Uradiance

Last night, Dr. Shakti performed a full moonoscopy on my fontanelle, separating the tectonic plates in my skull, re-opening the soft spot I had when I was a baby. Then She poured seven galaxies down my backbone. It went well and I feel great this morning. Each breath is a string of hollow diamonds, ringing.

Collage by Rashani Réa  

  My religion is simple. Let us pray. No Savior but the second coming of a scavenger kitten trembling in my flashlight beam by the pantry door. No Holy Mother, just the crone selling cherry bombs on the Third of July at the Thunderbird Tribal Casino. No patron Saint but the half-blind abuelo carefully cramming cages of hens into the luggage rack on the midnight flight from Newark to San Juan. No Revelation, only the wail of the newborn citizen whose mother crossed over in the hour before dawn, her final breath a one-word prayer, “Al Norte.” I believe in the Last Judgment. It is an infant’s tear without circumference. The sound of a wood thrush is the end of time, a Parousia in each dogwood blossom. I am a fallen creature plummeting into grace. From what should I be saved? I was never lost. The mountaintop is wherever I am. I vow to wander. M...

You can sweep up the dust of a thousand ruined civilizations in this breath. You can gather the ashes of your ancestors in this breath. Whisk the DNA from all the microbes that ever swarmed the gut or swam the blood of rodent, honeybee, or leprous medieval peasant in this breath. You can reap the protein from each virus, from each chromosome fossilized in fissures of a meteorite; you can harvest molecules of leopard scat and mastodon, maggot and wolverine, the very color code of parrots in this breath; or learn the secret gene-Om of a black hole humming from the core of the galaxy. And in this breath, you can distill the tears of your enemies, the wild scent of your first love, the healing elixir in all rain-forest herbs, the dew in the eyes of your unborn children for a thousand generations to come. You can taste the nectar of atoms that Jesus breathed in this breath. Now hold it, friend. Just for a moment, cherish and hold this brea...

Who told you you were “white,” that disdain for shadows, color of the fear of falling ? You are not white, you are oak, apple wood and dandelion. Make a barrel of your bones. Make wine of yourself. Acquire the flavor of your ancestors.   Who told you you were “black,” that abstraction of laughter and tears? You are more than black. Seeds of the sun are sown  in your cheek furrows. You are banyan and mahogany, kola nut and cocoa bean, kinnikinnik of the sacred pipe. You are the olive night.   Voracious love has dipped us both in honey, meshed our chromosomes in darkest cilia, netted our dendrites like mushrooms in sweet loam, the wild manure of one dragon.   Dust in a wrinkled rainbow, whorled pallet of earth tones,  ginger, sorrel, burnt sienna... We're one human juice   pulsing through a pungent root toward starlight.     West African Earth Goddess Ala, image  shared...

Each kingdom is food for the next. I was mineral water, liquid lunch  for rhododendrons. I was a succulent leaf of skunk cabbage for the hippopotamus. I was a goat for the hunter. Now my mind is the food of angels. But perhaps creation explodes out of nothing not for me. For whom then? A songbird at dawn? Did the phylogenetic storm of eons whirl from the black hole of eternity, the cosmos erupting in a breakdance  of hydrocarbon bling,  a dream in the chloroplast, a sundance of green munched up by gorillas in mammalian concupiscence, just for this man-brain to secrete neuropeptide satori-nectar? Maybe, after all, not for me but for the epiphany of a white-throated sparrow, tiny bones and feathers the stuff of chthonic stone, breakfast of berries and worms, twigs for a nest, provided  by the old-growth cedar forest, her wide un-trembling eye more capable than mine of wonder, of emptiness,  of seeing into the silence beyond thought, and singing about it. Photo by...

"Let Jesus be your breath." ~St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain   Let Jesus be your breath. He is the Door that is always already open. The frame has a shape, but the passageway is empty. Let Ram be your breath. The arrow floats back to the bow. That is how true warriors win battles before they begin. Let Allah be your breath. Hu dissolves the sugar into sweetness. Now let the Goddess Kundalini be your breath, turning your midnight nerves to bolts of lightning. At dawn, the sound in your chest is a forest full of exultation about nest-building. The fierce flower that blossoms in your body may appear like the universe outside you, but it is a golden path of drowning, self within self, no distance, no journey. The honey bee can't fly, his feet are so weighty with galaxies of deadly pollen. See how the face of the Beloved lures you inward toward a Kiss of annihilation. When lips touch, there is no breath at all, and it will be a thousand years until your next heartbeat.

