A New Year's Message from the Boys (Video)
Happy New Year from the boys. It's a whole new vibe, a whole new earth. No
fifth dimension. No quantum consciousness. Just good old soil, water, wind and
fire. No "Oneness" anymore. No "Twoness" either. Just
wholeness, the all-pervading Friendship. No "non-duality" either. Aren't you getting tired of That? Just I and
Thou, a single radiance self-dazzled in twin mirrors of pure awareness.
No
more clinging to “now." The past and future are the bouquet of presence. No ideologies anymore, just persons. Neither "left" nor
"right," neither "liberal" nor "conservative,"
only the dance.
Here’s something else we no longer need:
spiritual teachers. We learn from falling snow, how it whirls. How a
crimson berry holds the whole summer on a frosty morning. Our teacher is
the patient hunger of finches waiting their turn at the feeder. We
follow threads of milkweed bursting into the breeze.
The way your face becomes lovelier
with age, half-lit, half-shadowed. How crumbs arrange themselves in a
sunbeam on the wooden table, buds swell on a plum twig, breath
disappears on a windowpane. We rediscover what's
been thrown away, the ordinary, glowing with suchness. The light of the
one who sees in what is seen.
There's no need to be a
rose-scented new-age angel in order to meditate, or visit an ashram in
order to meet the Guru. The Christ dwells in your chest, between
breathing.
No need to sit full lotus and pretend your
knees don't hurt. Here's the heresy: there's no one "else" for you to
be. The fundamental dis-ease that cripples our culture is the toxic compulsion
to be someone better than you are. That's over now. The sign of
progress is that you're not as perfect today as you were yesterday.
Don't
be a fraction trying to reach the number One. You’re already One. Call
off the search. The beginning and end of
spiritual practice is to rest your mind in your own broken heart. Align
with your
jagged edges, that’s how you get polished. Roar out your rough unholy
joy. Make room for wrinkles and tears. When you quit seeking the
eternal, you'll get washed in the river of time. Your spine a tuning
fork, your heart a singing bowl, you’ll never know how many trillions
of creatures gather to your hum. This earth doesn't need another Gandhi
or
Jesus: it needs You.
The new paradigm? This breath. Enlightenment is more like falling
than ascending,
more like collapsing than getting it all together. Stop clinging to the
raft of
someone else’s teaching. Become the sea by sinking into your own wave,
even if it's a hot-mess. This is stillness. Stumble into the dance of
your own chaos. This is peace.
I did not learn this from the Gods. I learned it from the Dogs.
Photo: The boys, Emerson and Finn
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