NO RETURN ADDRESS

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Love has no teeth
Or appetite.

Speed, size, and charisma
Are all subordinate to it.

Love is secretive – so even when fully open –
You’ll never be able to guess its timing.

Love has its own weather –
And its own meteorologists.

Love doesn’t calculate
Or attempt to gain control.

Love is immortal because, once in existence, it can’t be lost,
Eternal, because its light will never go out.

Love knows everything without thinking about it –
And is the reverse of self-importance.

Love is a letter sent to oneself
With no return address.

REINTERPRETING GENESIS

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The snake was both friend and foe –
Friend because it enticed us into opening up to self-awareness
Foe because it gave no hint about the consequences.

Once, long ago, we lived as happy human animals,
Doing what we wanted or needed –
Without reflection.

But, one day, just before biting into a ripe pomegranate,
We stepped back, looked at what we could see, and
Made a conscious choice.

For the first time, we could see ourselves, in context –
And were shocked –
Because, suddenly, we realized we were responsible
For our actions
And that we were no longer going to just do “what comes natural”.

After that, we had choices:
To be anything –
To do anything –
And we would be able to see it all.

After that pivotal moment, we no longer could stop seeing ourselves –
Because once you know – you know –
And in that archaic instant, we lost all naturalness –
We lost “Eden”.

The gap between a human animal
And a human being is virtually infinite,
(not qualitatively different from the gap between the spark or “touch” that created the universe and God),
Now, however, we’re compelled to continue crossing that gap,
Because, once started, there’s really no turning back.

The snake knew this, of course –
That’s why its gift was a curse,
And its curse a gift –

Humans had to lose themselves
In order to become themselves.

This is the cross shared by every human being –
And it’s never a matter of sin
But of consciousness of the responsibility for our own suffering.

All of us, also, need to suffer for future generations
Who’ll need to cross that gap as well
To become full human beings.

So, each of us is presented with the same choice as Jesus –
That is, whether or not to act as God
Would act
If God were human.

For us, it’ll always be a matter of direction –
Individually, as well as for the entire human race.

DANCING WITH A WILD GOD

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God is so wild,
That the authorities decided to seal the Holy Spirit up
Inside stone buildings with long narrow aisles
And steeples like tall
Pointy fingers.

God is so wild,
That people aren’t permitted
To say anything that’s not already been said a million times before.

God is so wild,
That we wear business suits
To worship –
In order to demonstrate our good order.

When we pray in public, we do it all together –
But, generally, quietly –
Because we don’t want to risk sending God
Over the top.

God is so wild
That we lock our hearts up in tiny jeweled theological boxes
So we’ll never be tempted to reject our lifetime of clichés.

God is so beautiful
So true, so loving –
That without all these solid protections:

We might start dancing, wildly, along with God –
Out there –
In the violet twilight
Of our beautifully naked streets.

JOY

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… since there is no joy without God, but all joy is in God,
and God himself is wholly joy, it follows that the first speaker
said first and before anything else ‘God’. Dante

The greatest love affair a person can experience is with God. When we begin to fall in love with God and start searching for our true self, the confirmation that we’re going in the right direction will be the amount of joy we feel in our hearts – a fountain of sparkling, radiant “life” that starts bursting through our broken self.

Pleasure and happiness are good things to experience, but joy far surpasses them. Nothing comes close: not sexual orgasms, superb food, high art, or incalculable wealth. That’s because no one can buy God or one’s true self. This is the “pearl” for which we should be willing to sell everything because, without joy, what’s the point of living, no matter how successful or famous we become? Joy is a dance with God that takes place in our hearts – a dance that, once begun, never ends.

The further along the path towards God and the true self you travel, the greater the feelings of joy you’ll experience. You can see it in faces of the “saved” – the saints and enlightened ones – who literally become suffused with radiant joy. When you’re overloaded with joy, when you simply can’t take a single drop more, what arrives next is ecstasy – when you feel as though you’re flying high above the ground. Ecstasy means “standing outside yourself,” while simultaneously remaining firmly grounded inside yourself.

Joy is experienced at the core of our being – in our heart of hearts – in our true self. Living in the spirit is like attending a wedding celebration that never ends. Jesus repeatedly used weddings and celebrations as metaphors: people are invited to a wedding, but fail to come; or they come, but aren’t properly dressed for the celebration – a celebration in which Jesus is turning water into wine – i.e., turning the material into the spiritual. Weddings symbolize hope for the new life that will be created by entering into this new relationship. The weddings and celebrations Jesus was referring to are the ones where you discover your true self and then decide to go on and “marry” God.

