We have lost an awareness that our own individual soul is a part of the WORLD SOUL.

"There has been a recent resurgence in spirituality in the West, what some would call an 'awakening' . . . Yet we still have little understanding of the spiritual dimension within the natural world, or of how our individual soul relates to the larger dimension of the World Soul (what the ancients called the 'anima mundi') . . . Instead we are caught within a contemporary consciousness that focuses on the individual self, no longer even aware of our deep bond to the sacred within creation.  We may have begun to reclaim an understanding of how to relate to our own soul and experienced the meaning and sense of purpose that can come into our life through this relationship . . . But we have little awareness of the relationship between our individual soul and the WORLD SOUL.  We have forgotten the ancient teaching that says that the individual is the microcosm of the whole . . . While there may be a growing awareness that the world forms a single living being - what has been called the Gaia principle - we don't really understand that this being is also nourished by its SOUL, the Anima Mundi - or that we are a part of it, part of a much larger living, sacred being.  Sadly we remain cut off, isolated from this spiritual dimension of life itself.  We have forgotten how to nourish or be nourished by the Soul of the World.  And while there is a growing ecological movement that reminds us that we are guardians of the planet, this guardianship is interpreted as looking after our PHYSICAL environment and its myriad inhabitants, rarely addressing our inherent responsibility of the SACRED within creation.  Instead, in only relating to our planet from a physical perspective, much of the ecological movement perpetuates the concept of the earth as something solely physical, without sacredness or SOUL, and so reinforces the divorce of matter from spirit.  While we may remember the sacredness of human beings, we have forgotten that the Earth is also sacred, and that its Soul can speak to ours."

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee,

Sufi teacher

"Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth"

Photo: The La Sal Mountains, fog, sandstone cliffs, and a housing development near Moab, Utah; December 2, 2013

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If we regard Nature, Nature regards us as well.

"In Chinese painting, Nature is no longer an inert, passive entity. If we regard it, it regards us as well: if we speak to it, it speaks to us as well. Evoking Jingting Mountain, the poet Li Bai affirms: 'We regard one another tirelessly,' which echoes the painter Shitao who, with regard to Mount Huang, says, 'our tete-a-tete is endless.' "

Francois Cheng,
"The Way of Beauty"

Photo: A snowy Arthur's Rock gazes at the western Sky; Lory State Park, CO; December 5, 2013

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Beauty will save the world!

"Beauty will save the world."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Photo: Red cliffs and Ponderosa Pine in the snow; Lory State Park, CO; December 5, 2013

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Solitude Melts Us into the Unitive Realm BETWEEN All Things

Solitude is not really "me" time. Instead, it enables us to experience COMMUNION with the deepest level of those whom we love, stripped of the superficial qualities that cause so much dissension in our daily lives. Paradoxically, solitude unites us with the solitude of everything else in the cosmos, and with the One Great Solitude in which we all share. But this Oneness is not a mere singularity. Rather, this Oneness - this Solitude - is in reality the realm "between" I and Thou, and thus contains a dynamism that is truly revolutionary. As Jewish theologian Martin Buber says, "Spirit is not in the I, but between I and Thou." In solitude, we all melt and dissolve in this unitary BETWEEN, which we might also call RELATION.  And that unitive "between," I am convinced, is the true power and reality of solitude.

Photo: Solitary Pinyon Pine cone with the Needles in the background; Canyonlands National Park, UT; December 1, 2013

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This universe, which was capable of engendering beings capable of vision, must possess vision itself.

"This universe, which was capable of engendering beings capable of vision, must possess vision itself . . . Even a culture as reputedly unreligious as the Chinese feels that this universe, which was capable of engendering living beings provided with eyes, must itself be moved by the need and the capacity to see."

Francois Cheng,
"The Way of Beauty"

Photo: Arthur's Rock gazes at the western sky; Lory State Park, CO; December 5, 2013

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Moments of happiness seize and take us by surprise.

"The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us."

Ashley Montagu,

anthropologist and humanist

Photo: Sunlight shines through the fog on a snowy peak; I 25 near Rifle, CO; December 2, 2013

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Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.

“Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.”

