Uradiance

So many suns, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, all sharing the same sky. So many opinions and points of view, all arising in the same space, the space of awareness. All human minds share an intractable and unified expanse, in which there is plenty of room for all. Yet we are trapped in grids of polarized energy that flow through this boundless space of mind. Stuck like flies in the web of mental conflict, which is woven of nothing but thought, we cling to our limited viewpoints, our beliefs, instead of resting in our unbound awareness. We are trapped in the cloud of what OUGHT to be, instead of realizing our true idently as the pure sky of what IS. The breadth of a galaxy, the emptiness in an atom, the abyss or our own Being are all the same space. Yet this space must awaken. Only when space wakes up can humanity know true peace. This is the elegant solution, the real "shift" to a new earth. It won't happen through political debate, economic systems, or m...

The universe supports you to the degree that you are passionate about sharing your unique gift. Only then does the Go ddess pay attention, bending every law of nature to uphold you. But she is not the slightest bit interested when you imitate someone else. Why were you created? Don't say, "to love and to serve." That is a platitude. The universe is specific. She loves detail, every brush stroke, the flavor of a pollen mote on a bee's nose, the bindhu of a photon. Don't be a safe generality. Love as You alone can love. Serve as You alone can serve. You impoverish the cosmos when You hesitate. Bee wild about your work. In the cell of your heart, turn the earth into the honey that tastes like no one but You. Photo by Kristy Thompson

Every atom of you sings to its native star about some incomprehensible connection between pain and beauty. Wrathful deities cock their heads, Bodhisattva's blink, losing their place in the Heart Sutra, perplexed and ever so sweetly troubled by the music emitted from your nuclei. Something about your gravity and grief disturbs them with a sign of courage. They long to clothe themselves in what weighs you down to the mother of bodies, the planetary pulse of sweet grass and gray hair, the empty park benches, lonely faces of dissolving frost on maple leaves. Angels yearn to fathom the opacity of your tears, and smother their brilliant souls in your dust.

Have you noticed? This world is the mirror of your gratitude. You spin the cosmos out of glittering awareness, and nothing is not you. Would you like to see more grains of abundance, threads of deathless beauty? Pay attention to the gifts of the infinitesimal, sparks of darkness in light and joy in sorrow. Be thankful for the nakedness of twigs, the hollow in the seed.

Rest as original emptiness. Be the mirror, not the image. No fluttering wings of opinion. No old Summer stories struggling in a silver web the Autumn spider spins across the night. Be Ariadne, the one who doesn't get stuck in her own silken theater. Play the magical game where beggars and kings, warriors, lovers, witches, fools cling to their threads of desire, while you simply witness the glistening. Don't be a bead, a diamond, a netted star. Be the spider, the darkness Herself.

"This is my Body, given for you." ~Luke 22:19 The body is my ashram, my guru, my path. I only become aware of who I Am through this body. I know "God" through incarnation. My awareness locates itself through an object of perception, refines the object to its subtlest veil of otherness, then transcends the object, resting as Self-radiance. Grace caresses me, not when I am out of the body, but when I cherish the faintest sensation as a door, and step through it to pure consciousness. Zen-master Dogen wrote, "Those who gained enlightenment by seeing blossoms or hearing sounds, achieved it through the body." Breath brushing my sternum, like a mountain stream glittering over a stone, suddenly, I Am the sky! Through all my sensations, aches, ecstasies and sorrows, I arrive at this moment of awakening: awareness of the body becomes awareness itself. The vast blue firmament pervades every cell, dissolves the fractal edges of...

I speak to silence and say, I love you. Because you are another and you are myself. You are the wave nature of solitude. Especially in the forest, where snowy owls pierce darkness with a cry. They mate for life. I love you, silence. Your faintly quivering web of music holding the stars. The voices of ancestors in the flavor of your blackness. Your fragrance the musk of the menstrual moon. The way your mouth hungrily takes half the earth, the dark half, tasting of Winter. I love you, silence. You are the absence of everything but wonder, which like wings at night, fills what listens completely.

The smokeless blue flame of anger flashes up and vanishes. The grief cloud bursts in ten thousand droplets of the sun. Bitter turns sweet, sweet turns sour, but Beauty is the flavor of impermanence. No need to make a cult of ecstasy and delight. No need to make a cult of grief and anger. These are feeling states, not signs of more authentic spirituality. Feeling states pass through awareness like clouds through the empty sky. But awareness is not a state. It is the Self, eternal, unborn, boundless and clear. The Way is not to cultivate feeling states, or personify them as gods and goddesses, but to transcend them, resting as self-luminous pure awareness. This is meditation. This is ananda. Yet feeling states continue to arise, dissolve, arise, dissolve, in that field of bliss, and we have no cause to grasp or reject them. Is this freedom so esoteric, so difficult? In truth, is easier to rest as the Self, eternal and boundless, than to be joyful or sad... The Self ...

