Walking inspires confidence by allowing the landscape to deposit itself - through a multitude of sense impressions, like successive rock strata - into the soul.

"Walking results in an abundance of confidence. It fills the mind with a different sense of purpose, not in the sense of a head full of theories, but full of the world's presence. That presence which, during the walk, in successive strata, has been deposited in the soul throughout the day. And when evening comes, you can close your eyes and feel on your body the layers of landscape dissolving and recomposing. The color of the sky, the flash of leaves, the outlines of the jumbled hills. What may be called CONFIDENCE here is a quiet certainty. Thus the person who walks all day has become certain by nightfall."

Frederic Gros,
"A Philosophy of Walking"

I love the sense in this passage of a confidence that occurs not through mere positive self-affirmation, but through the various sense impressions of a landscape that deposits itself, bit by bit - like rocks layers successively laid down - in the soul. In other words, the landscape gives us a feeling of certainty - of solidity - a sense that we are a worthwhile reality in our own right.

For it is this sense of solidity and confidence that is necessary, the mystics would claim, so we can then - through voluntary self-emptying - become transparent to Divine Light. As transpersonal psychologist Jack Engler says, "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody." Or, in the words of Ken Wilber, "The whole point of ego is to create a self strong enough to die in nirvanic release."  In other words, it takes an abundance of courage to be able to die into the Greater Whole.  And that courage comes from a strong, confident ego :)

Photos: (Top) The Needles, late in the day.  (Middle) Juniper berries and The Needles; (Bottom) Wooden Shoe Arch. All three photos were taken in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, UT, on November 28 -29, 2014