Uradiance

My religion is  walking barefoot  in wet moss,  unnaming the stars. Every religion got started this way, invented by a five-year-old at the edge of a meadow. On the first warm day of Spring, after days of late Winter rain, when the sky melts into pools of cobalt, rivers of amber  you could wade up to your knees in, I follow the Rx of doctor robin: “Take seven sunbeams, then see how you feel.” I stand nowhere special (anywhere is sacred)  and inhale the fallen grace of April, mud squished through my toes, the holiest anointing a loam-gush from below, lean back, guzzling body beams of star-breath through my forehead, down the perineum, out my naked soles: I Am  the sun’s hollow path. My skin exhales the fire, therefore sprouts tremble with nectar around me, braiding birth and death,  green-umber in thirsty pastures. Every cell of dust inhales a burning sea. I Am the fifth element. Infinitesimal benevolent bact...

             Why are you awake at 3 a.m.? To make a home for the wandering angel of this breath. To hear the name of the Friend in your heartbeat. Why do you say, I am not this body? There's a garden in your chest where the sun and moon touch, twining their gold and pearl-white beams around a tree. The tree catches fire. From your belly to your crown, seven blossoms, coral, crimson, viridescent blue, other tinctures too soft to name, songs without words. And a chuppah made of clustered vines beneath your rib cage, where Christ meets Magdalene. You are the priest of silence who unites them. Their wedding is why you are awake. Please don't say, 'I am not this body.' Each atom of your dust is nothing but the light you've been longing for. Painting: Marc Chagall

 

To the bud, blossoming is a catastrophe.  Chaos ia just another word for Becoming. Nothing you can cling to is who you really are. The seed dies in a sprout. The stem holds up her tiny fist, which bursts into petals of ineffable fragrance. Pollen, nectar, honey, fruit. You have thousands of eyes. Soften your perception, the way a bee sees. Use your ommatidia. And if you cannot learn this from the body of Jesus, learn it from the breath of Spring.

Equinox = balance. Balance between light and darkness, Summer and Winter, Yin and Yang. But I cannot create this balance outside, on earth, until I find it inside, harmonizing my corporeal body, my breath-body, and my wonder-body. Unbalanced individuals cannot produce balance in the collective, in the nation, in the world. My own body is, after all, a hologram of the cosmic body, where I integrate the Masculine and Feminine, the Solar and Lunar energies, celebrating their spiral-dance around the Tree of Life, my spinal cord. Here I find, in a secret place nearer than my soul, the Bridal Chamber, where I witness the wedding of Shiva and Shakti, Christ and Mary, the Immovable and its Dance. When I pass through an infinitesimal door in one atom of my flesh, I enter an infinite expanse, the womb of creation. Uniting inbreath and outbreath, I rest in the equinoxial bindhu, where the rising and falling embrace. In this little indentation, this humble valley, just beneath my heartbeat and a...

    “Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect.” ~Mat 5:48 A life-coach told me, "you're perfect right now." I tried it for a day and got completely bored. After all, God is already God, but who would be Me if I didn't keep fucking things up in my own peculiar way? My blemishes define me, jagged edges are the letters of my true name. Call me Broken Buddha, the Half-Awake. This universe just wouldn't be the same without my sins. I’m more priceless uncut, mud-covered, a ruby mistaken for a berry in a crow’s beak, that gem of surprise! Here's the sign of progress: I'm even less perfect now than I was yesterday. I dedicate this poem to you, my dear, who discovered the hot mess of your own precious body on the kitchen floor slobbering your tears into the linoleum while Good Morning America bled out in the living room. I honor the unconditional catastrophe of your hair, y...

“There is strength in gentleness… gentler, gentler, so gentle  it hardly has any  substance, this 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, the stream of wonder that creates the world, whirls the moon and puffs the stars like milkweed over a bee-wildered meadow. Now it is midnight. Stay awake. This is when the Goddess comes, so lovely, almost naked, draped in the silver veil of your inhalation. The veil drops away. You rest in her trembling presence. Darkness, prayer, longing,  one flowing nectar that drips down your backbone. Use that flowing to polish your heart.

What if there's no such thing as 'enlightenment,' other than the world  as it is, and every atom of dust is already 'spiritual,' overflowing with  the light of the Good?

  "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter,  who will be with you forever." ~John 14:16 The Divine has sent you a Comforter in the form of your own breath. She inspired the Almighty when the earth and stars were created. She was his playfellow and paramour, who made the waters of darkness dance with waves, and lit them with the path of the moon.  She is Sophia, the very Wisdom and Spirit of the Lord, who humbles herself gladly to dwell in the rising and falling of your belly. The form of the Teacher will perish, but She will be with you forever. Press out her healing nectar from the space between breaths. What flows so gracefully can only be healing.  You gain nothing by listening to the voices of fear and anger that others plant in your mind. Listen instead to the syllables of So'ham, like the wings of a swan, settling on the lake of your heart, or listen to the music in the name of Jesus, pouring into every cell of your flesh. Inhal...

