Sexy Instagram Spirituality

Instagram, I've found, radically shatters common societal stereotypes about people who focus attention on their own physical attractiveness and then share it with the world in photos and videos. Yesterday, while walking amongst the beauty of the changing leaves, I found myself reflecting on the fact that the conventional wisdom would claim that those who give a surplus of attention to their own beauty are superficial, narcissistic and possess very little spiritual depth. However, I've discovered that if I post one of my "beautiful" landscape photos and add the hashtags ‪#‎beauty‬ or ‪#‎beautiful‬ together with ‪#‎inspiration‬ or ‪#‎inspirationalquotes‬, I get a whole group of people "Liking" the post who are either associated with the beauty industry or who regularly post photos with the "beautiful' hashtag referring not to Nature but to their own beauty and loveliness! And these very same people also post a surplus of inspirational quotes, many of which are really quite profound.

Interestingly, many of these Instagram users make a regular practice of posting a somewhat provocative picture of themselves, together with a quote from a prominent spiritual master. Most of these are women, many of whom also associate with Goddess Spirituality. I suppose it makes sense that my Photo-Quotes would find this sort of person, since I often add the hashtag ‪#‎goddess‬ or ‪#‎sacredfeminine‬ to my posts that include a reflection about the feminine aspects of "Mother Earth." Many of these women, I've discovered, are actually profoundly in touch with the fact that their own physical attractiveness is NOT an end in itself, but is - like beautiful landscapes - simply an incarnation of the larger presence of the Sacred Feminine. Based on my experience with Instagram, I'd say that "Goddess Spirituality" and a spiritual perspective on human physical beauty is currently alive and well :)  How fascinating is our postmodern era!

 

Photos: A Wild Geranium leaf and Aspen groves, Rawah Range, CO, September 21, 2015

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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.

Backlight is the perfect analogy for seeing the Divine in ourselves and others . . .

The other day as I was sitting under a tree in the mountains, admiring a whole group of backlit Aspens glowing in the sunlight, it suddenly HIT me what an amazing analogy the phenomenon of backlighting really is. Although they can be difficult to photograph, I find myself seeking out backlit trees, flowers and seedheads as subjects that are absolutely fascinating and intriguing. In each of these cases, the sun shining from behind utterly transforms ordinary reality into magic!

Speaking allegorically, if each of the trees or plants represents another person we are attempting to know (which would include our own self when viewed as "other"), then the sun shining from behind stands for the Divine Source. What this means is that if we insist on observing both others and ourselves as isolated units, what we encounter is often going to seem quite mundane, and sometimes even distasteful. For each of us when viewed as a lone ego-self definitely have our flaws! However, if we instead look toward the loving, self-emptying Source who stands behind all things as a sort of enlightening Backdrop, then the other person (including ourselves) will appear completely transformed. For we will THEN see them as utterly beautiful and light-filled!

May each of us remember this day to view both ourselves and one another against the beautifying Backdrop of Divine Light :)

Photos: Backlit Aspens and Alpine Dryad seedheads; Rawah Range and Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, September 11-21, 2015
 
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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.

The Joy of Wild Country Helps Us Forgive

"When you find a heaven on earth, as John Muir had found in the mountains and forests of wild America, it is easy to forgive."

Kim Heacox
"Visions of a Wild America"

On Monday, I spent an afternoon in an aspen grove meditating, journaling and pondering these words. As human beings, we frequently struggle with reconciling ourselves to a challenging situation, especially those in which we've been slighted or opposed by someone we care about. We try persistently to find a way to forgive them, but nothing seems to work. However, Kim Heacox's words on wilderness and forgiveness offer a powerful solution. Speaking personally, whenever I focus attention on the excitement I feel while traveling in the wilds or practicing the spaciousness of Wilderness Insight Meditation, whatever ways I've been wronged don't seem to matter much anymore. I find this form of meditation especially beneficial because it encourages the use of wilderness images within each session to help us remain in the joy of spaciousness and silence. Here I'm also reminded of the verse in the Book of Hebrews which tells us that "Jesus endured the cross for the JOY set before him." What a powerful principle for ALL of us to practice!

Photos: Aspens, Rawah Range, CO, September 21, 2015

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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.

