Even Rock is Transparent and Glows Like a Thought

 

"I spring to my feet crying: 'Heavens and earth!  Rock is not light, not heavy, but is transparent and unfathomable as the sky itself.  Every pore gushes, glows like a thought with immortal life, . . . the whole rocky picture seemingly translucent as if lighted from within by its own internal light!' "

John Muir

Photo: The La Sal Mountains, Fisher Towers, and surrounding mesas; from I 70 near Cisco, UT, November 25, 2011 

Beauty Serenely Disdains to Annihilate Us

"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure.  And we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Beauty stops just short of annihilating us in an all-consuming desire to possess it, a desire that can never be satisfied as long as we view ourselves as separate from the beauty for which we long. If we allow ourselves to sit with the discomfort caused by unfulfilled desire, we will find that beauty serenely becomes a mirror that is able to reveal to us the endless riches of our own desire.

When we really look into our desire, we see that it is simply the way in which beautiful things are able to appreciate themselves within that very longing.  At the same time, we also realize that beautiful things are simply a crystallization of our longing.  In both instances, we find to our great delight that we are already united to the things we desire!

Photo: Prickly-pear cactus pads, with the Needles in the background.  Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011.  Yes, the cactus pads really are this shade of purple in the wintertime!

The Light of Love Guides Us Within the Night of Faith

One dark night,

Fired with love's urgent longings

- Ah, the sheer grace! -

I went out unseen,

My house being now all stilled . . .

With no other light to guide me

than the one that burned in my heart

This guided me

More surely than the light of noon

To where He waited for me

- Him I knew so well -

In a place where None appeared

O guiding night! . . .

O night that has united

The Lover with His beloved,

Transforming the beloved

in her Lover.

(St. John of the Cross)

Photo: The moon and Venus, not long after sunset. At my campsite, Needles District, Canyonlands National Park, November 26, 2011

Thanksgiving and the Good Things of Life are Mirrors of One Another

 

Good and beautiful things appreciate themselves within human gratitude.

Human gratitude crystallizes itself in good and beautiful things.

Gratitude is the organic outgrowth of good and beautiful things,

And good and beautiful things are the organic outgrowth of gratitude.

Generally, we think of thankfulness as an attitude that is caused by the goodness and beauty of life.  However, in a non-dual world, thanksgiving is much more profound than this.  In actuality, gratefulness is not merely the effect of a cause.  Rather, it is the organic outgrowth of life's goodness and beauty.  In other words, good and beautiful things are able to appreciate themselves within our gratitude! The two sides constitute a single reality, with the good and beautiful things being the objective side, and their own gratitude - present within our acts of appreciation - being the subjective side.

However, the non-duality of goodness and gratitude runs the opposite way as well. Here, good and beautiful things are actually the organic outgrowth of our own gratefulness.  Viewed superficially, our thanksgiving is the cause of the good and beautiful things appearing within our lives as an effect. A whole host of self-help books try to make this point. But again, in a non-dual world, the situation is much more profound than this. Rather than thanksgiving being the cause and good things manifesting themselves as the effect, those good and beautiful things are actually a sort of crystallizing or outgrowth of our thanksgiving!  They are gratefulness embodied in concrete form.  It is the perfect balance of these two sides - gratefulness manifesting itself on one side, and good and beautiful things appearing on the other - that is the source of a happy and meaningful life. Each side is thus a part of a seamless circle that has no beginning and no end.

Photo: Upper Ice Lake, San Juan Mountains, CO, August 14, 2011

In Offering Thanks, We Give Ourselves, and That is a Greater Gift Than the Original Present

 

"The interdependence of gratefulness is truly mutual.  The receiver of the gift depends on the giver.  Obviously so.  But the circle of gratefulness is incomplete until the giver of the gift becomes the receiver: a receiver of thanks. When we give thanks, we give something greater than the gift we received, whatever it was.  The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving.  In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks we give ourselves."

