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, June 16, 2015

Transmuting Male Erotic Energy into a Love Affair with the Goddess


"The Woman I love is a Planet."

Paula Gunn Allen
Laguna Pueblo





Ever since my first trip to the West while in 9th grade, I've been uttered enamored by the ravishingly beautiful appearance of our Colorado Rockies in June. Even back then as a good Baptist boy with no training in how to experience the feminine dimension of the Divine, I realized during my mountain adventures that I was having a profound spiritual encounter with the Goddess. Every June during the annual snowmelt, the mountains dress themselves exquisitely in stripes of snow that resemble lacy lingerie. Then, as the fog alternately builds, swirls and dissipates in seemingly endless cycles, the Goddess seems to be doing a slow, flirtatious tease - revealing and then concealing and then revealing yet again her magnificent form. During this late-spring season, how could I NOT engage in a love affair with the Divine Feminine?




As males, we tend to be naturally endowed with a surplus of erotic energy from an early age. Obviously, neither repressing nor acting out that energy in hurtful ways is appropriate to a divinely human life. What I've discovered over decades of spiritual practice is that men are called to find a Larger Feminine presence who is able to transmute that energy, causing it to be expressed in something much larger and more vast. When this occurs, a man is then empowered to act in less demanding ways with his human female partner, which in turn enables her to focus more attention on her own needs. A man also begins to realize that he does not need to act out his erotic energy in affairs. Rather, he learns to release his excess energy in a love affair with the Goddess - which, in my case, occurs in large part in my passionate experience of the beauty of Nature. This kind of spiritual transmutation then enables a man to appreciate the simple energy of attraction that he so often feels toward the women he meets - AND to hold the tension and express it in creative or artistic pursuits - rather than feel the need to engage in compulsive sexual behavior. Instead of acting out his energy, he learns how to be a woman's good friend :)  I wonder - are men up to the task?




Photos: Snow stripes and fog playing on the Never Summer and Rawah Ranges, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, June 15, 2015

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