Julia Cameron   

Photo: This shadowy pictograph located on a cliff wall near Moab, Utah was painted by someone in the Archaic Barrier Canyon culture, which thrived in the area as early as 5,000 B.C.E.  To me, Archaic Culture art elicits thoughts of Aliens and mysterious spirit-beings.  December 2, 2013

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Beauty is the Very Radiance of the Good

"There is a connection between beauty and goodness . . . To designate beauty that is offered to our view, Chinese uses "hao-kan," which means "good to see."  Brought up with this language, the Chinese have an instinctive tendency to associate beauty and goodness . . . It is no exaggeration to say that goodness and beauty form the two faces of one organic, efficient entity.  So what is the difference between them?  Let us attempt a formula: 'Goodness is the guarantee of the quality of beauty; Beauty illuminates goodness and makes it desirable.' . . . Beauty, rising toward the state of joy and freedom, allows goodness itself to surpass the simple notion of duty.  Beauty is the nobility of the good, the pleasure of the good, the delight of the good, the very radiance of the good."

Francois Cheng,
"The Way of Beauty"

Photo: The La Sal Mountains loom above a ruddy sandstone cliff and a layer of fog; near Moab, UT; December 2, 2013

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Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.”

Emily Bronte  

Photo: Gambel Oak leaf with the Needles in the background; Canyonlands National Park, UT; December 1, 2013

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Prickly-Pear Cactus Lessons on Thriving in the Inner Desert

In an earlier post, I spoke of the adaptations of desert plants that enable them to thrive in an environment where water is scarce. There, I mentioned the Yucca plant as one example. Another amazing desert plant is the Prickly-Pear Cactus, or Opuntia. Composed of flattened pads covered by spines, prickly-pear produces beautiful yellow or magenta blooms which seem to announce that they are just as content with their harsh environment as buttercups are, living in a lush stream-fed meadow. Plant taxonomists sometimes tell stories about opening their filing cabinets of pressed plant specimens and finding a prickly-pear glued to its labeled cardboard in full bloom!

Prickly-pear possesses some amazing adaptations to the scarcity of water and scorching sun so characteristic of the desert. Like all plants, prickly-pear must open its stomates or leaf pores to absorb the atmospheric carbon dioxide necessary for the food-producing process of photosynthesis to occur. However, these same stomates are also the place from which water escapes to the atmosphere during daylight hours. This is not a problem for plants growing in ecosystems containing abundant water. Such moisture loss is compensated for by simply drawing more water up from the soil. But prickly-pear can’t afford to lose such large quantities of water since its desert environment is so perpetually dry. In order to get around this problem, it has developed an alternative means of practicing photosynthesis.

Employing a metabolic pathway called crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM), prickly-pear is able to open its stomates only at night, when the chance for water-loss is at a minimum. By manufacturing an enzyme whose affinity for bonding with carbon dioxide is much greater than that used by non-CAM plants, prickly-pear is able to absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide at night, compensating for the fact that its stomates remain closed in the daytime. However, this causes a potential problem. In non-CAM plants, carbon dioxide is prevented from diffusing back out of the stomates and into the air because it is immediately delivered to the sunlight-driven process of photosynthesis. But in CAM plants, carbon dioxide is gathered only at night when no photosynthesis can occur. In theory then, much of the needed carbon dioxide would be lost back into the atmosphere since there would be nothing in the leaf to hold onto it.

Amazingly, prickly-pear and other CAM plants have been outfitted an ingenious method for dealing with this problem by employing a chemical process which converts the carbon dioxide into several acids. These acids in turn store the CO2 until daytime, when they release it to the sunlight-driven photosynthetic process. In addition, the acid-forming nighttime process is isolated within a structure of the cactus pad separate from the area where photosynthesis occurs. This prevents the two chemical processes from interfering with one another.

These adaptations thus enable prickly-pear to avoid the massive water loss which would result in certain death if its stomates opened during the desiccating daylight hours.

We can, I believe, apply the lesson of the prickly-pear to our own experience of the interior desert. Accordingly, we learn to remove ourselves from the desiccating effects of the afflictive emotions of despair, excessive doubt and self-castigation, which can only harm us in the presence of the bright sunlight of a clear-cut ego-self. It is the clearly defined nature of this self that sets it up for being hurt so readily - over and over again. However, when we begin to let go of this overly-individual ego-self through the practice of meditation and time spent in expansive landscapes, our identity becomes more difficult to discover and pin down. Instead, we find ourselves embraced by the Great Mystery in the obscurity of a nighttime intimacy that occurs when the conceptual mind goes dark. It is then that we can finally feel safe to release ourselves to the Larger Self, the one who is One with the very Source of the Universe. In this way, the desiccating effects of the inner desert become the very goad needed to release us from the intense hurt associated with the solidity and bounded nature of the clear-cut ego-self.

