Uradiance

My daughter took this picture with instagram on the solstice. She noted, "Summer needs no filter." I planted this peony three years ago in a place that became a secret, hidden by swelling ferns and dwarfed by bamboo. It blossoms only two or three days of the year, just at the dawn of Summer, then drops its petals and vanishes. I never told anyone it was there, but Abigail discovered this flower, and made it ever-lasting. Thank you, Abby. Just this flower, just this picture, give me such fulfillment. How is that possible? Now that I am older than I ever imagined, yet somehow feel younger than I ever dreamed, I realize how boring my present life would seem to the youth I once was, yet how utterly beautiful it is: this sacrament of little things, brief perpetual pause between seasons, fragrant shadow under the petals of now, and quiet resolution of all my imperfections, into what I Am.  I wrote a poem about it: This yearning to bow to a dawn-lit peony, to your ...

The intellect makes distinctions between this and that. The heart ferments these differences into the wine of love. This is why we need a mind, and this is why we need a heart. But if your mind insists on choosing, tell it to choose the heart.

  Nothing prevents spiritual blossoming more than the perennial delusion that Grace is mediated by a hierarchy of elites, at the top of which is a pope, a guru, or a savior - when all the while the real Master embraces us immediately, now, from the deep Beauty of our own heart.

Are we afraid of our fertility? It is not the world that pushes us out of our comfort zone, but our own creativity. Beyond the safe boundary of imitation lies the ecstasy of being a creator. Where are you truly of service? Where you share y our ecstasy. Service is not the drab duty of imitating what others do in the name of seva . Service is sharing the ecstasy of your unique gift. Being You without fear is the real seva . No one else can do it. Freud wrote that, “The behavior of human beings in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of their other modes of reaction in life.” It's interesting to me that many of the sexual dysfunctions and controversies in our culture arise from fear of pregnancy; while in our spiritual lives, our growth is blocked by fear-based patriarchal institutions that point to a Creator above, but prevent us from realizing the Creator within.  May we form a new community to honor ourselves as divine Creators, celebrating fru...

  When I was a kid, I loved to swim. One of the main reasons I loved to swim was because I could let out my breath in a long rising stream of bubbles as my body sank to the bottom of a blue-green sunlit pool. At bottom, I would lie on my back to feel the silence, the stillness, while people played on the surface far above. The sound and motion of their play did not reach me at all. I simply witnessed. It's taken me a lifetime to realize why I loved that experience. It was an innocent childhood sacrament of cosmic consciousness. On the sensate surface of our lives, what plays in time is a shimmer of forms that does not disturb the vast stillness in the depths of our Being. From the depths, Being beholds time, enfolding the outer world with compassion and peace. It is precisely the non-involvement, the inviolable stillness of pure Being, that generates peace for the world above, and provides a calm basis for what happens on the surface. If Being were not completely beyond the r...

A shift of your own consciousness from anxious thinking to surrendered silence, even for a moment, relieves the whole world from stress. W hen a particle dissolves into silence, silence awakens everywhere. This is not philosophy. It is service. Painting by Albert Bierstadt

There is no death, only our agreement not to resist the opening, the current of dissolving that carries us again and again toward a black hole of chaos that suddenly blossoms into the great simplicity of Light.

When you have a cup of tea, a relaxed belly, and a good friend, even planning for the future happens in the present moment.

Before I go to sleep, the Creator reminds me to search my heart and ask one crucial question: "Did you have any fun today?" "But Lord, the world is so full of injustice, violence and terror. What right have I to be happy?" The Lord answer s, "I gave you the earth for beauty, but I also gave you the freedom to finish creation, by focusing on whatever you like." "I finish your work?" "Did I not give you the power to name the creatures? That is the power to bend the world toward joy or sorrow, love or fear; the power of your perception." "They did not tell us about this power in church or in school." "They did not want you to be powerful. But now I tell you, the supreme creative power is the power of Delight. Even if for a single instant you delight in a blossoming weed, the face of a child, or the sound of hummingbird wings, you lift the heart of humanity, and offer creation back to its source. For I ...

