Fundamentalism is a potential danger for EVERY path!

Here's another passage I underlined during my Wyoming retreat last weekend:

"Nowadays, we thought that if we stopped believing in God we would be free from belief. But instead we believe in everything! Conspiracy theories, medical treatments, fundamentalism from anywhere except Christianity, power in stars, crystals, apparitions, and dogmatism seem to be everywhere."

Richard Rohr

Yes, I've become acutely aware that fundamentalism - the attitude of "my view (with the 'my' or 'I' usually dropped for convenience) is the correct, unfiltered view - is absolutely everywhere. Yet in our own culture, Christian (and perhaps Islamic) fundamentalism has become the "whipping-boy" or scapegoat, enabling all of the other more fashionable forms of fundamentalism to go unrecognized!

Photos: (Top) Mount Moran and Aspen trees; (Middle) Showy Goldeneye and The Cathedral Group; (Bottom) Reddish grasses, Sagebrush, and the Tetons; All four photos were taken in Grand Teton National Park, WY, September 4 and 7, 2015

The false self is skilled at hiding behind the mask of spirituality . . .

"There is no more clever way for the false self to hide itself than behind the mask of spirituality . . . This ego-mask takes a new form in every age. It is easy and even trendy to bash public religious roles, but it is very hard to critique the current movements of 'spirituality': specialized forms of prayer, new up-to-date postures and teachers, and especially any form of meditation or contemplation. They can all be used by the unstable ego to give itself identity, self-image, definition, and power . . . With the Western isolated self in a state of insecurity today, we are flailing about, searching for any solid identity. 'Why not see myself as an enlightened person? Why not read the appropriate authors and attend the appropriate workshops? Why not try on the 'spiritual' persona'? We can thus concoct a quick 'salvation,' without ever really growing up or 'dying' to our false selves at all. A spiritual self-image gives us status, stability, and security. There is no better way to remain unconscious than to baptize and bless mere form instead of surrendering to the deeper substance. I know this because I have done it myself. Spiritual seeking, when it is done by the false self, might be the biggest problem of all. In the name of seeking God, the ego just pads and protects itself, which is almost perfect cover for its inherent narcissism . . ."

Richard Rohr

Photo: Unidentified wildflower and The Cathedral Group, Grand Teton National Park, WY, September 7, 2015

Myth is something SO true that it can't be expressed in any other way.

Here's another passage from Richard Rohr's book "What the Mystics Know" that I read at the campground during my Yellowstone retreat:

"Why does a story have such power? Because most of us don't think abstractly. We live in a world of images and symbols; that's what moves us. Each of us IS a story. We were created by God as a story waiting to be told, and each of us has to find a way to tell our story. In the telling of it we come to recognize and own ourselves. For many people, 'myth' means something that isn't true. Please put aside that understanding. Myth is, in fact, something that is so true that it can be expressed only in story, symbol, ritual. It can't be abstracted and objectified. Its meaning and mystery are so deep and broad that they can be presented only in story form. When you step into a story, you find it is without limits and you can walk around with it and inside it. It is too big and too deep to be merely 'understood' or taught."

Photos: (Top) Hot springs pool at West Thumb Geyser Basin; (Second) Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin; (Third) Water from a hot spring flowing into the Firehole River; (Bottom) Bacteria mats in the Midway Geyser Basin; All four photos were taken in Yellowstone National Park, WY on September 5-7, 2015

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I am available for spiritual direction / mentoring sessions via cell phone or Skype. The fee for each hour-long session is $65. If you are interested, or would like to host a talk or workshop in your area, please contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com .

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We are always just a part of a larger Whole . . .

In Yellowstone's geyser and hot springs basins, there's always a lot of mist and steam. An elk or a tree or a particular thermal pool will come briefly into focus and then disappear into the mist and steam once again. This gives the sense that it is not so much any of the parts of the landscape that matter in an ultimate sense, but the whole of which they are a part. Similarly, our own spiritual path or perspective is meant simply to serve a much larger Whole. It is not meant to BE that Whole. Each of us is just a particular perspective or way of knowing that greater Whole. While having my morning retreat at the campground, I was therefore fascinated to read these words:

"Jesus invites us to become a new community of human beings; he calls us a little flock. I don't believe he ever wanted us to be the whole - only the part. He said we should be the yeast, the leaven, not the whole loaf. He called us to be the salt, but we want to be the whole meal. he urged us to be the light that illumines the mountaintop, but we want to be the whole mountain. The images Jesus uses are very modest and yet very strong. It's very difficult now for us to be merely leaven and salt and light. We hardly know how to do that. We want to lead; we want the way of power. We thought we had to be the whole loaf, whereas he tells us to be just the leaven. That is a much more humble, fragile, and even invisible position. it feels powerless and will appeal only to people who don't need power."

