A Spirituality of "the Selfie"

The phenomenon of the "Selfie" challenges the traditional notion of a humble, unselfconscious spirituality like almost no other element invented by modern technology. What are we to make of this, and how might it contribute rather than hinder the spiritual journey?

One of my wise thirty-something daughters told me the other day that she sees the Selfie as a major way the members of her generation seek to discover who they are. Out of touch with any deeper, more stable identity, they use closeup cell phone self-portraits to offer a window into their own selfhood. Those Selfies taken in a mirror seem especially to justify this kind of interpretation. You can almost see the exploratory "Who am I?" expression on the person's face in the midst of taking the shot. However, I don't think this interpretation is the end of the matter. For I believe there is also a real and genuine spirituality lying behind the phenomenon of the Selfie.

Growing up near Amish country in Pennsylvania, I accepted as gospel truth the idea that one should avoid giving too much self-conscious attention to one's public persona or image. The Quakers on my mother's side of the family supported this move toward humble self-forgetting, as did the Christian contemplatives with whom I studied for over thirty years. However, since I've gotten on Instagram, I've been introduced to a huge culture of Selfies, including photos in the outdoors taken with the help of "Selfie Sticks," and lovely models who aim the phone video camera at themselves, taking a movie from every possible seductive angle. In fact, I've gotten to where I look forward to Instagram outdoor pictures with people in them, especially since there are so many health-conscious, beautiful people recreating in the Great Outdoors these days.
As you might expect, I like to employ myth in trying to understand the spirituality of what traditionally would have been regarded as evidence of narcissism. Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche Chogyam Trungpa once used the playful image of "Empty Space putting on makeup" to talk about how spacious awareness "dresses up" as the individual egoic self and as all worldly phenomena. Poet Anne Waldman, one of Trungpa's students, actually wrote a whole poem employing this image, called "Makeup on Empty Space."  Here, "empty space" refers not to a mere nothing but to the spiritual reality of spacious awareness, "Dharmakaya," which is also filled with creative potential.

In any case, I like to imagine our Beloved Source emptied out in blissful, ecstatic love into the spaciousness of our awareness, and then playing a long, long game in which He or She masquerades as the constricted reality of both yours and my ego - acting "cocky," self-important, even arrogant - but always with a sense of playfulness and a "this-is-not-really-who-I-am" attitude underlying the entire game. Here each of us might embody a certain sexy, self-important, aloof, self-occupied attitude, yet KNOW we are putting on an act and playing a lifelong game! And that precisely is what a Selfie is: the divine self PLAYING at being self-preoccupied and self-important, temporarily forgetting that all of this posturing is actually a game, yet periodically waking up to the vastness of the True Self with a pleasant sense of shock and surprise :)

Photo: Sunrise on Sprague Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, September 19, 2015

- - - - - - - - -

I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page.

Morning Coffee on Jackson Lake

What could be more wonderful than enjoying morning coffee on the shores of spacious Jackson Lake, with the Tetons towering just behind?

Photo: Grand Teton National Park, WY, September 7, 2015

Approach each thing as strange and new for the thousandth time!

"To conceive of any natural object with a total apprehension, I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange . . . You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be."

Henry David Thoreau

This is precisely what the Yellowstone landscape enables us to do. Its otherworldly aura opens up a fresh faculty of perception that then helps us look at the mundane features of our daily lives in a similar manner.

Photos: (Top) Fishing Cone just off the shore of Yellowstone Lake, West Thumb Geyser Basin; (Middle) Grand Prismatic Spring; (Bottom) Hot spring pools in Norris Geyser Basin. All three photos were taken in Yellowstone National Park, WY, on September 5-7, 2015

Nature Can Help Spirituality Remain REAL

There is a tendency in religion for various aspects of human experience to be ignored or denied. For the fundamentalist wing of each faith, the tendency is to deny the unity of all things, the value of silence, and the goodness of another person's religious tradition. For the mystical wing of those same religions, the temptation is to deny the individuality of things, the fact that one possesses a relative perspective even when experiencing the absolute, and a denial of the importance of ideas, words and theology in the life of the spirit. Contemplatives like myself have a tendency to live in denial about our experience of anger, even when others can still feel it. And all religious and spiritual traditions succumb to the temptation to deny the reality and sacredness of sexuality. 

