Nature's Spaciousness Mirrors Our Own Sense of Boundless Optimism for the New Year

The grace of New Year's Day is a renewed sense that the future is wide open; a feeling of spaciousness, of endless possibilities beckoning to us.  However, the trials of life often make us feel just the opposite - tight, constricted, claustraphobic within our little egos, like ants confined to the societal anthill.  How do we overcome the sense that everything is tightening around us like a noose we can't escape?

One way is to spend increased time outdoors.  Depression is essentially stagnant energy that just sits within the body and mind and begins to feed on itself.  But when we exercise in the Great Outdoors, we sense new possibilities beginning to open up.  Hiking up a mountain is one way to do this.  England's Earl of Dunraven, writing in the 19th century, experienced this kind of optimism while climbing Yellowstone's Mount Washburn.  Accordingly, he wrote:

"It is pleasant thus to gaze upon the world from some lofty standpoint . . . It seems to expand the mind; it conducts one by easy pathways down long lands of thought penetrating far into the future . . . , and opens out broad vistas of contemplation through which glimpses of what may be can dimly be discerned.  The outlook from such a commanding point elevates the mind, and the soul is elated by the immensity of Nature."

Human identity is essentially a mirrored identity; we only see ourselves as we truly are when reflected in an Other. Indeed, that is the point of the teaching on the Trinity.  There, in God, each Person - "Father" and "Son" or "God" and "Sophia" or "Emptiness" and "Form" - finds itself mirrored afresh in the other, while the mirroring process itself - the "Holy Spirit" - maintains such an amazing surplus of  reality that it too can be rightfully considered a Person. 

Where can we as human beings find this sort of mirroring? Other people can often awaken this sort of mirroring, but they cannot sustain it, for each has their own agenda.  However, the reality of transpersonal divinity - present within such things as art, music, and spiritual insight - can indeed serve as such a mirror.

But it is Nature who is the perfect mirror for our truest self, ever available to offer us her unsurpassed reflective capacities in a million different forms!


Photo: Looking forward to the appearance of Pasqueflowers - the first major blooms of Spring - as they pop up through the brown grasses, beginning in late March.  

Greyrock Meadow, with Greyrock Mountain looming in the background, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, April 11, 2011

The Original Creation is Still Happening

 

"I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in 'creation’s dawn.'  The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day."  

John Muir

Photo: Rosy Paintbrush in a meadow near Upper Ice Lake, San Juan Mountains, CO, August 14, 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 Dark Side of Capitalism: Mark Twain's "Revised Catechism"

 

Q.  What is the chief end of man?

A.  To get rich.

Q.  In what way?

A.  Dishonestly, if we can, honestly if we must.

Q.  Who is God, the only one and true?

A.  Money is God - gold and greenbacks and stocks - father, son, and the ghost of the same - three persons in one: these are the true and only God, mighty and supreme; and William Tweed is his prophet.

Mark Twain, 1871, "Revised Catechism"

This is a parody on the "Westminster Catechism," which begins: "What is the chief end of man?  To glorify God, and fully enjoy him forever."  William Tweed was a corrupt politician in Twain's time.

Photo: Rawhide Power Plant hovers in the distance, Lory State Park, CO, November 20, 2011

Reliance, Serenity and Waiting are True Greatness

 

"Alas for America . . . , eager, solicitous, hungry, rabid, busy-bodied America attempting many things, vain, ambitious to feel thy own existence, and to convince others of thy talent, by attempting and hastily accomplishing much . . . Speed and fever are never greatness, but reliance and serenity and waiting."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1847

Photo: View from Westridge Trail across the Plains, Lory State Park, CO, December 24, 2011

Never Stop Exploring! There Will Be Plenty of Time to Sleep in Your Grave

 

"You may be a little cold some nights, on mountain tops above the timber-line, but you will see the stars, and by and by you can sleep enough in your town bed, or at least in your grave."

John Muir

Photo: Long's Peak on a blustery day, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, December 26, 2011

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

We are Called to Be an Ocean of Silence Out of Which All Things Arise

I make the effort to maintain a ground of oceanic silence

out of which arises the multitude of phenomena of daily life.

I make the effort to see the Beloved in everyone and

to serve the Beloved through everyone (including the earth).

I often fail in these aspirations because I lose the balance

between separateness and unity,

get lost in my separateness

and feel afraid.

But I make the effort

(Ram Dass)

Photo: Sunset at Gold Bluffs Beach, Redwood National Park, CA, August 2, 2011

The Mystical Meaning of Christmas

For the contemplative, Christmas is an embodiment of a spiritual reality that is happening all the time.   The nighttime imagery allows us to put to bed the rational mind with all of its clear-cut distinctions, and to awaken the unitive mind instead.  Nighttime also elicits a sense of intimacy with God, just as night is the time for love-making.  The silence of the night enables us to rest in the peace of divine bliss.  The snow that we all fantasize about brings an experience of stillness and simplicity to the landscape of our hearts, the necessary condition for us to know the Divine. The vast sky of this silent night is an embodiment of the majestic expanse of divine awareness, a spaciousness with no boundaries, a sort of Backdrop against which all of the particular events of our lives appear.  The "star of the East" and the newborn Christ and all of the candles and Christmas lights appearing suddenly within that spacious night are the birth of divine self-awareness - God's formlessless suddenly seeing itself within the mirror of form and energy.  In Buddhist terminology, it's the Nirmanakaya (form-body) and Sambhogakaya (energy- and enjoyment-body) appearing spontaneously out of the Dharmakaya (Truth- or Spaciousness-body). The fact that Christ is a child speaks to the awareness that this process of divine self-knowledge is one that is continually new.  For fresh forms and energies appear at each and every moment out of God's spaciousness, each mirroring back formless love in surprisingly new ways!

