"Can you become a stranger in a strange land who forgot his name, forgot his identity? If only for a minute or two, just to let that bolt of lightning strike, to create enough openness to let the light in."
— JB, Empty Thine Cup to Receive
"If you don't discover how to empty your cup, then it cannot be filled by grace, by light, by divinity."
— JB, Empty Thine Cup to Receive
"The mysteriousness of everything holds immense freedom if you can let yourself drop into unknowing, unknowing for even a minute or two."
— JB, Empty Thine Cup to Receive
Dear Family,
I recorded this video a few days ago in Sardinia, Italy during the Gondor retreat.
Gondor was an epic success and this video transmits some of the revelation that was dropping in for me during the journey.
I recommend to watch the video to receive the fullness of the transmission, but if you prefer to read it, here is a lightly edited transcript:
Now is open.
Now is free.
Coming from Italy, on the island of Sardinia—
now is open.
Now is free.
Now is space.
Now is spaciousness.
What happens if you simply experiment with dropping all identifications, all identities, all attachments, all beliefs, all relationships, all conceptions of what you think life is?
And you simply open to the now as if you had never seen it before.
As if this sparkling, glistening portal of openness—this astonishing space of weightless luminous God-play, this clear clearness, this weightless, spaceless, invisible fire—nonetheless radiates and shines forth as all of this colorful, formful poetry.
What if you let yourself see it like a newborn baby seeing it for the first time?
Simply regaled. Bowled over. Awestruck. Dumbstruck.
Joyful to discover that anything could be at all.
That any color could glisten.
That any sky could be so blue.
That a bird could float through it.
That the Mediterranean Sea behind me could simply unfold on the horizon as an appearance of glistening serenity.
Serenity and grace.
Just look at that sea back there.
Look at that peninsula.
We were on that peninsula yesterday and—oh man—the most astounding rock formations. Literally looking like God’s ice cream sundae melting with gargantuan, Narnia-like flavor.
Utterly enchanted.
Like being on an alien planet.
A foreign world.
On every other planet, we’re the aliens. We’re the extraterrestrials.
And Earth is the alien planet.
Can you let yourself see this place we call Earth as a foreign land?
Can you become a stranger in a strange land who forgot his name, forgot his identity?
If only for a minute or two.
Just to let that bolt of lightning strike.
To create enough openness to let the light in.
If you don’t discover how to empty your cup, then it cannot be filled by grace, by light, by divinity.
If your cup is so full with your stories and histories and relationships and attachments and life situations and to-do lists and your laundry list of grievances and complaints and problems—
then there’s no room.
No room for the thunderbolt of revelation to come in, to strike, to resound.
And that’s not to negate everything you’re going through.
That’s not to negate your problems and challenges.
Those are very real.
We are human.
We are people navigating a challenging world—a challenging layer within infinite creation.
And yet—
simple freedom is available here and now.
Home is now.
You are home.
Now is free.
Now is joy.
Now is an ever-present opportunity to completely hit the reset button.
To hit Control-Alt-Delete on your consciousness and simply open to newness and freshness.
Newness and freshness.
Newness and freshness.
The hugest and bestest.
Like an open tornado waiting to whoosh away all apparent problems, hangups, and sticky places.
An ever-present opportunity to let your entire house of consensus reality be whisked away by that Wizard-of-Oz-like tornado of spaciousness.
Joyful vortex.
Now.
And for this nowness to stand revealed as where you’ve always been.
Eternity.
Eternity here and now.
Have you ever experienced anything that didn’t occur right now?
In and as the immediacy of now.
This now-field.
This prayer-field.
This Buddha-field of texture and lusciousness.
This ever-changing tapestry.
This effulgence.
A completely unsayable riddle.
A paradox.
A poem.
Something these words cannot touch or graze.
As the cows meander in the prairie and look on, bemused at this funny passerby.
This funny ape-like humanoid, trickster bard, whatever I happen to be, sojourning and moseying along.
The nice thing is: I don’t need to know.
I don’t need to know what I am.
I play roles in this world.
I play the role of a dad.
A husband.
A family man.
A son.
A brother.
A friend.
A lover of Christ.
A Christian who is also a lover of Zen and the Tao and the Vedantic mysteries.
I play the role of writer, speaker, rapper, creator.
