Uradiance

In the beginning was the Silence. And the Silence was with God, and the Silence was God. Ineffable Darkness was over the deep, and the breath of Silence was stirring the waters like a Mother softly, restlessly brooding over her egg. The Darkness was shining and the Night was as bright as the Day. And God said... No, God did not speak. The Silence was already filled with Song. Photo: NASA 

Don't give away all your beauty for free. Let there be a portion of your silence that falls into a deeper silence, pulsing like a distant star in the scented abyss of your intimacy with darkness. Learn the art of not revealing what you yearn to share with every thirsty stranger. Let your luster be like the moon pulling on the garden from within. We all share this night. Now and then a green nocturnal bud bursts free. Pilgrims stop and want to know, "What is that fragrance?" Don't tell them. Just let your wild invisible sweetness fill the air, the hour before dawn. Love is a secret. The Beloved is a secret. You could be a secret too.

Let us descend into Divine Darkness. Earth bows her head to Night,  adorning herself with stars in preparation for the Winter Solstice.  I invite you to enter this mystery through the gateway in your own body.   

  Start with something small like breathing in the stars, holding trillions of them in your chest, to light up every atom in your body. Then breathe out, giving each a new name  and a deeper darkness, more space to polish with the beauty of fire. Let this exhalation caress the lake, the forest, the city, touching every heart, the heart of fur and feather as well as the human heart. Then move on to larger tasks,  like listening to a stranger  at the coffee shop, or smiling at a serious baby who rides backward in a grocery cart. Then get down  to the greatest work of all, healing the earth  with your naked toes.

For just one day, try this. Shift your attention ever so softly from victimhood and blame to thanksgiving. You'll survive. The seed is gratitude, the flower abundance, not the other way round. The beginning and end of the path? Resting the mind in the heart. Not ascending, but sinking deeper into who you are. This body is a miracle of portals and doors leading to edgeless amazement. An ocean of stars in every cell, the same black hole at the core of the Milky Way in the center of each proton, a dot of magnetic silence, gathering into one wild holographic flower the shards and filings of the cosmos. Everything spins but You. Say "I Am," but don't ask what or search for a noun. Just feel the hum of radiance between your nipples. "Am" is the name of that golden sun. If you like, call it Christ, Krishna, Kali, or Ruuh, but these shining syllables are only mirrors you hold up in front of your chest. Gaze into one, let go. The mist of exhalation...

This is the work  of the Sabbath. All creatures flower  out of themselves, a rose,  spiraling star pollen  in a meadow   of midnight sky, a blue-green egg, floating in the nest of the twig-weaver, and our little planet,  eddied in its swirl of distances. Your work is flowering too, bursting from the loam  of the effortless,  the ground of forgiving.  A prophet does not see  into the future.  A prophet sees deeply into the present moment. From now on, friend, each stranger you meet  is You. Bathe everything  in the light that pours  through your heart-window. Photo by Kristy Thompson

There is a hug so ancient and round, so empty and deep it has no name, a hug that absolved the moon and stars before creation, a hug that encircled you before you were conceived, when the whisper of your soul had not been spoken. A hug that clasped your form when mountains were inside wind and wind was the sap in a pine, and the blues of the sky had not gleamed from your pupils, and the sun had not yet burst its golden seed in your heart. Why have you forgotten to hug yourself this way? Why do you shrink from the honey that was already poured before your cells were shaped to contain it? Don't you know that you cannot embrace another until you hug each centreless electron of your own flesh? Sink into the sweet dark well of your body, the abyss of never having needed to be forgiven. You think this is foolish? It's what angels fell here to feel. Run into the garden this very moment, whatever the weather may be. Immerse in the sting of wet grass. Spread your arms and hug the horizo...

  There is a love that needs no story, a love that needs no lover, a love that falls in love with Love itself. This love is our true nature. It is an empty blue sky, clinging to nothing yet filling each cell of our body, each atom of flesh, with an all-pervading Intimacy that unites us to every quark and every star. When we scent this love awakening in meadows and woods, in melting frost and furrowed mud, when we feel this love from golden hills that float on morning mist, when we catch the glimmer of love's empyrean in the eyes of a stranger, and perfectly, simply understand that the stillness between our thoughts is the unfathomable darkness between the stars - then we nourish all creatures from within. How could we be so intimately inside every creature? Because love dissolves otherness. What is the sign? An ever deepening silence of the heart. This is the mystery of the divine womb.    Art: Pinturicchio, detail, Madonna of Peace 

  There is a diamond at the center of silence. No one placed it there. It makes a ringing sound like a bell, or a trillion bells. No one plucks it or plays it with their breath, not even God. It is before God. Yet this crystal symmetry contains all the laws of creation. When everything dissolves into nothing, the diamond at the center of silence remains. And when you are gone, still, the diamond music at the center of your heart goes on.   Hubble photo: starburst galaxy NGC 4536 

  Why waste your life believing  that the sun is above and the earth below, only to discover too late, too late that starlight gushes from every pore of your body the moment you begin to dance? Why travel from here to there? All journeys are over but the deepening of now. Your heartbeat is a shaman's drum. Don't move: be moved. One treasure is left to find: the flame you were before you started the search. Spring is an intuition crinkled in cocoons. Your laughter can do something  about that. Ferns make fists all Winter, waiting for your belly to unbreathe. Now fall among pale bulbs in black soil on the only world  that is really yours, and touch the heavens with your knees. Painting: detail from Botticelli's Allegory of Spring