Nature loves to enfold us. Mists, prairies, waters. This Sabbath morning let me honor the small. Only twelve gathered in a circle, singing and sharing their journeys  at the center of the crossroad. Only two gazing through each other’s eyes, beholding vast distances. Just one in solitude, floating on her ocean of zeros. Let me enter the heart's silence and touch creation's source, which requires less, not more. Out of the small Comes the great. Mists, prairies, waters.

  "Above all things, love silence. Out of your silence will arise something  that will draw you into deeper silence. When you practice this, inexpressible  light will dawn upon you." ~St. Isaac of Ninevah, 7th C.  "True prayer is the heart's silence, free of all thoughts, ceaselessly breathing Christ..."  ~St. Hesychius of Jerusalem, 5th C.     

There's a secret in this madness. Everything is breath. A toadstool is Spirit-blown like glass. This mossy stone must be  the supreme Being because it exists. The wing of a housefly reveals a thousand verses of scripture, but you need to look. The fur on a golden shelter dog is infested with celestial messengers. Your next inhalation, the intimate name of Lady Wisdom, Sophia, whose whisper only lovers know. How does Mount Fuji float on a cloud? How do a billion stars rest in your open palm like a black moth? It happens through the science of miracles. The sun and planets in free-fall, caught and held by some colossal stillness. Be a pilgrim, then you'll understand the secret in this madness. Let the radiance of your destination illuminate your starting place before you take the first step. Let the space between the beginning and the end be a single exhalation of grace. What stands in your way is seeking. Everyth...

    True silence stops the mind like the scent of jasmine in the dark. From that moment on you are breathed by an Other who is deeper inside you  than the memory of birth or death. There is no sunlight in general. Sunlight is  intimate, particular, one beam for each  awakening bulb. It depends on how ready  you are to burst open and fill the air with attar  of Unknowing. Listen, dear, this world is like a dry cocoon. Soon it will crack and shatter, spilling up into golden sky the crinkled rainbows  you've kept holding too long  in your chest. Relinquish certainty. Just unfurl. Photo: A visitor in my backyard

To you who say God is not a person I say God is my friend. To you who say God takes a human form I say God is boundless space in the brain of an ant. To you who say God is beyond the body I say God is this breath. I hold opposite teachings in my chestful of wonder. To you who say God dwells inside I say God spills over the rim of the star chalice like silence from an empty bell. You say God is One, I say God is love longing for a companion. You say God is your paramour, I say yes, yes, God hides in the plum blossoms dancing as pure light through the wings of a dragonfly. Photo by Clare Louise Larkin

"Rest the mind in the heart" is a very simple instruction found in an ancient Indian treatise on meditation, the Vijnana Bhairava, and repeated verbatim in the Orthodox Christian manual of prayer, the Philokalia. Rest the mind in the heart, until the path disappears. We meet here, in this brokenness, where all our pronouns dissolve into Thou.  This journey from the mind to the heart may be twelve inches, or twelve thousand light-years. You decide. The earth doesn't need capitalism or socialism or any other -ism. The earth needs to open its heart chakra. Sovereignty of the heart is the only real government, the kingdom of heaven within you. It's time to take our sovereignty back.   At first we think our heart is just a blood pump. But as we rest in the valley at the tip of the breastbone, a mysterious warmth arises, then a glowing wholeness enfolds our entire body. After a time, the heart shines like the solstice sun. The he...

The final apocalypse has already happened. The Last Judgment was a moment ago, in your diaphragm, when you breathed out.  The End Time  is now, a sunbeam shattering  the prism'd raindrop on a dragonfly’s wing, scattering colors on a still pond. Creation dissolves in the tranquility of chaos.  Look around you. Don't think, don't name anything. Just look in a state of original amazement. What do you see? A wordless unceasing explosion of free energy, which is Love.  When you are doing what you truly love, are you not living in the end of time? I n that moment are you searching for "meaning"? Of course not. You are too busy living the explosion, the dazzling eruption of free energy from the Void.  This Love has no cause, no story to tell, no past to regret or future to fear.  Love must be lived, not thought. Love is not a concept at the conclusion of any logical argument.  To dissolve into pure existence,  Sat, into pure awareness,  C...

I will not stop at your skin. I won't turn back at the dazzle of your purity, that most subtle  substance of erotic fire. I pass through your locks and doors, a villain of galaxies scattered in your thimbleful of brownest loam. I imbibe You, not the color  of your flock, or scent of your  ancestral herd. I taste the smoke of your true  volcano, your voice, not the missing tooth in your old harp of chromosomes. I must see mountains melt  and tumble down your spine from the death's head of wisdom to the broken pomegranate in your birth valley. Smell the musk of your tears, hearken your bloody drum throbs, flutes in your panther walk as you shoulder all darkness  between stars,  and growl down black paths  through the core of Andromeda, which is the core of every proton  in my body.  I insist on beholding the smokeless  undulant flame of your form as it scorches my eye,  feeling the pai...