The restless mind loves political angst, exaggerates conflict by taking sides, and believes that righteous anger will change the situation. Political angst makes the mind feel alive on the surface level of mere thinking, but dulls and suppresses our underlying consciousness. By perpetuating conflict, thought perpetuates itself. The very nature of thinking is analysis, which is division, which is opposition. Thinking is like a dog that gnaws a dry bone to get the taste of its own blood in its own saliva. The "political" conflict is really a conflict projected by the mind. Of course, this is the opposite of the Marxist analysis of history. Marxism is based on a materialist vision, a vision that sees our mental condition as a mere reflection of economic conflict. But the ancient Vedic vision is the reverse. How we see the world reflects the quality of our consciousness. The world is our projection. The ego loves to superimpose its mental conflict onto the world. Year after...

It is good to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, shelter the homeless. But it's not enough. Mere alms-giving keeps both giver and receiver in materiality. The deepest service is to awaken the heart. If you feed a person, you keep them biologically alive for another day, but to what purpose? So that they get hungry again? So that they can breed hungry children? So that they can acquire wealth, perchance, and make others hungry? But if you teach a person how to stir up the inner fire of bliss in every atom of their body, kindled from the depths of divine silence, they will fulfill the purpose of living: they will experience God. That is the greatest service. That is why we teach meditation. Meditation awakens the very core of our being. 

We are overwhelmingly free. There are people in prison cells, with nothing at all, who realize overwhelming freedom. There are people with immense political and economic power who feel utterly bound.

Dear God (alias 'Almighty,' 'Lord of Hosts,' 'Heavenly Father'), OK, I know we're all having gender issues here. And I must admit, my life has been so much better since I started thinking of you as Her. I mean, face it, the Goddess energy rocks! But because its Father's Day, I'm going to try really hard to say, 'Our Father.' At least for today, though, you got to promise me you won't be jealous, angry, or judgmental. No brooding in the clouds. Come down to earth. And no more Commandments. They don't work. Suggestions are much better. Please drop the crap about hell because we've grown up and just don't buy it. Also, don't order any more armies to slaughter the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Palestinians, the North Vietnamese, the Sunnis and Taliban, Apaches and Gay People. And stop sending whirlwinds to the Bible belt: that makes NO sense. Lose the lightning bolt. There are no sacred we...

The peace that passes understanding is not above but before understanding. How crucial it is to connect with Who you already are, before you know anything! Tell me, friend, how do you return to the Heart-Whole-Healing alignment that you never lost?

"... that my joy may be in you, and your you may be complete." ~John 15:11 Christian - Sin = Celebration. Celebrate the incarnation of Joy from the womb of Light. No one fell. No one is guilty. No one needs to pass through Armageddon to get to the Garden. We just need to plant it right where we are, and enfold all creation in the fire of Love. The only sin is to think so little of ourselves that we give away our power to another.

The politics of privacy is getting interesting. We progressives want complete transparency and public disclosure in government. But don't mess with our own privacy. Being good students of Marx, we disdain private property and private enterprise. But we demand private iPhone and email accounts. We encourage the government to confiscate and redistribute private wealth - taxation - so that we have all the access we need to other people's money. Yet the government who gives us the money isn't supposed to know anything about us. We claim a right to public healthcare, public transportation, public schools, public parks and public safety from crazy people with assault weapons. Yet we also claim a right to privacy. Would this be a public right to privacy, or a private right to public goods and services? The only solution to this conundrum is more consciousness. The All-Knowing dwells in every nook and cranny of the earth. The All-Seeing pervades the sky, unto the farth...

There is a process of making honey that begins in the loins, no, in the soles of the feet, no, deep in the loam, and if allowed to continue without the intervention of the mind, results in the fountain of stars that others call the sky at night, but we know as astonishment, the domelessness of the temple of this body.

