Uradiance: Lila

A dear dear friend and Anam Cara passed suddenly away a few days ago. He was not only my best friend in college, but the mentor who guided me to meditation, who kept me on the path, and who inspired me to go with him to a teacher training course in meditation. Now suddenly, he is gone. I haven't seen him for years, though we were occasionally in touch at important times.

I feel so close to him again. I feel his Presence in the middle of the night. I pray for him, and then slip deeper into silence, and I am praying to him, and even deeper, I am praying in him, and he in me, and we are in the place called the Heart, where we've all met before we breathed, and will meet again, all of us as One, and One in all.

Effortlessly he drew me into the place which Christian mystics call “the cloud of witnesses,” and “the communion of saints,” where our mutual shining yet individuated consciousness goes to rest: and play. Here, for a few moments, he and I had quite a conversation. Of course, conversation there is beyond words, and a thousand pages of theology happens in the briefest moment. This is the place where mind dissolves into intuition, intuition dissolves into silence, and from that silence God is ever whispering, “Let there be light,” and the Word-world is born.

We met in a heavenly kingdom that was just a bubble bursting on the foamy surface of this Silence. Of course, our world is but a bubble bursting there as well. The conversation lasted only a moment in eternity, but if I transcribe it into words it will seem much longer...

“Hello, dear Friend!” I said. All he could do was smile. Yet his whole discourse was contained soundlessly in that smile, which was not a mere expression on his face but an energy flowing through creation. I feel that smile now as I am telling you this. It is a smile that awakens bliss in every nerve, every cell down through my chest and belly. Each cell in my body smiles his smile. The warmth of the April sun melts my solar plexus, even though it is Winter in this world. And through his smile, he silently says everything...

“Yes, Freddy, this is it! As you can see, there is nothing but joy here! And this joy is our work.”

“But it all seems so relaxed, so easeful here, free from every big deal, every great significance, and every need to Do. It feels like an ocean of Being where all Becoming just happens without any task as all!”

He laughed and laughed, with the laugh of our beloved Teacher, which I recognized immediately. I asked, “Is he here with you?”

“Of course he is! Not only with me, but in me, and I in him. There is no difference here, no distance here, yet there is a constant churning of melody, harmony, and rainbow wings that open from every infinitesimal dot in space. And the chords of time keep sounding, resolving into greater and deeper harmonies, swirling splays of galactic light throughout the vast incomprehensible Silence. And this is our work, the work of Beauty.

"Some of us are musicians. Our instruments are the physiologies of those who are still in their earthly bodies. Some of us are artists. Our palette is the brain and the eye and the pineal gland of earthly painters, who imagine the colors we send them. Some are poets, whispering phrases into the ears of earthly listeners, who feel an irresistible urge to write them down and sing them to their paramours, wondering where the words come from. Some of us are scientists inventing the mathematics of yet-to-be-discovered crystal elements in the periodic table, which shall be used to build a new earth with a more celestial kind of matter. And we murmur these equations to the day-dreaming scientists in your world, through the language of pure mathematics. And some of us are just lovers, wandering through the sad cities of the earth, uplifting the fallen with the merest gaze, pouring the nectar of heaven out of our eyes like a libation into the soil.”

“And this is your work?”

“Yes, yet nothing is done. It all just happens in stillness. But the stillness is so ecstatic that it breathes, it becomes, it creates. You on earth don’t realize that our stillness isn’t far away; it isn't separate from your own bodies. It is the very stillness between your heartbeats, and you can enter our stillness and hug your dearest departed friends at any moment you turn within.”

“So for you there is nothing to do, yet there is eternal work?”

“Yes, exactly! Our Master taught us this, did he not? And he gave us the meditation practice to make this eternal work of Being a lived experience. Did he not say, again and again, ‘I teach you to accomplish more by doing less, until you accomplish everything with no effort at all.’ "

"Certainly I remember, Friend. I can still hear his words ringing in my heart, and not with gravity, but laughter!"

"How do you pray?” he suddenly asked.

“How do I pray?”

“Yes, how do you manifest your desire?”

“How do I manifest?”

“Yes, how do you accomplish your work without doing?”

“I don’t know!”

“Yes, just so! By not knowing! Don’t even think of what you need, what you desire, what you must manifest in your life; whether it is financial, or political, or aesthetic, or whether it is the ideal relationship you seek with a partner. Don’t try to manifest any of it. Just repose in the Un-manifest, this is the secret. Repose in the Un-known.

"Rest in the silence of God, at the very center of your heart. Rest in the stillness between an exhalation and an inhalation. For God already knows what you need before you ask. Resting in his silence will allow the silence to manifest every-thing you need from no-thing, the fullest abundance from emptiness, and the fiercest act of victory from the peace that is already here. To become, from Being, the unimaginable future from Presence."

O dear Friend, if I tell them this, they'll imagine it is so very deep, so mystical, so serious. But it is actually weightless, breathless joy, divine play."

"And so it is. Our eternal work is playfulness. Our burden is light. Tell them not to try so hard. Tell them not to worry so much. Tell them to play."