David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine Monk

Photo: Reflections in Lost Lake at sunrise, Kebler Pass, near Crested Butte, CO, October 1, 2011

Desire is an Endless "Tremoring Vibration" That is a Fulfilling End in Itself

 

"For tantrikas [practitioners of tantra], desire is the mark of the endless creativity of consciousness.  It is the very movement, the very nature, of the universe itself.  In discovering the universality of desire, we enter its radiant space . . . When we ask ourselves the question: 'What do we really desire?' we generally believe that we desire to possess people or objects.  Hence, we go through the world as predators, seeking to appropriate for ourselves everything our desire can touch.  But after a short time, we realize that we are dissatisfied, and this mechanism of truncated desire pushes us unceasingly to desire more objects, in an endless cycle that eventually gives way to frustration.

" 'What if desire were to desire something other than objects?' the Tantric masters then wondered.  If desire were simply the incandescence that gives us the feeling of being alive, were intensity, were the tremoring vibration that carries us, then it would be absurd to allow it to be consumed by objects and to lose it once we possess the object or realize we cannot attain it.  This profound movement of desire is life itself, and this tremoring is the one that all yoginis and yogis experience, precisely because they remain in the incandescence of desire without rendering it dependent upon the object . . . Here, we allow our desire to blossom out over all objects.  When our desire occupies all of space, the absence of one object goes totally unnoticed, because the flow of our awareness remains free to come into contact with thousands of others.  In the tantric sadhana there is a particular practice wherein the yogi sees the world as desire.  Everything - a leaf falling from a tree, the sky, the snow, the water he drinks, his food - desires him.  Each contact with reality becomes a celebration of the universality of desire.  Fixation on a single object thus ceases to exist."

Daniel Odier

Photo: Midway Geyser Basin at dusk, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 3, 2011

The Spiritual Journey is a Spiral Descending into the Depths of Our Union with God

"The spiritual journey might be compared to descending a spiral staircase, moving from the superficial layers of the false self up above, toward the reality of union with God in the depths.  As we progress toward the center where God actually is waiting for us, we are naturally going to feel that we are getting worse.  This warns us that the spiritual journey is not a success story or a career move.  It is rather a series of humiliations of the false self.  It is experienced as diminutions of the false self with the value system and worldview that we built up so painstakingly as defenses to cope with the emotional pain of early life . . . The spiral staircase is a combination of the horizontal and vertical . . . As we descend toward our center, we encounter difficulties again because there is a circular structure to the spiral staircase and hence horizontally we seem to meet the same old problem.  But vertically we are now dealing with it on a deeper, more mature level . . . By leading us gradually (the way human things work), through growth in trust and humility, we are able to make an ever deeper surrender of ourselves to God.  In this way we reach a new level of interior freedom, a deeper purity of heart, and an ever increasing union with the Spirit . . . What happens when we come to the bottom of the spiral staircase and fully access the divine presence?  It will be a great surprise and not like anything we expected."

Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk

Photo: Spiral Mountain-mahogany seeds glowing in the sunlight, Hewlett Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, October 17, 2009

The Mountains Will Only Have a Voice if We Ask Them to Speak to Us

 

"It is very important that we be connected to the elements as a human race.  As a Native person, I am connected to these elements, because I can hear their voices.  I hear all their songs and everything else.  I'm asking each thing to continue on in a good way.  I have to do something so that all of the elements continue on . . .  For example, I bless the mountain . . . I ask the Mountain to continue to have a voice, to have songs . . . If the mountain doesn't have a voice, then we as a people are not going to have a voice pretty quick.  All the living things are not going to have any voice, because the mountain is where the voice comes from.  The mountain is where the people are, the little people up there, the mountain people, as we call them, or the rock people - they're up there listening to us.  They're the ones we have to pray to; they're the ones who take care of the mountain . . . We have to ask what's out there, the rocks, the land, the living things, to unite together; everything has to work together.  Long ago, the land, the mountains, used to have more voice, a clearer voice, clearer than what it is today.  The land, the rocks, they used to continue to tell us over and over again to take care of them and to ask us to do those things.  But today, we're lost, and I think it's the reason we're not concerned with anything; we just look at a mountain as if it's just there, nothing more.  But the mountain's got a life to it.  Everything's got a spirit; the mountain's got a spirit, and all the living things on the mountain have got a spirit . . . One of the reasons why their voice is not clear and loud anymore is because we haven't been taking care of them."