And what if the true path does not lead you into the next moment, but deeper into this one? Photo: Sunset from my little town on Puget Sound

On this exquisite day in the North West, not a cloud in the sky, 63 degrees, blossoms unfolding. I prayed to beloved Lakshmi when I awoke this morning: "O Mothe r, let me share your beauty and abundance with others today." Just came back from a five mile walk with Bowie, pictured here, already asleep in my arms. On the walk, I had a very simple conversation with my heart. So that is what I am sharing. ~Where do we go when we die? ~The next world. ~Where is the next world? ~Inside. ~Is it a higher world than this one? ~It is the light this one is made of. ~How can I see it? ~Feel the luminous throb of a humming photon cloud around an electron in one flowering atom of your body. Un-whirl yourself to the bindhu star at the heart of the nucleus. ~This could be a dance. ~It is a dance. ~This sounds like music. ~It is music. ~It seems that when we die, we don't go anywhere. What do we do? ~Dissolve into Who You Are. ~Is it hard? ~How hard could ...

What is the great evening sacrifice? Not to offer wine and doves, not to offer flowers and coconuts, or a thousand meritorious deeds; but simply, for one sunset moment, to give up every effort to be someone better, someone else, and take a Sabbath rest as who you Are. Your spine a wick. Your breath a flame. Free from hope and regret, you ignite the stars. Photo: Kwan Yin over my fireplace

It's popular to talk about Kali Yuga these days in the West. Yes, according to the ancient Vedic teachings, this is the age of increasing injustice, chaos, and political corruption: the dregs of time, when impurities rise to the surface of creation, so that they can be emptied in the trash. Most Western authors get off on identifying with the trauma, outrage, and chaos of this age, but they are only embracing a half-truth. Kali Yuga is also the age when the secrets are open, the temple veil is rent, and the "highest" teachings are given away in the street. The age of Kali makes spiritual liberation easier, not more difficult, because it is not granted through human effo rt, but through surrender to the grace of the Divine. Grace is the operative word in this age, not achievement. And grace becomes concrete, substantial in the human nervous system, through the vibration of the divine Name, the mantra. This is why we find that we tend toward liberation wh...

The art of sipping this wine is a subtle discipline: the rule is only one glass at a time. Each breath is enough to inebriate both body and soul. Was it your heart or mine that was a cup for the other's lips? Was I the host and you the guest, or vice versa? And who pays the bill? The secret is, we don't have to settle. The tip is incalculable anyway. O God, we go reeling out of this tavern. Here's my shoulder, give me your arm. My devotion to your path will keep us both from stumbling. And here's my chest with its broken gate wide open. I'll make sure you get home.

If you want to bless the entire creation, be yourself. Most people try to be someone else, causing a great deal of stress. Resting unconditionally as your Self ripples, then settles, the cosmic web of energy into alignment. Resting unconditionally as your Self bathes countless creatures in waves of harmony. Resting unconditionally as your Self generates, from the all-pervading center of silence, a more intimate, healing, inward light in every atom of the earth, and every distant star. Is it not your highest vocation, above all other work, to be You?

Spiritual healer, remember, behind the mask of perfection lie eight billion lethal wounds, all calling you to speak with their voices. Be nourished by that thirst.

I invite you to listen to this Metta meditation  for the world sorrow on SoundCloud. 'Drops'

  Perhaps "attention deficit" is not a disorder, but our Buddha nature encouraging us to relinquish points of view. There are countless stars but only one sky. So there are countless points of view, but the space that contains them is one. It is pure awareness, the space of the heart. To rest the mind in the heart is the beginning and end of all spiritual practices. Photo by Linda Olsen

The original sin is comparison. That is the fall. To judge your incomparable sparkling singularity by the standard of another, is the root of suffering.

A friend said, "I am feeling sad, no reason why." I said, "No reason why." She said, "Tender and vulnerable." I said, "Tender and vulnerable." She said, "Empty, yet full of tears." I said, "There is something that is higher than joy, deeper than sorrow." She said, "The womb." I said, "Thank you." "For what?" she said. "For the courage to breathe what has no name."

In the cool of the evening my Beloved walks down this cobbled path of little bones that begins at the almond tree growing between my eyebrows and ends at the dark lily pond in the woods beneath my navel. We meet under the bent ribs   in the heart chuppah, that golden canopy of sighs. Now I must explain that all the gods are flavors in my blood, the goddess just a tremor of my exhalation. She takes my hand and asks, "Did you eat of the tree whose fruit is Knowledge?" I answer, "No Beloved, I ate of that other tree whose fruit is bewilderment." She plays a seven-stringed vina, which is my body, cacophony of dust. Mangoes and pomegranates split themselves without a knife, because ripeness and wounding are one. I dance now. Galaxies swirl open, rainbows on a peacock's tail. Other worlds spring up, blossoming, rooted in the juices of my longing mixed with her tears. I am so full of light,...

