Your Body's Sacred Land

You don't have to go to the Amazon, beat a drum, shake a tortoise shell rattle, or take hallucinogenic herbs, to become a shaman. You don't have to go to Tibet to study the secrets of Tantra. And you don't need a studio full of sleek blond models to practice Yoga.

You were a shaman when you were six months old. Your throat was the rattle and your chest was the drum, and your joyful gurgling was the incantation that invoked your animal guides, a dog, a cat, a robin.

The sounds you heard in your body as you toyed with the art of speech - "Yah!" "Hum," "Phwat!" "Oooom," "Mbham!" - were tantric bija mantras, full of Mother Earth's power.

As you explored your sacred form - rolling, stretching, curling, shaking - you performed the entire series of Yoga asanas required for perfect health. With every animal posture, you embodied the constellations of the zodiac. Your wrists and fingers ceaselessly played with secret mudras of Buddhic blessing.

The soft spot in the crown of your head drank in the light of stars, and imbibed the spaciousness of galaxies. At the center of your ancient brain was a holy shrine, where you hid a medicine bundle called the pituitary gland. A visionary crystal was buried near it in a deep well - the pineal gland, sending sapphire streams of wisdom through your forehead.

Your nerves sent glowing tendrils through the soles of your feet, deep into the earth, like roots. Was your spine not the Tree of Life at the center of your body's garden, branching upward into your brain, each twig and leaf a flame of fire? That was the fire that does not burn, but creates. Your nervous system was the Burning Bush. All revelation was inscribed in the marrow of your bones; verses, slokas and spells written in your ribosomes. All scriptures began as the sounds inside your body.

Hanging on the tree of your spinal chord, the delicious ruby fruit of your heart, ripe and succulent as a pomegranate, was cradled tenderly in the wings of the serpent Goddess, Shakti, who spiraled up and down your trunk as inbreath and outbreath.

And if you return to innocence now, with a single inhalation of Grace, you can walk with her again through the garden of your flesh, in the cool of the evening, and in the perpetual dawn.

It is very difficult for God
to let there be light
without your eyes.
The play of Glory
is our work.
Now get busy
shining.
Didn't you know?
Each electron in your flesh
contains the whole sun.
The dark core of every proton
condenses galaxies.
It is not enough
to illuminate the mind
with knowledge.
This body must dance
as pure light!

'Bodhisattva Earth' by Thich Nhat Hanh

"This Bodhisattva Earth is not just our environment, The Earth is us. We are her children, and She is in every one of us.

"In Buddhist literature, there is the name of a Bodhisattva, called 'Bodhisattva Refreshing-Earth.' That is her, and She is the mother of many Buddhas, many saints. Buddha Sakyamuni is her son. Jesus Christ is her son. Our father, our mother, are also her children. When we die and this body disintegrates, we go back to Earth. We have a place to go back. I take refuge in the Bodhisattva Great Earth!

"Every time we suffer, every time we lose ourselves, every time we feel alienated, we may practice Touching the Earth in order to return to her and restore ourselves. When we get sick, it is usually because we are alienated from her. So when we breathe in mindfully, we can abandon our regret, our sorrow and our fear, and go home to the here and the now. Then we realize that we have a body. This body has been given us by Mother Earth.

"Breathe mindfully, and you know you have a body, and your body is a wonder. When we connect with our body, we connect with Mother Earth, and then we begin to heal. Healing will not be possible without that kind of connection. Your healing must be one with the healing of the planet Earth."

~Christmas Eve Dharma Talk at Plum Village

Rest In The Heart: An Ancient Practice

The beginning and end of all spiritual practice is to rest in the heart.

If we want sanity in the coming generation, if we want peace on earth, let us teach our children to rest the mind in the heart. Then the work of love will flow from their hands.

The mind cannot find rest in the brain. The mind can only rest in the heart.

Our minds are weary. And when our minds are weary, we get confused, angry, depressed. Schools and colleges teach our minds to stay in the brain, but never to rest in the heart.

A cerebral cortex is a useful tool. But after I use a tool, I hang it up over the workbench. If my mind keeps hammering away at the brain, I create a hundred new problems for every one I solve.

Resting the mind in the heart allows destiny to unfold without confusion, like a petal from the center of God's flower. This is called Grace.

"Let the mind descend into the heart." (Philocalia, the Orthodox Christian classic on prayer)

"Set the mind in the heart." (Vijnana Bhairava)

Link: photo by Jessica Jenney

Shamanic Yoga & Self-Awakening

      Ancient Celtic figure of Cernunos, showing him as Shaman, Yogi, 

     and Prajapati, the original tribal Shiva, 'Lord of the Creatures.'

I.

Two words much bandied about these days are "Shamanism" and "Yoga." When we demystify their vocabulary, what they mean is very simple: Self-empowerment. These are really one wisdom with different cultural roots. Shamanic Yoga provides us with techniques to derive life-force from our own embodiment, so that we no longer seek life from an external hierarchy, institution, or religious authority.

In finding this inner empowerment, the Shaman or Guru is the guide who ignites us, but we ourselves are the source, the fuel for the journey, and the goal. This is completely antithetical to all systems of religion that demand our dependency on the mediation of priests and ministers. The goal of Shamanic Yoga is not to find a savior or mediator, but to awaken im-mediate contact with the Divine.

The techniques of Shamanism and Yoga are essential to the birth of a new humanistic spirituality, freed forever from priestly authority. The techniques given by Yogis and Shamans empower us from within, reconnect us with our sacred bodies, and make us each an authority over our own spirit.

