"As if there weren't enough ways to avoid what’s going on in our minds, e-mail and social media are now routed to our mobiles to distract us all day long. As convenient as this may be, this hyper-connectedness means that now even the slightest feeling of boredom or restlessness is a trigger to get online and keep busy." Headspace, Huffington Post Today I ordered my very first smartphone so I will have the capability of doing something that many people have requested of me: share short videos with teaching points here on Facebook. I need the video capacity of the phone so I can take it outdoors and record whenever I need to do so. Hopefully, this will help in gaining clients for my Spiritual Direction business. Also, those of you who have not met me face to face will be able to gain more of a sense of who-I-am than mere words on a screen ever could. However, I make this move with quite a bit of trepidation. Part of my daily spiritual practice involves remaining present in each moment to whatever is occurring, even if that experience of "now" seems boring and without meaning. As monks and contemplatives throughout the ages have always known, such boredom is the very fuel needed to activate the SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION as a means to finding sacredness in situations that appear meaningless and spiritually dry. While it is easy to leave my wifi-connected I Pad at home when I'm working nights at my janitorial accounts in town, the phone will generally remain with me. This means that the temptation to check email, Facebook and Instagram will be greatly intensified. For years, I've noticed with dismay that many of my friends engage in the habit of constantly checking their phones, no matter where they are. One spiritual direction client even brought his phone into our face-to-face sessions and kept checking his messages while we were talking. I finally informed him I would only continue with the counseling on the condition that he LEAVE his phone in the car. Now I will no longer be able to use the "leave the device at home" strategy in attempting to faithfully preserve my regimen of spiritual discipline. I pray for the capacity to activate new reserves of INNER discipline instead. Here is a link to the article quoted above: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/meditation-in-action-technology-and-mindfulness_n_3360037.html Photo: Wild Currant bush and rock formations; Vedauwoo Recreation Area, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY, September 28, 2015 - - - - - - - - - - - I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Enlargements of many of my photos are available. Here is the link: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6
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"The voyage of the best sailing ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times. Ordinarily, everybody in society reminds us of someone else, of some other person. True character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. Every true person is a cause, a country, and an age!" Ralph Waldo Emerson Photo: Crooked Aspen tree, near Kebler Pass, CO, September 26, 2015 - - - - - - - - - - - I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6 Yesterday, after my meditation session in the mountains, I wrote these lines in my journal: Silence is the mutual bliss - the ananda - of both God and Goddess. The Emptiness of the forest is the bliss of God; The Forms in the forest are the bliss of Goddess; And the Two are One, Both now and Forever. Photo: Long's Peak and Aspen trees, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 9, 2015 - - - - - - - - - - - I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6 One of the challenging things I've noticed about modern life is the fact that ongoing connections with people these days are often difficult to maintain. This is especially true with social media. My experience is this: people seek me out for friendship and put a lot of time and energy into the interactions for a few weeks or perhaps a few months. Eventually, however, they either tire of the interaction or simply move on to greener pastures. I've heard something similar from people who use the internet to find dating partners. One relative told me: "I think that because there is so much CHOICE in the world right now, people will date me a time or two, but then figure they'd like to see WHO ELSE is out there. It is frustrating, because the interactions end almost as quickly as they begin!" This sense of the fragility of human connection is especially true with those of us who do spiritual work. I've discovered over three decades of offering spiritual services that many people expect spirituality to be given completely free of charge, as though the person offering it has no financial needs. "GOD will take care of you" seems to be the common attitude. The principle of reciprocity seems to have gone "out the window" in this modern age of hyper-individuality, and those of us who offer such services are becoming something of an endangered species. Add to these trends the fact that people's workplaces no longer feel a loyalty toward them - but will instead replace them on a whim with someone "better" - and you have the prescription for a full-blown societal breakdown. For myself, I've discovered that time spent developing my relationship with the Divine - both the Sacred Masculine and the Sacred Feminine - through contact with the natural world is one of the chief ways to remain sane and connected. Photos: (Top) Golden Cottonwoods and green Aspens, with Long's Peak in the background, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 9, 2015; (Middle) Aspens, peaks, and mudflats on the edge of Crater Lake, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO, September 27, 2015; (Bottom) Aspens and Thimbleberry leaves, near Kebler Pass, September 26, 2015 I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6 Both silence and intellectual reflection are needed in the spiritual journey. Without one or the other, our lives remain incomplete, for both are an integral part of our basic humanity. If there's one thing I've noticed about modern religion and spirituality, it's that they almost always deny some part of our innate constitution as human beings. On the one hand, Silence is needed for intellectual insights to arise - spontaneously and miraculously like echoes with no Original sound - within the still lake of the mind. On the other hand, Reflection is needed - especially using mytho-poetic, paradoxical, and seemingly nonsensical