I play all these roles.
But can any of these roles truly and finally define me?
Pin me down?
Say what I am?
Or what any of this is?
No.
And that is great freedom.
The mysteriousness of everything holds immense freedom if you can let yourself drop into unknowing.
Unknowing for even a minute or two.
Forget everything you thought you knew about life and who you were.
Suddenly you find yourself a stranger in a strange land.
You can’t say what you are.
You can’t say what this tapestry of wonders is.
You can’t say what any of this is.
And you simply melt into all of it.
You are one with all of it.
You can’t be pulled apart from any of it.
It’s all moving together.
And you don’t need to say what it is.
Because it’s perfect contentment.
It simply is as it is.
And that’s about the truest thing anybody can say.
This is as it is.
You can call it a glorious emanation of unknown God-nectar from the Heavenly Father and Mother, shining forth as pure radiant juiciness with unbelievable precision, functionality, and artistry as we gallivant through this unfathomably rich world of wonders.
You can poetically evoke it.
Categorize it.
And yet it will always be more than that.
It’s inexhaustible.
As the Christians say.
Especially the Christian monks and mystics have deeply grokked this revelation of God’s inexhaustibility.
The total inexhaustibility of infinity.
There’s always more water in the well.
You’ve never experienced this moment before.
This moment is ever fresh.
Ever new.
A total revelation of newness and abundance.
The nature of abundance is that this moment has never been seen before.
And that’s true now.
And now.
And now.
Consider that on Earth alone there are eight billion people, each one having experiences that have never been experienced before.
Every nanosecond.
A single day of Earth-time contains an infinitude of novelty erupting from this super-volcanic dynamo of creative inspiration and intelligence.
Perpetually gurgitating newness.
Freshness.
These are ways I can poetically evoke fresh possibilities of looking directly here and now and noticing this openness and freedom.
But none of the words can encapsulate it.
It’s too free.
Too open.
Too simple.
Too direct.
It is all-pervading Spirit and the play of all-pervading Spirit as form.
It’s freedom.
It’s open.
So purely open and free.
Look at this pathway leading to the Mediterranean Sea.
It’s utterly astounding.
Utterly beyond fathoming that anything could be at all.
And that it happens to look like this.
This world of wonders.
This Willy Wonka chocolate factory of phantasmagorical fun and frankincense floating and fluttering through itself, as itself.
We are immeasurably fortunate to be alive.
Immeasurably fortunate.
This is an extravagant treasure chest of boundless bizarreness and bounty.
Bountiful beauty.
Radiant, numinous, luminous poetry.
God-poems splayed out nakedly revealed.
Nothing hidden.
Nothing revealed.
In a deep sense, it’s always been standing right before you.
Gobsmacking you in the forehead.
God-smacking you in the forehead.
The simplicity of the color green.
The flotation of a butterfly.
Every single thing testifies to infinity.
To the nameless.
To what cannot be said.
To limitless creative capacity and intelligence.
Beyond all mechanistic metaphors.
Way beyond mechanistic.
The nature of this functionality is so omni-jubilant and omni-dimensionally intricate that it’s utterly unfathomable.
Utterly unfathomable.
So this has been something of a meandering video diary from Sardinia, Italy.
Transmitting some impressions after being on retreat the last few days.
What a lovely experience that was.
Good brothers.
Good soul brothers.
Food for the soul.
Medicine for the heart.
I’m just so grateful.
Deeply in awe of the treasures of this island and the treasures all around us.
Every location holds the omnipresent open secret.
The omnipresent freedom.
The omnipresent openness.
There’s no place where God’s treasure chest is not.
It’s all-pervading.
So soak it in if you like.
Check it out.
It’s here for the grazing.
It’s here for the slurping through a straw.
Imagine your whole consciousness as a giant mouth drinking in this vastness from all angles.
Let yourself feel that.
It’s a lot about letting it in.
Opening the sensitivity to really receive the astonishing poetry perpetually all around us.
So—
that’s the message for today.
Thank you for listening.
Sending love and hugs from Italy.
Peace.
God bless.
Buddha bless.
Christ bless.
Be well.
Be well.
Peace infinity.
Much joy.
One love.
Love,
Jordan
P.S. Here’s a hint of what’s coming next.