Corbin Harney, Western Shoshone Elder

Photo:  Medicine Bow Peak at sunrise, Snowy Range, WY, August 28, 2011

Meditation Enables Us to Watch - Spellbound - as All Things are Birthed Out of the Seamless Expanse of God's Spaciousness

 

"I experience God as Source, the Emptiness that gives rise to Form.  This is my experience.  In periods of intensive meditation practice, at times when I have been very, very, still, I've seen the world I know and recognize as myself and my story dissolve and become the vibrancy of infinite space.  The place from which the sentient, discriminating awareness of life begins, is revealed.  It feels to me like the edge of creation.  Looking at emptiness, I feel I see God.  Form is the manifest side of emptiness.  Creation keeps on happening.  My experience of emptiness is that it is alive with the possibility of everything waiting to be born. Buddhists say, 'Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.'  Everything derives from and returns to its undifferentiated source.  The Jewish Kabbalists call God "Eyn-Sof, the Infinite, that which has no beginning or end." When I pray, I think of how the Jewish phrase "God is One" and Buddhist "Emptiness" feel the same to me.  When I give thanks, daily, for my life, I think about creation as the amazing process by which non-differentiated emptiness continually is reborn as form."

Sylvia Boorstein, a "Bu-Jew" or Buddhist Jew

On my birthday, I am grateful for the continual process by which each and every moment is born - magically - out of the seamless space of infinite divine awareness.

Photo: A glacier lily pops up through the snow, Mount Rainier National Park, WA, August 5, 2011

The Dissolving of a Hundred Thousand Aspects of Ego is Needed to Fully Know Enlightenment

Let us away . . .

                                                                        You and I.

You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets

of moth wings,

So you could burn them away

one set a night

Rumi

For Rumi, moth wings represent ego,  the sense that we are each a separate self, full of unmet needs. The candle flame is symbolic of God, the All, the Ultimate Reality of which each of us is a unique mirror.  Night represents the intimacy of divine union, when the individual ego merges with the All through love. Whenever ego burns up and unites with God, there is enlightenment, the sense of non-duality, a realization that we are simply a mirror in which the Divine knows Itself. Many people think that the goal of spiritual transformation is to get rid of  ego, once and for all.  But Rumi understands that we can only know the All by having something to contrast It with; that is, the individual ego.  Without the continual dissolving of our false sense of separation into the Ultimate Reality of union, how could we ever truly know that union? And without the flaming of ego, how could we ever know the gorgeous radiance of enlightenment?  Therefore, the great Sufi mystic prays that a different aspect of ego might manifest itself and burn up each night, thereby guaranteeing a continually fresh experience of enlightenment.

Photo:  Long's Peak flames in alpenglow light, Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, November 18, 2011

Camping Allows No Wearisome, Humdrum Sermonizing!

 

"Camping:  the delight of picking a place - fresh, beautiful. Here are no wearisome sermons – comfortable, commonplace and humdrum.  Instead, there is an escape from every phase of civilized formality, from all the fixed societal laws of action. Here we find ever-changing scenes: new “furniture” in the dining room every day and every meal."  
 

John Muir

Photo: My backpacker's camp in Silver Creek Basin, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO, August 13, 2011 

Ego is the Most Efficient Fuel for Enlightenment

 

Student: How do you step out of ego?

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: I suppose, you could say, by developing a friendly relationship with ego . . .

Student: Would you give an example of being friendly to your ego?

Trungpa Rinpoche: It is a kind of communication and understanding of the mechanism of ego and not trying to suppress it or condemn it, but using your ego as a stepping stone, as a ladder . . . In fact, the very idea of enlightenment exists because of ego – because there is a contrast.  Without ego there wouldn’t be the very notion of enlightenment at all . . .

Student: When I get rid of my ego, will that make a difference?

Trungpa Rinpoche: You don’t get rid of your ego at all.

Student: But if I don’t get rid of my ego I can’t be enlightened, is that right?

Trungpa Rinpoche: It’s not as simple as that.  Without ego you cannot attain enlightenment, so you have to make friends with ego . . . Generally, ego is not aware of itself.  But in this case you begin to be aware of ego as it is: you don’t try to destroy it, or to exorcise it, but you see it as a step.  Each crisis of ego is a step toward understanding, to the awake state.  In other words, there are two aspects: ego purely continuing on its own, as it would like to play its game; and ego being seen in its true nature, in which case the game of ego becomes ironical.  At the same time, you don’t try to reject it.  The game in itself becomes a step, a path.

