Welcome! I am a contemplative thinker and photographer from Colorado. In this blog, you'll discover photographs that I've taken on my hiking and backpacking trips, mostly in the American West. I've paired these with my favorite inspirational and philosophical quotes - literary passages that emphasize the innate spirituality of the natural world. I hope you enjoy them!

If you'd like to purchase photo-quote greeting cards, please go to www.NaturePhoto-QuoteCards.com .


In the Spirit of Wildness,

Stephen Hatch
Fort Collins, Colorado

P.S. There's a label index at the bottom of the blog.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Meditation practice enables us to be amazed at the simplest things.


In the practice of Insight Meditation, we learn to identify ourselves with the vast sky of awareness rather than with the clouds of thoughts and feelings that arise within that sky.  Often we pay attention to our exhalations as an aid to "mixing mind with sky." In the process, we begin to detach ourselves from our ideas, fears and emotions.  However, rather than making us deny these thoughts and feelings, this kind of detachment enables us to be AMAZED at their variety, and to be in awe at the fact that they are able to arise at all - like echoes coming out of nowhere!  Bringing this mindset into everyday life, spacious awareness allows us to become mindful of the simplest things as they arise moment by moment from the vastness, and to find in them a beauty  that was not perceptible before.

Photo:  Prickly-Pear cactus roasted by a forest fire; Galena Burn, Larimer County, CO; April 1, 2013




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