  You are made of the medicine that heals you. Soil, water, light and air are powerful immunities. At night, feel moonbeams penetrate your brain, gently massaging your pituitary, amygdala, and hypothalamus. Close your eyes and taste The champagne prana sparkling in your neurons. Distant stars spill over the cup of each vertebra, soaking into the loam through your naked soles. Your root pulls you deeper. Only allow the sea-grace of the Dark to do her work. When the wave comes, rise higher. When the trough comes, sink deeper. This is the only way to become the whole ocean. At dawn, cleanse your lungs with sunbeams. Breathe out yesterday. Every cell of your body, like a robin's egg, the endless circle of the clear blue sky. Are you hungry? Break your fast. You are the bread you hunger for. You are the yeast of love Arisen in the night. Never forget that the energy of God is your body.   Painting ...

This mad little Gnostic reflection of mine was just published in 'The Braided Way,' a wonderful journal of spirituality. I am grateful. LINK New archeological evidence proves conclusively that Buddha never sat in the lotus posture! The lotus was invented by Christian missionaries because they thought Buddhism sounded too easy. The missionaries taught the Indians that no one gets saved without a crucifixion. Though he is a very loving God, God is also very angry, and he has to take out his anger on somebody. To prove it, they told horrific stories about Jesus in agony, hanging on a cross to please his father. But the Indians just shrugged their shoulders and replied, “Our savior smiles a lot. If we want to get saved, we just breathe.” So the missionaries drew pictures of Sakyamuni tying his legs in knots and sitting on them so he would look miserable, just like a missionary. The truth was, Buddha had chronic lower back pain. When he...

  All night long while our bodies sleep we wake in a star-like convergence inside each other, watching over these soft brown  slumbering forms whose breath flows up to touch our light and then returns, fragrant with musk. This is Tiriya, the work of stillness beyond the dream, neither I nor Thou but one vigil of pure love. Yes, the time is coming when the heart will never sleep, and all of us  will understand that there is no one else.

  Better than a thousand days of disciplined sitting  is ten minutes of surrendered prayer, one moment of  unquenchable praise, a single breath of wonder if you have been touched by the madness   of Grace.  Assume that this exhalation is the last, and you are on the slope of a final heartbeat. Befriend entropy. Fall into the groundless. Rising only by surrender,   be a wing that glides on gravity, never quite knowing how the melody is made  from listened silences. Perhaps there are more than a million reasons  for you to be unhappy, but not one of them  is this apple blossom.

The space beyond the sun at the far end of the Milky Way is the hollow in the mustard seed that was planted in the furrow of your missing rib. Therefor breathe the night. You are so ancient. Your glow is still approaching like a promise, a pilgrim God, and you are still receiving your name. How do I know this? I don't. I taste it. Someone touches the soft spot on my crown and pours the nectar of emptiness down my bones. I won’t say who, but her scent is pungent with silence. Her breath shimmers with the radiance of the dark. If I were one of those soul merchants Who sell keys to the door that is always open, I would bottle her perfume and call it "Bewilderment."

"The wind blows where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is for everyone who is born of the spirit." (John 3:8) If we carefully examine the details of this verse, we find that it contains Jesus' meditation teaching on the breath. Biblical Greek employs the same word for Breath, Wind, and Spirit. More than once, Jesus makes a wise pun on this Greek word, 'pneuma.' The wind blows where it pleases. Your breath is moved by a mystery, not by your will. Simply noticing that your next inhalation is given, not taken, turns breathing into Grace.   You hear its sound. Listening within, you sense a subliminal whisper in your breath, the sound that Elijah the Prophet called 'a subtle murmur of silence.' In Hebrew, this is 'qol daqah d'mamah.' 'Daqah' literally means 'finely ground or atomized.' The whisper Elijah heard was the vibration of the cosmos at...

When you were a child you practiced no esoteric tantra, held no concept of a "path." You were an orchid opening in equatorial wilderness, bending toward warmth, veering from chill. You smiled on the stranger who made your chest glow, turned away from one who made it shrink, inching by degrees  of swell and contraction. You could grow this way again. Obey the sacred scripture of your body. Move through the forest at midnight holding the candle of each breath. Near-sighted, step into the next lit pool of silence. Way will open. No need to see far. Just bend toward warmth and smile  on the perfect stranger. Depart from the kingdom of fear and enter the golden palace of your Self.