The great Yogis of India and Tantric Masters of Tibet were Shamans. The Shamans of ancient Ireland were Yogis, as are the Shamans of Siberia and Native America today. Shamanism is simply the science of Yoga in its indigenous earth-centered form.

The essence of Shamanic Yoga is the divine Mother-Energy or Shakti. Fully awakened, this energy is rooted in the earth, rises through the sacred tree of our spine, and blossoms among the stars. Our human body is created to be the conductor of this sacred electricity, a lightning rod connecting earth and sky.

But just as misguided teachers of religion divide East from West with an imaginary line, they also divide heaven from earth with an artificial boundary. So-called scholars teach us to see an opposition between the patriarchal Sky God and the earthen Mother Goddess below. Some feminist scholars have constructed a view of history in which the patriarchal Sky God, representing transcendental consciousness, invaded and repressed the original culture of the Earth Mother, representing human embodiment. In this dualistic telling of religious history, we must choose between oppressive patriarchal religion and liberating earth-centered religion. Yet this dualistic approach only drives a deeper wedge between our spirit and our body.

Through the practices of Shamanic Yoga, the polar forces of male and female are united within each individual, as spirit is integrated with matter. Whether we speak of Yin and Yang, Shiva and Shakti, Yahweh and Shekinah, Isis and Osirus, or Christ and the Magdalene, we are really seeking harmonious realignment with our own hearts.

According to the Gnostic Gospels of the Nag Hammadi library, Jesus taught Shamanic Yoga. His partner may have been Mary Magdalene. These early Christians practiced the realignment of the male and female energies in the sacrament of the Bridal Chamber, an interior union in the chamber of the heart.

"Then the bridegroom came down to the bride.... But that marriage is not like the carnal marriage... They unite and become one life, for they were originally joined to one another when they were in the Father... This marriage has brought them back together again, and the soul has been joined to her true love." ~Exegisis of the Soul

"Jesus said to them, When you make the two into one, making the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner and the upper like the lower, and you make male and female into a single one... then you shall enter the kingdom." ~Gnostic Gospel of Thomas

"In the Breath of Christ, we experience a new embrace: we are no longer in duality, but in unity." ~Gnostic Gospel of Philip 

The same union of male and female energies is the real purpose of Hatha Yoga. "Ha" refers to the solar force, the symbolic male; "Tha" refers to the lunar force, the symbolic female, as they intertwine around the spine in two channels, "Ida" and "Pingala." When these forces are united, they flow as one divine nectar up the central channel of the spine, the "Sushumna."

Shamanic Yoga is holistic spirituality, embracing the human body as the nexus of God-Consciousness. Yogic and Shamanic techniques return our wandering spirit to our flesh, sanctify our senses, and make our bodies temples again. In Shamanic Yoga we do not have to choose between spirit and matter: we simply dye the garment of the flesh with the radiance of God...

Every act an offering, every breath a prayer,
Every home a temple, every heart a priest:
So in each shall be increased
The Mystery that is everywhere...

Shamanic Yoga gives us time-tested techniques for breaking the shell of illusion and awakening the Radiant Self. We honor ancient traditions that hand these techniques down to us, but we don't need to "believe" in them. We can taste and see for ourselves whether they work. We honor our teachers, shamans and gurus, but we don't need to forfeit our spiritual power to any savior or religious authority. In the final words of the Buddha, "Be a light unto yourself."

Shamanic Yoga is a way of liberation for the coming age. And the whole point of it is simply this: authority comes from within.

II.

 

Prior to awakening, the energy of the Goddess Shakti lies in embryonic sleep at the base of our spine. She is the coiled serpent of wisdom signified in ancient myths - the dragon in China, the Kundalini in India, the Snake Goddess Hecate in Asia Minor, the twined snakes on the Cadeucus of Hermes, which became the sign of Western medicine. We also see this potent serpentine force in the Staff of Moses, and Jesus referred to her when he told his disciples, "Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves." In the Wisdom literature of the late Old Testament, and in Jewish mystical tradition, she is Hochma, which is a feminine power, associated with both the Holy Spirit and the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of God.

Originally associated with the earth Goddess, the serpent wisdom was often depicted as coiled about the Tree of Life, a symbol of the human spine. Or the serpent was held in the hands of the Goddess, as in the figure of Hecate above. In the Genesis myth, the author distorts this ancient symbolism, turning the "pagan" serpent of wisdom into a dangerous seductive power. This portrayal of the serpent not only contradicts the wisdom literature of the world, but other images of the serpent in the Bible. The association of the serpent with evil in the Garden of Eden is only a brief digression in the history of religious symbolism.

Why are such ambivalent feelings associated with this serpent force? Why does she invoke a sense  of danger as well as wisdom? Note even in the Biblical story of Eden, how Eve's "temptation" is not a temptation to sensuality, but to Knowledge! I would suggest that this is not a conspiracy to suppress the feminine, but a legitimate wariness about awakening a force that we may not be able to handle.

In our embryonic consciousness, neither our mind nor our nervous system are ready to be conductors of such divine electricity. For, as the Bible says, “the divine is a consuming fire,” and “it is terrifying to fall into the hands of the living God.” Or Goddess!

Awakening the Kundaline Shakti prematurely, we could be overcome with confusion or even mental illness . The divine Shakti is a form of Kali. When she uncoils her wild dance and rises up the tree of our spine, we had better be ready for the shattering. 