Fortunately, however, frequent contact with Nature helps counteract these deficiencies by keeping us "real." Intense beauty, suffering, individuality, unity, sex, male and female realities, personality, non-personality, cooperation, competition - it's all there. Oh, and mosquitoes, rocks to smack your knee on, sunburn, frostbite, overpowering sunsets, and the beautiful Nature writings contained in the book you stashed in your backpack. It's all there!

Photos: (Yellow Senecio, pink Fireweed, White Cowbane, Black Lake and various waterfalls, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, September 1, 2015

Nature's University

"Oh, yes, I went to the white man's schools. I learned to read from schoolbooks, newspapers, and the Bible. But in time I found that these were not enough. Civilized people depend too much on man-made printed pages. I turn to the Great Spirit's book, which is the whole of His creation. You can read a big part of that book if you study nature. You know, if you take all your books, lay them out under the sun, and let the snow and rain and insects work on them for a while, there will be nothing left. But the Great Spirit has provided you and me with an opportunity for study in nature's university: the forests, the rivers, the mountains, and the animals, which include us."

Walking Buffalo
Stoney Nation
(Alberta)

Photos: (Top) Indian Paintbrush and West Glacier Lake, Snowy Range, WY, August 22, 2015; (Middle) Subalpine Aster and Nokhu Crags, Never Summer Range, CO, August 29, 2015; (Bottom) Mountain Gentian and Medicine Bow Peak, Snowy Range, WY, August 23, 2015

Mount Rainier steals my vision! . . .

In the presence of Rainier and her meadows, I frequently lose all power of thought. Gazing on her, I find, is like seeing a lover unclothed for the first time. I’m left speechless and stunned by the majesty of the view. In fact, it seems as though the peak always finds a way to steal my visual capacity away from me, until my eyes are really hers. She is then able - through my vision - to gaze with playful haughtiness on her own amazing beauty! I recognize this phenomenon whenever I feel my awareness gripped by the overwhelming beauty of the setting . . .
 

Photos: (Top) Mount Rainier, Tipsoo Lake and Elderberries; (Middle) Cliff Paintbrush and Mount Rainier; (Bottom) Detail from one of Rainier's glaciers. All three photos were taken in Mount Rainier National Park, WA on August 28-30, 2015

Silent retreats lead to carefully arranging one's thoughts.

"In my opinion, it was chiefly owing to their deep contemplation in their silent retreats in the days of youth that the old Indian orators acquired the habit of carefully arranging their thoughts. They listened to the warbling of birds and noted the grandeur and the beauties of the forest. The majestic clouds - which appear like mountains of granite floating in the air - the golden tints of a summer evening sky, and all the changes of nature, possessed a mysterious significance. All this combined to furnish ample matter for reflection to the contemplating youth."

Andrew Blackbird,
Ottawa Nation

Photos: (Top) Wild Currant leaves and the sun setting behind Notchtop Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 25, 2015; (Middle and Bottom) Willow leaves, Subalpine Aster, and Elderberries, Lake Agnes, Never Summer Range, CO, August 29, 2015

Wilderness Insight Meditation

The important point in Wilderness Insight Meditation is not only to allow one's ego-identity to dissolve in the spaciousness of divine awareness, but to watch - spellbound - as one's thoughts, perceptions, emotions AND ego-identity reemerge like echoes with no original Sound out of that seamless vastness!

Photo: Changing Willow leaves and Lake Agnes, Never Summer Range, CO, August 29, 2015

Seeing the World as Lover

"When you see the world as lover, every being, every phenomenon, can become - if you have a clever, appreciative eye - an expression of that ongoing erotic impulse."

