Uradiance

Wiser than all the Vedas or a thousand Bibles is the silence between two breaths as inhalation-exhalation merge in the kingdom of stillness just above the crown where I guess I went to dream when I was a child, rising through my wounded fontanel into shimmering vulnerable night, ten million stars all bowing down - to whom, to whom? This space I hold for one eternal moment, then release a flow of luminous moon-stuff down my marrow, pouring those distant, promiscuous, effervescent, ringing stars into each cell, each bell, each grail of flesh to fill with sky, until each atom swells with its own galactic saltarello. Must be God, I guess, who spills through my sacrum, sowing a glitter of worlds in the soil to hold another moment of eternal emptiness in another kingdom, sacred, dark, the empire of ten million seeds, stirring, waking, drinking in the light of my prayer - to whom, to whom? Through the grace of my body, I guess, what is above, what is below are both the same kingdom, the ...

As you fall asleep tonight, do not take this inhalation for granted. Honor her like a royal guest. Make a spacious tent of your flesh, for She who scattered the galaxies and harvested all their clustered stars has come to dwell in the vineyard of your body. She will pour the Milky Way down your backbone, anointing you with spikenard from her fathomless bittersweet jar of whimsy. Let this exhalation guide you to a moonlit door. The key is silence. Step through. Follow her rainbow into the void where wings of astonishment will carry you from death to death. Your only hope is Presence. Fathom the sap. A scent of blossoms from the arbor under your ribs will guide you home, heart widened by a memory of stillness. Let her lure you down green corridors and pull you into the seed. If you won’t become hollow, how will you be filled with music? ...

  She who churned the darkness into galaxies has entered my chest. Let it never again be said, "I am not this body." Her whisper a river of fire, burning up scriptures, drowning ancient prayers in the current of a sigh. The Heart floats like a swan on still waters, waters of pure awareness, listening to the strings of her vina, fibers of finest time, threading ancestors to the unborn. Grace moves her fingers, the way a midnight breeze stirs jasmine petals, whose fragrance arouses unbearable longing. Why is beauty in such pain when the world is made of causeless joy? Selah. The kiss of awakening is no ordinary kiss, but a catastrophic flame, lit by the Eye who sees its own seeing. What silence does to a warbler’s breast at the touch of dawn. The hummingbird murmuring Torah. The Pleiades entangled in an earthworm. Music of the Goddess in my marrow-fat. No need for any Way when Spring arrives in the garden of my ...

  "I have called you servants... but now I call you friends." ~ Jesus Christianity begins and ends with a great simplicity: personal friendship with the Beloved. Like other religions, Christianity has been culturally appropriated by new age metaphysics, "ascended masters" of cosmic Christ-consciousness, a Westernized form of Advaita, and a secular program for social justice. These are all valid works, but they aren't distinctly Christian. The nectar of divine love flows into this twig from the vine of Christ. It is a direct transmission of life-energy: through Presence, not belief; through Being, not doing. No need for any doctrine, nor any concept of service. Moment by moment, the lover dynamically responds to the intimacy of the Beloved, encountering the face of a flower, a stranger, a homeless addict, a newborn child, without any agenda but to fall deeper in love. Service happens. Justice happens. Not through universal Buddhic compassio...

  "Kabir said: student, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath." Honor your breath as the Holy Spirit and She will honor your body as the garden where Jesus meets his Paramour and thorns become blossoms at dawn. Learn to age the wine of longing in the empty sepulcher of your chest. Pour yourself without a word into the cup of desolation. Use the yeast of opposites to bake your bread, letting it rise and get delicious in love's dark oven. The seed of beauty seems hollow at first. Then it overflows. You bathed in that boundless power before you breathed. Is it any different now? Let each inhalation surfeit you with the blackness of un-created joy. Let each exhalation cast you back into the sea of the unborn. Wait upon the Lord, not with a waiting in time, but with a perfect bow. Patience is the rapture of the humble. Pure devotion is just listening. Very soon, I promise, some invisible Lover will fill you with unspeakable light. Sculptu...

