Uradiance

I love all the great paintings of Mary Magdalene. This one is by Cassandra Barney. I could care less whether the artist portrays her as black, or olive brown, or "white." Those who argue about Mary Magdalene's "race" and skin color totally miss the point. Every devotee is entitled to have their favorite picture of Mary Magdalene. But the image, the icon, is merely a symbol of the subtle energy in the heart, the resonance of her presence in the breath. Does your breath have a "race"? Does the Goddess dancing round the tree of your spine have a color?   Magdala, Migdal in Hebrew, means "column" or "tower." Your spinal column is a tower of myrrh and hyssop, bittersweet herbs of longing and love. In the West, the yoga of Shiva and Shakti expressed its ancient message as the marriage of Christ and Sophia, Word and Wisdom. Their union takes places in what Christian Gnostics deemed the subtlest and deepest sacrament, the sacrament o...

   Playfulness without a player. The frolic of God. An abandoned lute fingered by the midnight wind. Countlessness of pollen grains in a single flower. The fragrance of myrrh wafted over the ocean where moons dance in dolphin crescent stillness. A fallen tower spilling jasmine  and oil of spikenard on the sand as rudderless boats of plenty drift unhelmed wherever anointing is needed. Her body laden with jars of chrism and wine, how could she whirl up your backbone from blossom to blossom, escaping your gravity? A woman of the night or the temple virgin of Ningal? Yes. And the grail holder of Jesus. Scholars will never understand how her polished emptiness overflows. How her darkness engenders stars. They would rather correct mistakes in God's translation of her marvelous silence. If you want to taste her fecund blackness, cleanse the secret window of your heart. Behind clouds of grief and time the space of her...

   What is your name? What is the name of God? Are they the same name?Whenever you say I Am, you name God as you name yourself. When Moses asked God, "What is your name?" God used the same name you use for yourself, answering, "I Am that I Am." Your most intimate name speaks from the same divine source who spoke to Moses. Christ used the same name when he breathed from his heart, "I Am the light of the world." Later he said, "You are the light of the world," indicating the identity of Christ I Am as your I Am, shining with the same glory. One Being whispers, I Am the Creator, I am the Child of God, and I Am the Spirit Mother who enters your body as this breath. I Am singing a three-part harmony, to irradiate heaven and earth through the crystal prism of the Holy Trinity. Therefore when you say I Am, say it with ecstasy and reverence, caught up in the love of the Father for Christ, and Christ for his own maternal breath, ...

    Time and space are now granulated to infinitesimal quantum particles of eternity, each particular moment containing the entire past and future, each particular quark encircling the most distant galaxies in its aura. That which was once conceived as far in time or space is not a breath away. If we try to force our new multi-dimensional bodies into the old paradigm of mass in space that we've inhabited for aeons, we feel disoriented. For that space no longer exists. And mass is pulverized into wave-particles of bliss. Likewise, if we continue to conceive of time as linear, requiring a metaphysical leap from this time-line to a better one, we are paralyzed with confusion. For the vector that moved from past to future has been ground into the grace of discontinuity. We center in a timeless flowering of possibilities, that can feel like chaos, unfolding in all directions at once - as close in time to our most ancient ancestor as to the person we t...

    Fall into a deeper silence and you will hear the earth breathe flowers. A ray of the full moon descends into your fontanelle. You are the anointed one, the wounded one whose crown has never healed.   One drop of this nectar slips down your throat and pierces your chest. Hold it here, like a pulsing pearl. Your breastbone is an altar, where moonlight mingles with the warmth of the sun. Christ meets Mary here. Their encounter is a mysterious kiss. This is the bridal chamber of the heart. The two become one. Yet the one becomes two for the sake of love. Their silence trembles with a song. Surely, this is the Song of Songs. "Your love is sweeter than wine, and your name is perfume poured out. Lead me into your chamber, O King. I am the garden and you are the Spring." Miryam, in Hebrew, means a bitter sea, an ocean of tears. Magdala means a tower, or a columm. This tower is stored up with bittersweet myrrh, rising from your sacrum to your brow....

A true story of grace and transformation, originally published in the Quaker journal, 'What Canst Thou Say.' I share it again for the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, which begins at Vespers on July 21. In all wisdom traditions, she is here in the anahatta chakra. Her secret name is the Unstruck Sound. She personifies our yearning for divine Beauty. For Longing and Beauty ceaselessly merge, separate, and merge again. This is the eternal pulse in the whirling heart of the universe. Radha yearning for Krishna, a Sufi's ecstatic dance with Ruuh, Magdalene longing for Jesus: all creation is a likeness of their lila, the divine play of "bhedabheda," which in Sanskrit means, "two, not-two." Dear friend, do not be troubled by this resonant play of reflections. Just rest between two breaths, and become the mirror. I know there are many of you who embody this same rhythm of longing and union, who yearn for Divine Beauty. So I share this story of ...