Practicing Wilderness Insight Meditation Among the Autumn Aspen Trees

"A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves . . . "

John Keats

The other day, I spent an afternoon having a retreat in an aspen grove up in the Medicine Bow Mountains, about an hour away from my home. What a glorious time it was! Sitting with my back against a tree whose lowest branches spread out fifty feet above me, journaling while enjoying the nostalgic yet invigorating autumn scent of all of those golden leaves lying on the ground, coating my fingertips with the white powder of the trunks and then rubbing it on my face - ah, how wonderful! When it came time to meditate, the forest seemed to practice along with me. The spacious blue sky visible through a clearing in the trees embodied the vastness of my own awareness, made more prominent through attention to each outgoing breath, enabling me actually to BECOME that vastness. "Mixing mind with space," the meditation teachers would call it, and that is exactly how it felt. The sound of the fluttering leaves, eventually dropping off into silence before arising once again, signaled the same rhythm occurring in my own thoughts. Crow caws resounded now and then in the distance as Some Presence LOST in bliss within me nevertheless found a way to label each thought, feeling and perception "Echo, Echo" - amazed at the way they seemed to arise out of nowhere before melting back into spacious silence once again . . . Ah, how wonderful that afternoon truly was  :)

Photos: Aspen trees, Rawah Range (Medicine Bow Range), CO, September 21, 2015

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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.

The Emotional Tone of Autumn

The Aspen leaves are beginning to change color here in the Central Rockies! With the onset of autumn comes a rather complex emotional tone composed of nostalgia and invigoration, restfulness and crisp attention - and a whole host of other unnameable feelings, all rolled up into one!

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I am available for spiritual direction / mentoring sessions via cell phone or Skype. The fee for each hour-long session is $65. If you are interested, or would like to host a talk or workshop in your area, please contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com . 

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Photos: (Top) Aspens on Yellowstone Lake; (Second) Aspens and "The Cathedral Group" of the Tetons; (Third) Aspens, Jackson Lake, and Mount Moran; (Bottom) Aspen and Midway Geyser Basin; These four photos were taken in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, WY, on September 5-7, 2015

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive . . .

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go and do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

Dr. Howard Thurman
African-American mystic & theologian &
spiritual advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photos: (Top) Stephen on the Skyline Trail; (Middle) Lewis Monkeyflowers, Magenta Paintbrush, and Mount Rainier. These two photos were taken at Mt. Rainier National Park, WA on July 28, 2015; (Bottom) Rhododendron flowers and a fire-scarred Redwood, Redwood National Park, CA, July 26, 2015

At its best, the National Park idea to something larger than ourselves.

"At its best, the National Park idea to something larger than ourselves."

Dayton Duncan

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Photos: (Top) Bird's-beak Lousewort (Pedicularis), moss and Mount Rainier; (Middle) Mount Adams as viewed from Mount Rainier. These two photos were taken at Mount Rainier National Park, WA on July 28, 2015; (Bottom) Redwood trunk, Redwood National Park, CA, July 26, 2015

Touching The Eternal Now . . .

While hiking the West Ridge Trail in the Prairie Redwoods section of Redwood National Park, we came upon a bench located deep in the forest. As you can see, it has a plaque on it that says, simply: "Forever."
Old growth forests really do provide us with a sense of timelessness, and they embody perfectly what is often called The Eternal Now. I'll never forget the moment when I first grasped the spiritual meaning of Plato's "Forms," "Ideals" or "Archetypes" - realities like "Humanity," "Love," "Goodness," or - in this case - "Treeness," that underlie all of the particulars of life. In that moment thirty years ago, it struck me that these Archetypes do not exist in time; or rather, all of time flows FROM them. The "Nowness" or "Form" or "Archetype" of a thing is something we touch in an instant, before our attention is immediately pushed away from It and into the particular things that arise from It. Augustine used the term "That Which Is" to speak of It. In this connection, I've always loved this passage from Thoreau:

"It is not when I am going to meet God, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover that God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know whom I mean."

Here, "God" is another term for the "Nowness" or "Ideal' underlying a thing. How sad that our society has largely lost touch with Plato's insight! Indeed, modern folks often seem to believe that individual things are all that really exist. I trust that people will eventually tire of the shallowness of this approach and once again return to a love affair with the timeless Universals that underlie all of the various particulars of Life.