Tonight I stepped onto my back porch and felt the chill of Autumn, gazed into the sunset, so much earlier now, and listened to the frog still exulting in a pool of last nights welcome raindrops. So innocently, in my heart, before my intellect kicked in with all its "reasons" for this and that, I sensed Autumn as a living conscious Presence, whom I could greet with gratitude and whisper, "Thank you Autumn!" which I did. And I realized that we have these vast mysterious intuiti ve instinctive responses, just like our so-called "primitive" ancestors, which empower us to commune with stars, moons, waterfalls and vibrant places in the forest, with seasons, with hours of the day, with night herself, and know them as persons, because everything has consciousness, just as we. Every spider and rose is a force of consciousness, someone to be greeted with respect. There is no inanimate object. Stones are alive. They sing in their silence, if we ...

I want to live in that village where the sunset is like wine in a golden chalice, where Francis, Chaitanya, Rabia, Lal Dev, Sappho, Han Sh'an, Jesus and his paramour, those who drink to remember and not to forget, all meet after dark at one table in a mist of violins, at a supper of poems that heal us by an invitation to enter our wounds. Pilgrim, have you been there? Have you listened to the silence that was in the bell before it rang? You know you have when your beauty awakens while others go to sleep. Photo from Assisi by Ingrid Henzler

My brain does not create this awareness I Am. This awareness I Am was here before my brain was created. This awareness I Am is the eternally awakened void whose fluctuations become the particles out of which my brain is formed. My brain will dissolve. Each particle will dissolve. An ocean of photons, suns, and galaxies will arise and dissolve in this awareness. But this awareness I Am will always be right here, right now. How do I know this? I don't. It is not knowledge. Knowledge is reference of one to another. But in this awareness I Am, there is no other. It is simply awareness awakening to itself. If it sounds abstract, I haven't made myself clear. This Awareness I Am is very concrete, because everything, a stone, a dandelion, a raindrop, a brain cell, is made out of this awareness I Am.

Because this incomparable moment is all there is, the bliss of total freedom is possible. Because we compare what is to what is not, this mind creates bondage and suffering, then blames it on the world.

The wound in the clouds may be the sky. Photo: Taken while flying through heavy weather by my daughter Abby

(A poem from 'Savor Eternity One Moment At A Time') The ancestors want you to know that you are not required to carry their pain. Your mother did not spin the web that nets you; you wove it from your own desire. Last night’s rain won't nourish this flower; why thirst for ancient tears? Your grandmothers are singing for you to birth your own unbearable happiness. Your grandfathers' bones are praying for you to hunt the sweetness in your marrow. Don’t think you must stand like a warrior in the withering crossfire of your father's blood. What wounds you is the wavering blade of your mind, slashing this moment into past and future. If you insist on making reparations, plant a wild pine - let it be a tree of Presence. You cannot pay them for the privilege of breathing, for awakening this solitude of beauty. They need no libation, nor thirst for the offering cup. They are not hungry ghosts, but earthworms who luxuriate in loam, shards of ...

Our Mother who art on earth, dark as loam, nameless as rain be your presence. Let your family dwell as a circle here where spirit and matter, heaven and earth unite in the smallest act of compassion. Be the breath we take and the bread we taste this day. Dissolve the veil of judgment that divides us one from another, so that we may all be One in You, but not the same. Dispel our illusions of impurity so that we may see all creatures immersed in our own abounding goodness. For thine is the roundness, the brokenness and healing of this body. Ahmen. Ahwomen! Marble Relief: Gaia, 11 BC, Ara Pacis or 'peace alter' in Rome 

Pain is pain. Thinking that the pain should not be here is suffering. When I accept the pain as pain, in the present moment, and sink deeply into it without thoughts or labels, then the pain is no longer suffering. It is no longer even pain. It is energy dissolving, awareness shining, Shiva dancing. This is a painful lesson.

The first step toward happiness is understanding that very little of the secret weight of our unhappiness is ours alone. It is the unhappiness of our tribe, our nation, our ancestors, who want us to be happy, who are pulling for our happiness, who yearn for us to prove that there can be a single courageous existential act of renunciation, by which we drop the weight, and choose happiness. Is this not the great task of the spiritual warrior? And there is help. Yes, a cloud of witnesses will help. We will not do it alone. And this is grace.