Uradiance

If Americans walked more gently on the earth, we would have fewer enemies. George Fox, founder of the Quakers, wrote: "Walk cheerfully over the earth, answering that of God in every person." Sioux elder, Black Elk, said: "Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer." When we touch our own land, we can allow Muslims to recover theirs. People who live in relationship with their soil are not interested in empire. Breathing from the souls of our feet, we remember how to walk. Slowly and delectably, we listen to the inquiry of a cricket, a bell thrush, the sun-dappled cottonwood leaves rattling in the afternoon. Walking barefoot, breathing, noticing the vast wealth of the small: this is world-changing political action. The central question for our world leaders is: "Do you know how to take a walk?" Friends, there's a relationship between our politics and our spirituality. If our spirituality is unearthly, our politics are as disconnected from the ...

Churches are burning, temples are falling, mosques exploding from inside. Priests, rabbis, imams make war. It's revelation time! Time for a newer testament, time to spill the ark and see what God really has to say; time to rip off the temple veil and gaze into the Holy Empty. But this time, let's keep it simple: No scripture but your sighing - no temple but your heart - the Master's form, Awareness itself - the Master's word, I Am - his anointing, your fingertips on the petals of a rose - his Spirit, your breath - his Kingdom, your body - his Second Coming, Now! If you're not ready, wait another thousand years and I'll tell you the same thing.

This is what you do 0n patrol in the woods, Fort Lewis, Washington, when no one is there: You happen upon a trillium white and secret as God in a shadow. You bow down saying, "Thank you for showing me what’s inside." Six months later on patrol in Fallujah you happen upon a girl three days dead in the rubble , her body cut nearly in half by American fire, your fire, my fire. Her large intestine blossoms in the desert sun , a terrible sweetness in your nostrils. You bow down saying, " Thank you for showing me what's inside." It is your last war.

"The Glory of God is humanity fully alive!" (St. Athanasius) In scripture, a "new Jerusalem" descends from the clouds. But the new energy that transforms our world will not descend from above: it will emanate from the atomic structure of your body. Your body will radiate the New Creation. Your radiance will transform the earth. Our religions have all shared a mythological hope of leaving the body for a "higher" world. But in the age now dawning, there is communion through sensation in the body. In the Lord's Supper, we taste a tiny portion of bread and wine. The central religious rituals of Holy Eucharist, Jewish Sedar, Hindu Puja, are prophetic meals. Their symbolism foreshadows this age: God is here, now, in the ordinary sacraments of daily work. Let us value this human body as the temple of initiation. We need no other church. In Jesus' words, "Your whole body will be filled w...

"To dwell in this body is a political act..." Being consciously and intentionally in the body leads to the age-old goal of political philosophers: “the simple life.” The simple life is the good life: a life content with nature and her necessities, without greed for extraneous luxury, hoarding of wealth, class envy, or addiction. A deepening awareness of the body is the key to these long sought Utopian goals. Being fully aware in the body is not "materialism" or "sensuality," which are, in truth, obsessions of the mind. Materialism, addiction, and lust occur in persons who are profoundly OUT of touch with their bodies. The simple life of body-awareness is a profoundly spiritual life, a sacramental life where each sensation is infused with radiant attention. In this state, a person's body becomes the body-politic: a harmony of personal needs with the needs of the earth. What is the political consequence of living a simple life, a life in which just dwel...

Arguing the primacy of science or religion is a waste of time. It is like arguing whether Spring is more important than Fall, whether music is more important than words, whether the right foot is more important than the left. It is desperately silly for a scientist to claim that God does not exist. It is even sillier for an evangelist to disclaim the mechanics of evolution based on chapter one of the Bible. Just as a laboratory experiment can never determine God's being, the fundamental equations of physics will never be solved by a hymn. Science and religion are not conflicting but complimentary realms of human experience: particle and wave, the apple and its flavor. When we engage science and religion in debate, or argue that one should explain the other, we forget that neither are bodies of fact. They are, rather, methods. They are utterly different ways of seeing. A human being who wishes to be whole must learn to use both, just as we learn to see with two eyes. There are th...

Contrary points on a two-dimensional surface cannot be resolved without adding a third dimension. In three-dimensional space, these disparate points become one at the apex of a pyramid. Similarly, all the environmental, political, and economic problems in our present world have entered such a critical stage that they can never be resolved on the material plane. A new dimension must be added, where our overwhelming problems may be solved in a simple unity. This new dimension is Awareness. It has always been here, in the background of our thoughts. But now pure Awareness - clear, empty, boundless, unlimited by the contours of a single thought - must emerge from background into foreground as our fundamental experience. Human beings have been using Awareness, but have not been living the experience of Awareness. When a threshold percentage of our population finally comes to rest in the direct experience of their own Awareness, they will cover the earth with blessing. A new dimension...

The Sabbath is perpetual. It is the silence underlying every moment of our lives, the silence of Awareness itself, at rest in its own pure space. Perhaps the seven days of creation described in Genesis 1 are not seven consecutive periods of time, but seven frequencies of energy enveloping each other in layers whose center and core is the zero-point vacuum of pure silence, which is the mind of God. Each successive valence shell of energy is more grossly condensed than the one inside it. Yet all the inner frequencies pervade the grosser husk, as dissolved sugar pervades sap, and sap pervades the flower. The gross external layer of energy is what we perceive as the physical earth: but its present density was never intended. This density of physical matter is symbolized by the animal skin coat put on by Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. Creator intends us to live in a more ethereal earth, a plane of energy that is at once sensuous yet responsive to our goodwill. In the original ...

“I know more than the greatest philosophers because I know that I don’t know anything.” - Socrates “If I doubt, I know I do not know… If I am mistaken, I must exist.” - St. Augustine Don't confuse enlightenment with understanding. In truth, there is nothing to understand and no one there to say, "I get it!" Of this I am absolutely certain because I don't understand. To say, “I don’ get it,” is a sign of nobility. Getting is possessiveness. It reaffirms the owner, this little "I." “Getting it" perpetuates the illusion of ego. If enlightenment were something to get, then "I" could go to a university and "get" a PHD in enlightenment. But enlightenment has nothing whatsoever to do with thinking. Enlightenment is an ocean of Silence, where awareness rests in its own bounty. On the surface of this sea, thoughts arise and dissolve like bubbles. Each of these bubbles is accompanied by a little "I" who "gets" it. But t...

When I discovered the lump, you looked into my eyes and said: "Everything will be all right." The biopsy was positive. But you gazed at me that way again: "Everything will be all right." Chemo began. I sat on my bed wondering if I could stand up without vomiting. You sat down beside me. Your eyes swam into mine and spoke again. But in six months, I was ready to give up. "Go ahead, give up," you said. "Everything will be all right." For a year I whispered, "I'm OK." Then I looked in the mirror: cheeks like smoke that veils the surface of a distant planet. I turned to meet your eyes, those gentler mirrors. The final night, I was a paper lantern without a bulb. They had me on a morphine drip. I couldn't wait for the animal in my throat to stop sucking. You came into the room, sat down beside me. "She can't hear you," they said. "Yes she can," you said. My eyes were somewhere else, but you found them ...