Uradiance

New ideas don't come from old ideas. They spring out of  emptiness, flowers of silence. Therefore the wise always confess, "I have no idea,"  and thus become  Masters of Wonder.

Merely by resting in your heart you soften one thousand miles of space around you. Those who come near you feel the touch of wild cotton, the radiance of seven pearls threaded on a sunbeam. Their souls begin to orbit your belly button. They enter your invisible garden of Presence and somehow taste those blood-red seeds from the pomegranate's core without gashing the husk. This is why you must repose in the golden shrine of your chest. Let others make the haj. You just need to be more hollow. Supreme attainment is a mind that no longer seeks because it has dissolved into the erotic splendor of the void. Let this exhalation be what pours from the libation cup offered by a dying warrior. The triumph is surrender. Let this inhalation be the Beloved's sparkling kiss. Welcome home, dear one. Did no one tell you? Your breath is the name of God.  

        The veil between the worlds is thin.     Bright to dark the seasons turn,     Green Man's fire in the Jack O'Lantern,     Light above now shines within.    Come dance in the circle of Samhaim,*    Buds of Beltane burnished in frost.    Honor the Old Ones: nothing is lost.    Whatever you offer is born again.                     *Pronounced Sów'an We have just ended Navratri, most sacred Goddess festival of India. We wish happiness to our Indian and Goddess-centered friends. In the West we have Goddess festivals no less sacred. At the end of October is Samhain (pronounced Sów'an) the Pagan and Celtic New Year. Children know there's something holy about Halloween, and its not just divine Snickers bars and Red Hots. There's a tingling electric presence we feel in the eth...

  Whatever you see, hear, taste, touch is a guided meditation led by the formless Guru who pervades everything. He is not your Master but your oldest Friend. You gaze upon his face by reposing in your heart. Ask for guidance. He says, "You are a gypsy from the stars, I came to call you home." Inquire, "How long is the journey?" He answers, "A pilgrimage of one breath." You breathe in and travel I3.4 billion light-years to the rim of the cup of eternity. Then you breathe out and return to the garden in your chest, the wedding bower where Magdalene caressed the cheek of Jesus, where Radha kissed Govinda's lips. I whisper this secret knowing full well that you cannot keep it. Even when they take a vow of silence, lovers reveal the ineffable light of the Friend through their eyes.

Whatever ache or sensation you feel right now, the hunger, the numbness, the weary dream story sleep cannot cure, you must know that your body is made of pure and boundless light, requiring no transformation. All paths end here in a synapse, the ineffable trembling of a single nerve. Your thigh bone is a butterfly wing. Your marrow of dark matter is a cloud full of snow. When you take one inhalation, you receive a stream of stars so distant that no telescope has yet beheld them. Yet their touch is ointment, their taste is honey slicking your manubrium. See how the hollow in your throat becomes the blue sky where your face floats like a nest of flames? Wolves are howling in your blood so quietly, tenderly, because they feel the moon between your eyebrows. They know that when you love yourself completely, embracing your pain, a tremor of pure and boundless light, all the trees in the forest, all the feathered folks ...

Grace of Sunday morning meditation. I don't know what "quantum" means. I am not qualified as a physicist. But I do know that the entire cosmos dissolves into a boundless chaos of sparkling photons, and these photons dissolve into the pure white light I Am. I know that the pure white light I Am vibrates through the most distant stars on the rim of creation, as in the particles of my own body, with a single intimate breath. And I know that this breath dissolves into love. I know that there is nothing but transparent all-pervading self-luminosity. And in the no-thing of love, the word "two" cannot arise. If there were an "other," I could not be whole. Yet, while love is formless, I know that it is not impersonal. Love is never merely a noun. Love is a breathing that tenderly returns my astonishment, reflecting an Otherness back to me so intimate, so caring and gentle, that Love's infinitude is doubled. Now I open my eyes and see the B...

  Every human heart needs a Friend made of fire. I chose the one whose gaze  is love, whose undulation  is my next breath. And I know by the warmth in my chest that the Friend has found a home, the flame has found a wick. Yet if truth be told, I have  no choice, and neither  does the Friend. Can a famished bee select which flower to drown in? Can a honey thief resist the invisible fragrance of compassion?  I am beguiled by God,  God beguiled by me, both of us, choiceless. Photo by Aile Shebar

  Perhaps you didn't notice when you awoke this morning, how you took your first breath from the next dimension, shifting for a moment to a world where atoms vibrate by a softer Law. Perhaps tomorrow morning, you won’t come back. You’ll stay there. And it won’t matter anymore if you are on the Left or Right, Christian or Muslim, Nondualist or Fool for Christ. You won't need to wear a veil in that moon-drenched air, where the only authority is Presence, and the tribe you once belonged to leaves no scent. Where only the glow of your essential oils anoints the meadow, and no one else exudes such tincture, swelling the plum, stiffening the fur. No longer enticed by abstractions, you’ll live by touch and tear, musk and radiance. It won’t matter anymore which master you follow, as long as She is the one who descends through your next breath, blossoming in the splendor of your chest, resting in your hollow core of silence. All that matter...

