Uradiance

You don't need to construct a higher self or a happy face to deny your pain, your world-weary anger, or the loss you feel this moment. Just let your wound stay open, and the wound itself will flower. If you are closed and your shell is hard, open to the dark ocean. Don't resist the tides of fear. Breathe every chaffing grain of sand into the mollusk of your heart. Embrace the jagged edge and splinter of the world. Split open down to your soft core, until you awaken the vast space, for it is this uncreated vastness that opens you, and its already there. What seemed like emptiness was calling you all along. A fist is closed tight. It opens and is empty. Then you discover it is this very emptiness that opened the fist. Nothing from outside pried it. Unconditional vulnerability is your invincible strength, your nature. When you touch your core, the dark contracted bud that seemed so heavy with the toxins of human sorrow suddenly blossoms into one entangled whole. The...

A flower makes no effort to spring from its seed. So you spring gracefully from your own awareness, because you cannot possibly be anyone but you. The final liberation is just to repose as you are, right now, before you even have a thought. This is why Jesus told us, in his Sermon on the Mount, "Take no thought... don’t worry... just be as natural as the lilies of the field." There is no other path, no other blessing, no other grace but to be You. Imagine how it feels for a rose to be nothing but a rose. For the wild meadow to be its own entangled galaxy of fragrances. Why would you need to be someone else? In fact, all suffering arises from this very effort to be other than I Am. Reposing in the Self is not passivity, but ultimate dynamism, the regenerative power of surrender to the force that creates you. Resting as you are cannot but release the germ from its seed, the action that the universe longs to perform through your unique moment presence. Ecstasy ...

  I'm still searching for a word to describe what it's like to discover the sky in my body between two breaths, what its like to swirl through the blues in my diaphragm, a word to explain precisely how my eyeball shapes the immeasurable curve of the Milky Way , and a silent stream of stars pours all night down the hollows of my spine. There is a hummingbird inside me probing for soma. What does she call the honeysuckle twined around my ribs? There is a murmuring bee covered with the golden pollen of pure consciousness. What does he call the sunflower springing from my lungs? Maybe the word is simply Friend, whispered, then unwhispered ,  naming the one wh o touches  my chest like a feather  piercing a cloud, like a dagger of honey so finely honed my heart hardly knows it has been severed into "I" and "Thou." Photo by Bahman Farzad

  In the white noise of many opinions I long to hear the silence creatures make when they are listening, and there is no thought only the harmony of trees and raindrops. Invisible things appear. Deer step gently out of the mist. When I listen, the heart opens fearlessly. No need to defend itself. No need to form an opinion about anything. Photo from a hike with my brother on Mt. Rainier

Honor the ancestors. They are the golden honey that streams through this moment. Honor the dead and the unborn, for none are dead, none are unborn. Sacred is the womb,  sacred is the grave. I sing to you, Mother. As a wild iris bending  toward dawn, you bend toward the dark. I sing to you, Father. Let your withered beams return to the hollow seed. Each step I take on earth makes this a sacred day, a sacred day. The soles of my feet pay obeisance to you who traveled before me. Yet you leave no trail. Each footprint a thistle furrow, a bowl of chanterelles and raindrops, no room for a Way. That is why I wend off-trail entangling the seasons of Samhain and Imbolc. I touch the moon t hrough  my own eyes, my own breath. And I feel you, grandfather,   walking in my footsteps. Aboriginal art by Peter Mulchahy

  Reduce 10,000 commandments to Zero. Break the circle open. Let the emptiness inside spill into the the center of the Milky Way. On your ballot, write in the name of someone you really love. Unjoin the party, the church, the sangha. Wander out beyond the empire of thinking into the solitude of all souls. Does silence have edges? Hear the song between the words. Let it be the humming of your molecules. It's not enough to be the sky, you must become the loam. Not enough to alchemize an angel. You must become a mycorrhizal hypha plunging like a dolphin through waves of sod. Don't be more than you are, be all that you have been for 10 million years. Find the farthest star in grit-spark clenched in a clam shell, chaffed by darkness into pearl. Churn the void into a song of buttermilk. Anther and ovule, you and I, wedded in one calyx. Gaze at a maggot close up, the golden idol of your...

  Why travel to Mecca, Benares, Jerusalem or Rome? Just make the haj to your own heart. Follow the still motion of blossoming, the golden swirl of Allah's most intimate gaze, Christ's healing gesture, Shyama’s dance of inebriation. One spiral of amazement pierces  the proton,  Laniakea’s  superclustered spine, a frond of lavender, this miracle  of breathing inward, outward. Is there a solitary  infinitesimal dot in all of space and time that does not overflow with the nectar you thirst for?

Don't go on and on about Oneness. Just fall silently in love with every crack in the path and see what happens. April, a dandelion, October, a toadstool. Meet each ache and throb with a kiss of direct perception. Frog peep, nettle sting, psalm of the Barred Owl over the swamp. Vacancy of the park bench covered with wet leaves where we met that Sunday and surely touched on a summer afternoon. Small signs of awakening, sacraments of the perceiver in love with the sad, broke-open , unfallen world.

