Sabbath Morning

Spring Sabbath morning, dew drop diamond armor of ineffable softness, work accomplished through repose, harmony in silence, abundance spilling from emptiness, indefatigable dynamism of stillness.

The cosmos in a yellow burst of daffodil. The whole blue sky in a robin's egg. All wisdom in one foolish sigh. Breathing in, "Aham," I Am. Breathing out, "Sah," the Divine.

"Ham'sah." Most ancient Upanishadic mantra. Shimmering with many levels of meaning: "a swan," "the soul," the sound breath makes moving in and out, the affirmation "I Am God!"

"Ham'sah," which is also "So'ham," two mystic syllables written on the petals in the lotus of the heart, merging in the pistil at the center of the flower, the bindhu, dimensionless point, where inhalation and exhalation kiss.

An infinitesimal pollen mote in my solar plexus, A needle's eye of wonder through which invisible hands of Grace thread distant stars to the neurons of my spine, and whose black hole of no-thing-ness flings out all worlds, both earthly and celestial, like sparks from an annihilating fire.

I contain Gods. Where are the boundaries of my flesh? Even the silken fiber of my consists of vertiginous fractals that touch the sparkling edges of creation.

All I know is this: If you want to begin the greatest adventure of all, then let go of names, labels, and concepts. Experience the energy of consciousness without words. Only then will you dissolve into Truth.

The cosmos vibrates like a binaural beat, the oscillation of a terrible rapturous paradox: there is no Other, yet all is the Beloved.

The total manifestation of the universe - both inward and outward, both consciousness and matter - is the love-play of inhalation/exhalation, expansion/contraction, the pulse of "Spanda," as it is called in the yogic scriptures. It is all the throb of devotion, the rhythm of Lover and Beloved, longing and merging, longing and merging, ever two yet ever one.

In the final analysis, there is no devotee and no one to receive her devotion. Neither subject nor object, neither Chit nor Sat. There is only Ananda: a mutual dissolving into bliss.

The Lord God and I gladly drown in this nectar that bubbles up between the petals of "Ham" and "Sah," "I Am" and "God Is." We both surrender to the supreme pulsation of foolishness, the Self-Who-Is-Another and the Other-Who-Is-Myself. When names evaporate, this boundless creation of unknowable energy is my body, and yet it is the very form of the Beloved.

What does it matter if I murmur Ham'sah, Krishna, Jesus, Kali Ma, or Alla'hu? Every stream of devotion is a current that leads beyond conceptual thought, to the ocean of divine love, where all our pronouns dissolve into "Thou."

Photo by friend Neil Dicke