Become transparent to the breath of light. Photo by Kristy Thompson

F or a little while each morning and evening , I vow to let go of all doing, all thinking, and reconnect with 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, and there is no noun after the verb, to Be. Where the pilgrim has returned 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 this is not who I am, I am the seer. I see the whole cosmos happening within me. This 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. This is not who I am, I am the seer. In my body I see trillions upon trillions of sparkling atoms dancing through stillness. This is not who I am, I am the seer. Let mind, body, moo...

  They say that if you  doubt your Teacher you will fall into darkness for a thousand lifetimes. I don't know anything about that. Here's what I say. Don't doubt the sunrise. Don't doubt the raindrop. Don't doubt the song of the first sparrow or the silence of a breeze between pine needles. Don't doubt the soft healing splendor of this breath flowing over your breastbone. Why shouldn't the peep of a tree frog be your Teacher as you wake up and taste the nectar of this day, this one perfect morning when creatures are unable to be anything more than what they are? Photo by Neil Dickie

These days there seems to be much gloom, fear, and desolation. But the gloom that shrouds us is our own mind. Mind is our doom, and mind is our enlightenment. Choose your mind. If you live in the kingdom of fear, it is by your self-will. In truth, you are heading toward an age of enlightenment, creativity, and joy. But the light is not merely given. It must be chosen - or postponed. "The kingdom of heaven is within You." Not within Us, but within You, within Me. You and I are each invited to manifest the kingdom, not to wait for its general manifestation in the collective. Yes, an Age of Enlightenment is approaching, but illumination will not come from the government, the identity group, the commune, the tribe, or the sangha. It shines from the sovereign heart of the Person who takes responsibility for his or her own wholeness. Only when your heart center, your hridaya, is Self-Radiant, may you contribute to the mutual irradiation of the family, the community, and the nation....

  I keep returning to 3 A.M. Millions mingle here in verdant mist, some plunging toward slumber, others rising toward black curves of emptiness bending to no asymptote of thought or word in the womb of awakening where small frogs only listen but do not peep, raindrops neither cling nor fall, suspended in glistening darkness, no exhalation of Thou, no inhalation of I, only a trembling stillness that enfolds the infinitesimal tear of the green earth in a vigilance that was here before we opened our eyes. O dear one, be reminded by silence that our work is not to fall asleep, this vigilance, this task of love.

  “Gentler, gentler, so gentle it hardly has any substance… the breath of Silence. Then it is infinitely powerful, infinitely creative.” ~Maharishi Mahesh Yogi  That path is best whose first breath is all you'll ever need because it is the stream of wonder that created the world. What whirls the earth, what blows the stars like milkweed over the bee-wildered meadow? Now it is midnight. Stay awake. This is when the Goddess comes, lovely, almost naked, draped in her silver veil of silence. Almost, almost rest in her trembling presence, where prayer and light and nectar all flow into one. Use that flowing to polish your heart.

  Resting the mind in the heart is the beginning and end of the spiritual journey. At first the heart is just a beating pump, a jug of blood. Yet as we rest the mind here, a golden wholeness enfolds the body-mind. The heart space pulses with the gentlest breath, soft but ineffably powerful, especially when permeated by the sound of the mantra, imbued with the name of the Beloved like an unstruck gong. The heart is an ever-expanding energy-field that warms the soul, melts the mind… heals sickness… dissolves stress… This glow outshines your form, for the heart is no longer in the body, the body is in the heart. Hridaya, more luminous than the sun, beams compassion through all time and space, comforts your ancestors for seven generations past and to come, threads every atom to a star, entangling galaxies in the wonder-woven garment of God's infinite light. Why not bathe your home, your village, these meadows and hills, and this entire planet in the radiance of your ...

Here is all the politics we need. My blue sky pervades each atom of your body. Your blue sky pervades each atom of my body. Where you are, I am. Where I am, you are. Translucent wings of a turquoise moth rising into radiance, dancing on the faintest breath of breeze. All our troubles woven in the veil of a single thought: "I am not You." Love is letting this thought dissolve. Photo by Laurent Berthier