Thus she lies coiled and latent in the root chakra at the base of the spine. And the whole field of Maya, or illusion, is actually created by our own mind as a protective shield, or shell, so that we are not overwhelmed by her.

Yes, we create the shell of Mayic illusion as a sheath of protection. We create this Maya out of our storehouse of mental images, our memory. We project these thoughts through our senses into what we perceive as our "world." 

But the shell of Maya is not the living world of divine energy, the radiant green earth which is our true Garden of Eden. Maya is only the world that our mind super-imposes on the radiance of creation. This act of mental projection has dominated our culture for thousands of years, making us slaves of our own minds, suppressing our intuition, and keeping us in exile from the dazzling revelations of the living earth.

We use our mental images like sunglasses to protect ourselves from the overwhelming beauty and fire of nature. And where our native Shamanic awareness would see the living gods in herbs and trees, the “civilized” mind sees dead lumber, paper, commodity and profit to be made in the market.

Here we must understand that the problems of "worldliness" and "materialism" do not arise from the material nature. Matter is holy energy. It is "Mater," the Mother. All that religions call “worldliness” arises in the mind, as insatiable and restless desire. We super-impose our internal world of desire onto the earth, often with devastating consequences.

But because the world that we see is only the projection of our past karma, worldy problems can never be solved in the world. Their cause can never be located. These apparent problems - whether social, political or economic - form a circular web of cause and effect without beginning or end. The web of karma never changes its patterns, because objects perceived are all made of thought, and thought is the repetition of past perception. And so it goes, ad infinitum.

III.

At some point in this karmic morass of cause and effect, which circles on through many lifetimes, we start to feel a bit hopeless. But what is hopelessness? It is disillusionment. And what is disillusionment? Awakening from illusion. We begin to experience a healthy dissatisfaction with Maya. A crucial insight dawns in us: the future will never be anything but a repetition of the past. 

Thus we give up hope. And there is no greater step toward wisdom than to give up hope in the future, since this empowers us to dwell in the present.

Dwelling in Presence gives us courage, courage to behold the truth that sets us free: this outer shell of our perceived world is just a thin crust of sensory and social attraction, whose glamor we have created out of our own past desires. The world is an old movie on a screen, and we are so absorbed in the moving pictures we cannot even see the screen.

Now, like the author of the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes, we sigh to ourselves: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." The Hebrew word for "vanity" is "hebel," which literally means "empty." Ecclesiastes is saying, "All forms of the world are emptiness." Is this not precisely the teaching of Buddha, whose central Heart Sutra tells us, "form is emptiness, and emptiness is form"?

At this stage, we are not only disillusioned with external forms; we also develop a healthy distrust of every political or religious system of authority. We find the honesty to admit that such institutions never really change, no matter how many “reformations” they go through, and they never actually solve the problems they claim to. Now we may turn from politics to spiritual transformation, for if the world will be changed, it must be changed from within the field of consciousness itself. 

The "unified field" at the source of all energy (to borrow a term from modern physics) is pure awareness. Our own ground-state of awareness is the seamless continuum where there is no gap between subject and object. Pure awareness is the silence of the creative void, where all forms arise and dance as a mirage in stillness. We are the field. The change we seek is us.

Note here that the outer shell of Maya is neither "good" nor "evil," but simply unsatisfying. We need not make value judgments about the world which our minds have created - about its parties, its religions, its institutions. They are all just forms, ever-changing circles of cause and effect, creating each other in patterns of polarity, pairs of opposites. One form is not "better" than another. And none hold the solution. 

The solution to all our problems is simply to shatter the shell of Maya.This seems like a stunning stroke - at once too easy and too radical. Yet it happens quite naturally, quite gently, when the time is ripe for the shell to crack and the serpent to awaken, dance, and connect us to the heavenly green radiance of the earth. 

When the shell breaks, Shakti within emerges to dance with Shakti outside. The inner and the outer are no longer two, but one continuum of divine energy. Heaven and earth, male and female, spirit and matter, no longer two but one dance. Our egoic mind has exaggerated these polarized opposites in order to develop its analytic function. But we went too far: we became stuck, fixated in arguing for differences. And our entire educational system was based on this divisive activity.

The mind-bound ego felt more alive when it argued for separation and division. But now is the time in human evolution when we can reintegrate as whole persons, merging intellect into the harmony of intuition. Time to see the all and not the parts. Intellect will continue to serve as a useful tool, but will no longer dominate as ego. 

When we transcend intellect through shamanic yoga, we can witness reality through the sparkling transparency of pure awareness, our vision no longer bound in a point. That means, we are no longer stuck in a "point of view," a judgment. Our vision expands like the blue sky, all-inclusive. Then real listening is possible, real love is possible.

In the sky of loving-kindness, we witness the pairs of opposites as vibrating strings in unbounded stillness. Each "pair" is really a unity, a continuum where no opposition can be found, just poles dancing with each other, arising and dissolving each moment. Now we may stop exaggerating differences between the sexes, between the political left and right, between religions, between East and West, between I and Thou, between a venison steak and a bowl of vegetables.

Clear seeing beyond opposites is the true revolution. In this revolution, no violence is ever required, only the clearing of the blue sky. 

In clear seeing, we need not be against anything. We can be for. Neither need we judge or compete: for in an energy field whose circumference is boundless, any point can be the center. The sky of love encircles all points. In the words of St. Hildegard of Bingen, "You are hugged by the mystery of God."

Friend, awaken your sacred presence. Not in a kingdom above, but here in your body. Every atom is divine. You are the light of the world, born to overflow. You have no edges. You no longer need to re-act, but to act. Don't be the effect of your world: be the cause.