Given the choice, I'd rather be a fool than a cynic, sitting backward on my donkey riding Westward, gazing at the dawn, shouting to the sun, "Old fellow, follow me! I'll lead you  to Summer morning meadows and Autumn afternoons, to Winter evenings where  you'll learn how stars dwell in sacred darkness." You laugh? Don't be a cynic, friend. Let's just say there's a fifty-fifty chance our eyes create the light they see. Mula Nasruddin being a "spiritual teacher" while riding backward on his donkey

  Emptiness is a verb. I might even call it a practice, except that the "I" is the first thing to go. How can there be a practice when there is no practitioner? In the New Testament, Philippians chapter 2 tells us how Jesus "emptied himself." Commentators speak of this as a noun "kenosis," self-emptying. But in the text, it is a verb, "ekenosen." Emptiness is not a static or passive destination, but a continuous dynamic pouring of the self beyond itself, into the depths of un-created Being; no goal in sight, just an abysmal fall into the groundless, where ever-expanding no-thingness is bliss, the motion of stillness, the flowering of wonder. Hollowed out by this perpetual fall, our naked amazement swells into a boundless zero, and ripens into the spaciousness of pure possibility. Worlds are born from here, both earthly and celestial. This place is the silent womb of creation, yet it lies beyond creation, deeper inside me than myself. My ...

  If you think you are a spiritual teacher and the lady at the drive-through coffee gazebo who micro-foams your latté  is not, you have a serious problem. If you feel you are an "empath" and the stray kitten licking a plastic cap of half-and-half beside the trash compactor is not, you must be seeing through your I. Every living creature is an empath; it's why we're all here. Even the pilgrim snail on a hosta leaf is neuro-divergent, sensing starlight that hasn't yet arrived. You'd better start listening to a dust mote, the larva and the rose. Learn to shut up and smile like a dolphin. Don’t you want to feel  the bliss-ocean parting for your slippery  dorsal fin? Don't you want to enter the Kingdom of the Fur, or the sweet annihilation of a hummingbird's tongue?  Now burn away this moth-wing veil of thought. Become the flame itself. Image: Wallpaper by Jeff Wilkie

  They say we should bust out of our comfort zone. I love my comfort zone. I love my comfort zone so much, I decided to expand it. My comfort zone swells over forests, cities, mountains. My comfort zone includes the whole nation, expands into the clouds, embraces the moon and sun, the Milky Way, Andromeda, the wild churning ocean of galaxies, many of them so distant their light hasn't yet arrived. If you feel lost and confused, don't worry. You are already resting in my comfort zone. Just lie down in the meadow for awhile, listen to the bees. Fall asleep and let your nerves root down into fallow loam. Drink up my sap into your bones, and dream that you are tiny, even tinier, a lady bug, lost in a thistle and clover cathedral. Gaze up into the crystal dome of blue. You are welcome here. I hope you are very comfortable. It's good to be lost. I am lost too. Both of us, lost in the zone. Photo from Vecteezy

  "Hello, I am channeling a crucial energy update from the star beings. All is well. Your planet is beautiful. This moment is a portal of wonder leading nowhere, everywhere. Each pebble, leaf, and raindrop settles into its miracle of Being. There is no other news. So turn off your cell phone, go outside and see if you still know how to feel a breeze on your cheek, taste crystals of sunlight among pines, listen to the geese fly home. Let the last rose of October be a tarnished grail teaching you how to empty yourself and hold the sky. Let this breath cleanse your heart of yesterday, of tomorrow." Photo: by Jim Graham, October moon, Chester County PA

Yoga means astonishment. It's what babies do when they’re not trying to do anything. Yoga isn’t just twisting the body, holding the breath or chanting mantras, It's a kingdom of wonder where the heart kindles and perception melts like butter into ghee. I create separation when I put a concept around my amazement. Why would I need a concept, a belief? Yoga means Being without belief. Saying I Am with no noun after the verb. No past, no future, just the causeless inconceivable explosion of Now, whose energy is love.

It takes no more time to realize God than to pluck this blossom from a twig. It takes no more effort to surrender than to dip these weary feet in a mountain stream. God is the one who is always already here, heaping this heartbeat with weightless treasure. Some say, “Not a person, just energy.” Then who delights in its flavor? Some say, “The gardener who meets you at dawn, calling your true name.” Some say, “The player who presses a golden flute to his anointed lips, smiling, luring you into a forest of bewildered melodies.” Krishna, the cowherd boy? Or Kokopelli, with his innocent perpetual erection?   Yet others say, “The music flows from a sepulcher under your breastbone where the serpentine Goddess coils, your breath her emerald necklace.” All I can tell you is this: “I am doula for the birth of ancient silence. I will never return to pretending that I know anything. For I have gazed into love's mirror and tasted the nectar ...

Being human is not enough. One must become a human Being. Impeccable in your practice, polish the heart with your breath until it glistens like a self-luminous pearl, the pearl I AM.  It is because we have forgotten to practice the art of Being that we have fallen into black vs. white, left  vs. right, Israeli vs. Palestinian, believer vs. non-believer. Your homeland is not in the East Bank or the West Bank. Your homeland is not Russia or Ukraine, North of the border or South. Your homeland is the heart.  Quite literally, this pulsing organ, in its wilderness of nerves, its vast electrical field that encircles all other hearts on earth, and beyond, here is your Om and your valley and your mountaintop. Here I Am. When you dwell in this homeland, you love your neighbor as your self, because your neighbor Is your self.  Each of us is the unique diamond hologram of one I Am. We are a temple with eight billion windows. But we all have the same sky, and it is inside us. Pl...

You will never make peace, because you ARE peace. You will never wake up one morning to discover that the politicians have made peace on earth, because peace is not the nature of this world. This world is the field of conflicting opposites. And that is precisely why it is the place of liberation, where we come for awhile to discover, "I am not this, I am not that," until we finally say, "I Am."  Liberation won't happen in paradise, because heaven has no opposites; things are too dreamy there. So we come to this world of polarity because polarity awakens us. Not this, not that. We are strangers and pilgrims on the earth.  Yet when we are awake, we illuminate the earth.  The light of the Divine shines out through our heart-window.  So Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." Yet he could also say, "My peace I give you, not as the world giveth."  The whirled cannot make peace. YOU are the peace in the midst of the whirled. Because you are ...