  Sometimes when I've pointed my finger and poked my stick too much, muddying the stream, the best thing to do is absolutely nothing, silently, until the water clears. To attain perfect clarity by not interfering is also action. Frolicking in waves of stillness. Words full of quiet. Dancing like a mountain on a cloud. These are the signs of the Witness. This morning I am called, not to improve my doing, but to deepen my Being. In Hebrew, the word shabbat literally means "stop!" Let my Sabbath nourish the earth. Lie fallow, boldly decay, regenerate, take time. When I take time for time, I move in eternity. I hear ten thousand seeds of Spring singing in the silence of Samhain. Winter comes lovely like a bride, rummaging among my bones. Isis, Ishtar, Cybele, Anat, the Magdalene weeping at my tomb. Desolation is the field of the Mother. Perhaps you hold great knowledge, great power. Perhaps you have become the "spiritual teacher." You no longer need the Beloved. You...

You are not on earth to change this dream. You are here to awaken. Your first step contains all the others. A pilgrim arrives before the journey begins. This body isn't a guesthouse but a sanctuary at the end  of every breath. Your bones are corridors leading to heavenly places deep in the valley beneath your heart. Rest where you are. Perfect asanas arise from the spin of an atom whose momentum  is the Mother. Why all this effort, friend? Stars entangled in the shining blackness  of your hair effuse the scent of midnight jasmine. Are you not the silent radiance you’ve been praying to? Photo: by Wanderloom

      This is the work of the Sabbath. All creatures flowering out of themselves, the motionless explosion  of a rose,  a galaxy of pollen, a blue-green egg in a wiccawoven nest, the little earth in its swirl of distances. This is the task of the effortless. A prophet does not see into the future. A prophet sees deeply into the present moment.

  Prayer is wonder  without speech, without effort,   without begging,   each breath a womb perfused with the name of Jesus. Thus the Mother plants seeds  of  silence in us, seeds of  a new creation.

   An emaciated yogi told me  there is no other, only One. He must have meant this One. Or that One. Look, there's another One! I don't love you because you are me. I love you because    you are you.  Because you breathe lilac islands where  the moon path leads my feet  across the ocean of your eyes  and pale birds in the garden of your body    sing secret names that tremble with the fragrance of the rainbow.  Painting: Marie Stillman, 1885

  Yesterday this mad message was channeled to me from my Self, who said, "Share it or you will go mad!" I said to my Self, "I have already gone mad." And my Self said, "I know, I know. That is why we have chosen you to share this message with all the billions of cells in our body." I said, "There are no words!" The Self said, "Let them convert the words back into the ineffable quantum energy of astrocytes and glial cells from which they arose." _________________ You are your own data center. You don't need artificial intelligence. The neurons in your brain, in your cardiac and solar plexus, contain enough electro-chemical intelligence to power the city of the angels for a decade. You are your own CERN particle accelerator. Every time you let go of past and future and come home to this moment, releasing abstract mental images and paying attention to the finest neurological sensations in the body, you smash and dissolve billions ...

Just for today, a Sabbath from knowledge. Who knows? Just for today, a Sabbath from judgment. Forgiveness is your nature. Just for today, A Sabbath from being right. If a day is too long then just for an hour? If an hour is too long then just for a breath? That is enough to wash a thousand stars with your love. Just for a moment, friend, stay with me. Peace flower by Kristy Thompson

Everyone looks for a door. A door like Jesus, who is an opening in the shape of man. A lacuna between the worlds, like Mary, who is a wound in the shape of woman. Everyone looks for a portal leading to an empty chamber filled with secret palaces. We meet here while our bodies  are dreaming. We forget how much we need a gateway shaped like someone we can trust. Come, take the master's hand. Step through the hollow center  of the shadow  where  your last breath  has already gone. Meet Mira here, the poetess. Meet Rumi and the Magdalene, Mohammad and the Baal Shem Tov. Encounter the ancient Deer Priest, the Shaman who rattled your bones, changing your skeleton to a snake den. What century you came from doesn't matter. What religion your fathers gave you is the warm old Winter coat you put away in Spring. Come, meet Ishtar weeping as she looses and lets fall her seven garments of silence and self-aba...