One of the tasks I set my advanced cre­ative writ­ing stu­dents is to have them, one stu­dent a week, find three poems to read and then unpack from what­ever anthol­ogy I hap­pen to be using. We do this not only for mean­ing but also for craft, the tech­ni­cal and strate­gic ele­ments that cre­ate the psy­cho­log­i­cal atmos­phere of the poem. Poetry, to me, is an act of atten­tion. And I think that the reader’s atten­tion to the poem, his or her engage­ment with the words of the poet, can allow access to the poet’s atten­tion to the Power of Things. The best poems—those that evoke what used to be called the Good, the True, and the Beautiful—can reward this atten­tion with some­thing akin to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion: a direct access to a deeper real­ity. Other poems, unfor­tu­nately, ren­der lit­tle more than access to a poet’s web­site. But that’s another story. This week, my stu­dent Phyli­cia brought this poem to our atten­tion:   The Bat­tle by Abra­ham Abu­lafia When Yaweh spoke to me, when I saw His name spelled out in blood, the pound­ing in my heart sep­a­rated blood from ink and ink from blood, and Yaweh said to me, “Know your soul’s Read the Rest…

Sleep peace­fully, for every­thing is within My hands. Take your rest in the know­ing that every­thing is com­plete; you are what you were meant to be and so rest in the full­ness of your own heart— that is car­ried on the wings of faith.   Yes, rest know­ing that every­thing is already what it was ever meant to be includ­ing you, in each moment where you are held within Our love.   So rest peace­fully My beloved child Of light.   By Morn­ing Star (Inspired by Divine Spirit)

I’ve been hav­ing an odd expe­ri­ence of late, and I’m sure you’ve expe­ri­enced the same thing: some word or a phrase–or often, a tune–you just can’t get out of your head. That’s what I’ve been deal­ing with for some days now, and I think I may know why. The word that keeps play­ing over and over in my mind is “Aval­okitesh­vara.” I know, it’s a mouth­ful. So here it is, bro­ken down a bit: Ava-lo-keet-esh-vara. In Mahayana Bud­dhism, this is the name of “The Bod­hisattva of Infi­nite Com­pas­sion.” But I need to back up a lit­tle and explain what I’ve been up to in recent weeks. About a month ago, I decided to begin work on a new book, aimed at syn­the­siz­ing three great spiritual-philosophical tra­di­tions: Judaism, Bud­dhism, and Sto­icism. (Yes, some would pre­fer the term “reli­gion” for at least the first two, but that’s a dis­cus­sion for another time). My orig­i­nal title for the book was a con­trac­tion of the three words—hence, “JuBuSto”—but I later set­tled on the more mel­liflu­ous title, “The Three-Petalled Rose”. The idea grew out of my grow­ing con­vic­tion that Judaism, Bud­dhism, and Sto­icism share many fea­tures, and lead to a com­mon path of spir­i­tual and eth­i­cal Read the Rest…

Close your eyes and repose in the space of not med­i­tat­ing; the deep­est samadhi is sim­ply to watch. Your gaze is big­ger than any­thing you gaze upon; this is abso­lu­tion and remis­sion of sins. So watch­fully silent you see not only the mind inside you, but the world inside you, hap­pen­ing, hap­pen­ing; hug that. Hug the mad­ness of all thought, every simul­ta­ne­ous oppo­site mind-spark part­nered with its dark­ness, every doubt fear worry rage crav­ing tasted as unla­beled elec­tric­ity. Float amidst entan­gled nots of yes no never untied exquis­itely twist-twirling fractal-lusciously free in an effer­ves­cent mirage of fra­grant silences. Unsolve and tri­umphantly aban­don all dilem­mas in the space where count­less Yes’s rest on a sin­gle irre­proach­able No. These wave-particle neuron-thought dichotomies, mis­fired as lit­tle sparks of me, dis­solve when merely let-allow-go with laugh­ter. Past-future anx­i­ety bombs burst­ing in aer­ial ideas the infin­i­tes­i­mal orgasms of toxic neuro-peptides, fire-flushed, expand­ing this embod­ied God to full-statured cru­ci­form para­dox, your Christ. Clus­tered galax­ies at play in a womb of stars, your Body. Ten tril­lion sub-nuclear phos­pho­res­cent choices uncho­sen shout­ing So what! So what!, each a sparkling path of return to sun­rise on the choice­less ocean of pos­si­bil­ity, your Mind. The gap­ing empti­ness of per­pet­ual approach, the asymp­tote of the prob­a­ble not Read the Rest…

Max­ine Kumin wrote an ode to excre­ment. She was not being cute. This farmer-poet is among many artists who chal­lenge con­ven­tional notions of what is beau­ti­ful, supe­rior, and sacred. Tag or per­ceive some­thing as “sacred” and its appar­ent oppo­site as pro­fane, and you risk form­ing an unchecked, dual­is­tic prej­u­dice. In the his­tory of Yoga, Tantrikas have flipped notions of what’s sacred on their prover­bial heads. I have writ­ten else­where [http://yogamodern.com/categories/writing/hatha-yogis-in-the-counter-current-by-jeff-davis-2/] of how clas­si­cal Yoga main­tains that the body is an “ill-smelling… con­glom­er­ate of bone, skin, sinew, mus­cle, mar­row, flesh, semen, blood.” So-called “left-handed” Tantrikas have devel­oped prac­tices that involve phys­i­cal inter­course and eat­ing meat, chal­lenges to purist notions that demar­cate the sacred from the pro­fane. His­tor­i­cally, sev­eral Tantrikas and Hatha Yogis also allowed women and peo­ple of var­ied classes to become prac­ti­tion­ers, a chal­lenge to Brah­min notions of who is and who is not a can­di­date for sacred­ness. Some West­ern poets and painters, espe­cially but not only dur­ing the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies, are artis­tic Tantrikas. In response to YogaModern.com’s Decem­ber call to write about “the sacred,” I take up this topic in more detail. Drop in, and leave some com­ments. Click here to join in. And do me a Read the Rest…

