Uradiance

“The true wine is compassion...” ~Rumi It's a crazy vineyard. These grapes have already fermented on the vine. They don't even need to be crushed. Why get drunk like Jesus? Why get high like Rumi out in his field of scarlet poppies? Or Magdalene who sipped too many cocktails at her bridal shower, or Mira the tipsy paramour of Krishna? Each gets drunk in her own way. Savor your inebriation. One grape is a hologram containing all the stars, black holes, pulsars beyond the rim of light. It may be that you are only a drop in the sea, but when the drop falls back into the deep, the ocean gets its flavor and never tastes the same. For billions of years these swirling constellations groaned like patient beasts, bearing buckets of fire, prana, hydrocarbons and myrrh just to distill the unique bouquet of your breath. Pruners have labored like lovers over your vine. Would they do all that work ...

Blaming others impoverishes the heart; gratitude makes it rich. One gentle breath of thanksgiving dispels a storm of anger and fear. One silent beam of gratefulness falls from the stars through the soft spot in your crown, pours through your eyes, throat, chest, sacrum, sowing seeds of bliss in the dark loam below. Earth murmurs and awakens. Seven blossoms open on the trellis of your spine. The true feast is a flowering of forgiveness in the heart. Love is the harvest. Image by Étienne Colaud, b.1501

  "Energy is eternal delight" ~William Blake If your revolution does not begin by drowning in the ocean of delight, who will you liberate, and from what? If your neurons are not rivers of flame springing from wounds of delight, what use is thinking and believing? If your heart is not a tavern where chalices of wonder pour stars and planets back and forth to bring out their delightful bouquet, what teachings can you offer? You claim that sorrow makes you wise, but does your shadow not consist of pulverized suns, infinitesimal charmed quarks of joy? Do not speak until every particle of your tongue is Shivananda-Lahari, a wave of Shiva-bliss. Don't march for Peace or pontificate for Justice until your steps leave no footprints as you dance with a furious delight that granulates the rosary of your bones, churns your tears into the buttery spawn of rainbows, glitters your body in the hopeless bling of midnight, for love is never in the futu...

While I was sleeping, seven billion homeless wanderers came to my door (I know you were one of them) wanting a mug of yesterday's coffee and some toll house cookies my grandmother taught me how to bake. This is why I keep my heart ajar all through the Winter dark, a sliver of me unlocked to hear the shuffling socks of humanity come down the hall of my breathing (I know you took off your shoes when you came in) to rest a little while in my kitchen by the candle's flickering pool of loneliness until at last we're all gathered again, absently staring through widening rings of embryonic moonlight not yet shaped by uncertainty into ourselves. No need for me to say to you who wander uninvited here, "Welcome, rest and drink.” Some evening I may find your own leftovers warmed and ready for me in the small but generous kitchen of your own broken heart (have you baked them yet?) because I know our sleepless...

Gaté Gaté Pará Gaté Parasám Gaté Bodhi Svahá: 'Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Beyond Beyond, Hail the Go-er!' ~Buddhist Mantra of the Great Liberation   Spent thousands for enlightenment at the Ashram of Tantric Wine Tasting. Advanced flow-yoga at a seaside resort in Bali. Mantra to make me smile. Then, at Saturday's workshop, a Spiritual Teacher taught me that there is no teaching and nobody to teach it. The $1200 course fee included a complimentary green smoothie. I told my bank to cancel the check and wrote the Teacher a note: "Since there was Nothing to learn at your workshop and Nobody was the teacher, I am paying Nothing for what I received. Thank you."   I must be getting lazy. Lost my longing for exotic spiritual destinations. Just want to wander in the woods now, beyond my dilapidated fence, listening to raindrops on ferns, no dakinis sculpted on the walls of my mind cave, no Tibetan runes on the limestone cavern of my emptiness. And please, no more vanill...

In your next incarnation, I will be your breath. What is love? Since we met, I no longer pray that this be my last life on earth. Enlightenment is not to soar above the body but to dance through the aching, gaze through the years. It is not flesh that disappears in paradise, but this "I" who cannot see your face, or taste the dark matter of desire. Let me come back, reclaim this human energy and beam through your pupils, breathe up your spine, quiver your veins with my flame of exhalation, swelling two chests with the motion of one mind incarnate in a sigh. I want to undulate inside your breastbone, drip down your sternum, float on the rising falling tide of your belly. I want to be your gasp and whisper, build my hut in the valley of your bosom. The mud between our toes, the wattle of our bones, shall be home-making stuff. And if beyond the farthest galaxy there wander better stars, in some exile of perfection, let them fall ...