Photo: Prickly-pear cactus pads, Canyonlands National Park, UT; November 30, 2013

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Desert Plants Offer Us Clues About How to Survive and Thrive in the Spiritual Desert

In Western spiritual traditions, the word "desert" is frequently used to describe the state of interior dryness; that is, a condition in which the "water" of spiritual consolation, insight, meaning, and a love that can be sensed all appear absent. During these times, we are tempted to think we have done something wrong, and that we are being punished for our misdeeds through this withholding of consolation. Fortunately, the beauty of the redrock desert country is present to help remind us that there is a quality of loveliness inherent to the inner desert as well. The red color of the rock makes us think of our passion for life, which is actually more easily perceptible when we cease imbibing the soda-pop distractions of our consumeristic, media-driven culture. Indeed, a byproduct of the spiritual desert is a tendency to become dissatisfied with the shallowness of these societal substitutes for true spiritual nourishment.

The adaptations of desert plants also teach us in their own way the means by which we can thrive in the spiritual desert. For example, the Yucca plant is able to conserve water because a thick, waxy covering coats the narrow, spiky leaves. In addition, the leaves are shaped to direct rainfall and dew to the center of the plant, where the water concentrates in the soil directly above the roots and then is able to percolate through.

These sorts of water-conserving adaptations can instruct us to discipline ourselves to conserve our memories of the spiritual insight we have received in the past rather than open ourselves too widely to the water-sapping emotions of excessive doubt, discouragement and self-castigation in the present. During times of spiritual drought, we are called to EMBODY these past epiphanies rather than simply FEEL them. In spiritual terminology, this is called "walking by faith"; i.e., trusting in the insight that has been given specifically to us. We might think of this disciplined attitude as an inner type of "water conservation"; that is, a conserving of spiritual water that prevents it from being sucked away by the drying winds of affliction and difficulty. In this way, we are able to survive the drought of feeling and spiritual meaning that so often afflicts us, and actually THRIVE in the desert.

Photo: Yucca plant with the Needles in the background; Canyonlands National Park, UT; December 1, 2013

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Allowing Ourselves to Be Embraced by an Insight We Only Dimly Perceive

As spiritual seekers, we so often look for a crystal-clear epiphany that will wholly transform our lives. Sometimes, however, when our vision fades, we can instead allow our awareness to BE HELD and embraced by the revelation we are seeking. In other words, our relation to truth runs two ways. As the author of the biblical Book of Wisdom says, "Wisdom herself walks about looking for those who are worthy of her." Sometimes it is important simply to let the presence of Wisdom surround and hold us without knowing exactly what the nature of the insight is that is grasping a hold of us. Indeed, the spiritual darkness we sometimes feel may often arise from the fact that - because Truth is EMBRACING us so closely - we can't see anything with clarity!

Photo: Pinyon Pine cone lying on the sand in a slot canyon; Canyonlands National Park, UT; December 1, 2013

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All words and doctrines are merely pointers at the Great Mystery.

One of the most important principles to keep in mind when dealing with religion and spirituality (especially one's own!) is the realization that all words and doctrines are merely pointers leading us to a Mystery that lies BEYOND words.  Words help show us where to look for truth, but they work best when they contain paradoxical elements that serve as springboards into the realm of Mystery.  After all, the purpose of the universe is awe and wonder, not security.  We human beings so often cling to our doctrinal formulations because we wish for a sense of security in a complicated, constantly-shifting world.  But this clinging prevents us from imbibing the full measure of awe and wonder for which we were created.  Indeed, even the Divine finds ultimate meaning in the experience of surprise!

Photo: One of the Needles juts skyward in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, UT; December 1, 2013

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At the same time as the human becomes the landscape's interior, so the landscape becomes the interior of man.

"At the same time as the human becomes the landscape's interior, so the landscape becomes the interior of man."

Francois Cheng,
"The Way of Beauty"

Photo: Sandstone cliffs and the La Sal Mountains; near Canyonlands National Park, UT; December 2, 2013

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Simplicity crystallizes us.

"By poverty, i.e., simplicity of life and fewness of incidents, I am solidified and crystallized, as a vapor, or liquid by cold."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Sandstone formation and Pinyon Pine trunk in the snow; Canyonlands National Park, UT; November 30, 2013

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