Richard Rohr
"What the Mystics Know"

Photos: West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 5 and 7, 2015

We are the masks of God!

At Yellowstone this past weekend, I had some meaningful retreat time while relaxing at our secluded forest campsite. After meditating and journaling each morning, I did some reading in a new book entitled "What the Mystics Know" by Franciscan friar Richard Rohr. Here is one of the passages that I found myself pondering over the weekend:

"The Judeo-Christian tradition would see all human personhood as real and organic participation in the one personhood that is God. In other words, the human self has no meaning or substance apart from the Selfhood of God. We are the masks of God, and we play out God's image in myriad human ways. The immense problem we are facing in a secular society is that we do not know we are the masks of God. We are therefore condemned to creating our own significance, our own legitimation, our own mask and personhood. This makes us - like atoms - inherently unstable. When we do not see our lives as a participation in Another, we are forced to manufacture our own private significance. Contemporary psychology had to create a word for this: 'ego.' It is the atomized self, the small self, the false self, which does not really 'exist' at all. In such a state of insecurity, it overdefends itself and overdefines itself. We call this the imperial ego, and it is the basis for all illusion and all evil . . . "

The magical, ethereal, mystical landscape of Yellowstone is, I discovered, the perfect place to pierce through the beautiful mask-like surface of the Earth in order to see the sacred Presence - which in this analogy, is the magma and immense heat originating several miles below - dwelling deep within all things!

Photos: (Top) West Thumb Geyser Basin; (Second) Orange thermophile algae and bacteria mats emanating from The Grand Prismatic Spring; (Third) Bison in Hayden Valley, with Mount Washburn looming in the distance; (Bottom) Changing Aspen leaves in the Midway Geyser Basin. All four photos were taken at Yellowstone National Park, WY, on September 6-7, 2015

Happiness is finally an inside job . . .

"Happiness is finally an inside job. We are too often 'reeds swaying in the breeze' (Matt. 11:7), dependent moment by moment on others' reaction and approval. This is the modern self: insubstantial, whimsical, totally dependent and calling itself 'free.' I have worked with people in whom I have seen this change: Once they were responding primarily to life outside themselves, but through contact with what I will call 'authentic transcendence,' they're drawing their life from within. They're not letting other people name them. They are named by God, and they have recognized that name as their deepest and truest self."

Richard Rohr
"What the Mystics Know"

Photo: Half Dome at sunrise, Yosemite National Park, CA, July 23, 2015

Others come alive when we see them for who they truly are.

One of the 2nd century Christian mystics we studied in class yesterday - St. Irenaeus of Lyons - says that "The life of humanity is the vision of God." For a contemplative, life would be nothing without this seeing of the Divine in all things through a mind suffused by love. However, we might more accurately say that we come alive because WE are seen by our Source. As Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr says, "The 'beatific vision' is perhaps God looking at us instead of our seeing God." We have this experience during the silence of contemplative prayer, when a nameless magnetic Love wells up from the center of our being and holds us in its embrace. This is the Gaze of God grasping us with love and affirming our own inner beauty and goodness. As a Renaissance mystic named Nicholas of Cusa so aptly says of God: "I AM because You look at me . . . With You, to behold is to give life . . . Feed me with Your gaze, O Lord . . . For with You to see is to cause. Your vision, Lord, is Your essence."

On the other hand, we experience the gaze of the sacred feminine - Sophia, Gaia, Mother Earth, the Goddess - holding us in its loving embrace whenever something beautiful grasps and holds our attention. I especially notice this with photography, when a beautiful tree, rock, mountain, sunset sky, flower or animal grasps ahold of my attention. In both of these cases - with God and Goddess - we come more alive when we are seen for who we really are.

Each of us is meant to mediate this gaze of God and Goddess to one another. When we come alive inside, it is because we are truly SEEN by one another. This seeing awakens us to our own beauty and goodness on a whole new level. In "The Soul's Code," James Hillman puts it this way: "To be is to be perceived . . . Phenomena need not be saved by grace or faith or all-embracing theory. They are saved by our simple gasping at their imaginal loveliness. The AHH of wonder, of recognition. The aesthetic response saves the phenomenon, the phenomenon which is the face of the world."

May each of us this day feed one another - and bring one another to fresh spiritual birth - through the gaze of appreciation and love.

Photos: The same scene viewed on January 13 and 20, 2015, Lory State Park, CO.