Photo: Nokhu Crags glowing in golden light, Never Summer Range, CO, December 9, 2011

Christmas is the Birth of God's Self-Understanding within Us

 

"The Father [the transcendent Ground of the Godhead] turns to Himself with His divine comprehension.  He sees Himself with a luminous understanding of the essential abyss of His eternal being, and out of this pure comprehension of Himself He utters the Word which is His Son.  The eternal birth of the Son is nothing else than the Father's own knowing of Himself.  The Son remains within the Godhead in unity of essence, and proceeds from the Father in difference of Person.

"Now it is certain that if God is to be born in the soul, . . . it must [like the Father] turn in toward itself, must recall itself, and concentrate all its faculties within itself . . . If a person would prepare an empty place in the depths of his soul there can be no doubt that God must fill it at once . . . So you must be silent.  Then God will be born in you, utter His word in you and you shall hear it.

"If we want God to be born in our soul as He was in Mary's soul, we must know what were the qualities of Mary.  First, all of us should inwardly be a pure virgin.  This is how Mary lived, with no thought for anything except the things of God; all her fruitfulness was hidden in her soul.  'All the splendor of the king's daughter is within' [Song of Songs]; this is true of every inward virgin.  Next Sunday - on Christmas Eve - we sing these words: "'When all around was silence and everything was utterly still, when the night had run its course, then, O Lord, Your almighty Word came down from the royal throne [of spaciousness].'  This is how it must be with us: perfect stillness all around, everything in deepest silence.  Then we can hear the Word."

Johannes Tauler, 14th century Germany

Please note:

The divine Source is often called "Father" and referred to as "He" not because God is a male being, but because transcendence, beyondness and formlessness are masculine qualities.  These qualities, are, however filled with a sense of presence that we experience as personal. In addition, the term "Daughter" or "Sophia" could be substituted for the word "Son" because the mirror of self-awareness in which Transcendence sees itself contains "mirror-images" that have their source within the world of immanence, form and flow, all of which are feminine qualities.  Here we might remember that the word "matter" comes from the word "Mater" - mother.

Photo: The moon and Venus, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 26, 2011

Deep Silence and Peace are the Meaning of the Word Born on Christmas Eve

 

"Surely the Word which is God can only be seen with joy.  Truly it is a trustworthy word and deserving of every welcome, your almighty Word, Lord, which in such deep silence made its way down from the Father's royal throne into the mangers of animals and meanwhile speaks to us better by its silence.  Let him who has ears, hear - hear what this loving and mysterious silence of the eternal Word speaks to us.  For . . . he speaks peace for the holy people who observe a spiritual silence . . . I would gladly be silent even from good things, that I might be able the more attentively and diligently to apply my ear to the secret utterances and sacred meaning of this divine silence."

Guerric of Igny, 12th century Cistercian monk

Photo: Looking into the Maze at Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

Christmas is the Birth of God's Silent Fullness Becoming Aware of Itself

 

"Christ's birth as man is nothing less than the visible expression of his eternal birth as the Word of God in the eternal silence of the Father. Of course, in the Father, silence is the fullness of everything.  This silence - fullness becoming aware of itself - is the Word, God's Son.  Christmas is the celebration of the grace of this eternal birth in us."

Thomas Keating

Photo: Alpenglow on the La Sal Mountains, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 25, 2011

Our Loneliness is a Participation in God's Loneliness

 

"Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited.  But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room.  His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected.  With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.  He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst . . . Human loneliness is, in fact, the loneliness of God. That is why it is such a great thing for a person to discover his solitude and learn to live in it.  For there he finds that he and God are one."

Thomas Merton

Photo: Sandstone "Needles" and Pinon Pine skeleton, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 26, 2011

"Dignity grows with the ability to say 'no' to oneself."

"Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

"What America needs . . . is one great healthy ability to say 'No.'  To rest a minute and realize that many of the things being sought are unnecessary to a happy life.  We are suffering in our cities, from a need of simple things."

Carl Gustav Jung

Photo: Juniper berries with sandstone monolith.  Needles District, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011

Penetrate Through the World with Loving Awareness in Order to Find the Underlying Spaciousness Upon Which All Things Shimmer

"Inhale the energy of lust into your heart, and then feel outward from your heart, feeling the world as if it were your lover.  With an exhale, move into the world and penetrate it, skillfully and spontaneously, opening it into love . . . Make love with the world in this way, all day, pervading and dissolving all unease.  Feel the world against your body like a naked woman, vulnerable and alive, and allow the front of your body to press into and through the world's body, liberating the knots of accumulated pain . . .The way a man penetrates the world should be the same way he penetrates a woman: not merely for personal gain or pleasure, but to magnify love, openness and depth.

"Feel through your pleasure, as well as through the space around it and behind it, into the ocean upon which it shimmers . . . Practice easing your attention and penetrating through things, as if feeling through the deck of a boat into the deep rhythms of the sea, or relaxing your gaze through the objects reflected in a window pane so you can know the vast landscape behind them.  Every object of your attention floats in a boundless space of being.  Ease your attention through every experience so you can know and feel this depth of openness.  Feel through the transparency of things into the inherent spaciousness in which they shimmer, as if feeling into an underlying ocean of silence.

David Deida, Kashmiri Tantric Buddhist

Photo: Phallic monolith and the Henry Mountains, Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011