Uradiance

 The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof." (Psalm 24:1) God forbid that, as we shift to green energy, private corporations will try to sell us our birthright of sun and wind. It is time to put laissez-faire capitalism out of its misery. Now in its death throes, laissez-faire was invented by 18th Century humanists, sustained by the Social Darwinists of the 19th Century, and boosted later by the savage ideology of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand, born Alissa Rosenbaum in Tzarist Russia, was traumatized as a little girl when the Bolsheviks stole her family's wealth. Henceforth, she saw all regulatory government as Bolshevik, including our elected government, "we the people." Her minions in the Reagan administration, most notably Alan Greenspan, deregulated corporate America. They got plenty of help from the Clinton regime, which was the most laissez-faire administration ever disguised as Democrat. Under Clinton, Congressional corporatists gutted the ...

Depression is a disease. Spiritual practice is not a substitute for medical treatment, but it can be part of the treatment. The following practice, even if it only grants some understanding, can be helpful in lightening the weary weight. 'I' am sad. 'I' am lost in a fog. 'I' am falling down a bottomless well into darkness. 'I' am anxious about anything, about nothing, about being anxious. 'I' am hopelessly tired of living. 'I' am worthless. 'I' am longing for non-existence. 'I' am not me. Who am 'I'? 'I' am depressed... These are my names. These are my adjectives, a long list to get rid of, a long list to carry, an endless list to be... Yet they all stand on a ghost called 'I.' If this endless heaviness rests on a ghostly, weak and worthless 'I,' wouldn't it be easier just to let go of 'I' than to carry all these feelings that 'I' have? Who ...

If you feel a stinging in the breeze singeing your eye with drops of onyx, it's not you. If you feel a throbbing like broken valves in the heart of the earth, it's not you. If you hear weeping in the song of a sparrow and deep within that a dolphin's pant, it's not you. If you can't scent old salt among the reeds or fishy seaweed in the brackish driftwood, it's not you. If the waters look empty and tears feel dry, it's not you. If you want to say, "Don't cheer me up. Don't try to make me happy. Just let me be sad today. I have some grieving to do," it's not you. If the whiteness of the sky looks belly-up and the world, it's body, trembles with a slight but dangerous fever, it's not you. And walking, sighing, praying doesn't help, it's not you. And rain clouds gather like a council of elders furrowing their brows in prophecies that won't speak because they come too late, too late ...

Bow without knowing who bows to whom or why. It's just good to touch the earth with your forehead. That's how rain behaves in a sunbeam, how seeds die into new roots, what happens to night when one sparrow starts singing.

"You may eat from every tree in the garden, but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for on the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:16) What a beautiful place this planet would be if human beings had never been created! I want to bow down and weep before the smallest living creature - a sea urchin, a beetle, a turtle egg barely stirring with its little load of miracle. Between my tears, I would attempt to say, "Forgive me, forgive me, I have destroyed paradise, your home!" Yet imagining how green and luminous in untainted dew this earth would be without my rapacious species, I suddenly see that if man had never been, then no one would be aware of this place. As each creature has its genius, there must be a creature for whom awareness is the sacred gift and sole mission. Else who would worship? Whose heart would overflow with gratitude? Whose wonder would offer creation back to the Creator in a praise song? Mute cre...

'Dow Rebounds After Record Drop' (May 6, 2010, FoxBusiness.com) Every day we watch the stock market rise and fall, wondering if we'll ever get to WEALTH, wondering how much MORE we can accumulate. Our economy is based on the assumption that there will always be more. But how could there ever be more than there is right now? Now IS more. We may reconfigure the CONTENT of now, and stuff it with more things. We call the stuffing of now our wealth. But does stuffing the now with more content actually transform the quality of its SPACE, which is the quality of our awareness? Real prosperity is knowing that, whatever the content may be, the space of now is eternally brim-full of inviolate bliss. Our wealth is not more or less than the changeless space of now, which has nothing to do with its ever-fluctuating content. We exhaust our lives investing in future wealth. Yet do we ever feel, "Ah, I finally have enough"? Even those who obtain millions never ...

"A man's mind may plan his way, but the Lord directs his steps." (Proverbs 16:9)   The human intellect chatters about a divine plan. But God is the being whose sole purpose is Presence. I can either walk in that Presence, or stumble into the future.   Baba Ram Das said, "The best gift you can give another is your presence." I would add that, in fact, the only gift you give is your presence.  One might object, "I must have a purpose for my future. Purposeful work gives my life meaning." Another might add, "I give more than mere presence. I work many hours in community service to build a better future for the sick and the poor. And it's hard work!" Your efforts I commend. But in the final analysis, what matters is the quality of those hours, not their quantity. The material sum of all our work is but a drop in the bucket of what must be done. Whatever we do in the physical realm will never be much compared to the need. It is the ...

I am so honored to serve as an interfaith chaplain at an alternative community like The Evergreen State College in Olympia WA. We worship in this Longhouse, built as a sacred space by the Native Peoples' Program. At Evergreen, yoga, meditation, organic farming and sustainable economics are central to the curriculum. Recently someone told me that Evergreen is 'weird.' My reply: Evergreen is 'alternative.' What's 'weird' is mainstream America's unchallenged assumption that earth can survive another decade of unregulated capitalism, as practiced by Goldman Sachs, Massy Energy, Haliburton and BP, with workers' pensions robbed by Wall Street parasites, coal miners facing negligent homicide from CEO's, the environment devastated by big oil, and our valiant soldiers forced into multiple combat tours as imperial legionnaires, while vulture corporations gorge themselves on war profiteering. Communities like Evergreen represent a new par...

