Why not be an anar­chist for love? Explode as gen­tly as a rose. Can Krishna’s sky be scrawled on a wall? Does Mary appear in a frac­tal of shat­tered glass? The face of chaos, like the face of the Beloved, is too beau­ti­ful to name. Jesus burst the wine­skin of God’s law. Now it’s time to burst Jesus; he won’t mind. Burst Marx, Jef­fer­son, Obama; split open the left and right. Let them seep into each oth­ers vine­yards. Your wild heart could make this world dance naked, crush­ing every kind of grape in one bar­rel. But first, fer­ment your mar­row, dis­til your blood. Wake up beyond the mad­ness of two. Don’t be drunk or sober.

I sup­pose we all need to escape our present lives at times; the needs of them press so close around us that we for­get how to stride, how to see the world and our place in it anew ― how to real­ize we are not just the sum of our oblig­a­tions and the iden­tify we have forged, but that at any age we are still mov­ing and chang­ing. And so I took the train up the Hud­son River with eight other mem­bers from my church to stay for two days in a monastery. I knew exactly what I wanted from the week­end: peace. I did not take my lap­top or any other means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing on line by e-mail and social media, nor did I intend to work on my new novel. Oddly in a way these things had come to rep­re­sent the real me. (And oddly the great spir­i­tual writer Henry Nouwen had the same prob­lems let­ting go of his iden­tity in the world many years ago when he fled to a monastery for rather a longer time.) I was tired. I felt that the cen­ter of my soul where my nov­els were born was shriv­el­ing, until it would soon Read the Rest…

I am day­dream­ing again. Hav­ing stum­bled upon the descrip­tion of God’s breath hov­er­ing on the waters, my imag­i­na­tion has trans­formed me into a hum­ming­bird. I am sit­ting still but my mind is buzzing. Day­dream­ing is both a neces­sity for my writer-self and a lux­ury for my mother-self. It can also be a lia­bil­ity. Often, the open space of my dream state allows the tem­pest of my night­mares to over­whelm me. I am stand­ing at the edge of a chasm, peer­ing down at God’s breath hov­er­ing below me. I feel light-headed: I could eas­ily lose my bal­ance. Rabbi Tsvi Blan­chard taught me that the abil­ity to tol­er­ate both the night­mare and the fan­tasy of my dream state empow­ers me to trans­form my fear to joy. As I embrace the truth of his teaching—my mind can­not soar higher unless it has hov­ered low—I strug­gle to dis­cern my thoughts amid the noise of the dream. I am sur­rounded by chaos and noth­ing­ness. I inhale deeply, fill­ing my lungs with oxy­gen. I exhale slowly, feel­ing stead­ier as my breath fades. I take a sec­ond breath, emp­ty­ing my mind of anx­i­ety. The third time, I close my eyes and hold my breath close to my heart. Some­how, I Read the Rest…

Here’s an inter­est­ing 2010 inter­view with Ram Dass on the process of let­ting go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LxB-4_MGbc   “Your soul wit­nesses your feel­ings, your desires, your fear­less­ness. Stay  in the wit­ness, not iden­ti­fy­ing with the desires or atti­tudes or those things. You can sit by and watch the show. Watch the show of your incar­na­tion and just sit back from your ego and your other thoughts. I like to sit back with my guru who is like a soul-friend. And I would sug­gest you have a soul friend, one that is going to be lov­ing and pas­sion­ate and peace­ful and wise.” instead of desire the car, maybe the car will go and instead of the car maybe desire a guru or a good spir­i­tual friend, some­one to keep you on line towards God.”

I sit down at a table in Star­bucks, wait­ing for a friend.  There’s a fairly scruffy guy prob­a­bly in his mid-60’s sit­ting alone with his pack of cig­a­rettes read­ing a new­pa­per at the table next to mine – greasy hair, messy sweat­jacket, jeans and sneak­ers.  He gets inter­rupted every so often by an emphy­semic cough­ing jag that curls my toes.  My seat is fac­ing him, so I turn halfway in my chair and start read­ing a brochure so as to not to attract his atten­tion.  Soon I hear a weird suck­ing sound.  He’s gulp­ing at his cof­fee like an addict.  He’s not let­ting me ignore him.  We make eye con­tact and he starts our con­ver­sa­tion — Well, it sure is a nice, sunny Sun­day morn­ing! — It sure is! I bet it would be nicer if I weren’t here. — W!  Why!? Because I look so bad and I can’t do any­thing right. — Aw, well – you’re just not a morn­ing per­son! Do you ever get up, pour your cof­fee and just sit in front of the mir­ror and stare at your­self for a long time? — No… I don’t like to look at myself in the morn­ing – it’s not a pretty sight!  I Read the Rest…