Is anything acquired by the Self? Is anything abandoned?  The crucial question is, what have you accumulated through your spiritual practices? Be very clear and honest about this. For all your initiations, your advanced techniques of meditation, yoga and pranayama, your Visa bills for jet-setting to the ashram, have you actually acquired anything?  Who were you when you started your quest, and who are you today? Is the one who accumulated all this knowledge, all these spiritual practices, any different now? Has Awareness changed? The most advanced practice is to stay where you began. That path is best whose first breath is all you will ever need. 

When I choose a flavor I don't reject anything

To purify the world, see the world as pure. Then act in a pure world from the level of pure vision.  To purify vision, meditate, immerse the heart in pure Silence. Seeing the world as pure is to see the dancing Goddess, Shakti. Seeing the world as the dancing Goddess is to see nothing ungodly. See earth made of starlight, in every atom, each proton ripe and dense with bliss, Ananda. The dancing goddess is the whole creation. She is the earth. She is nature, Prakriti . Where does she dance? In what space? Her dance is an exquisite mirage in the immaculate void of our awareness. Adore her as your own Self.  Even her wildest dance is the vibration of stillness, of clear empty mind. Just as the form of each ocean wave is made of water, so her dance trembles in the stillness and the silence of our adoration and wonder. The world rests in the dance of the Goddess, and the dance of the Goddess rests in you. May you rest in Shiva, unbounded awareness. This is the Sabba...

I bowed. When my forehead touched the earth, I could feel the stars spill out. The intellectual asked, "Why do you bow?" I answered, "To honor my body." "To whom do you bow?" "To the one who is bowing." I sat in meditation. When my breath touched the root, I could feel the kiss of Christ and Mary Magdalene. The intellectual said, "You've been sitting for over an hour, doing nothing." "Doing nothing works," I said. The intellectual said, "Show me." So I started grinding diamonds from the mirror of silence. I took them to the marketplace and cried, "What will you give me for one of these diamonds?" The Rich Man answered, "All my wealth." The Prince said, "My father's kingdom." The Alchemist said, "The five elements, and every secret of magic." The Priest said, "Absolution of your sins, and the keys to heaven." I shook my head and repl...

The collapse of every ideology based on fear of the other. A blessed birth pang as we pass into the Age of Wholeness. We cannot conceive how vast and nearly instantaneous our progress will be when we act from our wholeness instead of taking sides, being "right," and drawing our identity from our conflict with the opposing party. Wholeness is a new way of being in the world.

The doorway to a house is not the whole house. Yet this humble open space, the door, is a gateway between outside and in. The lintel was sacred in ancient cultures, a liminal space protected by Gods and Goddesses like Ganesh, who blesses and protects doorways in India. Your body is the greatest portal of all. Just as the door is not the whole house, so your earthly body is not the totality of who you are: but it leads to the stars, to the kingdom of heaven. Honor your body as the doorway to the Infinite. Honor every glistening organic pulsation of muscle and nerve. Honor the hollow passages, flowing with food and lymph, blood and air. Honor the neuron flowing with fire. Don't let anyone tell you, "You are not your body." Honor the ocean in each cell. Honor the sky in every atom, opening like a sunrise from nucleus to electron cloud. Honor the black hole at the center of each proton, dense with all the information of the cosmos. That is the sacred Yoni. Be that ...

Women were the first drummers refusing not to dance beating sheaves against the barley sifters for meade brewing and turning work to song the men did not understand so the women gave them the work to do and the women kept dancing and drumming the hollow the empty rippling the mystery of the womb the vibration of nothingness became juicy and swollen on the vine dripped down and made the men mad with desire but who kept drumming... "In the beginning, from Nothing there arose Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit."  ~Rig Veda 124.4

Every person is absorbed in some vast, significant, beautiful inner work that seems small and hidden to others. Whoever you meet, honor their incomprehensible vastness.

Out of the night, I stumble half a step toward You. You have already taken a thousand toward Me, like a silent underground stream that emerges into a secret valley, rising in a mist of presence filled with thrush song, dogwood blossoms, the intoxicating fragrance of hidden things. I come by a path that leads from my brow to my chest, on a journey of exhalation. Thus I enter the kingdom of your Sabbath dawn. The pilgrimage to the heart is eternal, but it only takes one breath.