The fiery trials of our lives find healing when we view them against the spacious backdrop of Divine Awareness.

When I encounter trees burned in a forest fire set again a wide-open sky, I am being given a chance to see the fiery trials of my own life find healing when they are placed within a larger context.  Here, the sky is an embodiment of the vastness of divine awareness, a spacious, loving Reality in which my own consciousness participates.  If  I identify myself with this vastness rather than with the aspects of my life that have seemingly turned to ash, then I can begin to see them as transparent windows onto that vastness.  Indeed, without

the fire of trials, I would never have the motivation to look through them to the vast and loving reality Beyond.

Photo: Charred trees in the Fern Lake Burn; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; January 5, 2013