Don't seek spiritual water from others, when you have a fountain inside you!

"Wait for the illuminating openness, as though your chest were filling with Light, as when God said 'Did We not expand you?' (Qur'an, XCIV, 1).  Don't look for it outside yourself.  You are the source of milk.  Don't milk others!  There is a milk-fountain inside you.  Don't walk around with an empty bucket.  You have a channel into the Ocean, and yet you ask for water from a little pool.  Beg for that love-expansion. Meditate only on THAT     . . . There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, and yet you go door to door asking for crusts.  Knock on your inner door.  No other.  Sloshing kneedeep in fresh riverwater, yet you keep wanting a drink from other people's waterbags.  Water is everywhere around you, but you only see barriers that keep you from water.  The horse is beneath the rider's thighs, and still he asks, 'Where's my horse?' . . . Mad with thirst, he can't drink from the stream running so close by his face.  He's like a pearl on the deep bottom, wondering, inside his shell, 'Where's the Ocean?' His mental questionings form the barrier . . . Self-consciousness plugs his ears.  Stay bewildered in God, and only THAT"

Jelaluddin Rumi

Photo: Beehive Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 3, 2012

Wild Ice Waters Know How to Sing Themselves into the Soul

"These wild ice waters sang themselves into my soul more enthusiastically than ever."

John Muir

Photo: Hallett Peak towers above the icy, wind-polished surface of Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, January 28, 2012.  Wow, it sure was difficult getting this photo!  The wind was trying to make me skate - backwards!

We Need the Tonic of Wildness and Mystery

 

"We need the tonic of wildness . . . We require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.  We can never have enough of nature.  We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features . . ."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Winter winds whipping up the snow, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, January 28, 2012

When the Ocean is searching for you, bring your talky business to an end!

 

"Inside me a hundred beings are putting their fingers to their lips and saying, 'That's enough for now.  Shhhhh.'  Silence is an ocean.  Speech is a river.  When the Ocean is searching for you, don't walk to the language-river.  Listen to the Ocean, and bring your talky business to an end.  Traditional words are just babbling in that Presence, and babbling is a substitute for sight.  When you sit down beside your Beloved, send the chaperones away! . . . When you are mature and with your love, the love-letters and matchmakers seem irritating.  You might read those letters, but only to teach beginners about love.  One who sees grows silent!"

Jelaluddin Rumi

Photo: Sea stacks in the ocean at Trinidad State Beach, CA, July 31, 2011

Divine Praise Burns Up All Dogmas in Love

 

"God's Voice says: 'I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying  spiritual knowledge.  What seems wrong to you is right for him.  What is poison to one is honey to someone else . . . Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better or worse than one another.  Hindus do Hindu things.  The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.  It's all praise, and it's all right . . . I don't hear the words they say.  I look inside at the humility . . . Forget the phraseology.  I want burning, burning!  Be friends with your burning.  Burn up your thinking and your forms of expression! . . . Lovers burn . . . The Love-Religion has no code or doctrine.  Only GOD.'"

Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th century Turkey

Photo:  A forest fire burns on the east side of Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 3, 2011

When I think I exist, I am non-existent; when I am non-existent, I suddenly exist!

                                                       What do I know if I exist or not?

                                                       This is all I know, my Beloved:

                                                       When I exist, I am non-existent;

                                                       When I am non-existent, I exist!

                                                        (Jelaluddin Rumi)

Photo: The moon setting, Silver Creek Basin, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO, August 13, 2011

Existence is an echo with no original, appearing out of emptiness!

 

                                                  A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.

                                                  That's how I hold Your voice . . .

                                                  I saw you and became empty.

                                                  This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,

                                                  it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,

                                                  existence thrives and creates more existence!

                                                  Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th century

Photo: Sunrise on the peaks, from Silver Creek Basin, CO; Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, August 16, 2011.

Love is Its Own Reward

 

"Love is enough on its own; it pleases by itself and on its own account.  Love is its own merit and its own reward.  Love needs no cause, no fruit besides itself; its enjoyment is its use.  I love because I love; I love that I may love.  Love is a great thing; as long as it returns to its Beginning, goes back to its Origin, turns again to its Source, it will always draw afresh from It and flow freely."

Bernard of Clairvaux

"The payment for love is nothing else - neither can the soul desire anything else - than more love."

John of the Cross

Photo: Rosy Paintbrush bloom aglow in last light, Twin Crater Lakes, Rawah Wilderness, CO, September 9, 2011

Let Your Anxious Self Melt in the Sunlight of Meditation

"Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible.  Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature.  Think of your ordinary, emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun.  If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation.  Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing.  And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature."

Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist teacher

Photo:  Long's Peak and Mt. Meeker dissolving in late afternoon light, Westridge, Lory State Park, CO, January 23, 2012

Let Your Fear Dissolve Like a Teaspoon of Salt in a Vast Open Lake

 

 "I am sometimes still afraid, but it isn't the same experience of fear I usually had before.  I have a deeper knowledge of the vastness of connection in life, within which fear arises . . . As our faith deepens, the 'container' in which fear arises gets bigger. Like a teaspoonful of salt placed in a pond full of fresh water rather than in a narrow glass, if our measure of fear is arising in an open, vast space of heart, we will not shut down around it.  We may still recognize it as fear, we may still quake inside, but it will not break our spirit."

Sharon Salzberg, Buddhist meditation teacher

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

Self-Hatred and the Dalai Lama

 

"Self-hatred is truly an epidemic in the developed world.  U.S. citizens have so much wealth, but they have a poverty of spirit.  There is a very revealing story about the Dalai Lama, who was meeting with a group of Buddhist teachers from the United States and Europe.  One of the teachers said to him, 'A great obstacle to meditation practice of many of my students is extreme self-hatred.  What can I do about this?'  Apparently the Dalai Lama did not understand what the teacher was asking.  He had to have the question translated from English to Tibetan about three or four times.  Finally he asked, 'Why would anyone want to hate themselves?'

Spiritual practice will help you accept yourself as you are with your own particular quirks; it will also help you see the Buddha-nature within you - the unchanging part of you, beyond all quirks."

Diana Winston

"When I first heard the word self-hatred and was first exposed to this concept, I was quite surprised.  I found the possibility of someone hating themselves quite unbelievable . . . The antidote is seen in our natural Buddha-nature, the acceptance or belief that every sentient being, particularly a human being, has Buddha-nature.  There is a potential to become a Buddha.  Even such weak sentient beings as flies, bees, and insects possess Buddha-nature.  Then why not I?  Why can't I also become fully enlightened?"

The Dalai Lama

Photo: A honeybee explores my finger, Greyrock Meadow, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, October 23, 2009

Our Country's Best Natural Settings Encourage Us to Do OUR Best

 

"Saving our best scenes is the saving of humanity.  These places encourage every one to do his best.  Scenery is our noblest resource . . . Along with mountain-climbing, scenery shakes us free from ourselves and the world."

Enos Mills, founder, Rocky Mountain National Park

Photo: Rosy Paintbrush near Thunder Pass, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 22, 2011

A Climb in the Rockies Puts Us in Tune with the Infinite

 

"A climb up the Rockies will develop a love for nature, strengthen one's appreciation of the beautiful world outdoors, and put one in tune with the Infinite.  The Rockies are rich in mountain scenes which stir one's blood and which strengthen and sweeten life."

Enos Mills, founder, Rocky Mountain National Park

Photo: Queen's Crown in the foreground, with the Sharkstooth in the background, on the shore of Sky Pond, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 19, 2011

A Mountaintop Vista Unveils Life as a Tranquil Dream

"When one climbs a high pinnacle on the vast cathedrals of this world, one seems to mingle with the universe, and the subtle and changing panoramas of all time; all the glad hopes and dreams you may have had before are yours again, and all life is a tranquil dream."

Enos Mills, founder, Rocky Mountain National Park

Photo: Looking into Rocky Mountain National Park from the Greyrock Trail, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, November 19, 2010

Rocky Mountain High

 

"His sight is turned inside himself to try and understand the serenity of a clear blue mountain lake."

 John Denver

"Rocky Mountain High"

Photo: Lower Blue Lake, San Juan Mountains, CO, July 16, 2010

Let Freedom Ring from the Snow-capped Mountains of Colorado . . .

 

"I have a dream . . . Let freedom ring from the snow-capped mountains of Colorado . . ."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photo: 13,000-foot peaks reflected in Lower Blue Lake, San Juan Mountains, CO, July 3, 2011

The Spiritual Understanding - Rather Than Grasping - is Itself Grasped by Wisdom

 

"By the natural understanding the soul grasps the object which it penetrates; but by the spiritual understanding, instead of grasping, it is itself grasped."

William of St. Thierry, 12th century Cistercian monk

Photo: Last light penetrates a hillside in the Medicine Bow Mountains, CO, January 6, 2012

To Know God is Actually to Know Ourselves Penetrated with His Knowledge of Us

 

"To think of God is not to find Him as an object of our minds, but to find ourselves in Him, a perception of our being perceived.  The task is not to know the unknown but to be penetrated by it; not to know but to be known to Him, to expose ourselves to Him rather than Him to us."

Rabbi Abraham Heschel

"We know God insofar as we become aware of ourselves as known through and through by him. We 'possess' him in proportion as we realize ourselves to be possessed by him in the inmost depths of our being.  The aim of meditation is not to arrive at an objective and apparently 'scientific' knowledge about God, but to come to know him through the realization that our very being is penetrated with his knowledge and love for us."

