excerpt from the Dharma talk delivered May 26th in Salt Lake City.   "..that brings to my mind the Mojave desert at night - the Mojave Desert Preserve is also a dark skies Preserve meaning that any artificial list is restricted and it is one of the few places that you can see the Milky Way the way our ancestors did for millennium - Lots of tourist come get of the tour bus and look up at the night sky for about 5 minutes and say “that’s nothing I can see that at home”  disappointed they get back into the tour buses - The reason they didn’t see anything is that they didn’t let their eyes adjust to the darkness - they actually didn’t see anything - those that were willing to stop,  sit and wait in the darkness and let their eyes adjust - are shown the same view of stars that the first humans stood in awe of and made into the gods of their myths.   Are we not the same in our spiritual journeys - if all spiritual journeys start in darkness is not the first step not a step at all but to finally and courageously sit silently in the darkness and let our spiritual eyes adjust to the darkness -   Isn’t that what meditation is, it is sitting in the darkness of ourselves being still and allowing the darkness to show us the light of our inner luminosity?   For me it's similar to the lyrics from Leonard Cohen - but instead of all the cracks in the world letting the light in - I see all the cracks in the world letting the light out   May we all sit silently in the dark so we can finally see the light of our own Buddha Nature, show us the way to freedom. "