A Secret Luminosity...

                                                                       Sage of the Secret Luminosity


                                                the tao that can be defined
                                                     is not the eternal tao...
                                     the secret luminosity that can be spoken
                                         is not (and also is) the eternal light...


​There is mystery to this thing that we call life... is there not? Oh, to be sure, there are those who assert they have the answers, no doubt because they think they can control all the questions... just as there are (and have been) a seemingly infinite number of folks who have surrendered their thinking minds over to the purveyors of one creed or another... is that you? Are you in that number?

​If so, it is probably unlikely that you would be reading this!

I have long submitted lists of books that I recommend for your spiritual consideration, from the Tao Te Ching to Be Love Now by Ram Dass, from the poetry of Rumi to the Prayers of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz... It is of profound importance that you read! Monks of both our time and yesterday (and for thousands of years) have recommended the practice of a slow, deliberate, contemplative reading... but not just books! It is of equal importance to "read" one's culture, politics, economics, etc.

​Reading includes the "reading" of your own mind-heart... Of course, not believing everything that you think is one of the building blocks of wisdom -- and your sacred life! The mystic tends to give only marginal creedence to the thoughts that fleetingly inhabit our minds... let them go... let them go without judgment... let them go without the formation of an opinion... Why? Because, the heart is where the real-mind dwells in a secret luminosity...

​All of the great "I Am" declarations by Yeshua in the Gospel of John are, as it were, clarifications of the secret luminosity that in-fills all of us and all of creation... While dualism on the one hand needs to separate, divide, judge, and eventually condemn opposites and differences, non-dualism seeks to re-member, unite, free, and eventually liberate every opposite and difference into beatitude... When Yeshua declared I am the Light of the world, that declaration was so much more than the birth of a new religion!

​"I am the vine and you are the branches" is linked, directly, with the Light... no plant and no life grows without the light of the Sun: so too, the light of a secret luminosity which is the soul-core of every life and, indeed, of every thing, is the non-dualistic real reality to which we are all called to embrace as our very own life... Now, here is the key to this embracing: yearning, hunger, and surrender in contemplative prayer...

​Tao (pronounced dow) is a word, comparable to Christ (or deeper, christed)... both Tao and Christ are thought of by practitioners as way... but, also as vehicles of transportation or transformation... To engage in the building of your sacred life... is, as much as anything else, the learned practice of referencing every aspect of your life into the perspective of already sacred! When you cook, when you eat, when you work, when you play, when you rest, when you sex, when you read, etc., etc. there is not a different person "doing" this or that... you are one... so too, in the real reality, you are already a secret luminosity! You are connected to the Vine... you are shining with the Light...  

​The Beatitudes of Yeshua and the Tao of Lao Tzu, are lessons directly from the life experiences of wisdom masters: these teachings are not religions in the popular sense of the word, rather they are revelations of that which already is, and the Way, and the Vehicle to get us all to where we want to go: into the real reality, already here and simply waiting for our "Yes! Now!... Heaven isn't a distant time or a far-off place: it is within us right now, it is all about us and everything right now: it shines as a secret luminosity... pregnant, in a delightful anticipation... or like a rising orgasm that would be impossible to stop... ultimately, the Beatitudes and the Tao are about just riding the wave... and keeping it going...