Thomas Merton

Photo: Nokhu Crags in last light, Never Summer Range, January 6, 2012

You Can't Have Both Joy and Power

 

"You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Sunset just outside my door, Fort Collins, CO, January 5, 2012.  If  joy and power do occur together, the transformed person really doesn't care about the power, or care to make an identity out of it.  Instead, they focus on spreading joy.

We are Just One Strand in the Web of Life

 

"All things are connected.  Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth.  Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it.  Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

Chief Seattle

Suquamish Tribe

Photo: Tonight's full moon viewed through a web of Cottonwood branches, January 9, 2012

The Universal Vastness Becomes Particular in Us, and We in Turn Dissolve into the Universal

 

"There is truly but one miracle, the perpetual fact of Being and Becoming, the ceaseless saliency, the transit from the Vast to the particular, which miracle . . . has for its most universal name the word God."

"I believe I shall some time cease to be an individual, that the eternal tendency of the soul is to become Universal."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Ponderosa Pine in a snowstorm, Lory State Park, CO January 7, 2012.  Saliency means the state of projecting or jutting beyond a surface.

The Silence of Snow is a Support We Can Lean Against

 

"I love the deep silence of the midwinter woods.  It is a stillness you can rest your whole weight against . . . This stillness is so profound you are sure it will hold and last."

Florence Page Jaques

Photo: Aspens and wind patterns in the snow, Rawah Range, CO, December 16, 2011

Politics Can't Compare to Natural Beauty

 

“ 'Republicans and Democrats' – what names to write after considering the lilies!"

John Muir, 1890

Photo: Avalanche Lilies, Mount Rainier National Park, WA, August 5, 2011. The reference here is to Jesus’ statement about “considering the lilies” in Matthew 6:28.

It is not wise to belong to any religious party.

 

"I suppose it is not wise, not being natural, to belong to any religious party . . . Now if a person is wise, . . . he will say to himself, 'I am not a member of that or of any party.  I am God's child, . . . a fellow disciple with Christ' . . . A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a person from the vexation of thinking . . . The difficulty is that we do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all, and this accommodation is, I say, a loss of so much integrity and, of course, of so much power."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Twin Sisters Peak with a solitary ponderosa pine lit up in the day's last light, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, December 2, 2011

Eucharistic Air

 

                                                         It was like a church to me.

                                                         I entered it on soft foot, . . .

                                                         It was quiet.

                                                         What God was there made himself felt,

                                                         Not listened to, in clean colours

                                                         That brought a moistening of the eye . . .

                                                         I walked on,

                                                         Simple and poor, while the air crumbled

                                                         And broke on me generously as bread.

                                                         R.S. Thomas

                                   Photo: Sunrise from my front yard, Fort Collins, CO, January 3, 2012

Wringing Out the Light

 

                                                                  

                                                                 Wring Out My Clothes

                                                                 Such love does

                                                                 the sky now pour,

                                                                 that whenever I stand in a field,

                                   
                                                                 I have to wring out the light
                                                                 when I get
                                                                 home.

                                                                 St. Francis of Assisi

                                   Photo: Sunrise outside my house, Fort Collins, CO, January 3, 2012

Glowing with Wild Joy

 

"I glowed with wild joy."

John Muir

Sierra Nevada

Photo: This morning's alpenglow, just outside my door, Fort Collins, CO, January 3, 2012

Make Your Own Bible

 

"Make your own Bible.  Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: A patchwork of aspen "scriptures," near Cottonwood Lake, Collegiate Peaks, CO, October 2, 2011

Quietly Bloom Without Fanfare

 

                                                        "The most fragrant of purest fragrances

                                                         comes from the ones who are spiritual but

                                                         not flaunting it.

                                                         Why flaunt your practices?

                                                         Why flaunt your good deeds?

                                                         Your flowers will attract the cosmic bees

                                                         that spread the Greatest Nectar

                                                         through humanity

                                                         as you just

                                                         quietly bloom

                                                         without fanfare."

                                                         Belle Heywood

"When you give . . . do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret."

Jesus

Photo: Mountain Avens and bee, Denali National Park, AK, June 25, 2010

New Ideas Expand into a Distant and Dazzling Infinity

 

"There is a pleasure in the thought that the particular tone of my mind at this moment may be new in the universe; that the emotions of this hour may be peculiar and unexampled in the whole eternity of moral being.  I a lead a new life.  I occupy new ground in the worlds of spirits, untenanted before.  I commence a career of thought and action which is expanding before me into a distant and dazzling infinity.  Strange thoughts start up like angels in my way and beckon me onward.  I doubt not that I tread on the highway that leads to the Divinity."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Sunrise in the Snowy Range (WY) with meadows of Western Yellow Paintbrush and Elephanthead, August 27, 2011