is the
infinitesimal wound that leads to the Infinite? Here, at the tip of the blade, in
the center of my chest. Am I called to live without thoughts or feelings? Certainly not. But I am called to plant my thoughts and
feelings in the ground of Being, which is divine silence. Rooted in Silence, I am not merely human, but a human Being. Is this a "teaching"? Very well then, let it be the simplest teaching, for
I am the most foolish of teachers. Here is the foolishness I teach.
A Goddess guides you into your own body. She bears a mighty sword, yet
the sword is your own breath. She melts your sternum into a pillar of moonlight, a tower of myrrh. She
whirled the galaxies into their dance at the dawn of creation. She was the first mover in the stillness of God. Yet now she comes to you as your comforter, nearer to your heart than your soul. Some have called her Shakti, Shekinah, Ruuh, Sophia, the Bride of Christ. But, her touch is more tender than any name.
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