Joanna Macy
Buddhist Deep Ecologist

Photo: Fireweed, Reflection Lake, and Mount Rainier, Mount Rainier National Park, WA, July 28, 2015

"Nones" and Wilderness Mysticism

In preparing for a workshop I'm giving on Wilderness Mysticism this Sunday, I did a little more research about "Nones" - i.e., those who identify themselves as religiously unaffliated. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center study, 23% of the U.S. adult population are Nones, up 8 points from 2007. Especially important in driving this increase are those in the Millennial Generation (born 1981-1996), 35% of whom consider themselves to be Nones. Interestingly, only 7% of Nones identify themselves as atheist or agnostic. While more studies need to be done, it appears that increasing numbers of Nones consider Nature their primary source of religious inspiration. A new study from Baylor University claims that those areas containing especially beautiful landscapes in the vicinity also have a higher percentage of Nones. Portland is certainly an example of this correlation, where 42% of the population identifies as Nones.

In any case, I've been committed over the past 30 years to providing meaningful theological reflection on the spiritual experience of Nature. Many people I know (at least in Colorado, where I live) love to recreate in the Great Outdoors, but very few actually reflect on the meaning of their experience and relate it to their spirituality. I am excited to offer Wilderness Mysticism as one way of doing that! :)

Photos: (Top) Indian Paintbrush and West Glacier Lake; (Middle) Rocks on an unnamed lake. These two photos were taken in the Snowy Range (WY) on August 22, 2015; (Bottom) Subalpine Arnica and Lake Helene, with Notchtop Mountain towering above, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 25, 2015

Embracing Contradiction

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes."

Walt Whitman

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

One of the things that is most fascinating about life is the fact that we as human beings are a bundle of contradictions. We sense a stable core at the center of our beings, but are carried away by a thousand passions. We want to conform to a singular view of Life, but Life itself keeps showing up as a many-sided jewel. Every truth implies its opposite. Oneness keeps shapeshifting into multiplicity and multiplicity continually transforms into Oneness. Eternity is in love with time, and time forever seeks to partner with the Eternal. Light cannot reveal itself without some degree of shadow, and vice versa. "We are gods with anuses," as cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker famously declared. It's no wonder that quite a few indigenous tribes celebrate a trickster side to the Creator. Raven, Crow, Coyote, Iktomi the Spider. The best thing we can do is throw our heads back and LAUGH at the wonder of it all :)

Photos: (Top) Rose Crown / Queen's Crown and West Glacier Lake; (Middle) Subalpine Arnica, a quartzite block, and Medicine Bow Peak; These two photos were taken in Wyoming's Snowy Range on August 22-23, 2015; (Bottom) Subalpine Aster (Erigeron) and Notchtop Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 25, 2015

Nature teaches us to think our own thoughts . . .

Earlier, I spoke of the realization that each of us is a completely unique lens through which the Divine knows and celebrates Itself.

However, in our current era, many of us hardly ever listen to or follow our core self. As a result, we run across very few real individuals these days. People identify themselves instead with the media and entertainment culture, which seeks to make each of us into a sort of robot with no mind of our own. Rather than create our own mythical stories that embody the paradoxical life of the Divine, we instead rely on the technological expertise of moviemakers to do the imagining for us. Rather than think our own thoughts, we listen non-stop to the thoughts of others: to the love-dramas of pop-singers, the incessantly negative news promoted by the media, and the dogmas of religious groups that would discourage us from ever coming to our own conclusions. Rather than enjoying the self-possession that is the product of a disciplined life, we rely instead on the "Likes" and "Comments" of OTHERS recorded in Facebook and Instagram posts.

Nature, on the other hand, teaches us to think our own thoughts, imagine new theological stories, be embraced by Silence, and practice the disciplined life we crave. Time spent in the natural world helps us once again become who we REALLY are in our deepest core. How wonderful!

Photos: (Top) Sunrise on Medicine Bow Peak, with white and pink-colored quartzite in the foreground; (Middle) Subalpine Arnica; (Bottom) Mountain Gentian; all three photos were taken in Wyoming's Snowy Range on September 21-23, 2015

One of the most important principles in the spiritual journey is the fact that we always view Truth or Reality through a particular lens.