Student: What do you do?  You want to get rid of your ego, but you don’t reject it.  I don’t understand.

Trungpa Rinpoche: You don’t want to get rid of ego.  That’s the whole point.  You don’t try to get rid of ego at all – but you don’t try to maintain ego either . . . In other words, the ego is the ideal fuel, the fuel that is exciting to burn.  Consuming the ego as fuel, that would make a nice fire.  If you want to make a good fire, one that is dry and puts out a lot of heat, and doesn’t leave a lot of cinders, from the point of view of non-ego, ego is the best fuel that could be found in the whole universe.  Discovering this delightful fuel, this highly efficient fuel, is based on looking into the mirror of your mind.  That is what watches the ego burning.

Photo: Sunrise at West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 4, 2011

When Ego Burns Like Incense, the Whole House Becomes Fragrant

 

"Rumi says: 'Light the incense!  You have to burn to be fragrant.  To scent the whole house, you have to burn to the ground.'  Incense is made out of all sorts of dark things, just like the ego.  If you want the incense to scent the house, you have to light it, light the ego.  In disappearing, it releases the Divine perfume everywhere.  If you want to scent  the whole universe as Rumi did, you have to burn away.  That is the Law."

Andrew Harvey

Photo: Geysers on Yellowstone Lake, WY; September 4, 2011.

When You are Unaware of Your Own Goodness, It Shines All the More

 

"The wise embrace the One, and set an example to all.  Not putting on a display, they shine forth.  Not justifying themselves, they are distinguished.  Not boasting, they receive recognition.  Not bragging, they never falter . . . Be really whole, and all things will come to you . . . A truly good man is not aware of his goodness, and is therefore good. A foolish man tries to be good, and is therefore not good."

Lao Tze, 6th century B.C.E.

Photo: Perhaps these Rosy Paintbrush blooms are able to radiate such profound goodness precisely because they are exquisitely unselfconscious about it all. Upper Ice Lake, San Juan Mountains, CO, August 14, 2011

Faith is Meant to Surprise and Stun Even the Divine Presence

 

Faith is meant to stun us with its surprising courage and tenacity.  But we do not at first realize faith's great value.  

The process generally begins with an experiment, one that involves trying out various images and metaphors to see which of them is most helpful in evoking whatever spiritual understanding we are seeking.  As we work with these images and metaphors in trial-and-error fashion, the light of insight - Sophia Wisdom - suddenly strikes us with an "aha! experience that lets us know which of the images is most interesting to the Divine Presence. For ultimately, it is God - not us - who is seeking to know the depths of Spirit through the mediation of our own creative images and metaphors.  

However, once the "aha!" occurs, it often immediately disappears, leaving us in a wintry experience of desolation, like brown grasses rattling in the wind.  During this withdrawal, we are tempted to think that our insight was merely an illusion.  However, this is precisely the time when faith is meant to awaken and to stun the Divine Presence - the One dwelling intimately within us - with its surprising ability to trust in the remembered insight despite all obstacles.  Bringing vibrant color where none is apparent, faith is meant at first to seem unnatural and doubtful. For faith's ability to hang on despite all current evidence to the contrary is exactly the sort of shock that the Divine Presence enjoys so thoroughly.  

Let us always remember, however, that this is a faith not in some sort of dogma which someone else - or some religious tradition - tells us is true, but a trust in the earlier revelation - present within the vibrant aha! experience of insight - that was given specifically to us.

Photo: Prickly-pear cactus fruits, Reservoir Ridge Natural Area, Fort Collins, CO, November 10, 2011

Each of Us Mirrors a Different Piece of the Truth

"The truth was a mirror in the hands of God.  It fell, and broke into pieces.  Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth."

Rumi

Photo: Just after sunset at Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, 11/11/11

Ice is Only Another Form of Terrestrial Love

 

"But glaciers, dear friend - ice is only another form of terrestrial love."