In the beginning, there was no difference between Earth and Paradise. We were all Elohim, just ordinary Gods. Out of pure consciousness, we imagined flesh,  sensuous undulation in the void, so that we might touch and dance, ou r soul-bodies vibrating through infinitesimal particles of chiaroscuro, a harmony of light and darkness, allowing each of us to manifest a unique glory. Did we dance in uncreated Light, or the light of creation? A meaningless distinction. Did we touch in divine Darkness, or the darkness of ignorance? Again, a meaningless distinction... At some point in eternity, one of us conceived of "something better," and started whining, complaining, "Is this all there is? We need to improve things around here." The notion of "something better" spread quickly until there were two groups of Gods, the Angels of the Ordinary and the Angels of Utopia. We gathered the Council of Elohim to discuss what to do. I must remind yo...

This is first verse of the Gospel of the Raindrop, written 50 years before the birth of Jesus by Krist’ Al- Fanaa, a Romani mystic from India who eventually settled in Provence to tend the mule that transported water barrels up to the cave of Mary Magdalene. Jesus himself kept a copy of this secret scroll sewn into his azure robe, hidden from the Pharisees, just as we keep it hidden today from the archons of our universities and political parties, who imprison us in their matrix of linear thinking. I had to access this scroll in the archives of my cerebellum, where it is inscribed as an ancient gypsy script in neuro-hieroglyphs, which are really quite easy to read when you gaze with compassion into the radiant crystal hollow of your pineal gland. Child of the Pathless Way, yearning to understanding the art of manifestation: here is a deeper skill. Learn to become the Unmanifest. Child of creation, yearning to make things appear, learn to disappear: then see what remains. The art...

The Guru is not a solitary human figure in a white robe and sandals. The Guru is a timeless stream of light, love and creativity, flowing through the centuries. Yet the entire lineage may be concentrated in this now, through a particular human form, who is just the messenger. The messenger will awaken the Guru within you, who flowers from your core, releasing the all-pervading fragrance of the Goddess Shakti. She is the Holy Spirit who takes the form of your breath, nourishing both mind and body with the energy of bliss. This is the process of initiation. It begins with a teacher who appears as the external Guru, and ends with the Self. While the external Guru is your Friend and Messenger, the true Guru is the awakened radiance of your deepest Self, who is more intimate to you than your mind, than your soul. This is Guru-tattva, the Guru principle within. Upon awakening, you know that the Guru is who you truly Are. Spirituality was a path from the Guru to your Self. And now you real...

"We are born only to bless, not to punish. This you should never forget. We should always see good things in others - very important. We are not in a position to criticize anyone. The existence of enemies means that our friendliness has not been sufficient enough." ~Maharishi

  Don’t tell me what you are against. Tell me   what you love. What you cherish with your whole body. Being against contracts the heart. Being for opens the chest like an orchid bending toward light. Now is the time to depart from the empire of despair and return to the palace of beauty, this human form. One sweet dark nerve in your solar plexus   radiates a thousand times more power than any opinion. Let this be your worship on a Sunday morning. For a little while, don’t be against anything. Only be for. Be for the sun on the table. Be for the late summer rose. Be for tears and the laughter of children. Wash the whole planet in the foolishness of God. A Poem from my book, 'Strangers & Pilgrims.'

In the end it doesn't matter, because it isn't matter. It is energy. It is consciousness. The world you fear and the world you savor are the worlds you project on the screen of your mind, the worlds you atomize and disperse into nothing the moment you fall asleep. Your best and worst dreams come true because you sculpt them from the marble of pure awareness. Why not just dissolve your heart in love? Then you won't need a dream. You won't need a story. You'll stop believing in your fairy tale of doom. You'll even stop believing in your hope, that glorious burden of a future that never comes. Why not just rest here? You are the pearl at the center of the rose. You are the darkness between the stars. You are the transparency between thoughts, the stillness between dying and birth. You are the sweet tangled garden of eternity between that breath and this one. Painting by Marney Ward