Photography involves taking a unique and particular perspective on a subject, one that helps open up fresh ways of seeing for the viewer. For me, that means aiming for a layered effect, as in this sunrise photo, or looking at a scene from a ground-level perspective, as in the two wildflower photos. I never present a landscape setting "as it is," but rather through a particular perspective. Similarly, one of the most important principles in the spiritual journey is the fact that we always view Truth or Reality through a particular lens, filter or perspective. We never see things "as they are," but rather through the lens of our own individual, psychological, cultural, gendered, racial, philosophical and religious filters. After all, that is precisely what the Divine is after in creating this world - knowing Itself, Himself and Herself through an infinite number of filters and then marveling at the freshness, nuance and surprise that each filter provides. There is no other filter exactly like ours! And that is true as well for the 7.3 billion other human beings who inhabit the planet. Add to that the perspectives held by the billions of other life forms, and the result is an endless source of amazement available to the Creator. For we human beings, this means both that we remain forever humble (realizing that we only know the Truth through one or several particular fliters), AND that we will always and forever need the perspectives and filters of others to fill out what is lacking in our own. This keeps us ever reaching out toward one another and serves to bond together the plethora of different ways of seeing into one multi-faceted Whole :)

Photos: (Top) Sunrise on Medicine Bow Peak; (Middle) Rose Crown / Queen's Crown, an unnamed lake and Medicine Bow Peak; (Bottom) Mountain Gentians and pond; All three photos were taken in the Snowy Range (WY) on August 21-23, 2015

Two Fundamentalisms: Dualistic and Nondualistic

This past weekend, as I was hiking in the beauty of Wyoming's Snowy Range, I enjoyed immensely both the vast and imposing backdrop of the mountain peaks AND the individual expression of beauty - found in wildflowers, trees, rocks and lakes - that arise within that vastness. While walking, I found myself reflecting on the fact that the tendency toward a fundamentalistic mindset is so incredibly pervasive in human affairs. In fact, it often takes seemingly opposite forms! In the realm of spirituality, this means, for example, that for conservative traditionalists, ONLY duality is the true reality. Here, there is a Creator-creation split and a billiard-ball view of the self, both of which deny that any kind of overarching Unity has any reality. On the other hand, a kind of mystical fundamentalism holds that ONLY the Unity has any ultimate existence, and that all individuality - including the words, ideas and thoughts that correspond to discrete insights or beings - are actually illusory. This pattern reveals the fact that fundamentalism is a typically HUMAN trait and is not the possession of any one group. It always focuses on one sliver of the truth to the exclusion of all other slivers. In my experience, all of the various slivers are needed to make a more complete picture. Here, for example, BOTH duality and non-duality issue continually into and proceed from one another. Accordingly, nondual vastness continually gives birth to individual beings, AND individual beings perpetually manifest nonduality in their tendency to run toward the horizon of Unity and dissolve there. Amazingly, both duality and nonduality continually issue in - and shapeshift into - one another. And that, of course, is precisely the magic of life!  

There is, of course, a more inclusive Unity, but this consists in dwelling IN BETWEEN these two realms and in becoming the space in which they integrate into a single, dynamic yet restful Reality :)

Photos: (Top) Subalpine Arnica, A quartzite block, and Medicine Bow Peak; (Middle) Rose Crown (Queen's Crown), an unnamed pond, and Medicine Bow Peak. These two photos were taken on August 23, 2015; (Bottom) Silvery snag in an old burn, August 21, 2015. All three photos were taken in the Snowy Range, WY

God sighs to be known in us . . .

"God sighs to become known in us. God is delivered from solitude by the people in whom God reveals himself. The sorrow of the unknown God is softened through and in us."