The time has come for us to bow down and weep before our Labradoodles and Collies, our Longhaired Domestic or Persian cats, our Parakeets, Macaos, Chestnut Fillies and Pythons. Then recite the following confession. "I take refuge in my Pet, whose name is ___________; and with all my heart I implore the Four Leggeds of the Earth, the Serpents and Crawling Things, the Winged Ones of the Air and the Swimmers of the Water, to forgive me and my human race for what we have done to your sacred planet."

Breeze moves the flower, but who moves the breeze? Mind moves my hand, but who moves the mind? Who is the Do-er? 'Notice the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor store into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Behold the lilies of the field; see how they grow: they neither toil nor spin. Yet the king in all his splendor is not dressed like one of these.' Who is the Do-er? We attack impoverished Third World nations like an invasive non-native species, pocking the earth with bombs, displacing millions, frying the air itself with spent uranium bullets of 'democracy.' We slaughter tens of thousands more innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan than Islamic terrorists ever killed in America. When is it enough? When is it finished? Who is the Do-er? We drill the earth for coal and oil to frolic in illusory abundance on uninhabitable coastlines, in dead oceans, sucking a breathless atmosphere. Who is the Do-er? Pleasure ...

 I am gradually learning to live in the grace of freedom without the burden of freewill. "Behold the birds of the air... and consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they they neither toil nor spin." (Matthew 6:26) Jesus pointed to the grace-filled lives of these simple creatures, not because they have no work to do, no struggle with the wind and weather, but because they don't have a little "I" to constantly whine about it. Let me be wise as a wildflower, knowing the difference between freedom and freewill! The extent of my "freewill" is paltry. The only thing I am really free to do is to invent this little "I" who claims to be the do-er. In fact, no "I" ever does anything. What happens simply happens. Yet, when awareness no longer superimposes an "I" on the happening, freedom is limitless. To see that the scope of freewill is merely to invent or not to invent an "I," is immeasurable unfathomab...

Sabbath is simply spaciousness. Keeping the Sabbath means resting in the space of awareness. Space is awake: it's content is like a dream. Have a lovely Sunday. The word ShBaT in Hebrew actually does not mean a day of the week or a temple ceremony. It literally means, "stop, desist from all doing." If, even for a moment, I surrender my doer-ship, and desist from ascribing "I" to what is happening, this moment refreshes my whole day. During this gap in doer-ship, awareness fills with Shakti's dance: endlessly reconfiguring electrons in the vast silence of Shiva. No need to impose any thought-forms from  my memory onto this dance, in order to give it meaning: for "meaning" is just a repeating loop of my past impressions. After such a moments of I-less seeing, "I" return, thinned out and transparent to the Light of God, to work again in creation.

The problem with our communication is that we think it has to be about something. Is there a form of communication where we are not about , but simply are , sharing the fierce vulnerable radiance of our pure being? Isn't that what we really want to do when we communicate, though we hide it behind words and concepts, plans for the future and stories of the past? In this new age, why not extend the mystical experience from our inner life to life in community, life in communication? Mystical experience has a precise definition: it means immediate communion with Truth, or Spirit. Most religious experience is mediated through words, doctrines, images of scripture and symbols of ritual. There are also human mediators between the believer and the Spirit: priests, prophets, ministers, popes, imams, rabbis. Traditional religion has been a second-hand experience of Truth, just as most communication has been second-hand communication, mediated by and about things. But in every religio...

In the coming age, the real soul-work will be done, not by world religions or global spiritual organizations, but by local shamanic circles rooted in a sense of place. A spiritual "movement" is fresh and authentic when 10 to 12 seekers gather in a circle, in someone's living room or under a tree in the back yard. The teacher is your Friend, who walks beside you, stays in your humble guest bedroom, rides in your Honda. There are no fancy academies. No vast auditoriums with $100 tickets to catch a glimpse of the guru. No canned, rote, step-by-step programs for getting enlightened. No corporate hierarchy. No fund-raisers that give front row seats to the rich. No flower-strewn BMW's. No bowing to a distant Master who nobody can talk to any more because he or she has 4 million groupies, many of whom only last a month. When a movement gets that big, its time to be a circle again, in someone's living room or under a tree in the back yard. Catch the sou...

When I was with this beloved Teacher, a small roomful of us were gathered before him, and he said two things that transformed my heart. I have never seen these words in print. I want to preserve these teachings in his honor. They have resonated in me for forty years. 1. The wave said to the ocean, 'How can I be like you?' The ocean replied, 'It's easy. Just settle down.' 2. No one ever loves anyone but himself, or herself. Every wave of love goes forth from the Self and returns to the Self. This is the secret of love. Hearing this first offended me, then confused me, then brought a sea-change in my understanding. I'd always wondered how anyone could be selfless. I'd always suspected that selflessness was a hoax. I knew I would never be capable of it! Maharshi boldly yet innocently shared what no other had ever said to me. Love is not selfless. Love is divinely selfish. Love gathers all others into the unity of the Self. For the...