It’s nat­ural to think pol­i­tics and sacred space don’t mix. The polit­i­cal arena roils with power plays, back­room deals and grandiose egos. Sacred space, on the other hand is often viewed as a sanc­tu­ary from such earthly tur­moil. Yet, visit a tem­ple in Varanasi, a church in Rome, or any one of the other count­less holy places around the world and you will encounter pro­found still­ness mixed with all man­ner of human activ­ity, includ­ing pol­i­tics.   The con­tro­versy about Ground Zero and a nearby Islamic com­mu­nity cen­ter expresses the mod­ern view­point of sep­a­rat­ing the world into defin­able categories—spirit/matter, mind/body, human/natural, religion/science. This world­view helps our minds find order within the tides of change. It also causes us to feel iso­lated and endan­gered by those dif­fer­ent from our­selves. This lens of sep­a­rate­ness and peril dis­torts the world into a bat­tle­ground of us against them con­flicts. It increases fear and shat­ters hopes for a soci­ety that sup­ports indi­vid­u­al­ity while strength­en­ing unity.   Trav­el­ing to world sacred places for decades and design­ing them in my archi­tec­tural prac­tice has taught me these lessons about how sacred space can heal the divides that wound us:   1. Sacred space is all encom­pass­ing. It receives all the impulses Read the Rest…

Each day, bil­lions of peo­ple visit sacred places. These set­tings offer pro­found peace and inspi­ra­tion. Yet, they can also be places of intense con­flict. With this para­dox in mind, I trav­eled to sacred sites around the globe. Mov­ing from cul­ture to cul­ture, I saw global com­mu­ni­ca­tion offer­ing a new way of expe­ri­enc­ing sacred places. The count­less struc­tures that had been sep­a­rated by geog­ra­phy and belief for thou­sands of years could now be seen as many door­ways to a com­mon store­house of human expe­ri­ence. Here is a vision of what I encoun­tered in the world trea­sury of knowl­edge and won­der. Some­thing com­pels us to draw designs. It car­ries us out of the world we know to a place where dark­ness con­tains a pul­sat­ing seed of light. The pul­sat­ing light breaks into stars. The stars gather into a hub of radi­ance and a wheel of time. The hub and wheel become a won­drous dwelling place where con­scious­ness and energy stream into the world. This com­bi­na­tion of aware­ness and forces shape the world in sub­tle and mys­te­ri­ous ways. I want to under­stand what these these pow­ers are and how they work. So I search for places that reveal the secrets of energy and mat­ter. Read the Rest…

As food and cloth­ing are essen­tial to the body, sacred space is vital to the human spirit. It doesn’t mat­ter if we call our­selves reli­gious, spir­i­tual or a rag­ing mate­ri­al­ist. We crave set­tings where we can find a moment of peace and touch the renew­ing well­springs of life. Whether it’s the cav­ern of a vast cathe­dral, a stone bench under a tree, or a table in our favorite cafe, we all visit some sort of sanc­tu­ary. Yet, phys­i­cal set­tings are merely por­tals to direct encoun­ters with a mys­te­ri­ously elu­sive non-physical expe­ri­ence.   As an archi­tect, I shape mate­r­ial bound­aries with the inten­tion of cre­at­ing open­ings into this non-material real­ity. This is what sacred space at all scales and sizes has done for thou­sands of years. Over the years, I learned that non-physical expe­ri­ence of sacred space is avail­able wher­ever we are, when­ever we open our per­cep­tion to it. Here are a few “sutras” that may assist you in notic­ing the peace and vital­ity of sacred space as you travel through your day: Sacred space is the still­ness embrac­ing you now.   Sacred space is the gap between two breaths.   Sacred space is the open­ing of each door­way you pass through.   Sacred Read the Rest…

Today I ini­ti­ated one of my stu­dents as a teacher and healer within the Peo­ple Israel. It is an ancient rite of ini­ti­a­tion, as old as the Hebrew Peo­ple are old, going all the way back to our shamanic earthy roots when the healer– sto­ry­teller– vision bringer per­son was trained up and ini­ti­ated by the med­i­cine elders of the com­mu­nity. It is a process that we call S’micha, which means lean­ing into, and which rep­re­sents a soul-merging of the per­son per­form­ing s’micha and the one being leaned into. Teacher into stu­dent, stu­dent into teacher. Two souls breath­ing as one. I do a lot of work men­tor­ing upcom­ing teach­ers. It’s one of my spe­cial­ties. And I focus my greater work through this lens, of men­tor­ing teach­ers, because this is one of the great­est needs we have in the world today, uplift­ing and empow­er­ing our teach­ers and heal­ers. We need peo­ple to be out work­ing in the Light. It’s a tragic real­ity though that there are not enough peo­ple avail­able to men­tor the wealth of folk want­ing to com­mit to work­ing with Spirit in the World. Peo­ple do not have access to the men­tor­ship and guid­ance and nur­tu­rance and sup­port that they need Read the Rest…