 Photos: Redwood National Park, CA, July 25, 2015

A grove of California Redwoods is the perfect place to practice Wilderness Contemplative Prayer.

A grove of California Redwoods is the perfect place to practice Wilderness Contemplative Prayer. Descending - as though along an endless Redwood trunk - into the depths of silence present at the core of our being, we are magnetized by the Ground of Being holding us in Its loving embrace. Meanwhile, our thoughts and emotions recede into the distance like the lowest tree branches spreading out several hundred feet above us, and like the clouds - drifting far, far above those. What better way to "rest in God" and take a vacation from the intensity and constriction of our usual ceaseless stream of thoughts!

Photos: Ferns, Rhododendron flowers, Redwoods, and Stephen; Redwood National Park, CA, July 26, 2015

A Varied Thrush Call in the Redwoods

Hiking in the redwoods was absolutely amazing! The forest remained completely silent except for one Varied Thrush singing its beautifully contemplative song. http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/42254 .Featuring a series of sustained single notes - each with a long pause in between - this call never fails to bring me into the profound silence of Wilderness Insight Meditation. Here, each thought, emotion and perception is like an echo of a divine love-word whose original sound is hidden, yet which resounds - like the song of the Varied Thrush - at the root of all things. Later in the hike, we could hear the roar of ocean waves crashing in the far distance, yet resounding within the intimate depths of the forest!

Photos: (Top) Rhododendron Flower and a fire-scarred Redwood; (Middle) Beautifully-textured Redwoods; (Bottom) Fern growing in moss on a Big-Tooth Maple. All three photos were taken in Redwood National Park, CA on July 26, 2015

Adversity causes some to break; others to break records.

"Adversity causes some to break; others to break records."

William Arthur Ward

Photos: Four Thousand year-old Bristlecone Pine Trees growing in The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest near Big Pine, CA, July 20, 2015. The oldest trees in this forest are over 5,000 years old 

Why does our culture fail to value the beauty of elderhood?

When I'm in the presence of Earth's oldest living creatures - 5,000 year-old Bristlecone Pines - I feel such dignity, wisdom and loveliness. It's amazing to me how much beauty there is in trees this old. They really are works of art, with their sensuous curves, varied textures and vibrant colors. I wonder why our own culture has such a difficult time valuing the aging process? Is it because we - unlike the indigenous cultures on whose land we are living - do not foster the development of the spiritual wisdom that the Creator intended would be a natural outcome of the aging process? Or is it because we do not know how to perceive the richness of inner beauty? Or perhaps because we have so little awareness of the Eternal Now which forms the backdrop upon which ALL of life's stages, both early and late, are able to appear and thrive? It's definitely a question for all of us to ponder . . .

Photos: Trees and cones in The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest near Big Pine, CA, July 20, 2015. The mountains in the background are the Sierra Nevada.

The longevity of Bristlecone Pines serves as a lesson for our own inner lives.

The Bristlecone Pine trees living in this grove, located in the White Mountains on the California-Nevada border, are the world's most ancient living things. Some are over 5,000 years old! The ones pictured here have been alive for 4,000 years. Many flourish on talus slopes of pure dolomitic rock, where they encounter very little competition. Although they live in a harsh alpine environment of intense cold and pummeling, moisture-sucking winds, these very conditions are a key to their survival. Because these Bristlecones must grow so slowly, their wood is incredibly dense. This in turn prevents pests from getting a foothold, thus ensuring the longevity of the trees! We can apply this lesson to our own lives as well. While we often might feel tempted to bemoan the fact that our personal, emotional and spiritual growth often proceed at such a slow pace, we can find joy in the fact that this ensures our lessons are being learned with a thoroughness that will impart to them a greater longevity!

Photos: The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, Inyo National Forest, near Big Pine, CA, July 20, 2015

Did you know that trees talk?

"Did you know that trees talk? Well, they do. They talk to each other, and they'll talk to you if you listen. Trouble is, white people don't listen. They never learned to listen to the Indians, so I don't suppose they'll listen to other voices in nature. But I have learned a lot from trees: sometimes about the weather, sometimes about animals, sometimes about the Great Spirit."