There is only Yes.

Elemental Healing Meditation

    Mandala by Hildegard of Bingen, 11th C.

"You bring together and unite all things. From you clouds flow, wind flies, 
precious stones receive their qualities, streams are led in their courses 
and earth is refreshed in greenness." ~St. Hildegard of Bingen

I am made of Air, Air is my healing. Breathing fresh and deep and slow, down through my roots, up through the soft spot on my crown, my breath connects the earth and stars. "Thank you, Air, I love You."

I am made of Water, Water is my healing. Drinking fresh and deep and slow, feeling the rain in my belly, the mountain brook in my loins, the ocean surging in every cell of my body, I speak to the Waters, "Thank you, Waters, I love You."

I am made of Earth, Earth is my healing. Seated on a mossy forest stone, feeling my weight as a blessing, every ounce of me holy, hugged by the Mother, I surrender to gravity. "Thank you, Earth, I love You."

I am made of Fire, Fire is my healing. Standing in the Solstice sun, eyes closed, I see a sacred sparkling inside me. Draw seven breaths of radiance through my forehead down to my heart, I breathe light into my blood. "Thank you, Fire, I love You."

"Air, Water, Earth and Fire, You are medicine. I love You. As You have anointed me, so I anoint You with gratitude."

"Thank you," I heal the Air. "Thank you," I heal the Water. "Thank you," I heal the Land. "Thank you," I heal the Stars. With gratitude I heal You. With awareness I heal You. 

Amen. 

___________

Shamanism is whatever activates the human body as a link between earth and stars. Shamanism is whatever awakens the body's elemental powers, anointing bones, blood, tears and breath with the sparkling awareness I Am. Shamanism is the act of being conscious, and holding the whole creation in that awareness, as an offering, in gratitude.

Bubbling Spring

 

"Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give will become in you a spring of water bubbling up to eternal life." ~John 4:14

"Jesus said: I am not your master, for you have drunk, and have become drunk from the bubbling spring which I have caused to gush forth." ~Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, 13

What is this bubbling spring? Where is it located? How can one drink from it?

These words of Jesus are not symbolic. The spring he describes is actual. It bubbles out of an open heart, the heart chakra, flowing with an inward Light that is not figurative but substantial, an energy as real as any material object in the world of the senses.

Christian Gnostics called the heart center, "the Bridal Chamber." When the divine Shakti of Mary Magdalene rises up the spine in the process of Yoga (including such practices as kriya, pranayama, and meditation) She enters into the sacred marriage rite. This is the ancient "hieros gamos." Here in the heart She meets the Bridegroom Christ, the Shiva-tattva who descends from the stars above through the crown chakra. So our sacred ground energy rises from below to meet the starry energy descending from above. Mother Earth and Father Sky meet in the center of our own body, the Bridal Chamber of the heart.

The diamond radiance that gushes from their union transforms both soul and body into one new substance in whom the old duality of spirit and matter is dissolved. We may called this substance "Glory." I call it "Radiance." It is the stuff of the "Resurrection Body," or "Spiritual Body," described by Paul in the New Testament book, First Corinthians. But we do not need to wait for death to find this body. We can begin the yogic and shamanic practices right now that will transform our energy into its more vibrant, refined and illuminated state.  

The Radiance of the Resurrection Body was always dormant in our physical body. The physical is the external trellis on which the subtler flower takes shape. Now with the opening of the fountain of the heart, this inward blossom becomes conscious energy. It becomes the luminous healing breath of Prana, and infuses the physical form, raising the vibration of every atom.

The new ecstatic energy of our Radiance is like sap, flowing from the inward blossom into the outer body to begin the alchemical process of transmutation that, over seven lifetimes, results in the final incarnation of an immortal ascended body. The ascended body can function in heavenly worlds or on earth. It transcends matter and spirit; It is a body composed of glory and grace. We will function in such a body one day, and be truly useful to the universe. At this moment in our history, the time is ripe for an evolutionary leap that will raise our vibrations considerably toward the incarnation of this divine-human body.

Masters like Jesus already function in this kind of body now. Jesus spoke of this body when he invited us all to infuse the physical form with the Radiance of the inner light. In the Gospel of John he said, "These things which I do, you shall do also."And in the Gospel of Matthew he said, "The inner eye (consciousness) is the lamp of your body. If your eye is one, then your whole body will be filled with light."

Great Masters of the Holy Tradition have not come to be worshiped as Gods. They have come as our Elder Brothers and Sisters to teach us the Shamanic and Yogic processes that will transform us into beings just like them.

Therefor, the greatest service one could perform for humanity is to awaken the heart and begin this process of transformation now.

To the materially-minded, this sounds like a narcissistic delusion. But the materially-minded have created a civilization so deranged, so violent, so full of falsehood and injustice, that their opinion can hardly be taken seriously.

As for the economic problems they claim they would solve through political and economic means, these issues can never be solved on an economic or political level. For they are only the outward masks of our inward lack of consciousness. Our socio-economic problems arise from unbridled greed for wealth and power. Yet this craving for wealth is a misdirected quest for what we find within the fountain of the heart. That radiance is our birthright and our real wealth. When we find it, greed dissolves in gratitude. This is the solution for both rich and poor.

Our economic and political crisis is the effect of an inward and spiritual void. We think we can fill the inner void with the stuff of the material world - property, conquest, authority, sexual domination. This delusion is the root of all our addiction, crime, exploitation, corruption and war. The problem is not the economic system, and its solution does not lie in changing the system. The problem is our ignorance about what we're really looking for.