John Muir

Photo: Ice patterns with water running just beneath, Lake Haiyaha, Rocky Mountain National Park, 11/11/11

Enlightenment is a Perpetual Series of Astonishments

"Rumi says: 'I do not know who I am.  I am in astounding lucid confusion. I am not a Christian, I am not a Jew, I am not a Zoroastrian, and I am not even a Muslim' . . . That radiant bewilderment is the highest state that you can be in on earth.  It is very important to know what the enlightened mind is like.  The enlightened mind doesn't have the answers.  It isn't omniscient in any sense that the ego understands by 'omniscient.'  It isn't a hyper-sophisticated computer.  It is an infinitely responsive and loving instrument capable of infinite lucid expansion . . . Enlightenment isn't a fixed state.  In fact, enlightenment is the knowledge that there is no such thing as a fixed state, that all places are placeless, that the possibilities of transformation in God are endless. That is why Rumi is saying, 'I am in astounding lucid confusion' . . . Rumi says that because the universe is reinvented in every second, . . . real divine life is a perpetual series of astonishments which goes on right until the 'last moment' and beyond."

Andrew Harvey

Photo: Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 3, 2011

In the Mountains, Our Unique Individuality is Finally Able to Crystallize

"Many come to the mountains for the very purpose of escaping from bondage.  There are ropes enough in civilization. It seems one of the gravest faults of civilized life that uniformity prevents separate development.  The body politic is beaten into a kind of paste and constantly stirred, thus rendering perfect crystallization of individual character difficult or next to impossible."

John Muir

Photo: A meadow of Rosy Paintbrush and Senecio just after sunrise, Silver Creek Basin, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO, August 13, 2011

We Know God Best in the Moment When We Look Away from Him and Face the World

 

"Let God alone if need be . . . It is not when I am going to meet him, 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."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Mist and light, Yellowstone National Park, September 5, 2011

The Highest Miracle is to Look at Life Through Another's Eyes

 

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" 

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Upper Ice Lake with Rosy Paintbrush and Alpine Avens wildflowers, San Juan Mountains, CO, August 14, 2011.  This is one of the most stunning lakes in the entire state!

The Obstacle is the Path

"The obstacle is the path."

(Zen Proverb)

If the opening in the earth's surface within the geyser basin were wide and unencumbered, the hot water underneath would not have the force necessary to spurt up in a majestic plume.  It is only the resistance set up by the narrow cone that enables the beauty of the geyser to be created!

Photo: Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 3, 2011

To Paint the Atmosphere Through Which We Look at the Day: That is the Highest Art

 

"This world is but a canvas to our imaginations. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue; . . . it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look . . . To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Yellowstone Lake (from our campsite) just before sunrise, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 5, 2011

We Practice Cross-Pollination When We Visually Transfer the Beauty of One Thing to Another

 

"How to extract life's nectar from the flower of the world.  That is my every-day business.  I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.  Do I not impregnate and intermix the flowers, produce rare and finer varieties by transferring my eyes from one to another? . . .  The poor rich man!  All he has is what he has bought.  What I see is mine."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Rosy Paintbrush, Silver Creek Basin, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO, August 13, 2011.  These particular blooms were produced by the interbreeding of Rosy Paintbrush and Western Yellow Paintbrush.

Divine Seeing Makes All Things Glow

 

                                                To sit and look at light-filled leaves
                                                May let us see, or seem to see,
                                                Far backward as through clearer eyes
                                                To what unsighted hope believes: . . .

                                                Time when the Maker's radiant sight
                                                Made radiant every thing He saw,
                                                And every thing He saw was filled
                                                With perfect joy and life and light

                                                (Wendell Berry).

Photo: Golden Cottonwood leaves glow in last light, one day after the snow.  Lory State Park, CO, November 2, 2011. 

Solitude Reveals Something More Grand Than Man

 

"It is very dissipating to be with people too much . . . Ah! I need solitude! I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon – to behold and commune with something grander than man.  Their mere distance . . . is an infinite encouragement."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Horse in the snow at sunset; near Bellvue, CO, November 2, 2011

Bathe Yourself in the Spirit-Beams of Beauty

 

"You cannot feel yourself out of doors; plain, sky, and mountains ray beauty which you feel.  You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a camp-fire.  Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature."

John Muir

Western Yellow Paintbrush with Sugarloaf Mountain lit up in morning alpenglow, Snowy Range, WY, August 27, 2011 

Mad with Joy on a Flowery Planet

 

"People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us."

Iris Murdoch

Photo: Rosy Paintbrush and Senecio, Silver Creek Basin, Maroon Bells Snowmass Wilderness, CO