Walking Buffalo
Stoney Tribe,
Western Canada

Photo: Bark patterns on a burned tree, Fern Lake Burn, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, May 6, 2015

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

"Everything that is done in the world is done by hope."

Martin Luther

Photo: Rainbow appearing behind a burnt Ponderosa Pine, Galena Burn, Lory State Park, CO, May 30, 2015

In solitude we discover a sense of inner authority.

In solitude, we realize our oneness with the Divine especially through silence, which serves as a kind of solvent, dissolving us into Something more vast than anything we've ever known. In this solitude, we understand that we ARE the web of life knowing and celebrating herself through our own unique vision. It is this oneness that gives us a sense of inner authority. Here, like Christ, we are not primarily a Christian; nor are we a Buddhist - just as Gautama Buddha was not. For these are merely external labels by which the world seeks to categorize us, but which cannot do justice to the reality of our oneness with the sacred Ground of Being. It is this oneness that gives us any spiritual authority we might have.

Photo: Subalpine Fir tree and Notchtop Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, March 23, 2015

The soul is a shy presence.

"The secret and the sacred are sisters. Our times suffer from such a loss of the sacred because our respect for the secret has completely vanished. We need to shelter that which is deep and reserved within us. That is why there is such hunger in modern life for the language of the soul. The soul is a shy presence. Maybe one of the ways to reconnect with your deeper soul-life is to recover a sense of the soul's shyness. Though it may be personally difficult to be shy, it is an attractive quality in a person. In an unexpected piece of advice, Nietzsche says one of the best ways to make someone interested in you is to blush. The value of shyness, its mystery and reserve, is alien to the brash immediacy of many modern encounters. If we are to connect with our inner life, we need to learn not to grasp at the soul in a direct or confrontational way. In other words, the neon consciousness of much modern psychology and spirituality will always leave us in soul poverty."

John O'Donohue
"Anam Cara"

Photo: Limber Pine bark "blush," with Long's Peak in the background, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, March 16, 2015

Inhabiting the margins of spirituality.

I love hanging out with the "pioneer, outlier trees" right at treeline, the ones that somehow have the strength and endurance to brave the cold, blasting winds, hail, grit, and intense UV rays.  They never fail to encourage me to keep moving in the spiritual vision I've been given, even if people don't resonate with or misunderstand what I'm trying to say.  Being part of an "invisible church" that involves a non-institutionalized kind of spirituality is part of the lonely calling I've been given.  Then again, there's the union of an artistic eye, an active intellect and a soft heart.  To academic people, I'm too heart-based.  To heart-based people, I'm too intellectual.  And to Nature photography enthusiasts, I'm too intense, both in heart and intellect.  It seems I'm destined to inhabit the margins, calling others into a realm beyond the usual institutions and categories - just like these trees :)

Photo: Engelmann Spruce trees at treeline, Montgomery Pass, CO, March 7, 2015

"The sugar pine is the noblest pine yet discovered . . ."

"The sugar pine is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty."

John Muir

Photo: Hatch and Muir holding a sugar pine cone. Muir is standing next to a massive specimen.The sugar pine grows in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.

Spring always follows Winter in our inner lives as well!

If one of us were to travel around the country, giving a talk entitled "Spring Always Follows Winter," chances are that no one would show up. After all, this truth is plainly obvious to everyone. However, for some reason, when the Winter doldrums descend upon our own inner lives - bringing depression, a frozen feeling, and the sense that we are forever stuck within our current set of challenges - we find ourselves easily tempted to believe that the Springtime of the heart will never come. Why is that? Has our corporate-industrial society so detached us from the cycles of Nature that we no longer believe our inner lives follow the same seasons as the natural world? 

For myself, I find that a constant conscious association with the Great Outdoors helps me retain greater balance in my own inner life. As winter continues its steady march, may each of us take the time to read the signs occurring all around us that Spring is on its way. And may we begin to transfer this joyful realization to our own inner lives as well!

Photos: (Top) Spring Beauty flowers, Lory State Park, CO, February 11, 2015; (Middle) Willow branches turning gold in anticipation of Spring, Bellvue, CO, February 9, 2015; (Bottom) Elm flowers, Watson Lake, Bellvue, CO, February 10, 2015