Karuna... Breathe in the sorrow of all who are in pain, yet do not own it as "my pain." Mudita... Breathe forth the joy of all who rejoice, as if it were your own joy. Maitri... Taste the un-created nectar of pure love flowing through the core of every creature, yet call no one "my love." Upeksha... Repose softly, lightly in the broken heart of the universe, where sorrow is as sacred as happiness. Come home to the mystery of the bliss of silence. You won't be able to describe these feelings to anyone. That is why Buddha called them, The Four Immeasurables. Yet surely, someone will see the rainbow shining through your tears.

I have no idea how to go to heaven. But I do know how to go to sleep. I learned from my cat, who always naps on my shirt, so she can slumber in the kindness and protection of her best friend's scent. When you fall asleep tonight, just assume that you have lain your head at the feet of your Beloved, and rest in the miracle of this breath. Know that the Beloved is very near, in fact, is the gentle radiance of your heart, who will bless you all through the darkest hours. Remember that each inhalation is the Beloved's gift, and each exhalation is a flower of gratitude, offered back. Drift off into the ocean of Grace. And when you wake up, you will radiate peace. Good night.

In the human race there are two tribes. The people who, when they look at trees, see lots and lumber to sell. And the people who, when they look at trees, see beauty to walk through slowly, a silent cathedral of green and golden fire. The future of the Earth depends on raising our children to be the People Who See Beauty, the People Who See Beauty. Don't worry, they are the most ancient tribe.

Some say the world is transformed through political action. Some say the world is cleansed through anarchy. Some say the world is healed through waves of silence arising in a heart that drowns in the ocean of bliss. I say, don't worry. The world was annihilated a moment ago and recreated just so, a sparkle of delicious fire on the wing of a dragonfly. Now do what you love. Photo by my dear friend, Aile Shebar

  Thousands of pages of philosophy cannot contain it. The myriad verses of the Bible, Torah, Qu'ran, Vedas, Sutras of the Buddha, cannot comprehend it. The dharma talks and guided meditations of all the new-age "spiritual teachers" cannot approach it. It is beyond the believer and the non-believer, beyond left and right, beyond the masculine and feminine, the rich and poor, enlightenment and ignorance, duality and non-duality. It is an infinite yet intimate simplicity. ὅ τι ὁ Θε ὸ ς ὁ ε ἰ πών Ἐ κ σκότους φ ῶ ς λάμψει, ὃ ς ἔ λαμψεν ἐ ν τα ῖ ς καρδίαις ἡ μ ῶ ν πρ ὸ ς φωτισμ ὸ ν τ ῆ ς γνώσεως τ ῆ ς δόξης το ῦ Θεο ῦ ἐ ν προσώπ ῳ Χριστο ῦ . "For the God who said, Let there be light shining out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the radiance of the Knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Corinthians, 4:6)  Open your fist, hold out your hand and see. You are holding all the stars. Open your chest and breathe. You...

When you discover that your very breath is the subtle body of the Goddess, She who danced and played with the Almighty at the dawn of creation, whirling the galaxies, churning the stars from the milk of compassion, then you can rest, you can fall into the rhythm of your heartbeat, a silent prayer that says more than all the words of scripture, yes, you can savor the whole story of salvation in the rising and falling of your chest.

To become aware of pure awareness - whether awake, or dreaming, or in deep sleep - is the crest-jewel of liberation. Consciousness itself is the Beloved. When the charm of pure consciousness outshines perception of the object, outshines the dream, outshines even the darkness of deep sleep, the veil between the worlds dissolves. This is Love, all-pervading, all-forgiving, all-unifying. Your love or God's love? No need to ask. Consciousness permeates even that veil, and you love the other as your self. Then otherness sparkles even more wondrously, even more intimately. Waves of joy in the stillness of Being, waves of Twoness in the One, for the sake of love. Whether of man or woman, insect or angel, pebble or toadstool or Mother Divine, otherness irradiates creation with beams of grace that emanate from your own heart. It is You, it is You who have been saying all along, "Let there be light!"

"Guru is not a person. Guru Shakti is the infinite energy, and that is also the energy of yourself. If you become empty, you too will become that. The energy will shine through you." ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar The Guru is not here to be our personal savior. The Guru is here to teach us sadhana , to remind us and re-heart us of ourselves. The most difficult renunciation is not to go beyond drink, or sugar, or sexual indulgence, or wealth, but to go beyond the glamor of the Master. This truth is hard, but the truth sets us free. We don't absorb eternal Light from the form and personality of the Master. We absorb eternal Light from the core of our own heart, after the Master's grace has ignited it. Spirituality becomes religion when we replace the inward sadhana with the personality cult of the guru. Jesus taught the kingdom of heaven within. He never taught an external kingdom. Your own heart is the sovereign power that governs you, not the rule of the Guru...

" For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." ~2 Cor 4:6 Many critics don't really know anything about the Gnostic Paul, and how essential he is to understanding Christian mysticism. They judge him for being a child of his time and culture, but they do not understand him as a child of eternity. None was his equal at encapsulating vast realms of visionary wisdom in a single verse, like this one. This verse should not be read as a linear sequence of thoughts, but as a ring of concentric circles, like Danté's celestial rose. The outermost circle is the light of Creation. Within that circle is the circle of Gnosis. Within that is the circle of Glory. And within the circle of Glory is the ineffable beauty of the divine Face. Now gaze into that Face. This too is a sphere that we must penetrate if we would come to the heart of the Mystery: the Personhood...