We are looking for our hearts. We need to turn our outward quest 180 degrees around. We need to embrace the very lack we feel within. We need to embrace our own hollowness as a spiritual act, and hold the space of our emptiness like a sacred cup.

What are we really looking for? We are looking for what is looking.

Then the wine steward will come fill the grail of the heart with a sparkling vintage, the wine of divine Radiance. Only this divine light, bubbling from the heart as a fountain of love, brings fulfillment. It satisfies beyond any taste of the material world. This is the only experience that ends craving, and thus ends the cause of our economic or political problems.

Establishing contentment in the heart, we can simplify our lives, reducing wants to needs, until ordinary things become sacraments. This is the real economy. 

To take a simple breath of air is to sip the sweetest nectar. Who needs liquid wine? To behold a wildflower is to bow before a monarch's throne. When awake, the human body is a palace; why would anyone need a mansion? Our nakedness is the most beautiful garment ever woven. Sit down gracefully, stand up mindfully, walk with bare feet on wet grass: this is the royal Way. Gaze into each others eyes: this incalculable wealth.

Heartbeats from the Masters (Great Quotes on the Power of the Heart)

 

"If light is in your heart, you will find your way home." ~Rumi

"Sit with lovers and choose their state. Do not stay long with those who are not living in the heart." ~Rumi

"When the bud breaks, it becomes a flower. When the heart breaks, it becomes divine." ~Sri Sri

"Come, live in my heart and pay no rent." (Arabic proverb)

"The time has come to turn your heart into a temple of fire."(Rumi)

"Mind is but a poor reflection of the radiant Heart." (Ramana Maharshi)

"My crown is in my heart, not on my head." ~Shakespear, Henry VI

"The way to create art is to burn and destroy ordinary concepts and to substitute them with new truths that run down from the top of the head and out of the heart." ~Charles Bukowski

"The souls ability to nourish itself lies in the heart." (Aristotle)


"The beginning of prayer is to let the mind descend into the heart." ('Philocalia,' Orthodox Church)

"An unawakened person sees only his mind, which is merely a reflection of the light of pure consciousness arising from the Heart. " (Ramana Maharshi)

"That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility." (Rumi)

"We have to study with our warm heart, not just with our brain." (Zen Master Suzuki Roshi)

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am. I am. I am." (Sylvia Plath)

"The heart has reasons that reason cannot know." (Pascal)

"If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing." (Marc Chagall)

"What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me, here, in my chest." (Rumi)

"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge." (Thomas Carlyle)

"Don't dismiss the heart, even if it's filled with sorrow. God's treasures are buried in broken hearts." (Rumi)

Hridayeh chitta-sanghattad
drishya-svapa-darshanam

"One who merges the mind into the heart-center perceives the external world as it truly is: a dreamlike projection of consciousness." (Shiva Sutras)

"Your heart and my heart are very very old friends." ~Hafiz

"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge." ~Thomas Carlyle

"The message behind the words is the voice of the heart.... What was said to the Rose, to make it open, was said to me, here, in my chest." ~Rumi

Holy Mater: Sacrament of Sensation

 I. Sacred Sensuality 

"Ancient rishis called it Gyan-ganu, solidified Knowledge. Every particle contains all the information in the cosmos... Empty space is really not empty, but filled with bliss and knowledge. Knowing that, we simply relax and get connected."  ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

1.

A molecule of dung sings with the voice of Andromeda. The holly berry ripens, humming with the moon. When the wood thrush chants, hidden in dark branches, sunlight gushes through her throat. Minerals, plants and animals are all suffused with the nectar of consciousness. Yet having no mind, they neither worry nor doubt: they are immersed in the oceanic sensuality of the Holy Spirit, beyond any need for thought. 

Choiceless delight irradiates dust, berry and bird, in weightless awareness without an 'I.' It is for humans to worry and doubt, because only humans have invented the mind, in the no-man's-land between biosphere and angelic kingdom.

When a stream of photons bursts the bud, I say that stream is consciously blissful. Green seedlings break ground, aching like nipples for the kiss of the sun: I say they are aware. Sparrow-throated joy arises at first light, witnessing its own feathered song. The boundless subjectivity of God quivers in each molecule of a leaping salmon. 

It is not terror but bliss that explodes through the muscle fibers of a doe as the cougar sinks its teeth into her fibrillating artery. Blood-mist sprays in noble delight through her nostrils, Spirit surfeits form in mid-leap, and the body falls, re-cycling fuel to the living planet. 

Awareness infuses all organic matter with super-essential joy. We humans know this ground-state of joyful energy in morning stillness just as we awaken, right before our first thought....

But as soon as the mind of yesterday returns, we remember what it was we were supposed to worry about, and we drag that non-existence past into this now of creation. Happiness is instantaneous and only lasts a moment: it must be re-discovered ten thousand times per hour.

When we cling to yesterday, we begin another drab loop of conditioned thought, each thought a reaction to a past thought. We dwell in abstractions about life instead of living life itself. Insofar as we inhabit concepts instead of life energy, we forfeit our birthright of primordial joy. Humans are the only sentient beings to have lost their song of animal ecstasy, the bliss that pulses in each particle of matter. 

Might bliss sing again in our marrow? People seek ecstasy by forcing themselves to the edge of experience: in extreme sports, violence, drugs, mind-shattering noise, sexual license. They desperately look for bliss in extremes, when in fact bliss vibrates right within each atom of this body, while simply sitting, gracefully standing, calmly walking, or lying in repose.