images - to interpret the infinite meanings contained within that very Silence! Photo: Lost Lake and the peaks of the Ruby Range, near Kebler Pass, CO, September 25, 2015 - - - - - - - - - - - I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6 An effective way of transmuting the energy of desire and longing into spiritual fulfillment is to momentarily take our focus off the object of desire and place it instead on the energy of DESIRE ITSELF. We might call this a "mindfulness of desire" because it allows us to focus on an emotion that we usually take for granted. When we do this, we realize that the desire is not actually OURS. Rather, we find our awareness, which is a major aspect of the "real" us, GRASPED and GRIPPED by desire and longing, as though by a Divine Beloved. When we experience longing from this perspective, we come to realize that our longing for love or fulfillment is actually a participation in Love's and Fulfillment's longing for us! Here, by a magical spiritual alchemy, desire turns out to be its own fulfillment! Or, put in more theistic terms, our desire for God is a participation in God's desire for us, and our longing for the Goddess is actually the Goddess' longing for us! Rather than being the BEGINNING of a process of acquisition whereby the object of longing sets itself up IN FRONT of us, longing is now revealed as the END of the process, with the One from whom the desire arises situated effectively BEHIND us, grasping and magnetizing us with a Longing that loved us first! Here, we come to sink endlessly back into Desire's arms and yet never arrive at the One who is forever grasping us in longing. For The Beloved-as-Desire is eternally LOST in holding us, which means that there is now a sense of being-held with NO ONE doing the holding! In this case, the object of our longing situated in front of us actually becomes merely a crystallization of our own desire, which arises like an echo of The Desire that grasps and holds us from behind in ITS loving embrace! Photos: (Top) Shore of Crater Lake, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO, September 27, 2015; (Middle) Aspen trees and Beckwith Mountain, near Kebler Pass, CO, September 26, 2015; (Bottom) Aspen leaves lying on the surface of a stream, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 9, 2015 I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6 "Nature like a fluid seems to drench and steep us throughout, as the whole sky and the rocks and flowers are drenched with spiritual life - with God!" The Contemplative John Muir Photos: Various cascades in Poudre Canyon and in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 5, 10 and 12, 2015 I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6 When people claim that "Every contemplative or mystical tradition is really saying the SAME thing," they fail to take into account the fact that each is actually contributing something UNIQUE to the Grand Mosaic of Divine Wisdom. What they are actually saying is this: "Every contemplative or mystical tradition confirms what "I" believe!" But this is all subconscious, of course. People habitually and conveniently replace the "I" in this statement with "God" or "The Truth" or "The Way It Is," but the "I" is always present nonetheless. One of the major insights of the postmodern era is the fact that "All knowledge is PERSPECTIVAL." It is definitely true that each tradition or non-tradition-based way of experiencing the Sacred taps into ONE Divine Self-awareness, but it is just as true to say that each contributes a DIFFERENT facet or perspective to that one sacred Self-knowledge. Together, all of the various perspectives make for an AMAZING mosaic of spiritual wisdom! Photo: Aspen trees just before sunset, near Kebler Pass, CO, September 25, 2015 - - - - - - - - - - - I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6 The Silence I experienced today while hiking and meditating at Red Mountain Open Space was really quite profound. In this silence, I sensed a mutual bliss of God and Goddess, with my identity sandwiched in between the Two. "The I only awakens to itself in a Thou," says Abhishiktananda. "Therefore, there cannot be solitary bliss, any more than there can be solitary being or solitary self-awareness." Today, I could definitely sense that mutual bliss." Photo: Three-leafed Sumac, with red cliffs in the background; Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO, September 19, 2015 - - - - - - - - - - - I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6
Solitude is one of the most important spiritual disciplines we can practice. When in solitude, we come home to our relationship with the cosmos - and more specifically - to our union with God and Goddess. They in turn then bring us home to our true self by emptying themselves continually through love and bliss into the very core of our being. That core self is not defined by any social expectations or by the fickle praise of society, but by our calling to contribute a unique, one-of-a-kind perspective to the Divine Source's self-awareness and self-appreciation. By contrast, our tech-oriented society would try to convince us that our true home is in our internet connections. In this regard, I'd like to suggest an experiment. Ask yourself: "Do I feel most at home in solitude or in my internet connections through social media and email?" When you get up in the morning, is checking your email, Facebook or Instagram the first thing you think about? As you move throughout your day, do you feel a persistent hunger to check your messages? If so, then you may want to spend more time in solitude away from your phone, tablet or computer. Having a natural area nearby where there is no cell phone service available can definitely aid in experiencing the richness of your true home in the communion of solitude. It is one of the things I appreciate most about our Western wild areas. Photos: Various scenes from Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 9 and 16, 2015 I am available for one-on-one spiritual direction / mentoring via phone or Skype. You can contact me at canyonechoes@gmail.com if you are interested. The rate is $65 per hour-long session. You might also want to check out my Spiritual Direction with Stephen Hatch Facebook page. Many of my photos are available as prints, either mounted or unmounted. Here is a link to the pricing and various mounts available: http://www.stephenhatchphotography.com/#!mounting-prices/cpr6 |
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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