Ibn al-Arabi
13th century Sufi mystic

Quoted by Franciscan friar Richard Rohr in his book: "What the Mystics Know"

Photos: (Top and Middle) Indian Paintbrush at Twin Crater Lakes, Rawah Wilderness, CO, August 14, 2015; (Bottom) Snowbank and The Sharksteeth, just below Sky Pond, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 15, 2015

The Importance of Self-Forgiveness

There's a lot of talk these days about forgiving others and how important this is for our own inner peace. When we hang on to our grievances regarding what others have done to us, we feel constricted and leaden inside. Forgiveness serves to release us from this tightness. However, what is often neglected is the equally important necessity of forgiving ourselves. We all have mistakes in our past that sometimes continue to plague us into the present. We wish we could reverse the video recorder, as it were, and redo those parts of our lives where we "messed up." But we unfortunately cannot, so we seem to be stuck with all of our mistakes. Obsessing over past errors then becomes like an unhealed wound that festers and will not heal. It is easy, therefore, to understand why - in our own religious culture - so many people, especially evangelicals, find a theology of substitutionary atonement so appealing. If one can say: "Jesus took the blame and punishment for all of my sin, thereby releasing me from guilt," then the resulting liberation can be experienced as quite powerful.

However, for those of us who do not find release in having someone else - especially someone as special as Christ - be punished and killed for our misdeeds, there is another way of release. And that is to realize that the "self" which "blows it" is not the True Self after all. To the contrary, our REAL self is a vast lake of love and awareness that underlies the more superficial parts of our personality, which correspondingly form the "sunlight diamonds" dancing up on the surface of that lake. Those flecks of light are the things we say and do - sometimes helpful and sometimes not so helpful - during the course of our daily lives. Our temptation, however, is to consider those glints to be who-we-really-are, causing us to miss out on the vastness of our underlying Identity. Therefore, we actually NEED those times when we mess up in order to move us - forcibly, almost - to a deeper level, where we REALLY and TRULY dwell on the level of Being. All character development, in fact, is simply a deepening awareness - through both thick and thin - of this deeper Self.

And for those seekers who are Christ-followers, the liberating truth is the fact that this deeper Self is actually the ever-present reality of  . . . Christ!  Christ, Buddha-Nature, Brahman, Tunkashila, Gaia, Sophia, the Tao, Yahweh, Allah, Wakan Tanka, Ein Sof, the No-Self - they are all THERE, on that deeper level! But we could never KNOW the majesty of that vast Lake of divinity unless it were lit - you guessed it - by the sunlight diamonds of our more superficial selves dancing up on the surface! Forgiveness in this context comes in realizing that we can let go of our mistakes (AND our accomplishments) in order to identify instead with the deeper level of the vast True Self.

Oh, and one more thing. A lot of the talk these days about self-love or self-forgiveness can seem quite shallow in its tendency to remain caught up in a solipsism of "me, myself and I." In truth, the Self is a community, and the "I" who does the self-forgiving is actually not simply "me" but is instead . . . . [ ] !

Photos: (Top) Rosy and Western Yellow Paintbrush blooming above Saint Louis Lake near Fraser, CO, August 8, 2015; (Middle) Elephanthead blooming on the shore of one of the Twin Crater Lakes, Rawah Wilderness, CO, August 14, 2015; (Bottom) Fireweed and Arctic Gentian blooming on the shore of Lake of Glass, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 15, 2015

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities . . .

"Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, - the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing people are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, - to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, - a temple open to the sky, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to process the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant . . . Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their holy-of-holies for an hour, aye, for many hours! To make a very bar-room of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us, - the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts' shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? . . . We should exclude such trespassers from the only holy ground which can be sacred to us. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers . . . If we have thus desecrated ourselves, - and who has not? - the remedy will be wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a temple of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and naive children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities . . . Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts . . ."

Henry David Thoreau
"Life Without Principle"
1863

Photos: (Top) Rosy Paintbrush and Lulu Mountain, Never Summer Range, CO, August 4, 2015; (Middle) Colorado Columbine, Snow Lake, and Nokhu Crags, Never Summer Range, CO, August 4, 2015; (Bottom) Queen's Crown and waterfall, just below Sky Pond, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 15, 2015

When I'm in the Great Outdoors, life makes so much sense . . .

