"If it be true that one's best friend is that individual who can make us do our best, then the trail is the most powerful of all silent friends. It kindly compels us to do our best without one word of advice. it teaches us as though it taught us not . . . The trail seeks out all the beauty spots and like a great character, finds only that which is the best." Enos Mills Father of Rocky Mountain National Park Photo: Joanne hiking to Dream Lake with Hallett Peak looming in the background, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, January 23, 2016 Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/
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"Gross utility kills beauty. We now have all over the world huge production of things, huge organizations, huge administrations of empire - all obstructing the path of life. Civilization is waiting for a great consummation, for an expression of its soul in beauty. This must be your contribution to the world." Rabindranath Tagore Photo: Ice art on The Loch, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, January 18, 2016 Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ "When God Was a Woman" Merlin Stone Author and scholar Today I did a spiritual direction session via Skype with another amazing, highly intelligent, spiritually-sensitive young woman. I find it fascinating to see that although I've spent decades honing my skills regarding male issues and masculine spirituality, very few men contact me to discuss their spiritual journey. It is mostly women of the Millennial Generation who end up coming to me for spiritual counsel. I am utterly amazed at the number of highly intelligent, powerful, motivated, spiritually sensitive young women I have the pleasure of serving. I suppose the Creator knew what She was doing when I was given two beautiful, smart, articulate and creative daughters, both now in their thirties. We've had so many wonderful conversations about life and spirituality over the years - while going out for coffee, sitting around the campfire, or sharing family dinners - that I feel amazingly blessed. In addition, I know so many amazingly spiritual women - locally, via social media, and through other internet connections. And then of course I've lived for the past 36 years with the most wise, generous, spiritually-sensitive and warm woman I could possibly imagine. For me there is no question: WOMEN are some of the Great Mystery's most amazing incarnations! Photo: The Cache la Poudre River, with Bellvue Dome in the background, Bellvue, CO, January 2016 Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ One of the traits of the Sacred Masculine I most appreciate is the capacity to take risks in the quest for adventure. If we think of the beyondness or transcendence aspect of the cosmos as a masculine quality, and if we imagine that the process of evolution is an adventure that has occurred under the influence of a transcendent God (the "Omega Point") who stands like a magnet in the infinite future, luring the whole process forward under the attractive power of love, we see that masculine risk has been a major aspect of life's evolution. Scientists tell us there were at least five major Extinction Events in geologic history: 1. The Ordovician-Silurian extinction, which occurred about 439 million years ago due to a drop in sea levels as glaciers formed, followed by rising sea levels as glaciers melted. 70% of all species went extinct. 2. The Late Devonian extinction, which took place sometime around 364 million years ago. To this day its cause is unknown. However, global cooling is the likely culprit. 70% of all species went extinct. 3. The Permian-Triassic extinction, which happened about 251 million years ago and was Earth's worst mass extinction. Many scientists believe a comet or asteroid impact led to this extinction. Others think that volcanic eruption, and related loss of oxygen in the seas were its cause. Still other scientists suspect that the impact of the comet or asteroid triggered the volcanism. 96% of all marine species and 70% of land species went extinct. 4. The End Triassic extinction, which took place roughly 199 million to 214 million years ago. This was most likely caused by massive floods of lava erupting from the central Atlantic magmatic province triggering the breakup of Pangaea and the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. The volcanism may have led to deadly global warming. 75% of all species went extinct. 5. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, which occurred about 65 million years ago and is thought to have been aggravated, if not caused, by impacts of a several-mile-wide asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater now hidden on the Yucatan Peninsula and beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Here, 75% of all species became extinct. The risk involved in initiating a relationship, setting out on an independent career, developing new ideas, or exploring a new landscape are all additional examples of the masculine risk-taking quality that inhabits all of us, both men and women. How could we ever feel bad when we seem to fail, especially in the light of Earth's five great Extinction Events? Photo: Waves of ice on The Loch, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, January 18, 2016 Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." Albert Einstein Photo: Lichen-covered boulders form a window through to a rocky outcrop, Vedauwoo Recreation Area, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY, January 13, 2016 Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ "Landscape lives the contemplative life of silence, solitude, and stillness." John O'Donohue Photo: Snow patterns, with Eagle's Nest Rock in the background, Larimer County, CO, January 16, 2016 Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ "Our desire to know is the deepest longing of the soul; it is a call to intimacy and belonging. All our knowing is an attempt to transfigure the unknown - to complete the journey from anonymity to intimacy. Knowledge does not abolish strangeness. True knowledge makes us aware of the numinous and awakens desire . . . Thought is a profound form of longing. Knowledge is intimacy." John O'Donohue Photo: Spires jut up through the mist above Emerald Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ "Though its belonging is still and sure, there is also a sense in which Nature is trapped in the one place. This must intensify the longing at the heart of Nature. The stillness of the stone is pure, but it also means that it can never move one inch from its thousand-year stand. . . . Think of your self and feel how you belong so deeply to the earth and how you are a tower of longing in which Nature rises up and comes to voice. We are the children of the clay, who have been released so that the earth may dance in the light." John O'Donohue Photo: My shadow at sunset in a landscape of rocky outcrops, Vedauwoo Recreation Area, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY, January 13, 2016 Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ Wilderness Insight Meditation is an Embodiment of the Spacious Backdrop of the Sacred Masculine1/20/2016 Wilderness Insight Meditation does not aim at getting rid of thoughts and emotions, nor try to remove us from the cares and concerns of the world. It detaches us from all of these - yes - but not as an end in itself. Rather, Wilderness Insight Meditation helps us identify ourselves with the spacious BACKDROP of awareness, the vast inner sky, the expansive interior lake, the all-pervasive ground of being. It does this through attention to each outbreath, and to attractive wilderness imagery that emphasizes the quality of spaciousness and beyondness, the domain of the Sacred Masculine. Then it teaches us to watch in absolute wonder and amazement as those very thoughts, emotions and concerns - together with all form and energy, domain of the Sacred Feminine - arise like intriguing echoes out of nowhere, like ripples on a seamless lake-surface, like clouds in a wide-open sky - STUNNING us with their beauty and grandeur. What greater calling can any of us - man or woman - have, when acting from within our own inner masculine, than to serve as the steady, stable, ever-present, loving Backdrop on which all of the color, form and energy of the Goddess can unceasingly manifest itself? It really IS quite a fulfilling and honorable calling! Photo: Snow patterns on the surface of Watson Lake, with Bellvue Dome and clouds in the background, Bellvue, CO, January 2016 Please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ A major quality of the Sacred Masculine - of God, Tunkashila, Father Sky, Dharmakaya, Sunyata, the Great No-Thing - is BEYONDNESS, transcendence, otherworldliness. The Masculine is meant to remain wild and undomesticated, not in a selfish, narcissistic manner that is dangerous to others, but in the sense of having his origin in another world. While the Goddess is all about immanence and this-worldliness, God energy is ever BEYOND - the sky-like backdrop, the lake-like expanse, the transcendent ground of being on which all creatures, together with the Goddess herself, can arise, thrive and find protection. This means that a man - and a woman in her masculine - is not meant to become mired in lame and tame substitutes for wildness: in alcohol, drugs, TV, video games, spectator sports, obsessive sex, or in a citified, domesticated existence. Rather, masculinity frequents the wilderness, either externally - in the wide-open landscape - or internally, in the domain of a vast and open mind and heart where God dwells forever in spacious, ecstatic, self-emptying bliss, lost to himself in love for a world which is nevertheless able to manifest itself upon the vast backdrop of his steady and loving Gaze. Above all, a man is meant to have the sky in his eyes . . . Photos: Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, January, 2016 |
AuthorStephen Hatch, M.A. is a spiritual teacher and photographer from Fort Collins, Colorado. His approach is contemplative, inter-spiritual, and Earth-based. Archives
June 2016
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