“No one knows the source of joy” says Rumi. Actually, we do know – joy comes from experiencing God. Happiness may arise from many different things, but joy derives solely from our relationship with God. In the material, once-born world, everyone strives for happiness, but it’s in the world of spirit that we find the true source of joy. We actually can measure the health of our relationship with God by the amount of joy in our lives. An objective test as to whether you’ve repented (i.e., turned to God) is whether you’ve fallen in love with God. If you’re still joyless after you think you’ve turned to God, then you haven’t, no matter how religious you might appear to be or think you are.

from “Diner Mystic”

PERSPECTIVE

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Hindus tell us life is a dream
While, at Cal Tech, reality is conceived of as particles –
Relying upon these concepts, there appears to be no true reality –
Everything just a trick!

But, if we’re a dream, we’re certainly a real dream,
And if we’re particles, where, after all, did “love” and “truth” come from?

People worry about how a God who’s good,
Can permit suffering to exist –

But, really, isn’t it simply the price of freedom.

Existence is deeply magical – that is, “spiritual” –
And, ordinarily, even though we take it for granted –
We really shouldn’t.

Picture raindrops striking a window –
Are they dreams, particles,
Or tiny gifts from God?

Think about how everything
Is part of everything else –
So intricately interrelated –
If this weren’t true
The world couldn’t exist
And, really, would be just a dream
Or a bunch of particles.

So,
We should be thankful for love, truth, and beauty
Each of which comes in almost infinite varieties –
Because, actually, they’re the only meaningful reality
That we’re ever going to experience.

THOSE WHO DECIDE TO LOOK

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Whoever talks about mirrors
Or “cleaning their mirror”
Isn’t talking about God –
They’re talking about their “self”.

They’re trying to see what they’re made of.

But since God is actually nothing – i.e., no thing,
The self, also, is equally nothing – in the same sense.

When this nothing merges with that nothing
“Reality” suddenly appears!

From God’s perspective
The Chinese Olympics
Aren’t any more spectacular than a single blade of grass.

Remember, love is everything –
So no matter what comes through the doors of life,
Big or little, large or small, it all may be loved –

Always, always – it’s a matter of attitude!

There are over seven billion people in the world
And trillions of leaves –

Each one, however, is magnificent –
In the eyes of those who look
Through the eyes of love.

BOTTOM OF THE WELL

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What do I know?

Nothing –
Except a few ideas, perhaps, about what lies
Behind the infinite masks of God.

Everything –
Especially, the almost infinity of what’s not there –
Which, like an engraving, defines our present reality.

I am, and, also, I am not –
Just like God –
Who, biblically, has asserted a humongous “I AM” –

Who’s God kidding?
God’s just as much a big “I AM NOT”.

Even so, as soon as anything’s said up there,
It immediately starts falling down here –
To us frogs
Living at the bottom of the universe –

Croaking so beautifully.

GOD LOOKS AT GOD WITHOUT HARM

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I want to be someone who, effortlessly, falls through interstices –
Who enjoys tumbling through –
Because God is alive there, and, pretty much,
Nowhere else.

You might believe a spiritual life can be built
One brick at a time –
But this is an illusion –
Instead, you’ll find you’ve only built a wall
Separating yourself from yourself.

It’s been said that no one who looks directly at God can survive –
But that’s incorrect –
No “false self” can do it –
Since artifice immediately dissolves upon the appearance of God.

Only a true self
Can look at God and survive
Because a true self is spiritually indivisible –

In other words,
“God” is able to look at God
Any time at all.

ADJUSTING TO THE COMING REALITY

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“Heaven” is a place many wish for –
But wishing doesn’t make it real.

It’s not just children who cherish fairytales –
We all want to believe in them.

From a personal perspective,
If life doesn’t continue after our given span, it loses some meaning –
But, of course, that’s not how God sees it!

God gifts us with life and almost infinite opportunities to love –
But if we insufficiently value this –
Counting on greater gifts to come –
We are fools –
Entertaining, but, ultimately tragic, fools.

Living within the stream of life –
Going fast – and then – towards the end – even faster –
Working, eating – having fun –
When we finally reach the “ocean” –
It looks like, at least in our present form, we may simply disappear.

It’s no different than anything else –
We are what we are,
And, then, one day, perhaps, come to an “end”.

It’s a joyful sort of tragedy –
Which we’ve been fortunate to participate in –

Our minds, sometimes, however, refuse to accept this –
But our hearts know better –

Our hearts are always willing to give our minds permission
To adjust to the coming reality.

MOMENT BY MOMENT

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When Jesus counseled us
To be “born again”
He didn’t mean just once –

Because it doesn’t take long
For a new self to freeze
Into a mask.

What he was saying –
Since God is absolutely free,
We, also, need to be.

Each moment should be experienced as a new birth,
So that our prior selves do not have the power
To bind us back into the past.

Love won’t arrive through habit or rote –
It always needs to be free!

That’s why, as we grow older and gain greater experience,
Jesus wants us, simultaneously, to spiritually regress –
Not just back to when we were a child –
But all the way back to when we were newborn
Where the subjective world begins again –

All our lifelong experience
Joined to the bud of birth –

A life occurring afresh –

Moment by moment.