Welcome! I am a contemplative thinker and photographer from Colorado. In this blog, you'll discover photographs that I've taken on my hiking and backpacking trips, mostly in the American West. I've paired these with my favorite inspirational and philosophical quotes - literary passages that emphasize the innate spirituality of the natural world. I hope you enjoy them!

If you'd like to purchase photo-quote greeting cards, please go to www.NaturePhoto-QuoteCards.com .


In the Spirit of Wildness,

Stephen Hatch
Fort Collins, Colorado

P.S. There's a label index at the bottom of the blog.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Wilderness Mysticism views BOTH distinctness and Oneness as real . . .



Some mystical traditions view distinctions as illusory and the Oneness into which they all continually merge as the true Reality. However, Wilderness Mysticism values BOTH the distinctness of things AND their underlying Oneness. We might say, in fact, that the distinct and individual nature of each and every thing exists in order to lend a sense of surprise to Oneness when the vast and seamless expanse of Divine Awareness suddenly blossoms forth in individual things, arising as though out of nowhere! Indeed, that is precisely what Wilderness Insight Meditation teaches us to do: to identify with the spaciousness of awareness (using our exhalations as an aid) and then watching in absolute awe as a whole variety of different thoughts and sensations arise from it like echoes resounding in space with no original "Speaker" ever to be found!




Photos: (Top) Yellow Paintbrush and Vetch, with Grand and Middle Teton in the background; (Middle) Male cones of a Whitebark Pine; (Bottom) Snow Buttercups blooming in a snowbank on Montgomery Pass. The first two photos were taken in Grand Teton National Park. The third was taken in the Rawah Range of northern Colorado.


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