When I'm in the Great Outdoors, life makes so much sense. Rather than feeling small, I sense that I'm an integral part of the greater Whole. There, my capacity for making meaning - for theologizing, doing meditation practice and acting as a vessel for Beauty to celebrate herself through me - blazes in all of its exuberant intensity. By contrast, I find society more difficult to navigate. Our culture's institutions, hierarchies, cliques, frenetic busyness, its compulsive marketing mentality  and its personality cults seem antithetical to the life of the Spirit. And yet we all must dwell there, make a living, pay bills, find those who resonate with us, learn how to deal with those who do not, and wrestle with our own socially-induced shadow side. It seems the best mode of living is to move back and forth between the two contrasting realms: between time spent in the Great Outdoors on the one hand, and daily life moving about within society on the other, thereby seeking to integrate the two opposites into a single whole.

What is YOUR way of dealing with the challenges that life in society bring you?

Photo: (Top) Queen's Crown growing on the edge of Sky Pond, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 15, 2015; (Middle) Colorado Columbines blooming on the shore of Snow Lake, Never Summer Range, CO, August 4, 2015; (Bottom) Rosy and Western Yellow Paintbrush growing next to Saint Louis Lake, near Fraser, CO, August 8, 2015

Now men must take responsibility to turn a "War in Which Only One Side Shows Up" into a "Dialogue in Which Both Sexes Speak Up."

Making our way through Eastern Oregon, I found myself reading with fascination a book I purchased at Powell's Bookstore in Portland. One of the passages especially stands out in my mind:

"In the twentieth century women led us through decades of resistance to the devastation caused by immature masculinity. The assault of feminism and many men's acquiescence to its demands has ground down the assertiveness of too many men who feel confused about their power. There has, for too long, been a silence about the increasing destruction of diversity of MATURE archetypal masculine traits . . . Given our focus on feminism, men and women alike have lost track of what MATURE masculinity really means. Warren Farrell writes in 'The Myth of Male Power,' Have we been misled by feminists? Yes. Is it feminists' fault? No. Why not? Men have not spoken up. Simply stated, women cannot hear what men do not say. Now men must take responsibility to say what they want - to turn a 'War in Which Only One Side Shows Up' into a 'Dialogue in Which Both Sexes Speak Up.' "

Terry Jones, "The Elder Within: The Source of Mature Masculinity"

Photos: (Top) Lewis Monkeyflowers, Green Lake and Broken Top Mountain, near Bend, OR; (Middle) Mount Jefferson, viewed from Smith Rock State Park, OR; (Bottom) Sunflowers and red badlands, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Painted Hills District, OR. These photos were taken on July 31-August 1, 2015

The intellect is needed to make spiritual meaning.

Because body-oriented spirituality is so much the rage these days, those of us who are called to articulate meaning in a theological-philosophical manner are often misunderstood. We are frequently told: "Oh, you're just your head," or "You're practicing mental masturbation," or even "All of your conceptual insights are merely ILLUSION!" However, our current era is suffering from a lack of meaning. While the old traditional theologies are falling by the wayside, there are few new ones to replace them. While the realm of the conceptual is not the ENTIRE spiritual journey, it is definitely a necessary component. It is with a great sense of consolation, therefore, that I read last week about the "Magician" archetype in Terry Jones' book "The Elder Within: The Source of Mature Masculinity":

"In order to find our own individual centers, we need to be able to access the inner Magician. The magician's wisdom and expertise guide us in our understanding of the self. So, even though this archetype is really in his head, we need his focus on the intellectual to grasp the meaning of life. Mature masculinity depends on the balance of the fourfold way: intellectual, psychological, spiritual, and physical . . . It is from the magician archetype that we are moved to thoughtfulness, reflection and insight."

While I seek to remain grounded in the physical, emotional and psychological realms, it is the intellectual realm - the place where insight and meaning are found - that is my primary vocation and dwelling place in this life.

Photo: South Sister Peak reflected in Lava Lake at sunrise, near Bend, OR, August 1, 2015