There is no certainty until you burn!

""If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don't abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire."

Jalaluddin Rumi

Photo: Grasses growing at sunset in the High Park Burn; Young Gulch, CO; January 7, 2013

The lover's house improves with fire. From now on, I will make burning my aim.

Should Love's heart rejoice unless I burn?
For my heart is Love's dwelling.
If You will burn Your house, burn it, Love!
Who will say, 'It's not allowed'?
Burn this house thoroughly!
The lover's house improves with fire.
From now on I will make burning my aim,
for I am like the candle: burning only makes me brighter.
Abandon sleep tonight; traverse for one night
the region of the sleepless.
Look upon these lovers who have become distraught
and like moths have died in union with the One Beloved.
Look upon this ship of God's creatures
and see how it is sunk in Love.

Jalaluddin Rumi

Photo: Sunset in the High Park Burn; Young Gulch, Poudre Canyon, CO; January 7, 2013

Be friends with your burning.

"Forget phraseology.
I want burning, 'burning'.
                 Be friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!
                 Moses,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
                 Lovers who burn
are another."

Jalaluddin Rumi

Photo: High Park Burn, Young Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO; January 4, 2013

Come into being as you pass away.

These Douglas-fir trees were burned in the High Park Fire this past summer, leaving the needles singed and the bark blackened.  Now, the needles of the dying trees are turning a bright red, contrasting beautifully with the blackened trees.  For me, these stunning needles illustrate a process that occurs each and every moment of our lives.  Here, the appearance of each event and each creature within our experience is like a fireworks display, exploding into vibrant appearance in the very moment when it is simultaneously dissipating and dying away, only to reappear out of the pregnant spaciousness of divine love in the very next moment, and then dying away again in the next. This process of simultaneous rebirth and death appears all through our lives, embodying the vibrant and paradoxical magic of life. When we consciously embrace this process, we are following the injunction of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: "Come into being as you pass away."  May all of us realize and practice this insight with increasing depth.

Photo:  High Park Burn, Young Gulch, Poudre Canyon, CO; January 7, 2012

Become the sky.

Inside this new love,
die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.

Jalaluddin Rumi

Photo: Beautiful sky; Fern Lake Burn, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; January 5, 2013

A mountain can be a great teacher because it stands apart, at once elusive and magisterial.

"A mountain can be a great teacher . . . because it stands apart, at once elusive and magisterial.  Walking up the mountain today, its imposing and indifferent presence reminds me yet again that things in and of themselves remain beyond us, even after the most exhaustive and accurate scientific or philosophical account, the most compelling mythology, or the most concise and penetrating poem . . . It was this insight that drew ancient China's intellectuals to mountains . . . The West's dualistic thinking devalues 'nature' because its linguistic silence allows for no meaning, no inner reality or spirit, and this devaluation has facilitated catastrophic environmental destruction, for it reduces earth to nothing more than a collection of resources for our use, or the stage upon which we play out our human drama during a brief exile from our true spirit-home.  But for the ancients, the elemental silence of things is the perfect wisdom that we, as linguistic beings, have lost."

David Hinton

"Hunger Mountain"

Photo: Last light glazes Long's Peak and Keyboard of the Winds above Mills Lake; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; January 4, 2013

The lakes boom and utter their joy.

This past weekend, I hiked to two lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park.  The first was Mills Lake, at  10,000 feet in elevation, and the second was Cub Lake, at about 8,600 feet.  On both hikes, I was surprised to hear the lake booming - a loud sound followed immediately by one that was softer, on the same pitch.  To me, it felt like the lakes were alive and talking.  I found it easy to resonate with Henry David Thoreau when he wrote: "The bare face of the pond is full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore."

Photo: Ice and reflections on Mills Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; January 4, 2013

In meditation, our thoughts are like whirlwinds of snow, kicked up from a mountain peak, made surprisingly ruddy with the last light!

At sunset on Saturday, the most amazing thing happened.  My wife and I were hiking in the Cub Lake area in Rocky Mountain National Park.  The sunlight had recently left the mountain tops, leaving them standing - in shade - in silent contemplation.  However, it was a blustery day up there, and every few minutes, the wind would kick up some snow on the peak and swirl it in the air, turning it into a whirlwind.  Each time that occurred, the last light - hovering unseen just above the peak - turned the swirl of snow a bright red, making the mountain look almost as though it was having a volcanic eruption!

As my wife and I watched this show, it occurred to me that this is precisely what I experience in meditation. As I sit in silence, I begin to embody the vast stillness of mountain and sky.  Then, out of nowhere, thoughts kick up.  Rather than treat them as intrusions into the silence, I have learned instead to practice AMAZEMENT that they could even occur at all.  Since many of these thoughts embody strong emotion - desire, love, fear, anger, etc. - it makes sense to imagine that when they arise, they appear ruddy with passion.  But just as quickly as they kick up, they subside back into the shade of stillness, only to arise once more a few seconds later. How amazing is the mind when we actually sit  and watch it!

Photo: Stones Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; January 5, 2013

The fiery trials of our lives find healing when we view them against the spacious backdrop of Divine Awareness.

When I encounter trees burned in a forest fire set again a wide-open sky, I am being given a chance to see the fiery trials of my own life find healing when they are placed within a larger context.  Here, the sky is an embodiment of the vastness of divine awareness, a spacious, loving Reality in which my own consciousness participates.  If  I identify myself with this vastness rather than with the aspects of my life that have seemingly turned to ash, then I can begin to see them as transparent windows onto that vastness.  Indeed, without

the fire of trials, I would never have the motivation to look through them to the vast and loving reality Beyond.

