The six directions are holy and mysterious beings.

"The six directions are holy and mysterious beings. With them and through them we send our voice to God."

Frank Fools Crow
Oglala Lakota medicine man

The six directions are West, North, East, South, Up (Tunkashila: Grandfather) and Down (Grandmother Earth)

Photo: Indian Paintbrush, Tipsoo Lake, and Mount Rainier, Mount Rainier National Park, WA, July 30, 2015

Wilderness Mysticism teaches us to seek for the INNER wilderness.

Wilderness Mysticism can find a home even in those who don't spend much time in the backcountry. For wilderness also refers to the wild, unexplored and endlessly fascinating spaces of the mind, heart and imagination. These are the places that cannot be manipulated by others, by the societal herd mentality, or by our own personal neuroses. It is in this interior wilderness of silence, solitude and creativity that the true self lies, and within it - the presence of both God and Goddess.

Photos: (Top) Scarlet Penstemon, Big Pine Lake #2, and Temple Crag; (Middle) Angelica; (Bottom) Crimson Columbine; All three photos were taken in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, CA, July 19-20, 2015

The God of Evolution is much more mysterious than the traditional anthropomorphically-conceived god.

 

Currently, I'm watching a PBS series on Darwin and Evolution, and am finding it quite fascinating. One of the things that strikes me is the fact that the idea of God which so many people either juxtapose with the science of evolution, or that evolutionary scientists end up critiquing is so INCREDIBLY primitive. It seems to center around an anthropomorphic god who simply "decides" to create each species of microorganism, plant and animal. Having studied and practiced contemplative traditions for over three decades, I've developed a view of God much more related to images gleaned from Nature. For example, I understand God to be a personal presence - rather than an individual person - who empties himself out in ecstatic delight into a vast, sky-like lake or ocean of awareness. Then, out of that vastness, all creatures spring forth through the evolutionary process as though out of nowhere, like sunlight diamonds magically appearing and shimmering on the lake of awareness, and then disappearing back into it once again, only to reappear in yet another form. The practice of meditation allows us to identify ourselves with this vastness, and then to watch spellbound as all things arise and evolve out of it, like echoes of a divine love-word that never had a chance to be spoken on account of God's ecstatic self-emptying. How amazing! Divine Love is at the root of the process, yet doesn't involve any sort of anthropomorphically-conceived "planning." Rather, all things somehow spring out of that love in a spontaneous and completely surprising way, leaving us suspended in awe and wonder!

Photo: Blue Lake, North Cascades Range, WA; July 21, 2013

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The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends.

"Divine beauty all.  Here I could stay - tethered forever with just bread and water, nor would I be lonely; loved friends and neighbors, as love for everything increased, would seem all the nearer however many the miles and mountains between us . . . The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends."

The Contemplative John Muir

When we saturate ourselves in periods of silence and solitude, we come into contact with the spiritual essence of all things.  During these times, we see our friends and loved ones as they really are - as pure, lovable and full of goodness.  In solitude, we perceive the core essence of all beings - including those whom we know and love - as facets of the One Divine Beloved.

Photo: Alpine Bog Laurel at Lake Solitude; Grand Teton National Park, WY; July 6, 2013

Within National Parks is room in which to find ourselves.

"Within National Parks is room - glorious room - room in which to find ourselves, in which to think and hope, to dream and plan, to rest and resolve."

Eno Mills,
founder, Rocky Mountain National Park

Photo: Marsh-Marigold, Finch Lake and Copland Peak, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 8, 2013

Our age needs a more balanced perspective that grounds all individual selves in a deeper Divine reality.

One of the pitfalls of our era is the tendency to regard only the individual self - and collections of individual selves - as ultimately real. This belief corresponds to a profound disconnection from any divine reality that is deeper, vaster, or broader - a ground of being or open sky of awareness or vast lake of love or infinite web of life that is the ultimate reason for our existence here on Earth.  This reality may take the form of God or Goddess or Consciousness or Love or Bliss, or any of the other innumerable ways of envisioning it.  But it is precisely the reality of this spiritual Ultimate that is being denied.  Philosophy calls this position "nominalism," the belief that universals  - like God or Goddess or Divinity or Consciousness - exist in "name" only and thus have no true reality.  In a nominalistic view, only individuals exist. Here, for example, meditation or yoga become simply an experience of "me and my mind," or "me and my body," with no real tie to a divine Self to which all individual selves are ultimately transparent. I find that Nature, however, is amazingly effective in keeping a person in touch with this Ultimate Reality.  Perhaps as increasing numbers of people spend time in the Great Outdoors, we as a society will one day return to a more balanced perspective that grounds all of the particulars of life in a deep Lake of divinity.

Photo: Lookout Lake, Snowy Range, WY; June 7, 2013

The prophet's duty is to concentrate and condense a divine Splendor which is invisibly diffused throughout the world

 

"Everything visible is visible because of concentration.  The breath in hot weather cannot be seen; in cold it can.  Cold concentrates it.  A prophet's duty is to concentrate and so manifest the splendor of God."

Jelaluddin Rumi

Photo: Concentrated water vapor appearing as snow on Mills Lake; Long's Peak, Keyboard of the Winds and Pagoda Peak in the background, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, February 5, 2012

The body is a just a shadow of a shadow, yet it somehow contains the entire Universe!

 

"An invisible bird flies over, but casts a quick shadow.  What is the body?  The shadow of a shadow of your Beloved, that somehow contains the entire universe."