We were in the mall last Sun­day after­noon and took lunch in the food court. Sounds of chil­dren play­ing on a nearby carousel com­peted against the din of the crowd social­iz­ing there. It was hard to tell by lis­ten­ing if it was a mall or a cir­cus. Nearby, a table of young girls held their bags from Aber­crom­bie & Fitch as they ate. Fam­i­lies jock­eyed for seats; gath­er­ings of young peo­ple, all in tight-fitting cloth­ing, jug­gled trays and clus­ters of shop­ping bags from Nord­strom, Jus­tice, Aero­postale. I could see but not hear the newly man­i­cured nails of a blonde woman tap along the rims of her Prada sun­glasses as she moved them from her tem­ples to a dyed alli­ga­tor car­ry­ing case which she then slipped into her Coach bag. She and a buff Italian-looking man sat nearby to eat their grilled chicken Cae­sar sal­ads. But clos­est to us was a men­tally chal­lenged middle-aged man with a mis­shapen head, eat­ing alone. He car­ried no bags. He was graz­ing a tray from Wendy’s and seemed to be writ­ing an essay on a nap­kin for the whole 20 min­utes I observed him. His french-fry-covered tongue would poke out beyond his fat lips at reg­u­lar inter­vals. Read the Rest…

In his upcom­ing book An Unknown World: Notes on the Mean­ing of the Earth, Jacob Needle­man dis­cusses “an entirely new kind of rela­tion­ship between con­scious­ness and nature, between con­scious­ness and the earth, between con­scious­ness and the human body here, now, in our lives. What Descartes is show­ing us is some­thing dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent from how he has been inter­preted: He is show­ing us that in the capac­ity of the mind to con­cen­trate its atten­tion toward itself in pure thought—in that capac­ity there is a cen­tral ele­ment of Man that is not merely sep­a­rate from nature, but beyond nature! Beyond earth! What Descartes is offer­ing is not more or less than the idea of the holy spirit expressed not in reli­gious lan­guage, but in the lan­guage of the inde­pen­dent human mind, the aspect of man that is, in incep­tion, in its embry­onic form, beyond the cre­ated world of nature, beyond the earth.” Read more at  http://jacobneedleman.com/blog/

When we real­ize that the kind of last­ing joy and peace and the free­dom from fear and anx­i­ety we are look­ing for can­not be found in the pur­suit of sen­sory plea­sure or in the world of com­pe­ti­tion and suc­cess, we begin to look for some­thing to nour­ish our insis­tent crav­ing for what is miss­ing in our exis­tence – some­thing less tan­gi­ble, some­thing beyond ordi­nary every­day con­scious­ness, and yet within our reach. Among the many seek­ers, there are those few blessed souls in whom some aspects of the per­son­al­ity, psy­che, or mind are already highly devel­oped. Their cer­tainty of vision and con­vic­tion of a higher call­ing attracts them to a teach­ing, or rather the teach­ing is drawn to them. They feel imme­di­ately com­fort­able with the pre­cepts of a par­tic­u­lar path or sys­tem, and their mem­ory of truth just needs a tiny jolt. They have a sense of “hav­ing known it before” or “hav­ing done this work before,” and it feels like “com­ing home.” Then there are those who seek and seek, and travel great dis­tances to achieve extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences or to find a guru on a moun­tain­top, only to be uncer­e­mo­ni­ously turned away. Yet upon their return, they dis­cover the words of wis­dom Read the Rest…

Amidst the daz­zling exha­la­tion of explod­ing super­novae and the pas­sion­ate in-breath of black holes, galax­ies whirl wildly while God, vastly smil­ing, spins on one cen­tripetal toe at the cen­ter of all, shout­ing, “WTF is going on?!” I pro­claim the igno­rance of God. This procla­ma­tion of God’s igno­rance is an act of faith. I am  com­forted by the propo­si­tion that the uni­verse is out of con­trol. God sim­ply watches the ran­dom glory of spon­ta­neous evo­lu­tion in per­pet­ual won­der, with no idea where it comes from or where it’s going. No God whom I could pos­si­bly wor­ship is in the con­trol busi­ness. I do not live in a robot uni­verse. As God’s great­est gift to me is the gift of free will, so God’s great­est gift to nature is chaos, the frac­tal poetry of chance, the ran­dom beauty of evo­lu­tion­ary self-design. The notion that Bib­li­cal prophets pre­dicted the future is a com­mon mis­un­der­stand­ing. The Hebrew word naviʾ, a loan word from the Akka­dian nabū, orig­i­nally meant to call, to sum­mon, not to pre­dict. The Hebrew prophet saw where present trends might take their peo­ple, and called them to ethical/spiritual trans­for­ma­tion now. The prophet’s call was not a time-line, but a cry for the turn­ing Read the Rest…

Tak­ing the First Step We have com­pleted the end of an era and we are begin­ning on a new road of light and awak­en­ing. We all have a part to play in bring­ing a greater spir­i­tual con­scious­ness to our world. The inten­tions of awak­en­ing were laid down long before our births in the illu­mi­nat­ing light of unity and the com­ple­tion will be known by our children’s chil­dren. Breathe in this new dawn and let it fill you with Love, Hope and Courage as we emerge from the dark­ness. Let us begin our walk from the dark­ness with an under­stand­ing of our rhythms and long-term spir­i­tual devel­op­ment. We have within us the most effec­tive mon­i­tor of our rhythms. Our heart­beats reflect our life’s rhythms and cycles. Our first step is to develop an orderly dis­ci­pline and prac­tice in our day to lis­ten to our heart­beat and rhythm, hear­ing the mes­sage of this moment. In that way we bring our being into per­fect and proper order. As we learn how to live in har­mony with the ris­ing and falling ener­gies of our lives, we flow with the ups, downs, ins and outs to progress toward our goal of spir­i­tual matu­rity. Now, care­fully study Read the Rest…