How did we ever lose what cannot be lost? 

We rejected the Tree of Life, preferring the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We invented thinking. The Tree of Knowledge is the thought-realm of opposites. The seed of this tree is the division of subject and object. To separate matter and spirit, subject and object, is our "original sin." The only sin is to abstract ourselves from creation's pulsating joy. 

Through abstract thinking, we become exiles from the Earth, expelled from the garden of Now. We invent the future and the past which, after all, only exist as thoughts, detached from the atomic substance of our bodily presence. Then we dwell in the ghostly parallel world called "mind," existing as approximations that ever approach but never touch the asymptote of the sensible world.  

"In nature there's no blemish but the mind." (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III.4)
 

2.

The invention of the abstract mind allowed us to develop science and technology. No doubt science had a purpose in human evolution. But the laboratory method of science only succeeds because thought kills matter, and lays it on a dissecting table, embalming the world in "objectivity." Thought triumphantly imagines its superiority over the inanimate earth, and takes dominion over her. Yet science, by this very method, kills the soul of the planet. The science-lab is by definition an artificial world. It is bleached white, sterilized, and haunted by a sense of exile. 

To save the planet, we must now learn to subsume and sublimate science under the deeper matrix of intuition, where subject and object re-unite in the primal unity of organic self-awareness.

Therefor the next step in our spiritual practice is not detachment from the material world, but consecration of the material world through enlightened sensuality. This means, quite simply, that our senses embrace the object of perception without losing awareness of the subject. Just as a flame immolates the wick, so awareness immolates the object. In this way, we transmute Matter into Spirit.

                                                                                3.
The function of awareness is to bless the object of perception, whether it is a flower, the face of a homeless child, or a loaf of bread. The material form is the host which is trans-substantiated by our senses into the body of the Goddess. 

Before the object is consecrated by our attention, it is merely matter. But when infused with awareness, we see the object as Mater, holy Mother. Consciousness is an energy that irradiates the earth, and the channel through which consciousness spills into creation is our eye, our ear, our tongue, our skin. 

In this dawning age, we understand that Spirit does not flow down from above, but outward through the senses, until we see divinity glow from each material object of perception. When we witness Christ born in the womb of the neutrino, it will be the Second Coming. Our consecrated sensuality is the vessel through which God becomes incarnate again in the womb of Mater.

                                                                               4.
Every physical particle has a spiritual core. It is time for humanity to locate the seat of divinity in the heart of the atom. This new mode of sacramental sensation reveals God in our bodies. We now transcend the age-old dualism of soul and flesh. Our goal is not to be liberated from the body, but to glorify it. For this body is an ever-dissolving stream of photons, and each photon is a virtual particle made of bliss, bubbling up and vanishing instantaneously in the boundless ocean of awareness. Our body is the field of our bliss.
 
The only difference between a Human and a Christ is that the Christ is fully aware of what the Human is. In the 2nd century, St. Athanasius declared: "God is humanity wholly alive." We are not designed for out-of-body experience. Nor are we designed for blind absorption in sensuality. Let us transcend these neurotic mood-swings between the metaphysical and the addictive. Rather, let us unite heaven and earth in celestial sensuality.

Jesus prayed, "Thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven." This is an earth prayer, a body prayer, a prayer for the glorification of matter through sacramental delight in the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and skin.
 

II. Practice for the Consecration of Matter

1. Observe the next thought arising...  This simple practice will subvert the power of forming images and words in your mind. Then you can rest as awareness unformed into thoughts. Do this not by suppressing thought, but observing the thought-stream without resistance or concentration. Simply refrain from grasping any particular concept in the moment of its arising.

The instant a mental image begins to form, let it dissolve back into the electricity of the brain. This does not require effort, only attention. And no energy is expended. In fact, energy is gained; for instead of capturing energy in mental image-making, thought dissolves into pure energy and becomes available to the nervous system as bliss.

2. Now experience this living electricity in your nerves as a one continuum of sensation. Experience the body as a host for a much wider field of energy that envelopes and pervades your form, scintillating beyond your body's edges. Experience that you, in fact, have no edges.
 
3. Enter a single random sub-nuclear particle. Observe the most minute particular impulse, such as a tingling in the brain. After dissolving thought into the sensation-field, let your attention sink into the finest particles of the field.  No sensation is insignificant.

4. Observe the subtlest thread of this sensation vibrating in and out of the field of pure silence. Use this very sensation as the suture (sutra) which weaves your awareness on the ever-dissolving edge of the present moment. Do not form a mental image or intellectual concept of this experience. Simply return to the finest particle of sensation arising from empty space.

5. As this sensation-thread dissolves, let empty space recognize itself as pure awareness.  

Do these sub-nuclear particles, threads, vibrations in you body, cause you to be aware? Or does vast empty awareness vibrate into particles? Is there any difference between subject and object, consciousness and matter?

6. Now, thought and sensation have evaporated into silent emptiness. You are aware of this silence within and between every atom of your body. It is also the space around you, enveloping your body. You have expanded into boundless space through the tiniest point in matter. 

You entered an instant photon of light and became the all-pervading eternity. You discovered the womb of the great Mother in the heart of one particle. Give thanks with this breath. 

III. Conclusion

Jewish mystical tradition calls this experience the Ain-Soph-Or: "Emptiness in a point of light." The Buddhist Heart Sutra defines this phenomena precisely in its first verse: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form."  