Photo: Charred trees in the Fern Lake Burn; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; January 5, 2013 

Watch the glow of God reflecting from my face.

Watch all the aspiration and light;
watch the glow of God
reflecting from my face

Jalaluddin Rumi

Photo: Long's Peak burns in alpenglow fire above Mills Lake; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; January 4, 2012

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we IMAGINE we are?

"I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream.  Are we not always living the life that we IMAGINE we are?"

Henry David Thoreau, 1859

Photo:  Cottonwood trees, an irrigator, and a backdrop of the foothills area hit by the High Park Fire; Bellvue, CO; December 31, 2012.  Notice the three coyotes at bottom right.

Everything terrible is something that needs our love.

"Everything terrible is something that needs our love."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Photo: High Park Burn made ethereal by late-day light; December 31, 2012

When we give love in ONE particular place, we find liberation when we learn to remain open to the ways in which our love is returned to us from OTHER sources.

One of the most difficult challenges in life is the experience of unrequited love, not only in a romantic context, but also in the realm of friendship.  When we offer our heart to another, and they do not love us in return, we are tempted to feel foolish and embarrassed.  In fact, we often feel we've gotten "burned" by giving ourselves so naively.  However, we can find liberation from the suffering this situation brings when we realize that life   - together with our own core identity  - is actually composed of a whole NETWORK of beings, all of whom are intimately interconnected at their deepest core.  In the context of a Rocky Mountain aspen forest like the one pictured here, we might say that every person and every creature is like a single stem growing in a grove in which every tree is interconnected at the roots.

Interestingly, the Pando Grove in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah is commonly thought to be the largest living organism. It covers 106 acres, and is at least 80,000 years old, although some scientists think it may be up to a million. It is comprised of over 47,000 stems, all of which are tied in to a single root system. This aspen grove serves as a wonderful embodiment of the answer to our dilemma of unrequited love. Accordingly, one of the most important life-lessons we can learn is the realization that - when we offer our love to ONE particular person - we must then remain open to the ways in which we may receive love in return from some OTHER person.  In other words, except in the case of intimate relationship, where both partners are ideally equally in love,  we will remain disappointed with others only if we erroneously expect to receive love back from the same person to whom we first offered it.

Can we remain open to receiving a sense that we are lovable from an attractive stranger's smile, for example, or from an alpenglow sunrise, or from unexpected wildlife we might encounter on the trail? Or perhaps from a liberating insight that suddenly visits us, or from a sense of joy at simply being alive? We may feel our love turned to ash within the recipient of our love when they do not want it, but we find liberation from hurt feelings when we remember to remain open to receive love back from some other creature - or person - composing the vast web of life.  In other words, the solution to our dilemma arises when we take our attention off the ashen aspen tree and place it instead on an unburned tree composing the great grove of the world.  Gradually, it dawns on us that our frequent experience of rejection comes from our habit of construing life too narrowly. We begin to see that we can find peace instead when we understand that the love we receive in return may come from a completely DIFFERENT source!

Photo: Burned and unburned aspen trees; Fern Lake Burn, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; December 29, 2012

Let us appreciate the yin and yang of life.

I'm always attracted to contrasts nestled side by side.  In this case, it's a sprig of Oregon Holly-Grape jutting up out of the snow, next to an aspen trunk burned in last month's forest fire.  To me, this sort of aesthetic visual contrast speaks of the importance of respecting the yin-yang aspect of life.  Without something to struggle against, we would develop no psychological muscle.  Without emotional suffering, there would be no sudden insight.  Without the sense of separation, there could be no awareness of union.  Without unrequited love for another human being, there would be no search for a Divine Lover. Without ego, there could be no enlightenment when ego is seen-through. And without the mundane events of life, there could be no ecstasy or epiphany.  Obviously, we will all continue to work to end EXTREME suffering - unbearable physical or psychological pain, debilitating disease, poverty and oppression.  Too much pain does nothing but squash the human spirit.  But mild or moderate suffering is the gas that fuels the spiritual journey.  It is the fire of trials that brings the greenness of new life.  This, I've come to realize, is a major reason why I love spending time exploring, photographing and contemplating in forest fire burn areas.

Photo:  Fern Lake Burn, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; December 29, 2012

Let us have faith during the inevitable period of dormancy that occurs after old realities end and before new growth springs forth.

Last month, the vegetation in this marsh was burned to stubble in a forest fire that covered 3,500 acres. When spring arrives in a few months, these plants will sprout vigorously from the roots, becoming greener and more beautiful than ever.  However, for now, they are covered in a blanket of snow, and not much seems to be happening.  Similarly, when the fire of challenge and suffering comes into our lives, many things we had relied upon come to an end.  Even so, we can have faith that new possibilities will eventually spring forth.  However, let us not become discouraged when a period of winter-like dormancy seems to drag on for months before that newness emerges.  During that time, our psyche is being watered by what seems like a smothering, deadening blanket, and our inner being is preparing for its later growth. Let us maintain our faith, and weather through the period of dormancy until life is ready to spring forth once more!

Photo: Cub Lake, Fern Lake Burn, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; December 29, 2012