"The heavens cannot contain Me, or the void,

Or winged exalted intelligences, or souls;

Yet I am contained, as a guest, in the heart of the true believer.

And without any qualification, definition, or description,
From this blazing mirror, every second spring
Fifty wedding feasts for the spirit."

Jelaluddin Rumi

Photo: Tree shadows on frozen Zimmerman Lake, Mummy Range, CO, December 16, 2011

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!

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

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

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 Pure Religion of Sunshine and Snow

 

"One passes naturally  . . . to the pure religion of sunshine and snow,  where all the good and evil of people lifts and vanishes from the mind, like mist from the mountains."

John Muir

Photo: Zimmerman Lake, Never Summer Mountains, CO

The Truth Has a Spontaneous Mind of Its Own

"The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Jesus

"As a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up.  But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Windblown snow on Bierstadt Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, December 26, 2011

Thanksgiving and the Good Things of Life are Mirrors of One Another

 

Good and beautiful things appreciate themselves within human gratitude.

Human gratitude crystallizes itself in good and beautiful things.

Gratitude is the organic outgrowth of good and beautiful things,

And good and beautiful things are the organic outgrowth of gratitude.

Generally, we think of thankfulness as an attitude that is caused by the goodness and beauty of life.  However, in a non-dual world, thanksgiving is much more profound than this.  In actuality, gratefulness is not merely the effect of a cause.  Rather, it is the organic outgrowth of life's goodness and beauty.  In other words, good and beautiful things are able to appreciate themselves within our gratitude! The two sides constitute a single reality, with the good and beautiful things being the objective side, and their own gratitude - present within our acts of appreciation - being the subjective side.

However, the non-duality of goodness and gratitude runs the opposite way as well. Here, good and beautiful things are actually the organic outgrowth of our own gratefulness.  Viewed superficially, our thanksgiving is the cause of the good and beautiful things appearing within our lives as an effect. A whole host of self-help books try to make this point. But again, in a non-dual world, the situation is much more profound than this. Rather than thanksgiving being the cause and good things manifesting themselves as the effect, those good and beautiful things are actually a sort of crystallizing or outgrowth of our thanksgiving!  They are gratefulness embodied in concrete form.  It is the perfect balance of these two sides - gratefulness manifesting itself on one side, and good and beautiful things appearing on the other - that is the source of a happy and meaningful life. Each side is thus a part of a seamless circle that has no beginning and no end.

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

In Offering Thanks, We Give Ourselves, and That is a Greater Gift Than the Original Present

 

"The interdependence of gratefulness is truly mutual.  The receiver of the gift depends on the giver.  Obviously so.  But the circle of gratefulness is incomplete until the giver of the gift becomes the receiver: a receiver of thanks. When we give thanks, we give something greater than the gift we received, whatever it was.  The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving.  In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks we give ourselves."

David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine Monk

Photo: Reflections in Lost Lake at sunrise, Kebler Pass, near Crested Butte, CO, October 1, 2011

Desire is an Endless "Tremoring Vibration" That is a Fulfilling End in Itself

 

"For tantrikas [practitioners of tantra], desire is the mark of the endless creativity of consciousness.  It is the very movement, the very nature, of the universe itself.  In discovering the universality of desire, we enter its radiant space . . . When we ask ourselves the question: 'What do we really desire?' we generally believe that we desire to possess people or objects.  Hence, we go through the world as predators, seeking to appropriate for ourselves everything our desire can touch.  But after a short time, we realize that we are dissatisfied, and this mechanism of truncated desire pushes us unceasingly to desire more objects, in an endless cycle that eventually gives way to frustration.

" 'What if desire were to desire something other than objects?' the Tantric masters then wondered.  If desire were simply the incandescence that gives us the feeling of being alive, were intensity, were the tremoring vibration that carries us, then it would be absurd to allow it to be consumed by objects and to lose it once we possess the object or realize we cannot attain it.  This profound movement of desire is life itself, and this tremoring is the one that all yoginis and yogis experience, precisely because they remain in the incandescence of desire without rendering it dependent upon the object . . . Here, we allow our desire to blossom out over all objects.  When our desire occupies all of space, the absence of one object goes totally unnoticed, because the flow of our awareness remains free to come into contact with thousands of others.  In the tantric sadhana there is a particular practice wherein the yogi sees the world as desire.  Everything - a leaf falling from a tree, the sky, the snow, the water he drinks, his food - desires him.  Each contact with reality becomes a celebration of the universality of desire.  Fixation on a single object thus ceases to exist."

Daniel Odier

Photo: Midway Geyser Basin at dusk, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 3, 2011

When Ego Burns Like Incense, the Whole House Becomes Fragrant

 

"Rumi says: 'Light the incense!  You have to burn to be fragrant.  To scent the whole house, you have to burn to the ground.'  Incense is made out of all sorts of dark things, just like the ego.  If you want the incense to scent the house, you have to light it, light the ego.  In disappearing, it releases the Divine perfume everywhere.  If you want to scent  the whole universe as Rumi did, you have to burn away.  That is the Law."

Andrew Harvey

Photo: Geysers on Yellowstone Lake, WY; September 4, 2011.

The Highest Miracle is to Look at Life Through Another's Eyes

 

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" 

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Upper Ice Lake with Rosy Paintbrush and Alpine Avens wildflowers, San Juan Mountains, CO, August 14, 2011.  This is one of the most stunning lakes in the entire state!