Jesus ecstatically shared this awareness when he said, "I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last." He also applied this principle in his social ethic: "He who would be greatest among you must become the least, the servant." His teaching echoed the ancient Indian Upanishadic text:  Ano Raniyan Mahato Mahiyan: "one atom of the smallest is greater than the greatest."

Or in the words of founding quantum physicist, Sir Arthur Eddington, "when the electron vibrates, the whole universe shakes."

Growing familiar with this sacrament of sensation, you can employ the practice any time, anywhere, at a bus stop or in a waiting room, to energize and re-create yourself. Be easy and natural with the practice. Don't regard it as a formal discipline. This practice is simply the humble awareness of your own body, in its finest particles, as the miraculous gift of Mater. Through this simple sacrament of sensation, you will know your own flesh as the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Make the entire journey - mind to body, body to energy, particular energy to cosmic silence - in less than a minute, or even in the duration of a breath.

In this dawning age, we will discover in our very own flesh, that our real substance is not dense "matter" separate from "mind." Our true stuff is Radiance: neither matter nor spirit, but a new, more integrated and gracious experience of energy. 

Our mind-body Radiance is downy as cotton, glittering with threads of ananda. Consciousness in itself is peace. Consciousness in the body is bliss. 

Through our Radiance, rays of pure awareness dance into particles, shining and spilling as light from darkness, creation ex nihilo. The entire field of body, senses, and the world we behold, is the grace of a dazzling sun, that shines from the womb of unfathomable divine silence within us.... On earth as it is in heaven.

Jai Guru Dev

'The Sacred Body'

Sermon Delivered at Unitarian Universalist Congregation 

of Tacoma WA  11/10/13 by Fred LaMotte

SYNOPSIS: It is important for us to return to the sacred body, because the healing of America’s anger begins in healing our anger against our own bodies, the wounded divide between what we are, and what we think we should be.

Because we are profoundly uncomfortable in our bodies, dis-eased in our bodies, we are alienated from the environment, from the body of mother earth, and we take it out by abusing the indigenous peoples of the earth. The solution to America’s angry divisions may be as simple as coming home to our bodies with a simple breath….

_________

What shall I choose for my text today?

I could take any of these marvelous utterances from history: "God became human so that humanity could become God." ~St. Athanasius, 2nd C.

Or from the 14^th C Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich: "God is in our sensuality."

From the ancient sacred text of India, Shrimad Bhagavatan: "Blessed is this human birth. Even the dwellers in heaven desire this birth, for true wisdom and pure love may be attained only by humanity."

Or from the modern master of Buddhist meditation, Thich Nhat Hanh,  "We can get enlightened, we can get liberated, just by looking deeply into our body. There's a Buddha in your body. The Kingdom of God is in your body." 

But this is a Unitarian congregation, so I will stand on more rational ground and choose my text from Sir Isaac Newton: "The changing of bodies into light and light into bodies is very comfortable to the course of nature, which seems delighted with transmutations."

I marvel to tell you that in those words, "The changing of bodies into light, light into bodies,” is the whole science of Yoga. And “very comfortable with the course of nature” presents the whole Tao of Chinese medicine. Finding “delight in transmutation” is the essence of Buddhism:  accepting the flow of change and impermanence.

I am sorry to inform the rationalist that Sir Isaac considered himself an alchemist. This word is from the Arabic Al-Kemiya, God of the Dark Land, which in turn is from the earlier name for Egypt, Khem, land of the Khemites. This root means Darkness: the darkness of the void, the mysterious womb of Mater, Mother Matter. And all modern physics is an extension of alchemy, the ancient quest for the source of the material universe.

Strangely enough, contemporary quantum physics confirms what many of these ancients were trying to tell us: matter arises ex nihilo, from nothing. In the beginning, there was just Tohu wa Bohu, formless and void, according the Hebrew Bible. For some reason science cannot fathom, but which the rishis of India called lila, meaning “play,” just sheer delight in playing, Word of creation vibrates as Light from that uncreated silence of the divine darkness: “ya’hi Or, wa’ ya’hi Or.” “And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”

Now the materialist may insist there is a great deal of difference between ancient and modern views, because the old ones believed that behind this vibration of matter from silence, is a mind. And those silly alchemists sought the golden light of Consciousness in the dark source of lead, the heaviest element of matter they could find. Surely modern science implies nothing like this!

But again, I must inform you that its not that simple. The great quantum physicists of the 20^th Century recognized an immaterial intelligence at the basis of matter. The founder of quantum physics, Sir James Jeans, wrote, “The universe begins to look less like a giant machine and more like a giant thought.” And his fellow quantum founder, Sir Arthur Eddington, president of the Royal Academy of Science, wrote: "All through the physical world runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness.... The stuff of the world is mind-stuff."

 In the words of Max Planck, another monumental 20^th physicist, "All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter."

But my subject today is not to renew the debate between Plato and Aristotle, idealist and materialist. I want to take you to the time when these two contraries were one, soul and matter inter-twined in one sacred body. I invite you to practice the most ancient spiritual method: dissolve the mind into the heart and become alive in the present moment…

Because we are never going to solve the ancient argument, the dichotomy of spirit and matter, by a thought: a conclusion at the tale-end of a logical argument. It is solved through Presence in the body, a golden wholeness!

So I would like to bring the ancient myth of the creation story home to your own life experience, by asking you to meditate on a few of your primordial memories about your body: how it felt to be in the body before you formed a concept about “the body.” And then, remember the moment you first formed that concept, the moment you became separate from your body, the moment you began living in the concept rather than the radiance of your own marvelous molecules and atoms.

This memory of the separation between your mind and body, is the real Fall of Adam and Eve, our culture’s most primordial myth. It is the moment each of us becomes separate, and begins to live in exile from our body.

Can you recall your Garden of Eden? You were there. The garden was your sacred body. The tree of life was your spine. Adam and Eve were the primal energies, Shiva and Shakti, Yahweh and Shekinah, Christ and the Magdalene, the male and female energies of the divine, spiraling around your stem, connecting earth to heaven through every breath that rose and fell from your head to your belly button.

And what of the serpent? The serpent was not evil. It was the most sacred energy inside you: the dance of innate intelligence through your nervous system. This serpent of innate body-wisdom is one of the most universal symbols in all of world mythology: called Kundalini Shakti in India, Chi in China, Holy Spirit in Biblical tradition, where the word for Spirit and Breath are the same, ruach. Notice that the serpent is often winged, as is the form of the dragon in China. As snake, this wisdom dragon is rooted in the earth; as bird it is rooted in the sky. Jesus referred to the winged serpent of body-wisdom when he said, “be ye wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” This winged serpent twined around the human spine, survives today in the symbol of medical science, the Caduceus of Hermes.

In the nourishing garden of your body you were whole and one, undivided into spirit and flesh. Soul dissolved in the body as sugar dissolves into water: all its sweetness there, but without separation. You lived by a constant stream of luscious green intuition. You did not so much think as bathe in the voice of a trembling silence, who advised you not to eat from that other tree, the tree of mental complexity. For that is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which fractures our wholeness into conflicting opposites…

 In the natural course of events, you rebelled against the better angel of your intuition. You began to think too much, fell into duality, and became an exile. Natural intuition, where every thought corresponds to its present event in the body, was replaced by anxiety. Speculation about the future, regret over the past.

Let us now demythologize this so-called “Fall from Grace.” We don’t require a Miltonic poem, a lofty drama that sets Heaven against Earth, God against Satan, or even Man against Woman. We need only to remember that simple loss of innocence, that personal moment, when we first became alienated from our own body. That was the fall, that was our exile from Eden.

Some voice of judgment expelled you from the Garden  – one Hebrew root of “Eden” means bliss. Some minor incident cast you out from holy healing wholeness – all those English words are related in their root.

That voice of judgment was not an angry God. It was a parent, or a sibling, a school teacher, an older kid. And it was just a passing comment, not intended to be the world shaking prophecy that became your life-sentence, condemning you to live in a borrowed concept about your body, rather than the body itself.

“You’re too wiggly, be still!” “Fatty!” “Look what you did, you’re like a bull in a china closet!” “I don’t want you on our team, you’re too skinny.” Or perhaps you slipped and fell, and they laughed at you. Or you bounced and giggled with joy, but some lugubrious formidable uncle told you to be quiet. Or your body surprised everyone with a sudden flood of adolescence. And with that slight comment, that insignificant and entirely natural faux pass – your mind created shame, became a separate world, a concept of  “my body.” And you’ve been living in the prison cell of that concept ever since. Even when you look in the mirror, you see that, and not the stunning radiance of your flesh.

So now, relax, breathe back into your garden. Enter the space of the heart through this breath. And in this safe place, please remember that voice, that event, however insignificant. Because in the unconscious, nothing is insignificant, there is no time, and a past event is still resonating as if it just happened.  (Pause to meditate)

And now I want you to go back even further and remember a moment when you felt good in your body. What was it like? There was no separation between being “spiritual” and being “material.” There was no struggle to be stronger or thinner, more feminine or masculine, no need to pump iron or lose weight or be pretty or tough or take botox injections. It was just You, radiantly alive as your body, sparkling through trillions of photons of light. (Pause to meditate)

And now here’s your take-home practice. Re-mind yourself, re-breathe yourself, what it felt like before your “fall” from the garden. For the sake of your health and sanity, for the sanity of our whole alienated, dis-eased, dis-embodied culture, please find a way to stop just for a moment – do it several times a day. Just for the duration of a breath, consciously be in your body. Be in your body for a whole breath in and a whole breath out... This innocent practice will “change your body into light, and light into your body.”

POEMS

1.

Sparrows don't wait for dawn, they just start singing.                   

Plum buds feel a tug of warmth deep down blind naked twigs.

Even if you can't dance, there's rhythm in your breathing.                   

This round earth wants to be your whirling partner.

                   

It’s already started, the trembling of seeds

in the dust of your spine.               

Separateness is just the shimmering.

Keep kneeling to kale and pumpkins in your garden.

Keep kneading the moon into your loins

until the loaf of the world is risen.

Strive ever downward toward the Divine.

Your flesh’s humblest photon is the palace door.

Didn’t you know? Every particle pulsates with a Psalm.

Friend, your yearning for light is light.

2.

Your body has a glow inside
like the brook that sparkled and eddied
down Mary's spine,

dripping into her womb.
This is how Gods give birth
to themselves in human bodies.

They do it for just one reason.
You must find that out for
yourself.

I am only at liberty to give these hints:
the taste of mint on brown skin,
bare feet in the garden,

the sound of laughter, tears,
the shape of an egg
formed by a mouth crying "O"

at the beginning of a prayer,
any prayer, and the silence
of the Breathless between breaths.

3.

There's a heart within your heart.

When this one beats

that one sings about light;

the gong in the atom’s hollow,

photons echoing a golden bell

never struck.

This sound could only mean one thing:

a Lover whispering your name

before you were conceived.

  

Why should your flesh be filled with

anything but music?